Federal Drive with Tom Temin

It's official, more or less. The General Services Administration is bending nearly all of its efforts towards the idea of customer experience. That's what Federal Acquisition Commissioner Tom Howder told the Coalition for Government Procurement the other day. What does that mean for contractors? We turn to federal sales and marketing consultant Larry Allen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Government Accountability Office is out with its latest assessment of the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons programs. It’s the 20th annual edition. GAO says it’s seen some improvement in DoD’s management of major acquisition programs during that time, but cost and schedule growth are still huge problems. And while every program’s unique, one common theme is that DoD tends to commit itself to big systems before it has enough information about technology risks and cost estimates. Shelby Oakley is Director of Contracting and National Security Acquisitions at GAO. She talked with Federal News Network’s Jared Serbu about some of the trends in this year’s report. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The federal government has world-class engineering expertise in its ranks. The same is true of public health expertise. What it doesn’t have is a standing capability to fuse those disciplines together with behavioral science to help inform agencies’ response to crises. At least, until now. A brand new organization called the Engineering for Public Health and Human Factors Center — or EPH — is now up and running within the Army Corps of Engineers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Appropriators on Capitol Hill have a big week this week, the first official week of summer. For one thing, House members are marking up the 20-23 Defense budget and taking up the defense authorization bill. The Federal Drive got the latest from WTOP Capitol Hill correspondent Mitchell Miller. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Freedom of Information Act might be best known as a way for journalists and public interest groups to get information about the operations of government. But it can also be a tool for companies to get confidential information about their competitors. Safeguarding that information has gotten more complicated in the last few years, because the state of the law around the FOIA exemption that applies to things like trade secrets is in flux. Nathan Castellano is special counsel in the government contracts group at Jenner and Block. He wrote a recent briefing paper about those complications, and talked about it with Federal News Network’s Jared Serbu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When it comes to directed energy technologies like lasers and microwave weapons, the Air Force doesn’t have anything that’s quite ready to deploy on a fighter jet. But a new modeling and simulation facility at Kirtland Air Force base is going to try to make sure pilots are ready to use them once they are. The Air Force Research Laboratory just awarded a 10-year, $80 million contract to build a new “virtual range” for directed energy weapons. To learn more, Federal News Network’s Jared Serbu talked with Christopher Hurlburt, deputy principal investigator for modeling and simulation at AFRL. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency is overhauling the security clearance process under an initiative called Trusted Workforce 2.0. The reform effort promises to streamline background investigations using automation and other new processes. For the latest, Federal News Network’s Justin Doubleday spoke with the assistant director of vetting risk operations at DCSA, Heather Green. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Defense Department has several small innovation storefronts like the Defense Innovation Unit, SOFWERX and AFWERX. They partner with non-traditional vendors to find solutions to some of DoD’s toughest challenges. For years, DoD has focused on building the infrastructure to find these innovations, but now it’s turning its focus to the next step in this process: the so-called “Valley of Death.” Federal News Network's Daisy Thornton joins me with details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Technology Modernization Fund is making a big investment in better customer experience throughout government. The TMF will award $100 million to projects that cut wait times for public-facing federal services, as well as excessive paperwork and other barriers. These projects tie back to the Biden administration’s executive order on improving customer experience. For more on this announcement, Federal News Network’s Jory Heckman spoke with TMF Executive Director Raylene Yung. But first, you’ll hear from TMF Chairwoman and Federal Chief Information Officer Clare Martorana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today's Federal Newscast: A federal pay raise appears to be on the horizon, but remains up in the air. Inflation might mean more money for the DoD and nuclear maintenance . And an $11 billion contract award survives a protest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Federal agencies generally have a lot of discretion when it comes to their procurement decisions. But not explaining why they did what they did can be a recipe for bid protests. That’s exactly what happened when the Army awarded a major contract for communications support services in U.S. Central Command. The Court of Federal Claims has now ordered the Army to go back and fix problems with the 2019 award decision. To talk more about the case, FNN Deputy Editor Jared Serbu was joined by Joe Petrillo, a procurement attorney with Smith Pachter McWhorter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new report by the Cyberspace Solarium Commission bemoans the fact that the national cyber workforce shortage is still a major problem. But the commission thinks it’s a problem that can start to be solved with the help of the new National Cyber Director – and the director will need strategies that address both the federal workforce and the private sector. FNN Deputy Editor Jared Serbu talked about what the landscape looks like on the private side, with Tom Downs, the Head of Diversity Talent Acquisition and the Employee Referral Program at Booz Allen Hamilton. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Department of the Navy has a new strategy for dealing with climate challenges. Like past plans, it addresses what the Navy and Marine Corps can do to make their operations more resilient to climate change. But this one also lays out some specific goals to reduce the services’ impacts to the climate. FNN Deputy Editor Jared Serbu talked about all of this with Deborah Loomis, Senior Advisor for Climate Change to the Secretary of the Navy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last month, the House passed a resolution that helps pave the way for its staff members to unionize. The measure essentially grants House staffers the same legal protections other federal employees have against retaliation if they try to formally organize a labor union. Backers say it’s needed, in part, because of low pay and high turnover on Capitol Hill. But not everyone thinks it’s a good idea, including our next guest. Suzanne Bates is a senior writer and researcher at Americans for Fair Treatment, a group that calls itself a “union watchdog.” She talked with the Federal Drive about what she sees as the downsides. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As we discussed yesterday with assistant secretary Alejandra Castillo from the Commerce Department, Congress is considering legislation that would designate economic development funding to new “tech hubs” located all around the country. And according to our next guest, that’s part of an emerging trend in how the federal government approaches innovation funding. The National Science Foundation and the Economic Development Administration have already created programs that focus their attention on specific places, rather than individual institutions or research topics. Mark Muro is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and policy director for the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program. He joined the Federal Drive to talk more about it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices