• The Biden administration's final rule to block Schedule F is in place, but the push still continues in Congress. Many advocates say the new regulations securing job protections for career feds are a step in the right direction. But some are concerned it will not be enough to stop Schedule F's resurrection in a future administration. Democratic lawmakers are urging the passage of the Saving the Civil Service Act. The bill aims to prevent career civil servants from being made at-will and easier to fire. The legislation has not seen much action, but the new final rule spurred lawmakers, like Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), to press harder and call for its passage.
  (Saving the Civil Service Act - Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.))
• New guidance is out to improve the management of more than a trillion dollars in federal grants. The Office of Management and Budget released the 2024 revisions to the Uniform Grants Guidance. This is the first update in four years. OMB's Deputy Director for Management Jason Miller said among the major changes is improving NoFos, the notice of funding opportunities. "The Uniformed Grants Guidance includes a streamlined NoFo template for agencies to use to help with shortening and simplifying their grants announcements," Miller said. This is one of several substantial revisions to the guidance, which seeks to clarify and reduce the burden on grantees. OMB received more than 3,200 comments to the draft.
  (OMB updates governmentwide grant management guidance - White House)
• The Biden administration is working on hiring tools to help agencies compete for AI talent. The White House is planning to hire 100 AI professionals into the federal workforce by this summer. Some of those hires will come from a “Tech to Gov” virtual hiring fair on April 18. Participating federal and state agencies are looking to fill AI and AI-enabling positions. Kyleigh Russ, a senior adviser at the Office of Personnel Management, said her agency is also working on an AI and Tech Talent Playbook to show how agencies can effectively onboard these in-demand hires. “We know that this talent is very sought-after and that there will be constant competition, both across government and the private sector," Russ said.
  (Biden administration working on hiring tools to help agencies compete for AI talent - Federal News Network)
• The 2024 Vital Signs report from the National Defense Industrial Association provides a look into the challenges facing the defense industrial base. The Vital Signs 2024 Survey asked the industry to identify areas of improvement for the DoD when working with private companies. Some 65% of respondents want to see a clear and consistent demand signal through contract vehicles. More than 40% of respondents would like the DoD to provide specific points-of-contact in program offices. The report also recommends that the Office of the Under Secretary for Acquisition and Sustainment to engage with industry before finalizing the classified implementation plan for the National Defense Industrial strategy.
  (DoD needs to send stronger demand signal, increase investment in critical supply base - National Defense Industrial Association)
• Agencies and federal unions have marching orders from the Biden administration to re-establish labor-management forums. In some cases, it is possible for these forums to be met with resistance from either party, or even employees themselves. The Office of Personnel Management is offering advice on how to wade through any trouble spots in implementation. For one, OPM encourages management to have discussions with union leaders before making any top-down decisions.
  (OPM outlines how agencies, unions can recreate labor-management forums - Federal News Network)
• The Postal Service is missing more than half its service targets for mail products on which it has a monopoly. Its regulator told USPS it did not meet service performance targets for 15 out of 27 market-dominant products in 2023. The regulator is calling on USPS to take corrective action and to come up with a plan to improve its performance. USPS said 98% of households are getting their mail and packages within three days and that 50% of mail and packages arrive a day ahead of their service standard.
  (PRC issues report evaluating USPS service levels and rates - Postal Regulatory Commission )
• The Environmental Protection Agency is aiming to make permitting for environmental projects easier. EPA said its new website not only fulfills its commitment under the Biden administration's Permitting Action Plan, but also makes its information and process more transparent. Through the new site, EPA is posting information about the permitting process, such as permit applications and public meetings. The goal is to improve the timelines, predictability and transparency of federal environmental review and authorization processes for covered infrastructure projects, which include offshore wind energy under the renewable energy production sector.
  (EPA launches new permitting site - EPA)
• The public can now track defueling and decommissioning operations of the Red Hill fuel facility in Hawaii. A new app will provide the latest developments on tank cleaning, the decommissioning plan, environmental clean-up and regulatory approvals. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a full closure of the facility after jet fuel leaked into the Navy’s water distribution system. The app to track the closure efforts is available for download at Apple's App Store and the Google Play store.
  (New app will track Red Hill fuel facility closure - Navy Closure Task Force)

The post Some lawmakers offer more teeth to Biden’s Schedule F takedown first appeared on Federal News Network.

That, as you might have guessed, constitues the status of work life for staff members of the Congress of the United States. This finding comes from the Congressional Management Foundation, which surveyed 138 senior staff members. Only 5 percent of the people surveyed answered, but the foundation’s president, Brad Fitch, said the results show clear trends; principally, that the staff of the Congress labors under a peculiar group of people.

I”ll spare you yet another take on the principal issues impeding the car wreck that is Congress. Congressional staff occupy a galaxy less visible to the public, and even to much of the executive branch bureaucracy. Even in my own 32 years of covering government, I’ve spoken to only a handful congressional staff members, fewer even than members themselves. Staff learn early the value of self-attenuation in the shadows of their often egotistical bosses.

But don’t think they’re diffident. In fact, traipsing through the brick tunnels of the Capitol complex are some of the most informed and practically-minded people you’ll find anywere. Name the issue, and you can find members of the congressional staff that possess expert knowledge. And since politics often has the surface grace of ballet but the tactics of a prison yard, staff of one party sometimes know better than their members how to devise compromises with those of the opposite party.

When first-elected members come to town with perhaps green personal staffs, you can bet they learn lot from the committee staffs.

I say this only because the staffs of members of Congress constitute a sometimes underappreciated contributor to the nation’s well-being. If the Congress itself is semi-functional, the blame goes to many factors. Staff isn’t one of them. So it’s good to see at least a sampling survey of the health of this workforce. By contrast, the executive branch workforce is the object of intense, detailed and never-ending study. The annual Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey provides rich data and insight.

Here is a bit of what the Foundation survey found:

• Only 19% of the staff members thinks Congress “correctly functions as a democratic legislature should.” That breaks down to 31% of Republican respondents, 12% of Democratic.
• Only 20% agree that Congress provides “an effective forum” for debating the important questions.
• 81% of Republicans and long serving staff members tend to disagree that “current procedures” give members of Congress the information they need from the executive branch to do their congressional duties. Sure, there’s a Democratic administration. But 46% of Democrats also find information from the executive branch wanting.
• Two thirds of Democratic and Republican staff members would like elected leadership to “enforce the rules and norms of civility and decorum in Congress.” At least they don’t march into the chambers and whack one another with canes.

I spoke with Brad Fitch, the president of the foundation that surveyed congressional staff. A longtime watcher of Congress, Fitch said he doesn’t think the acrimony among members seeps down into staff relations. Otherwise, literally no bill might get written, much less ones the members reject anyway.

Fitch said — and the survey shows this — that the congressional staff sees positive movement in the technology, the workplace tools that have arrived in recent years. The Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress helped here. It sunsetted last year, but now there’s a follow-on caucus. Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Washington) ably chaired the remarkably bipartisan committee. It came up with a couple of hundred recommendations, a couple of dozen of which Congress implemented. Senior staff are better paid now, and they have somewhat better IT systems.

It seems bizarre that an institution as important as the United States Congress engenders agreement about its own brokenness among its own members, the citizenry, historians and just about everyone else. Just don’t blame the staff.

The post Understatement: Congress doesn’t function properly first appeared on Federal News Network.

Zscaler makes a key hire of a former federal technology leader to expand its global reach and influence.

These are two of the most recent federal executives on the move.

Eric Hysen, the DHS chief information officer, announced on Monday that Hemant Baidwan will be the new CISO, taking over for Ken Bible, who retired on March 29.

“Hemant has been instrumental in enhancing the department’s cybersecurity posture,” Hysen wrote in an email obtained by Federal News Network. “His background spans both the public and private sectors, where he has excelled in IT development, agile application deployments and strategic expansion globally.”

Meanwhile, Zscaler is hiring Brian Conrad, the former acting director of the cloud security program known as FedRAMP, Federal News Network has learned.

Conrad, who left the General Services Administration on March 22, will be the new director of field compliance authorizing authority liaison.

“We want Brian to own all the relationships with all the FedRAMP-type of agencies or organizations across the globe,” said Stephen Kovac, the chief compliance officer and head of global government affairs at Zscaler. “Many countries have similar organizations like FedRAMP, which act as an authorizing agency. Many are going down the path of secure by design as well, which we think will be huge internationally, so you’ve got programs that are maturing and may not be where FedRAMP is today, but all are trying to mature their processes. Brian has worked with all these folks over the years, but has been more of a friendly coach to many of these agencies. By him joining, this will allow us to build out global practice and build those relationships.”

Kovac said companies ranging from Japan to Singapore to Spain to India to United Kingdom are maturing their cloud security oversight organizations.

He said Conrad can bring a technical acumen to the conversation that will benefit Zscaler as well as the organizations themselves.

“From the earliest days of the FedRAMP program, Zscaler has been an innovator, working to ensure the federal government can deliver modern digital government services, securely,” Conrad said in a release. “Implementing a zero trust cybersecurity framework is mission-critical for every organization, and we must stay focused on separating the signal from the noise. I’m excited to join a team that aligns with my vision of building a secure global digital ecosystem.”

Conrad’s decision to join Zscaler comes after he spent the last five-plus years working for GSA. He was the acting FedRAMP director for the last three years.

GSA is hiring a new FedRAMP director and held information sessions about the position on Monday and today.

Before joining GSA and FedRAMP, Conrad was an officer in the Marines Corps where he worked the Marines Systems Command, the Marines Corps College of Distance Education and several other commands. After retiring from the Marines Corps, Conrad worked at Booz Allen Hamilton before coming back to federal service.

Similar to Conrad, Baidwan joined the government after spending the early part of his career in industry.

Baidwan has been the deputy CISO at DHS since 2021 and has worked in the CIO’s office since 2015 in an assortment of cyber roles.

He also worked at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement directorate as the governance and risk management section chief.

With Baidwan taking on the new role, Hysen said Antonio Scimemi will be the acting CISO. Scimemi has overseen the CISO cybersecurity assessments division and led the effort to develop the agency’s unified cyber maturity model.

He also was the deputy CISO and acting director of IT operations at ICE.

The post DHS hires new CISO; Former cloud security lead lands new job first appeared on Federal News Network.

• The State Department has named a new chief diversity and inclusion officer (CDIO), filling a position that has been vacant for 10 months. The job is going to Zakiya Carr Johnson, a former White House official and former director of the department’s Race, Ethnicity and Social Inclusion Unit. Secretary of State Antony Blinken created the CDIO position at the start of his tenure. He said the job is critical to attracting and retaining State Department employees.
  (Appointment of Zakiya Carr Johnson as the Department’s chief diversity and inclusion officer - State Department)
• A Homeland Security board has some major security concerns about one of the government’s biggest technology suppliers. The Cyber Safety Review Board said Microsoft’s security culture needs an overhaul. The board’s latest report found the tech giant had inadequate security practices when suspected Chinese hackers broke into the email accounts of multiple high-level government officials. The report recommends the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency regularly review the security practices of all cloud service providers. And it recommends the government periodically re-evaluate the security of cloud services widely used across agencies.
  (CSRB castigates Microsoft, urges federal cloud security updates in pending - Federal News Network)
• More than a quarter of federal employees are feeling burnout, according to a recent study. A recent Gallup survey of federal employees finds 26% of them feel burned out “very often” or “always” at work. Rob DeSimone, the associate principal of workplace initiatives at Gallup, said that level of burnout can lead to high attrition rates. “When people are burned out, they're much, much more likely to leave their agency," DeSimone said. Gallup identifies five root causes of burnout. Those include unfair treatment at work, unmanageable workloads, unclear communication from managers, lack of manager support and unreasonable time pressure.
  (One-quarter of federal workforce feeling burnout, with no ‘silver bullet’ fix, study finds - Federal News Network)
• Health care employees at the Defense Health Agency are getting closer to seeing union representation. After winning a union election in 2022, the American Federation of Government Employees said it is still working through some key steps to set up the new council for DHA. That council will represent up to 45,000 agency workers. The employees are mostly transfers from the Army, Navy and Air Force who were reshuffled into the new agency. Once everything is finalized, DHA will have a national-level collective bargaining agreement along with some smaller chapters to address local issues.
  (Forming DHA council to represent DoD health care workers - American Federation of Government Employees)
• The office of the Defense Department’s chief information officer will automate the review of zero trust implementation plans. Last year, the DoD CIO’s office received 39 zero trust implementation plans from the military services, defense agencies and combatant commands. It took four months and 35 full-time employees to review the plans. Randy Resnick, the director of the Zero Trust Architecture Program Management Office, said the process needs to be automated this year. The DoD CIO’s office mandated all defense components to submit updated zero trust implementation plans every October.
  (DoD to streamline review of zero trust implementation plans - Federal News Network)
• The Pentagon’s first-of-its-kind Commercial Space Integration Strategy synchronizes the department’s efforts to integrate commercial space technologies into its operations. The long-awaited strategy, released by Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy John Plumb, signals the Defense Department's willingness to take military action to protect commercial satellites. The document also calls for integration of commercial space technologies before conflict arises. The new strategy is aligned with the Space Force commercial space strategy, which is set to be released this week.
  (New space strategy calls for better protection of commercial space technology - DoD)
• A new bill in the Senate would extend the Department of Homeland Security’s use of a special procurement tool. The BEST Technology for the Homeland Act would extend DHS’ other transaction authority through fiscal 2031. It is currently set to expire at the end of this September. Other transaction agreements are considered more flexible than traditional contracts. The lawmakers behind the legislation want to see DHS use OTAs to acquire more innovative technologies.
  (Peters and Daines introduce bipartisan bill to ensure DHS can procure advanced technologies to strengthen national security - HSGAC )
• What is the best way candidates can prepare for a federal interview? The Office of Personnel Management is offering some guidance. OPM will share tips and an in-depth, inside look during a webinar on April 10. The free session is targeting federal job applicants and anyone else who might be interested in joining the federal workforce. During the webinar, experts at OPM will cover different types of federal interviews, common questions and other advice for preparing.
  (Federal interview process webinar - Office of Personnel Management)

The post New chief diversity and inclusion officer headed to State Dept first appeared on Federal News Network.

• A pair of Senate and House Democrats is calling for a more permanent path forward for better relationships between federal unions and management. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) introduced the Federal Labor-Management Partnerships Act Thursday. If enacted, the legislation would make labor-management forums a permanent staple for the federal workforce. The lawmakers said the forums can help resolve employee concerns before they escalate. The new bill comes after President Biden signed an executive order earlier this month to re-establish the forums, after they were temporarily revoked during the Trump administration.
  (Federal Labor-Management Partnerships Act - Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) )
• Congress is moving ahead with plans to cut the IRS’ modernization funding. Lawmakers, as part of a spending deal for the rest of fiscal 2024, are making good on a promise to cut $20 billion of funding the IRS received in order to rebuild its workforce and upgrade its IT systems. The agency still has roughly $60 billion of multi-year modernization funds left. The Biden administration agreed to these cuts last year, as part of a deal with congressional Republicans to lift the debt ceiling and avoid a default on government debts. The spending deal also locks in the IRS’ current budget for day-to-day spending.
  (Congress proceeds with $20B cut to IRS modernization fund in FY 2024 spending deal - Federal News Network)
• The Senate has brought the funding hammer down on centralized IT modernization accounts in 2024. Senate appropriators cut all three accounts that help fund governmentwide IT modernization efforts. In the final set of the 2024 spending bills, lawmakers not only zeroed out the Technology Modernization Fund account for this year, but rescinded $100 million from previous years' appropriations. The Senate also reduced the allocation for the Federal Citizen Services Fund by $15 million for this year, and the Office of Management and Budget's IT Oversight and Reform Fund saw a $6 million cut. The lawmakers were not done with the ITOR fund, as they also rescinded $10 million given to the U.S. Digital Service under the American Rescue Plan Act.
  (Senate to take $100M back from TMF, $10M from USDS - Federal News Network)
• Congress is looking for even more details from agencies on their telework policies. The government spending agreement this week lays out six new requirements for sharing data on returning federal employees to the office. Within 90 days, the Office of Management and Budget would have to turn over all agencies’ return-to-office “action plans,” lawmakers said. Agencies would also have to report to Congress on their use of office space, and employee productivity. An OMB memo, now almost a year old, told agencies to start mandating in-person work for feds at least 50% of the time.
  (Congress calls for more details on federal telework in 2024 spending package - Federal News Network)
• The Defense Innovation Unit could get a major funding boost. Congressional appropriators proposed an increase of $840 million for DIU in the 2024 budget. The compromise version of the defense spending bill also requires the agency to provide Congress with details on the infrastructure, staffing and authorities the agency will need in the future. DIU was created to bring innovative and promising technologies into the Pentagon faster.
  (Defense Innovation Unit might get major funding increase - U.S. House Docs)
• Congressional appropriators reduced the Space Force’s procurement account from $4.7 billion to $4 billion. They also reduced the service’s research and development account from $19 billion to $18.6 billion. The bill cuts funding from the IT, data analytics and digital solutions efforts. But the Tactically Responsive Space program got a boost in the 2024 budget. The House and Senate are expected to vote on the bill today.
  (Congress makes cuts to Space Force’s budget - U.S. House Docs)
• The White House kicked off a new effort to change the perception that agencies don't listen to public feedback and aren't transparent in their decisions. The Office of Management and Budget released a request for information to gather input on the experiences of individuals and organizations, including from underserved communities, in how they inform federal decision-making and participate in engagement activities. OMB will use this feedback to help develop a governmentwide framework, common guidelines and leading practices for public participation and community engagement. OMB will hold listening sessions with the public over the next month as part of how it will gather responses to the RFI, which are due by May 17.
  (OMB developing governmentwide framework for public engagement - Federal Register)
• Americans will be waiting another six years until the next Census, but the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is looking for a status update. Committee Chairman Gary Peters (D-Mich.) is asking the Government Accountability Office to review the Census Bureau’s preparations for the 2030 count in order to study potential risks, such as effectively hiring the large number of people needed to do the counting, managing IT and cybersecurity challenges, and following up with households that don’t respond.
  (Peters calls on GAO to conduct oversight of 2030 Census preparations - Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee)

The post New bill calls for permanent, renewed pipeline between federal unions, management first appeared on Federal News Network.

• The U.S. Coast Guard is formalizing its approach to obtaining behavioral health programs and improving access to mental health care for its service members. A new policy will require commanding officers and supervisors to refer their personnel to a health care provider for an evaluation as soon as service members request assistance. While the Coast Guard plans to implement parts of the Brandon Act to improve its behavioral health program, the service needed a slightly different implementation strategy. The service has also published a behavioral health playbook to support leadership on issues related to mental health. In addition, the Coast Guard is separating its suicide prevention mandatory training from the sexual assault prevention training, making them stand-alone courses.
  (Behavioral Health Update - U.S. Coast Guard)
• The General Services Administration is ready to take the next step in setting up its new contract for cloud services. GSA is outlining its initial thinking of what pools 2 and 3 will look like under the ASCEND blanket purchase agreement for cloud services. In a request for information, GSA is asking vendors to comment on the three categories of software-as-a-service it wants to focus on, including office productivity, customer relationship management and IT service and asset management. Under Pool 3, GSA wants comments on the service areas it chose, including application rationalization, multi-cloud management and cloud governance and policy development. Feedback on both RFIs is due by March 29.
  (GSA's details ASCEND contract Pools 2, 3 - SAM.gov)
• The Department of Health and Human Services is launching a probe into the cyber attack on Change Healthcare. HHS’s Office of Civil Rights said it will investigate whether sensitive patient data was exposed in the ransomware attack. Change Healthcare said a ransomware gang accessed some of its IT systems in late February. The cyber incident has upended the healthcare industry, leading to widespread delays in processing claims and payments.
  (HHS letter on Change Healthcare - HHS)
• The Department of Homeland Security has big plans for artificial intelligence this year. DHS is setting up an AI sandbox that will allow components to experiment with large language models. That is one of the major goals for 2024 under DHS’s new AI roadmap, released Monday. It details several use cases for AI at DHS, ranging from training immigration officers to aiding law enforcement investigations. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency will also evaluate how AI could be used to find and fix cyber vulnerabilities.
  (DHS AI roadmap stakes claim to “lead” government in responsible use of AI - Federal News Network)
• NATO’s Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) is expanding its transatlantic network of accelerator sites and test centers. The number of tech sites will go from 11 to 23 and the network will add 92 test sites in 28 allied countries. The DIANA program was set up to accelerate the development of emerging technologies, including artificial Intelligence, cyber and autonomous systems. Last year, 44 companies joined the program to tackle challenges related to undersea sensing and surveillance and secure information sharing.
  (NATO expanding tech accelerator sites and test centers - NATO)
• As many as 68,000 more Defense Department contractors will be able to join the unclassified cybersecurity information sharing program. The Pentagon finalized updated requirements to the Defense Industrial Base Cybersecurity Program that expands eligibility requirements, including eliminating the need to have an existing active facility clearance. DoD said the desire for more companies to join the cyber program drove its decision to revamp the eligibility requirements. Of all the applicants seeking to join the program in 2022, 45% were from vendors deemed ineligible. The new eligibility requirements take effect on April 11.
  (DoD to expand unclassified cyber sharing program - Federal Register)
• After five years of study, the National Institutes of Health is still stumped by Havana Syndrome, which was first reported in Cuba by American personnel who suffered headaches, balance problems and trouble sleeping. NIH published two papers yesterday detailing its research. MRI scans revealed no detectable brain injuries and batteries of other tests showed no biological abnormalities. However, NIH's senior investigator said that only means that if an event caused the symptoms, it left no persistent physiological markers or changes. But participants with Havana Syndrome did show significant symptoms of post-traumatic stress, and 41% qualified for a functional neurological disorder diagnosis.
  (NIH studies find severe symptoms of “Havana Syndrome,” but no evidence of MRI-detectable brain injury or biological abnormalities - National Institutes of Health)
• The Defense Department is about to get a lot more authority to hire and retain managers in its science and technology labs. The military’s 22 Science and Technology Reinvention Laboratories (STRLs) already have substantial leeway to operate outside of the government’s usual pay and personnel rules. But a notice DoD published last week would build on those flexibilities. Some of the changes: STRLs will be allowed to temporarily promote employees to supervisor and team leader positions, and offer bonuses of up to 50% of their base salary to retain them. The new authorities take effect on April 15.
  (DoD expands personnel flexibilities in its ‘Lab Demo’ program - Federal Register via DoD)

The post Coast Guard improves access to mental health care first appeared on Federal News Network.

Sources confirm his last day is March 22.

Conrad has been acting director since January 2021 and worked at the General Services Administration’s program management office since 2018.

It’s unclear where Conrad is heading next.

A GSA spokesperson said in an email to Federal News Network, “GSA will have interim leadership set up in the near future and we’re building a strong leadership team to support FedRAMP.”

It’s also unclear who will step into the acting director role at FedRAMP once Conrad leaves. GSA recently hired Eric Mill as the director of cloud strategy that includes oversight of FedRAMP and other security programs.

GSA has not had a permanent FedRAMP director since Ashley Mahan left in January 2021 to become acting assistant commissioner for solutions in GSA’s Technology Transformation Service. Mahan now works as a policy analyst in the Office of the Federal Chief Information Officer in the Office of Management and Budget.

“Last year, Brian managed the development and launch of the redesigned FedRAMP marketplace, as well as leading the PMO’s efforts in establishing the Federal Secure Cloud Advisory Committee, as required in the FedRAMP Authorization Act,” wrote Mukunda Penugonde, deputy director of TTS in an email to staff. “Under Brian’s stewardship, FedRAMP experienced a 30% increase in the number of secure cloud services available to the government. Brian has been instrumental in attracting talent, with a diverse set of skills, who are critical to the continued growth and modernization of the program over the long term.”

Over the last three years, Conrad has led the cloud security program through significant changes, including the initial implementation of the FedRAMP Authorization Act, signed by President Joe Biden into law in December 2022.

OMB released draft updated guidance for FedRAMP in October with a focus on software-as-a-service and changing the oversight of the program. Among the changes in the works is a new emerging technology framework to help prioritize artificial intelligence and large language model (LLM) capabilities in the cloud, new penetration testing guidance and updates from NIST 800-53, Rev. 5.

Conrad has overseen the growth of the FedRAMP office, which now has more than five full time staff members. He said at the ATARC CIO Summit in December that he expects the program office staff to continue to grow in 2024 and beyond.

“We’ve been listening to industry feedback and input on FedRAMP as we continue to build an overall strong FedRAMP team. We look forward to seeing continued growth and progress on FedRAMP,” said Ann Lewis, the TTS director in an email to Federal News Network.

The number of cloud service providers under FedRAMP also grew over the last three years from around 100 in 2018 to 328 today.

FedRAMP RFQ is out

With all this growth, brings a host of new challenges for FedRAMP.

Most recently, Conrad led the effort to bring more modernization to the program. GSA recently released a request for quote through the e-Buy platform for a governance, risk and compliance (GRC) solution.

GSA said in a release the GRC tool will:

• Shift from documentation to machine readable, OSCAL-based data
• Provide application programming interfaces (APIs) facilitating system to system integration with our stakeholder community
• Include outreach, training, tooling and technical support to ease onboarding cloud service providers(CSPs), agencies and third party assessment organizations (3PAOs) to the solution
• Refactor processes to leverage our new capabilities to improve and streamline the stakeholder experience

Bids are due March 21.

“FedRAMP has been making progress towards its goal of automating the Joint Authorization Board (JAB) and agency authorizations. During various pilot programs, they have successfully accepted ATO packages using the Open Security Controls Assessment Language (OSCAL),” said Valinder Mangat, chief innovation officer at DRTConfidence, in an email to Federal News Network. “FedRAMP’s commitment to automation is reinforced with the latest RFQ for acquiring a GRC platform, enabling CSPs to submit OSCAL-based ATO packages within 120 days of the award. As a member of FedRAMP’s early adopter program, we are excited about this initiative and OSCAL becoming a machine-readable medium for ATO package submission.”

Conrad said at the ATARC event in December that FedRAMP has been working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop the approach to use OSCAL for several years to help make authorizations get through the process faster but not lose any security rigor.

“We have to make sure authorization packages are of sufficient quality. After 10 years that’s still an issue,” he said. “We want to make sure when packages come in we can leverage automation to do automated validations. We are leveraging OSCAL to do this. We are very excited about automating not just assessment processes, but seeing what we can do to help agency authorizing officials get them vulnerability information or information about cloud providers so they can make decisions more quickly.”

Improving agency authorizations

At the same time, Conrad has been focused on improving the program’s processes. He said back in December that the PMO is doing an internal study looking at the agency authorization process to determine how to make that effort more efficient and effective.

“We made improvements over the years, but there hasn’t been any wholesale changes,” he said. “The way agencies get cloud services authorized today has been basically the same as it has been for years. We are now embarking down the road to see how we can do that better. We are looking at processes too as we bring in new technology to optimize the processes before we introduce new technology.”

Another priority area Conrad has been focused on is improving how cloud providers and agencies can use continuous monitoring to ensure the cloud services are meeting cybersecurity standards.

“It’s been a challenge to make sure the agency authorizing officials are on the same page with the cloud service providers. We want to make sure they have same information so the decision making processes are informed,” he said. “We have undertaken establishing a continuous monitoring lane. This is a net new capability in the PMO that we are developing and establishing to make sure correct amount of oversight and cloud services providers provide the same information.”

Before joining GSA and FedRAMP, Conrad was an officer in the Marines Corps where he worked the Marines Systems Command, the Marines Corps College of Distance Education and several other commands. After retiring from the Marines Corps, Conrad worked at Booz Allen Hamilton before coming back to federal service.

The post FedRAMP acting director Conrad to step down first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Pentagon has already picked a successor for Martell. Radha Plum, the deputy undersecretary of Defense for acquisition and sustainment, will officially assume the role on April 8.

Martell left his position as the head of machine learning at the ride-sharing company Lyft to lead the department’s nascent office in 2022. The Pentagon created the hub to bring disparate efforts around the adoption of data, analytics and artificial intelligence under one umbrella and allow industry experts to lead that effort.  

“It’s not for the joys of the job. I’m doing it because of the mission,” Martell said during the conference hosted by the Defense Department at the time.

Martell left the private sector to join the Defense Department around the time the hub became fully operational after absorbing the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, Defense Digital Services, the Chief Data Officer and the Advana platform.

When Martell assumed the role in 2022, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks tasked the CDAO with launching the Global Information Dominance Experiment, also known as GIDE. Last year, she instructed the office to provide a minimum viable capability for Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) to the Joint Force.

At the conference hosted by the CDAO last month, Hicks announced the initial version of the Pentagon’s efforts to combine its IT systems to improve decision-making was up and running, which was “no easy task.”

“The Deputy Secretary of Defense, Dr. Kathleen Hicks, brought me on board two years ago to stand up the CDAO. We agreed early on that to “stand up” meant developing a strategy for the organization and the DoD as a whole, developing the right roadmaps to deliver on that strategy, and creating the right organizational structure to support those roadmaps. With the release of the Department’s Data, Analytics, and AI Strategy in November 2023, the roadmap work that each of the CDAO Directorates have done, and the organizational changes we have put in place over the last few years, these were achieved. We brought together four distinct organizations into one, and we accomplished so much in such a short time. I’m incredibly proud of the team that made this happen,” Martell said in a statement the Pentagon provided to Federal News Network.

The strategy Martell’s office was in charge of developing unifies all the Pentagon’s previous guidance and resources to provide the department with a comprehensive roadmap for the adoption and usage of data, analytics and AI.

Martell spent most of his career in the private sector, leading machine learning efforts at tech giants such as Dropbox and LinkedIn.

The reasons for his departure from the position are still unclear.

Plumb, who will take over Martell’s role in the next couple of weeks, spent most of her career in the federal government but briefly left the public sector to lead policy analysis efforts at Facebook and trust and safety solutions efforts at Google. Prior to that, she was a senior economist at RAND. She also spent some of her time at the Energy Department and on the National Security Council.

“Dr. Radha Plumb will come in as the new CDAO. Radha joins us directly from her tenure as the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment (DUSD(A&S)), and she is no stranger to the ways of industry. She has been right alongside me for the past year at many key senior leader meetings and working groups, and she will seamlessly step into the role,” said Martell.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement, “I am grateful for [Martell’s] willingness to step out of the commercial sector over these past few years to contribute his talents to public service. Craig and the entire CDAO team had a monumental task of bringing together the diverse talents and cultures of four organizations to advance data, AI, and analytics for our national security, and deliver tangible results in a short time. Dr. Martell and the CDAO team have delivered on those goals and his work will have a lasting impact on how the Department approaches every data and AI driven task.”

The post Craig Martell to depart CDAO, reasons unclear first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services, a small, independent federal agency, plans to examine as many museums in the U.S. as it can. It’s National Museum Survey will launch in 2025. The agency recently completed a pilot effort to test its survey process. For details, Federal News Network’s Eric White spoke with Laura Huerta Migus, deputy director for Museum Services at IMLS. And with Matt Birnbaum, the agency’s Director of Research and Evaluation on  the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

https://www.imls.gov/news/institute-museum-and-library-services-announces-plans-launch-national-museum-survey-early-2025

Interview Transcript:  

Laura Huerta Migus So the National Museum survey is the culmination of more than a decade of work here at the Institute of Museum and Library Services to create a federal data set on the presence and reach of museums across the country. And I think something important to share when we say museum is that at IMLS, we actually have a very inclusive definition of museum that includes art museums, history museums, but also other disciplines like science museums and science centers, zoos, aquaria, botanical gardens, and other types of cultural institutions. And so this effort is building on previous efforts led by my colleague, Dr. Matt Birnbaum’s office in our Office of Research and Evaluation, to create a listing of museums. And this effort has updated that and then also has given us information on how to best get information about museums operation and reach on a regular basis.

Eric White Yeah. Matt, what role did you and your office have in this and how did you go about it?

Matt Birnbaum Yeah. Thanks. It’s been a wonderful partnership where we’ve tried to blend the expertise of my office in this type of applied social science from the survey and statistical methodologies, and blend it with the expertise of those who come from the leaders and others from the museum sector, to make a some type of survey that would be relevant. From our end, thinking about a survey, there are three pieces to it. You need a list of people and institutions that you want to survey that we’re going to call that the technical term is population frame a universe. And right now, we had to come up with an estimate that we could stand by that can be validated just the way any census study is. And right now we’re estimating at about 20,000 plus museums. The second part is we need to come up with a questionnaire. The questions that would be in the survey and part of the whole process was using a whole series of methods and processes in this type of work to come up with a questionnaire. And then you need a mode. A way to administer that survey could be telephone, could be email, it could be personal physical mail. All these things were all had wide variations and issues to consider. And we spent several years in working Laura’s office, my office, some of the leaders across the museum sector working with us as subject matter experts and then partners from the American Institute of Research in developing the plan and then running seven experiments last summer to pilot the survey.

Eric White Yeah, I want to just get a little bit into the methodology there. So how do you even figure out who to send it to? And when you did, were they more than happy to answer your questions? I mean, as somebody who’s been to your local museum, usually the people who run there are usually pretty happy to give you the kinds of information that I imagine you’re looking for. How did that process go?

Matt Birnbaum Sure. There’s a lot there. So I’ll just take the first part about who do you survey and what counts as a museum. So we had a definition, and it’s going to be a nonprofit entity. It’s going to cover these wide range of disciplines, those museums that are kind of living at artifacts and those that can serve other types of artifacts. It’s going to be open to the public 120 days the year. It’s going to have a physical location. From that, we began discussions with the Department of Census and some others, and we ascertained that we weren’t going to be able to get the data that we needed of these museums in a way that we could use it. So we entered into an agreement with Yelp to crowdsource this data, and we purchased a data set from them, and it had over 100,000 records. So at that point, I’ve got some really smart people, really intelligent, and they went to work behind the scenes using all the best data science of cleaning the data using traditional techniques of triangulating and fortifying missing data, moving to some of the most advanced pieces of data science out there, including using ChatGPT. It’s one point for identifying missing websites, using Amazon’s Mturk for trying to think about email addresses. All these types of techniques for coming up.

Matt Birnbaum So we ultimately were able to take Yelp’s database with another data set that represented some members of the museum association. We were able to come up with right now an estimate about 20,000 museums that fit. So that’s the first piece of that. Then you had a second piece of that that’s running concurrent, where we’re working really closely on Laura’s leadership and some of her team and my team providing support with these wonderful leaders from the museum sector to develop a questionnaire. And how you go about and do that is you start initially with what we going to use the term of respondent research. Where we did some initial surveys and some focus groups about what would be the types of survey or research that would make a difference, that would be meaningful, that we had the evidence. You can actually use it to help inform a conversation. And so that was going on at that point when we were putting together the whole vision for the survey. From that, we worked with our subject matter experts and some others, and starting to think about what the questionnaire was. We then went back out in the field again and did some focus groups, cognitive interviews to really start ground truthing this questionnaire. And we got it to the point where probably early last spring, we reached out to OMB and said, hey, we would like to be able to go ahead and test this pilot, and we’re going to test this pilot. I’m trying to run this questionnaire seven different ways using randomized controlled experiments to start learning about which of the ways were most effective. And we ran it probably the worst time of the year, you can think of it rather the dead of August, right before Labor Day when people are on holidays. But to  my mind, we got a really wonderful for that first baseline response, which it’s pretty good is about 17%. And it gave us a lot of insights into over the next year as we get ready for the next annual data collection. What are some of the additional revisions we need to do in the questionnaire, in the refining our population frame, and just thinking about a little bit about how we engage with others in the museum sector.

Eric White And so, Laura, when it comes to this data, and obviously this is a big project that Matt just described. When you go to your the folks that you report to in the administration, how do you sell this pilot effort? And what do you say that you’re going to get out of it if they give the all clear to it and give you the green light.

Laura Huerta Migus That’s a great question, Eric. I think the most important selling point is that most folks actually think that this data already exists. And so they’re shocked that a data set like this on the presence of museums doesn’t exist already. And I think that says a lot about how people value museums and already think about them as an important system. And so it’s a pretty easy sell that we’re filling the gap for a set of data that people really just expect for there to be already. I would say, additionally, there are a couple of key facets to our approach in use for this future data set. And the first is that the data is going to be free and publicly available. There are a number of surveys out there for museums and in the museum world, but most of them are either pay to play or behind some kind of a paywall. And from the practitioner perspective, this is a really important way for us to fulfill our service to the museum and library and policy community by creating a rigorous and freely available data set on museums. So that’s one of those selling points. And the other is that it will help us, as the federal government’s largest funder of museums, really quantify the impact of the investments that we make in the museum field, but should also serve as an important tool for our related, funding organizations and cultural organizations that also fund museums so that we can start to quantify the needs, as well as the value of the investments that the federal government and other kinds of funders are making in museums. And we don’t have that kind of universal benchmarking right now. So that’s a real need that we’re filling with this effort.

Eric White Yeah, it seems as if this is an effort that is looking to benefit the consumer. But also folks like you who are, you know, in the monitoring of the museum business. Are there any other uses that or people who could use this data set, that may not be the first people you think about coming to mind?

Laura Huerta Migus Sure. So I actually think about city and county leaders, like mayors and county commissioner boards that are thinking about cultural and community development, and they want to benchmark themselves against other communities and their vitality. And this data set is the kind of information that they could have at their fingertips. What is the presence of libraries, museums and performing arts is very much a conversation that happens at the local level. And right now there’s a gap around museums and how they fit into the economic fabric at the local level. I also think that there’s great potential for the general public. There is not a place where a person can go and really find out where are museums all over the country, even in their own communities. Matt talked about the importance of directories like Yelp. We know that they’re not perfect and those are crowdsourced. And this could really drive those kinds directories for the general public who we know love to visit museums.

Eric White All right, Matt, tell me what the next steps are and what you all are hoping to continue to learn and expand this project as it becomes a reality for you.

Matt Birnbaum I want to follow up on what Laura just talked about. We don’t know enough yet about how our audiences can best utilize the data. It could be that just giving them that data and allowing them to do their own statistical permutations will suffice. It could be that having us, or someone who we commissioned to do a full research piece that talks about some of the critical themes coming from that, that’s going to be the most valuable input. It could be that creating tools online per se, helping them make comparisons of one type of museum to another, having that type of querying capacity for them, that would be the most important. So one of the things that we’re going to be spending this year on is starting to doing that development, starting to work with audiences and starting to think about how we build that, because the added value of this is going to be having this data in a way that’s meaningful and actionable for others. While that’s continuing, we’ve got a lot of lessons to learn from the piloting. There are some areas of the questionnaire that will be wanting to refine, do some additional revisions, interviews, focus groups. We’re going to be having to update the population frame, get it really quite precise. And then because this will be part of the Federal statistical system, there’ll be a conversation with OMB related to the Paper Reduction Act to make sure that if, as we’re planning to go scheduling beginning this annual collection in about a year from now, that the benefits from collecting this information far outsee any burdens we’re going to be placing on people to participate in it.

The post A small federal agency plans to document the state of American museums first appeared on Federal News Network.

A former mayor of Warrensville Heights, Ohio, and later an Ohio representative in Congress, Fudge, 71, served as HUD secretary since the start of President Joe Biden’s administration.

“As a dedicated public servant for nearly five decades, I have been devoted to improving the quality of life for the people of this nation, focusing on those with the greatest need,” Fudge said in a statement. “Having worked at every level of government … I have worked tirelessly to ensure that America lives up to its promise of liberty and justice for all.”

Fudge’s statement did not indicate a reason she was resigning now, saying only that she planned to “transition to life as a private citizen.”

The White House, in a statement, hailed Fudge’s dedication to increasing the supply of affordable housing and protect the housing needs of some of the country’s most vulnerable residents.

“From her time as a mayor, to her years as a fierce advocate in the U.S. House of Representatives, Marcia’s vision, passion, and focus on increasing economic opportunity have been assets to our country,” said Biden, a Democrat. “I’m grateful for all of her contributions toward a housing system that works for all Americans, and I wish her well in her next chapter.”

Since taking over at HUD, Fudge has focused much of her efforts on addressing homelessness and making housing more affordable – problems that worsened during and after the coronavirus pandemic. Last year, HUD announced a series of measures aimed at reducing barriers to affordable housing, such as zoning restrictions that in some places have become a hurdle to increasing the supply of affordable housing.

Fudge has touted the fact that her agency extended rental assistance to 100,000 additional families. HUD also has built and repaired more than a half million units of affordable housing, issued more new rental assistance vouchers in the last three years than have been issued in same period over the past two decades and housed more than 1.2 million people experiencing homelessness.

White House principal deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton said Biden “certainly will nominate a replacement” for Fudge, but she offered no timeline for the process. For now, Deputy Secretary Adrianne Todman will serve as acting HUD secretary when Fudge departs, the White House said.

Under Fudge, HUD “worked closely with partners at the federal, state and local levels to increase the housing supply, particularly the supply of affordable homes, while allocating historic resources to address homelessness,” Dalton said. ”And with Secretary Fudge at the helm, HUD strictly enforced fair housing laws and took a stance against racial bias and discrimination in the appraisal market.”

David M. Dworkin, president of the National Housing Conference, said in a statement that Fudge’s tenure at HUD had “surpassed all expectations,” and he praised her for helping Americans navigate the economic ravages of the coronavirus pandemic while prioritizing affordable housing policies.

Dworkin called Fudge a steadfast advocate for equitable housing policies, saying she championed initiatives aimed at “alleviating homelessness, expanding access to affordable housing, and fostering sustainable communities.”

___

Associated Press writers Michael Casey in Boston and Fatima Hussein on Air Force One contributed to this report.

The post Housing Secretary Fudge resigning. Biden hails her dedication to boosting supply of affordable homes first appeared on Federal News Network.

It is with heavy hearts that the staff and members of The Coalition for Government Procurement mourn the passing of our dear friend and colleague, Marcia Madsen. Marcia built an outstanding career as a procurement lawyer, as evidenced by her numerous accolades and contributions to the government contracting community. She demonstrated repeatedly the ability to address a variety of complex issues of critical importance to the body of government contracts law that underpins efficient government operations.

Recognized as a well-respected leader and consummate professional across the procurement community, Marcia founded and led Mayer Brown’s US Government Contracts practice. As anyone who had the privilege to work with her can attest, her work ethic was legendary. Day or night, she was there for her clients, manifesting a level of dedication to which all lawyers should aspire. Among her long list of achievements include the Golden Eagle Award from the Court of Federal Claims, as well as appearances in the Washington Business Journal’s list of “Women Who Mean Business” and the National Law Journal’s list of “Washington’s Most Influential Women Lawyers.” The Coalition is grateful to have utilized Marcia’s skills and expertise over the years through our speaking engagements, trainings, and publications.

Equally impressive as her professional accomplishments, however, was Marcia’s unwavering commitment to helping those around her. She served as a dedicated mentor to many lawyers, including Coalition President Roger Waldron, helping them to navigate complex issues and advance their careers. Her kindness, compassion, and loyalty extended outside of the office, as well, which is why so many clients, colleagues, and others viewed her as a beloved friend.

Coalition President Roger Waldron shared the following statement:

“Marcia was my friend, and I am deeply saddened by her passing. She was a wise counselor, and without her, I would not be the person I am nor would I hold the position I now hold.

“I really got to know Marcia during our time serving on the Services Acquisition Reform Act (SARA) Acquisition Advisory Panel. As the Chairperson of the Panel, Marcia was the driving force behind the SARA Panel report that has helped shape and inform procurement operations to this day.

“Subsequently, Marcia recruited me to join the Government Contracts Practice at Mayer Brown, where her steadfast personal and professional support were invaluable to my successful transition from government to industry. After several years at Mayer Brown, Marcia’s advice was instrumental in my decision to become President of the Coalition for Government Procurement. Her friendship truly was life-changing for me, and I will forever be grateful for knowing and working with her.

“Marcia leaves behind a wonderful legacy that has shaped the law and the careers of so many in the legal profession. Notwithstanding her untimely passing, that legacy will continue to impact both those who knew her and those who will follow in her footsteps. I will miss her, and I know I speak for all here when I say our thoughts and prayers are with her and her family.”

The post In memory of Marcia Madsen first appeared on Federal News Network.

From the Education Department to the Homeland Security Department to the Air Force to the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), federal leaders are retiring or heading to new opportunities in the private sector.

Starting with the Education Department, Luis Lopez, the chief information officer since December 2022, is leaving on March 22 for a job with INOVA Healthcare.

An Education Department spokesman confirmed Lopez is leaving for the private sector.

“We are preparing for a smooth transition by posting the position before he departs,” the spokesman said.

It’s unclear who will be acting CIO when Lopez leaves. Education already put out the job announcement to hire a new CIO. Applications are due by March 14 so only a two-week opening.

Federal News Network has learned Lopez will be vice president of IT operations for Inova Health Care Services.

Lopez has worked in federal service since 2008 and been with Education since 2017.

In his short time as CIO, Lopez said in a recent interview that he set up a customer advisory council last summer to help explain to non-IT executives why the 2014 law matters to them and it’s more than just a technology priority. He also led the effort to consolidate and standardize the number of video teleconferencing and collaboration tools used by Education Department employees.

Along with his work at Education, Lopez also worked at the Defense Health Agency and the Walter Reed National Medical Center.

Joining Lopez in heading to the private sector are two other technology leaders.

Federal News Network has confirmed Drew Malloy, the technical director for DISA’s Cyber Development Directorate, and Robert Wood, the chief information security officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, also are leaving for new positions outside of government.

Malloy, who has been with DISA for 14 years and served in government since 2003, will join a small systems integrator.

Malloy has led DISA’s cyber directorate since 2020 where he oversaw the agency’s portfolio of cybersecurity capabilities, including identity and access management, the Joint Regional Security Stacks, cybersecurity situational awareness and zero trust.

He wrote on LinkedIn that he also “developed the modernization strategy for our network and security architecture in accordance with zero trust principles resulting in Project Thunderdome for the DoD enterprise.”

It’s unclear when Malloy’s last day will be or who will replace him even on an acting basis.

In addition to running the cyber directorate, Malloy ran DISA’s services development directorate and was the chief engineer for the Cyber Situational Awareness and Analytics Division.

He also worked at Naval Research Laboratory before coming to DISA.

CMS CISO Wood taking new role

As for Wood, who has been CMS CISO since November 2020, he will join a new venture with Sidekick Security, while also continuing to invest in and grow the non-profit Soft Side of Cyber.

Federal News Network has learned that CMS deputy CISO Keith Busby will be stepping up to lead the program until a permanent CISO is hired.

During his time at CMS, Wood focused on improving the culture at CMS around cybersecurity, building a security data lake to break down silos and advancing the technology strategy through cyber enablement.

Before joining CMS in 2020, Wood spent most of his career in the private sector working in cybersecurity positions with Cigital, Simon Data and N95.

Retirements at DHS, Air Force

Two other federal technology leaders decided it was time to call it a career.

Ken Bible, the Department of Homeland Security’s chief information security officer, and Eileen Vidrine, the Air Force’s chief data and artificial intelligence officer, have submitted their retirement papers.

Bible said his last day will be March 29 and has no firm plans for his post-federal life.

“I am looking forward to taking some time to enjoy my home in Charleston, S.C. and perhaps engage in helping in both the education arena as well as helping at the state and regional policy levels in the future,” Bible said in an email to Federal News Network.

He has been DHS CISO since January 2021 and worked in government for almost 39 years. Bible, who received a 2023 Presidential Rank Award,  started his career in 1985 at the former Charleston Naval Shipyard, where he rose to be a nuclear qualified engineering supervisor for three engineering branches.

During his time at DHS, Bible launched a pathfinder last summer to begin evaluating existing contractors with cyber hygiene clauses in their contracts and focused on addressing broader supply chain risks through a strategy.

Before coming to DHS, Bible served under the headquarters Marine Corps Deputy Commandant for Information as the assistant director for the information command, control, communications and computers division (IC4). He also served as the Marine Corps’ deputy CIO and CISO. Additionally, he worked at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) for almost two decades.

Vidrine is retiring on March 31 after 38 years of federal service.

She has been the Air Force chief data officer since 2018 and CDO/CAIO since January 2023 when she returned to the service after a one-year detail serving as the senior strategic advisor for data to the Federal Chief Information Officer in the Office of Management and Budget.

Last March, Vidrine told Federal News Network that her new title reflects the central role data has in getting AI projects off the ground.

Vidrine said AI readiness for the department comes down to establishing a baseline set of data and AI skills for airmen and guardians, as well as making sure they have access to the digital infrastructure and tools needed to advance breakthroughs in AI research.

Vidrine began her government career in 1986 as an enlisted member of the Army where she received her commission in 1987 through the U.S. Army Officer Candidate School Program as an Army transportation officer.

From 2006 to 2012, Vidrine served in various positions of leadership at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence culminating as the chief of staff for the Assistant Director of National Intelligence for Human Capital.

Army PEO-EIS leader moving to new agency

Finally, one federal executive who isn’t leaving federal service, but is on the move to a new role.

Rob Schadey, the acting deputy program executive officer for the Army’s PEO-Enterprise Information Systems (PEO-EIS), is joining the Defense Counterintelligence and Service Agency (DCSA) to be the program manager of the National Background Investigation Services.

Federal News Network has learned Schadey’s last day will be in March and it’s unclear who will take over for him even in an acting role.

Before stepping into the acting deputy PEO-EIS role in January, Schadey served as the assistant program executive officer and as the director of the business mission area, both at PEO-EIS.

As the program manager for NBIS, Schadey will have to continue to modernize the systems that help federal employees obtain security clearances.

OMB recently approved the Personnel Vetting Questionnaire (PVQ) in November, according to the third quarterly update on the “Trusted Workforce 2.0” initiative from the Performance Accountability Council. The questionnaire consolidates the SF-86, “Questionnaire for National Security,” along with several other vetting questionnaires used for federal jobs, including public trust and non-sensitive positions.

DCSA is now working on plans to integrate the PVQ into the new “eApp” web portal for background investigation applications as part of its NBIS.

The post Education, DHS among agencies seeking new IT leaders first appeared on Federal News Network.

To ameliorate these problems, the FAA recently created a Pilot Mental Health Aviation Rulemaking Committee. The new initiative is tasked with breaking down barriers that hinder mental health self-reporting. This is a necessary but insufficient step. In addition to more comprehensive self-reporting, the FAA needs to implement standards of continuous pilot evaluation, and then hold airlines accountable to them. Both pilot health and passenger safety depend on it.

Pilots face unique challenges that can weigh on their mental wellbeing. They travel frequently, spending time away from family and friends. They move in and out of many time zones, working irregular hours. Their profession is inherently stressful; hundreds of lives are in their hands whenever they are on the job.

In addition, financial and career incentive structures suppress transparent self-reporting. Using antidepressants or other mental health medications can lead to decertification, followed by a lengthy process to get back in the air. Pilots naturally don’t want to risk losing their salary for months. The result is that struggling pilots feel forced to either lie to the FAA, or choose not to get the care they need. Neglecting early treatment only worsens problems and sets pilots up for crises.

Unfortunately, the problem is widespread. In a 2022 study of 3765 pilots, 56% reported avoiding healthcare out of fear of losing certification; 27% said they had previously withheld information on FAA certification forms.

The FAA’s new committee seeks to destigmatize mental health treatment amongst pilots. While that’s a worthy goal, it doesn’t get to the heart of the matter: Pilots risk their careers and salaries by getting treatment. Destigmatizing treatment doesn’t change that fact.

With pilots struggling and lives at stake, the aviation industry needs to rely on more than just self-reporting.

Airlines need to invest in continuous evaluation programs that are data-driven and proactive. Such programs detect abnormal behaviors, seeking to identify early indications of a struggling employee to assist them. Systems can monitor publicly available data – from government court systems, sex offender registries and social media posts – to detect legal issues and organizational policy violations. This analysis can also determine when employees may be at an elevated risk of stress-related challenges or mental health concerns.

Continuous evaluation can also monitor the social determinants of health, predicting when pilots may be vulnerable. Environmental factors like neighborhood and community context, health care inaccessibility, and economic instability can intensify mental illness.

Rather than relying on pilots to voluntarily report issues, this automated approach allows airlines to proactively guide struggling pilots to personalized employee assistance programs before the issue poses a genuine threat.

While some might think that this approach compromises pilot privacy, this is not the case. Continuous evaluation requires employee consent before deploying a secure, limited-scope program. At every juncture, increasing safety and helping those who need it is the sole objective, not ratting out offenders in secret.

Transparency turns into trust. According to a recent study, more than 90% of workers were willing to allow their companies to collect data on them, provided there was a tangible benefit and their employers were transparent about how data would be collected and used. Maximizing flight safety and pilot health is about as tangible a benefit as one can imagine.

In aviation circles, the ‘Swiss Cheese Model’ of safety is commonly mentioned to minimize risk. Imagine a few slices of swiss cheese stacked up against each other. Each has holes, randomly distributed. If something slips through a hole in the first slice of cheese, it might not pass through a hole in the next slice. Built in redundancies work together to prevent accidents; if one layer of defense fails, another can avert catastrophe.

Continuous evaluation is not the only way to ensure safety in the skies. Pilot self-reporting remains a source of vital information, as do a myriad of other preventative measures. But continuous evaluation is another line of defense — another slice of cheese. By making it an industry best practice, the FAA can bolster pilot mental health, while ensuring that the skies are safe for the foreseeable future.

Tom Miller is co-founder and CEO of ClearForce, a people-risk technology company based in Vienna, Virginia.

The post Another line of defense: Pilots are struggling and continuous evaluation technologies can help first appeared on Federal News Network.

Smith quietly returned to the Pentagon on one occasion a few weeks ago, and was again in the building for a few hours on Friday. Officials said he has been listening in on meetings in recent weeks and getting updates in order to be prepared when he eventually returns to full duty as commandant. They said that return could happen in the coming weeks. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans not yet made public.

On Oct. 29, Smith suffered cardiac arrest near his home at Marine Barracks Washington and was hospitalized. He underwent successful surgery i n early January to repair a bicuspid aortic valve in his heart, which was the cause of his cardiac arrest. At that time, the Marine Corps said he “will return to full duty status as Commandant.”

The assistant commandant, Gen. Christopher Mahoney, has been serving as the acting head of the Marine Corps since Smith’s hospitalization. He will continue to do so until Smith returns to full duty, which officials said will be done after consultation with medical doctors.

Smith was confirmed as the new commandant on Sept. 21. His heart attack came just two days after he’d talked publicly about the stress of having to do the Marine Corps’ top two high-level jobs for the service — commandant and assistant commandant — for several months because Mahoney’s nomination for the No. 2 job had been held up by Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville.

Tuberville had blocked hundreds of military promotions and nominations for months due to his opposition to Pentagon policy paying for troops’ travel for abortions and other reproductive care. Under pressure from lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle, Tuberville ended his holds in December, allowing the Senate to confirm more than 435 nominations.

The post Marine general taking steps to return to full duty as commandant several months after heart attack first appeared on Federal News Network.

For a couple of decades, the For Your Benefit show has aired here on Federal News Network. It was regular listening for anyone planning to retire someday. Host Bob Leins broadcast his final show this past Monday. Because he was such a fixture for our listeners and for those of us at the station, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin didn’t want Mr. Leins to get away without a final interview.

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin Now just review for us. How many years have you been doing for your benefit?

Bob Leins How many years? I’d have to say close to 30.

Tom Temin But on Federal News Network, since we started about 24 years ago. Where did you do it before that?

Bob Leins I would go on a radio station. And I have a friend, would you come on and talk about taxes? And I said, you want me to talk about taxes? How long do you expect the show to last? And I said, I’m going for about 5 or 10 minutes but I don’t think I could do an hour. And that’s how I got into it. Actually, I learned how to stand on my feet and talk in front of a group of more than one. And it was my boss in the 70s. Hot tempered Irishman. But if you got beyond the tough part, he was a piece of cake. Very nice, extremely smart. And he took me out. It was a franchise for him and we had franchises all around the country to do consulting work. So he says, we’re going to do the annual tour. And I said, does that mean I have to talk or do I just carry the phone? He said no, you’re going to talk. I didn’t sleep for a month. I looked at everything I could. The first time we went out, I forget what state it was, and he looked up at me and said listen, you’re doing pretty good. I’ll see you at lunch.

Tom Temin Left you there in front of a crowd.

Bob Leins In front of a crowd on your own. And I had lunch, and I said, do I have to do this again after. He said you should be a pro to this now, yeah.

Tom Temin He knew you better than you knew yourself.

Bob Leins Yes he did. And very, very thankful.

Tom Temin And we should tell people that have been listening to the show for 24 years at 10:00 on Mondays. Who is Bob Liens? What’s your actual job and profession?

Bob Leins Well, I didn’t graduate at the top of my class in college. So I took a job and it paid decent, but it wasn’t particularly pretty, and it was like working in a closet. But I learned things that I would have never learned otherwise. And we have some really sharp people. And I would ask, and then my boss would come out and he said, look at this. And they come back and give me a brief on this. All he was doing is trying to find a way to beat me up, verbally. And he says, now, next time you come in here, do better homework. And again, I’ll go to the grave thanking him. And he didn’t let many people in behind the fence. Somehow I got there. I don’t know what it was, it certainly wasn’t talking about taxes. And that’s what I did. And then I said, I think I can do this. And I went to work for my friend Don Gold.

Tom Temin What exactly are you? You’ve described herself as an accountant who doesn’t like accounting.

Bob Leins But what I realized when I got out of school is, I could do the accounting, but to me it was boring. And so I kind of looked at doing tax work. Taxes, generally speaking, there’s no balance sheet. You don’t have to do this or that. You should do things if they’re aggressive. You can be aggressive, but you can’t be overly aggressive because once that hits IRS’ computers, they’re going to come after you. So I can give them ideas that I like. And that’s what I did. And then I went to work for my friend Don Gold. And we grew a large firm, more so from taxes than it was for the accounting. And Don liked accounting more than I did. And that’s where I am.

Tom Temin And how did you get into the idea? What interested you in helping federal civil servants with their not just taxes, but general financial advice and life advice that you’ve been giving them through you and your guests all these years?

Bob Leins Well, when I went out on my own, I started a firm and called it For Your Benefit. The radio show was that too. And that’s what I did. So I would go out and talk, and then after a while, I was talking to the people in government agencies, can you do this with other people? And I go, yeah, we got somebody that can do benefits, we got somebody tax, somebody can do this or that. Everybody’s got their own niche.

Tom Temin And you get a lot of feedback too, don’t you? The listeners, they write to us about you. So you must get a lot of ideas from the listeners as to what concerns them.

Bob Leins That’s it. So you get the feedback from that, you get the feedback from clients and it just grew.

Tom Temin And some of your regular guests have become well known in the market in their own right.

Bob Leins Oh, yeah. Well known in the market. Tammy Flanagan, when I first met her, she just left the government. And, it was just started [National Institute of Transition Planning (NITP)], the retirement firm. And I said, Tammy, we’re going to go down to. And she like me the first time, studied and studied and studied and studies. Well, Tammy didn’t need to study. So I said to her, I said, as we go along, as I see that you got a firm grisp, I’m going to be walking backwards. She goes, why? I said, because it’s your show, not mine.

Tom Temin Yeah. So you did to her what your boss had done to you, knowing she could handle it.

Bob Leins That was it.

Tom Temin What happens to the National Institute of Transition Planning?

Bob Leins We got a fair number of people. Admin, probably got ten admin people. And then we have the speakers. And why are there speakers there? To get clients. But they can’t sell. We have a rule. You can talk, but if you try to sell, you’ll be talking to yourself.

Tom Temin Yeah, that’s the best way to sell, is to not sell in some cases like that.

Bob Leins Create the need.

Tom Temin And earlier you mentioned you weren’t at the top of your class. What was the class? Where did you go to school, where did you grow up? Where do you come from?

Bob Leins I’m a born and raised Wheaton kid, so people around here would know where Wheaton was.

Tom Temin And not Wheaton, Illinois, by the way.

Bob Leins Oh no. Wheaton was a nice place to grow up. Maybe not to stay, but a nice place to grow up. And so I left Wheaton as quickly as I could. I got married, and I went to work for General Business Services. That’s it. That’s my work history.

Tom Temin Right. And we won’t reveal your age on the air, but you’re still a vigorous guy for the age that you are. And what are you going to do next?

Bob Leins My father was like this, so my mother, we paid no attention to age. And my mother, how old are you? I don’t know, and she probably didn’t know. My dad, he would know and they were smooth. And I didn’t hear a lot of arguments, maybe a couple raise voice discussions, but nothing nasty. No throwing books around. My dad would take us up to Wheaton High School to play football. Not for the team, but we could play as little kids, and he would do this or that. So I grew up normal. And then, I graduated from school and I went to work for this place called General Business Services. And that’s it. Ten years there and then I said, I can do this. And I told my boss, and I think I can do this. And he says, well, then why don’t you get out.

Tom Temin Now, this coming Monday morning, of course, there will be no ForYourBenefit show.  What will you do when you get up on Monday morning?

Bob Leins I’ll read the paper. I’ll figure out if somebody had emailed me with a question, and then I go to work, and maybe there wasn’t a lot to do, but it was better than sitting at home.

Tom Temin But what are you going to do now on Monday mornings? Every morning?

Bob Leins That’s a good question. It’s an unknown, but it all has something to do with something other than accounting. Sure, I like taxes, but I never liked accounting.

Tom Temin But you don’t make Lego ships, or you don’t pin butterflies on boards or paint pictures.

Bob Leins No. Whatever suits me for the day. Somebody will call up and say, hey, you want to go out and have lunch? Okay. Or somebody else will say, you want to go out and shoot hoops? And I go, okay. It’s that kind of stuff.

 

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