The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton

With millennial and Generation Z employees projected to comprise a large portion of the U.S. workforce by 2025, the Office of Personnel Management is pushing forward on more incentives to recruit and retain early-career federal employees. It’s particularly important right now, said OPM Director Kiran Ahuja, because of the current imbalance in how many early-career employees there are in the federal workforce, versus the nationwide workforce.

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Whether you think House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is leaving on a wave of glory or on a broomstick, things are shifting in Congress. In the meantime, she's still speaker for the remainder of the 117th Congress, affectionately known as the lame duck. Federal Drive host finds out what the lame duck will do, as he spoke with WTOP Capitol Hill correspondent Mitchell Miller.

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The Biden administration has proposed a new rule for federal contractors. It wants them to report their greenhouse gas emission levels, financial risks, and what the proposals calls "science-based emissions reduction targets." To get one industry view on the proposed rule, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with the federal counsel for the Associated General Contractors of America, Jordan Howard.

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In 2019, when Congress and the Trump administration enacted the U.S. Space Force, they left out something: A space national guard. After all, there are Army and Air Force civilian auxiliaries. There's even a Navy Militia. Last month, a Biden administration policy statement came out against a space national guard. Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with someone who makes the argument in favor: Col. Michael Bruno, the Chief of Joint Staff, Joint Force Headquarters in Colorado.

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When the Pentagon released its latest four-year national defense strategy, it became must reading for contractors and their associations. To find out more about how it is being received in one region with a substantial defense economy, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Mark Faulkner, who is now President of the Institute of Defense and Business.

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The U.S. National Ice Center. It sounds like a hockey rink. But actually it's an agency, operating under the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command. Actually a collaboration of several agencies: the Navy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Coast Guard. To find out more about the National Ice Center, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke, in studio, with the center's director and commanding officer, Navy Commander Casey Gon.

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The Defense Department closed out its fifth year of full-scale financial audits with a failing grade — a result that’s not surprising in and of itself, considering that officials have previously predicted that getting a clean opinion would take a decade or more from the time the audits started.

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If past is prologue, the CIO-SP4 services contract vehicle is in danger of being crushed by protests. It's supposed to be the next big offering from NITAAC, the NIH Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center. Unsuccessful vendors filed at least 117 complaints with the Government Accountability Office over the last two weeks. Federal News Network executive editor Jason Miller joins Tom Temin with the latest.

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A fixed-price contract. It is a common strategy for the government. Contractors need to understand that every word in that three-word phrase is there for a reason. If inflation, COVID, and/or supply-chain problems drive up your costs, tough luck. That point was reinforced in a recent lawsuit, about which Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke about with Zach Prince, Smith Pachter McWhorter procurement attorney.

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If the IRS gets all the money Congress promised it over the next ten years, its enforcement powers will grow a lot. One school of thought is that protections for taxpayers should also get a plus-up. Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with Dean Zerbe, who is a proponent of Congress passing a taxpayers rights bill. Zerbe worked on the IRS reform commission in the late 1990s, and is an attorney working for tax whistleblowers.

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