Federal Drive with Tom Temin

The bipartisan infrastructure bill that’s expected to be considered by the House soon could set up a huge challenge for the IRS. The bill would end the Employee Retention Credit Program, one of several credits Congress created earlier in the pandemic to help small businesses. It’s a complicated undertaking and since the change would take effect on Sept. 30, the IRS would have almost no time to prepare. Chad Hooper is executive director of the Professional Managers Association. He joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin to talk about what his members think is an impending emergency for the agency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The huge sums of cash Congress allocated for pandemic unemployment assistance went a long way toward staving off an economic collapse during the worst days of the crisis. But the huge surge in claims through state unemployment agencies also highlighted weaknesses in the system — weaknesses the Labor Department is now trying to help states fix. Michele Evermore is senior policy adviser on unemployment insurance at the Labor Department. She talked with Federal Drive with Tom Temin about some of the efforts now underway, with the help of about $2 billion in grants under the American Rescue Plan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Congress is focused this week on long-term infrastructure spending. But the clock is quickly winding down on the end of the fiscal year deadline to keep the basic functions of government working. We’re almost certain to start Fiscal 2022 under a continuing resolution. How long it lasts, and whether we might face a government shutdown later this year are bigger questions. Larry Allen, the president of Allen Federal Business Partners discussed the topic on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the State Department scrambles to process thousands of special immigrant visas for Afghans trying to flee through the Kabul airport, federal contractors are playing a big role. After all, most of the Afghans who assisted U.S. forces over the years were contract employees in one way or another, and in many cases, the government needs contractors’ data to verify their service. David Berteau is president and CEO of the Professional Services Council. He talked with the Federal Drive about how the government is working with PSC’s member companies on this huge challenge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Feast or famine, that was how many government contractors described 2020. Between the pandemic, pivoting to remote work and dealing with the uncertainty of the entire year, Deltek’s 12th annual Government Contracting Industry Survey offered more clarity into the volatile year that was. Kevin Plexico is the senior vice president of information solutions at Deltek and Dan Firrincili is the senior manager for product marketing at Deltek. They tell executive editor Jason Miller about how vendors say they dealt with and survived, and how some thrived, during the pandemic year of 2020. First, we hear from Dan Firrincili. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The House returns to Capitol Hill this week to get to work on the bipartisan infrastructure bill. The House isn't expected to make many big changes to the bill the Senate already passed. Federal employee groups are already counting their victories and losses now that they've had time to review the new legislation. Federal News Network's Nicole Ogrysko joined the Federal Drive to run through some of the big items, and how they might impact federal agencies if the bill becomes law. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s still a lot of confusion about exactly how agencies will implement President Biden’s mandate for all federal workers to get vaccinated or subject themselves to COVID testing. But one thing that’s really, really clear: it’s a bad idea to lie to your agency about your vaccination status. Stephanie Rapp-Tully is a federal employment attorney at partner at the law firm Tully Rinckey. She joined the Federal Drive to talk about the consequences of lying on those new vaccine forms, and how yesterday’s full approval of the new Pfizer vaccine changes things. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Congress has fewer than six weeks left to figure out how to avert a government shutdown. But for the moment, the focus is on multiyear spending – including the infrastructure package that got bipartisan support in the Senate, and a separate $3.5 trillion package supported by Democrats. To talk more about what’s ahead on the Hill this week, the Federal Drive was joined by Loren Duggan, deputy news director at Bloomberg Government. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New research by sociologists at Rice University finds that when a natural disaster hits an area, self-employment tends to go up. But those gains also come with inequities. Racial minorities consistently see fewer gains in entrepreneurship than white residents. And for reasons that aren’t still completely clear, the gap gets wider depending on how much disaster aid FEMA contributes to local relief programs. Asia Bento is a doctoral fellow in Rice’s sociology department, and Jim Elliott is a professor of sociology at Rice’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research. They joined the Federal Drive to talk about some of their findings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It didn't last long. But millions and millions of people in the eastern part of the country felt an earthquake that originated in Virginia. The magnitude 5.8 quake occurred 10 years ago today, and yet damage in some places is still under repair. For perspective, we turn to a research geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey, Thomas Pratt. He talked with Tom Temin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pets often become part of the family, and that’s no different for soldiers. However, members of the armed forces are often mandated to travel overseas for their jobs, and that can make it costly to bring a pet along. COVID-19 has pushed shipping prices up, making it even more expensive to bring a fuzzy friend to another country. Army Emergency Relief is trying to alleviate some of that burden on soldiers. Federal News Network's Scott Maucione talked about the organization’s new program with AER Senior Emergency Assistance Administrator Glen Wellman III. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Agencies produce and collect reams of data every day, but not all of it goes to good use. Chief data officers, who were mandated in each agency by the Evidence Act Congress passed two years ago, are running data inventories at their agencies to better understand what information available, and what’s needed, to help shape management decisions. But good data is only half the battle. The Department of the Navy is also focused on improving the baseline data literacy of its personnel. For an update on this work, Federal News Network’s Jory Heckman spoke with the chief data officer of the Navy, Tom Sasala. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

IT asset management teams at the Department of Veterans Affairs and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services are improving their lines of communication in an effort to update their software. They’ve coordinated efforts to tally their technical debt, create budget balance sheets and outline their modernization needs to vendors. Federal News Network's Jonathan Tercasio joined the Federal Drive to discuss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Affective computing – a family of A-I technologies that aim to be able to use biometrics to detect human emotions, or someone’s state of mind – is a subject of active research in academia and the commercial sector. The Department of Homeland Security has also dabbled with the technology to see if it’s able to detect lies among people seeking entry to the country. But our next guest says now’s the time to put some boundaries around potential government uses of affective computing. In a recent paper, Alex Engler, the Brookings Institution’s Rubenstein Fellow for Governance Studies argued the president should ban it altogether for federal law enforcement purposes. And Alex joined the Federal Drive to talk about that argument. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Agencies will soon have a new way to recruit and hire more student interns. The Office of Personnel Management has a new authority that allows agencies to skip the usual job posting requirements and directly recruit students as paid interns. The authority also allows them to noncompetitively convert successful interns as permanent federal employees. This is the second time OPM has used the regulatory process this summer to tweak the federal hiring process. Federal News Network's Nicole Ogrysko joined the Federal Drive to explain the new intern hiring authority and why it matters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices