Federal Drive with Tom Temin

Agencies have marching orders as they put the final touches on their fiscal 2023 budget requests. The Office of Management and Budget told them to put a major focus on the workforce. This means more money and more programs. Federal News Network's executive editor Jason Miller has exclusive details on what OMB is telling agencies to do for 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

House Democrats passed a nearly 3,000 page bill last week aimed at American Industrial competitiveness. There's a lot in there for federal agencies, including the Commerce Department. But does it have legs? We get more now from Bloomberg deputy news director Loren Duggan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Citizen satisfaction with government services fell again last year. In fact, the satisfaction index fell to the lowest point since measurement started back in 1999. Here with the details, the director of research for the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Forrest Morgeson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What an irony. Congressional appropriations committees hold hearings on what harm might hit the military from Congress's own inability to pass a budget on time. But the security threat is real, according to my next guest. Retired Marine Corps major general Arnold Punaro is chairman of the National Defense Industrial Association. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As Federal News Network exclusively reported late Friday, the Biden administration is proposing a nearly 5% pay raise for federal employees next hear. We got more from Federal News Network's Jason Miller. -AND- The Biden administration wants to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by the federal government by 2050. The General Services Administration and the Defense Department are in the market for greener sources of electricity. Meanwhile, the White House is threatening to hold up the Postal Service’s plans to acquire its next-generation delivery fleet, if more those vehicles aren’t electric. For an update on these efforts, Federal News Network’s Jory Heckman has more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Defense Department’s contractor cybersecurity initiative is on the move. The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program will no longer be run out of the Pentagon’s acquisition directorate. For more, Federal News Network’s Justin Doubleday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The so-called insider threat remains a potent one for cybersecurity practitioners. But old fashioned outside hackers have been raising their capabilities. Now they're the biggest threat to governments at all levels. Those are among the findings of the latest annual cybersecurity survey done by software vendor SolarWinds. Here with the highlights, Solar Winds chief information security officer, Tim Brown. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In order to do good around the world, the U.S. Agency for International Development has to buy goods and services and make grants, around the world. It amounts to more than $20 billion a year. Overseeing it all is my next guest, who is also the recipient recipient of a Presidential Rank Award. Mark Walther is USAID's senior procurement executive and chief acquisition officer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vendors bidding on the $50 billion CIO-SP4 governmentwide acquisition contract, and there are scores of them, may be feeling like ping pong balls. The NIH IT Acquisition and Assessment Center, known as NITAAC, reversed course on its requirements for final proposals, barely a week after reversing them in the first place. Bids are due in a week .Federal News Network's Jason Miller joined the Federal Drive with the latest, Amendment 16 of this highly sought GWAC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hawaii health officials have ordered the Navy to remove fuel from a massive storage bunker after leaks made their way into a nearby aquifer. But the Pentagon announced this week it plans to fight the order in court, partly because officials see the Red Hill bunker as strategically vital to Navy operations in the Pacific. For more on the next steps – and why defueling Red Hill isn’t so easy – Federal News Network’s Jared Serbu talked with Tim Walton, a fellow and military logistics expert at the Hudson Institute. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Agencies all seem to be pursuing digital transformation. A way of improving service to the public and of how they operate internally. But how to you get there? A small team from the modernization community of interest at ACT-IAC has assembled a list of best practices for digital transformation. Joining me with more, from the industry side, Erika Flora, the CEO of Beyond 20, and from the government side, the General Services Administration's innovation and adoption lead Alison O'Mara. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After spending 30 years in a Coast Guard uniform, my next guest has donned a business suit and joined the senior executive service. But he's still with the Coast Guard, as the new deputy assistant commandant for intelligence. Jeffrey Radgowski joined the Federal Drive to discuss his new role. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For fish and wildlife to thrive in the United States, they need space. My next guest as spent a career helping secure woods and grasslands that support conservation. Now he's a recipient of a Presidential Rank Award, one in a series of interviews of PRA winners, the deputy director for program management and policy at the Fish and Wildlife Service, Steve Guertin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last week, the Office of Personnel Management made some big news, raising the minimum wage for federal employees to $15/hour. Besides the living wage angle, there’s also a diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility angle. Federal News Network's David Thornton has more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It might be 2022 and three quarters of a century since integration of the military. But minority officers and enlisted people still report experiencing racism inside the ranks and in local communities. That's among the findings in a new, first-of-its-kind study by Blue Star Families. It details experiences of minorities in the military, and why the situation presents a recruitment obstacle. Federal News Network’s Scott Maucione has more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices