Federal Drive with Tom Temin

The Department of Homeland Security is on a multi-year mission to improve employee engagement scores after years of being at the bottom of the pack. DHS improved overall engagement scores by four points on the 2020 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. Leaders and supervisors each improved their scores by five points last year. For how they did it, Federal News Network's Nicole Ogrysko spoke with DHS chief human capital officer Angie Bailey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do the oil and gas industry and the Capitol Hill Police have in common? Both need a bit more oversight from Congress, according to my next guest. Joining the Federal Drive with a two-for-one set of recommendations, Project on Government Oversight Policy Analyst Tim Stretton. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

EPA senior officials failed to follow standard operating procedures in 2018, when they signed off on permit renewals for certain pesticides. Including leaving scientific documents out of the decision. For details, the Federal Drive turned to health scientist in the office of the inspector general at the EPA, Alton Reid. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You can hardly swing a cat these days and not hit somebody talking about the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program. The Defense Department's strategy for buttoning up the Defense industrial base. My next guest says the CMMC approach is good in theory, but lacks anywhere near the resources to get it done. He's not only director of information security at Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, but also a founding member of the CMMC Accreditation Body, Chris Golden joined the Federal Drive to discuss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recent ransomware attacks have some members of Congress looking to boost the budget and the authority of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The Colonial Pipeline attack has lawmakers concerned about CISA’s ability to defend critical infrastructure. More now from Federal News Network’s Justin Doubleday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Agencies faced more than 30,000 cyber incidents in fiscal 2020, an 8% increase over the year before. Email phishing and website authentication continue to be among the biggest attack vectors hackers are using to get to agency networks and data. But despite this escalation, the annual Federal Information Security Management Act or FISMA report to Congress, highlights real progress. Chris DeRusha is the federal chief information security officer. He tells executive editor Jason Miller why the report, along with the recent executive order, lays out the cybersecurity path forward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When soliciting bids under a task order contract, the government isn't obligated to have full-on negotiations. Contracting officers can have interchanges with bidders, but even these have to be done fairly, or else bidder is likely to protest, as the Navy found out recently. Procurement attorney Joseph Petrillo brings us the case. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From rattlesnakes to bison, the wildlife are part of the attraction in places like the Grand Canyon National Park. But it's 2021, not 1821, and the bison herd must be controlled. That's why the National Park Service has initiated what it calls a lethal reduction. Joining the Federal Drive to explain how it works, spokesman Kaitlyn Thomas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

U.S. Customs and Border Protection plans to spend $46 million to update something you might not even know it does. Namely, the inspection of cargo coming into the United States not by sea or air, but by rail. Here with a look into this program, CBP's Aaron Bowker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, the Defense Department shut down Commercial Virtual Remote – the cloud-based collaboration service it set up to help employees telework during the pandemic. CVR was always meant to be a temporary solution, but it worked so well that it pushed the military services to speed up their plans to move the workforce to long-term implementations of Office 365. Those projects are now years ahead of schedule. Danielle Metz is the deputy DoD CIO for information enterprise. She talked with Federal News Network’s Jared Serbu about what the department learned from CVR. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Military relocations have happened in fits and starts throughout the pandemic. For a few months, the Defense Department even completely stopped service members from moving to new orders. Now service members are facing a different problem: supply and demand. Federal News Network’s Scott Maucione reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Congress is turning its attention to 2022 budget negotiations. But the talks about funding the Department of Veterans Affairs sound a lot like those of years past. VA is on track for another record budget next year if the Biden administration gets its way. Democrats said the extra resources will fund VA programs that have been unattended in recent years. But Republicans wonder whether it's simply too much. Federal News Network's Nicole Ogrysko had more on Federal Drive with Tom Temin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More than 75 years have passed since the Navy has had to repair several battle-damaged ships all at once. Now naval planners are wondering whether this capability might be needed once again. But the way they're going about planning it is operating without a compass. Federal Drive with Tom Temin got more information from the Director of Defense Capabilities and Management Issues at the Government Accountability Office, Diana Maurer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Biden administration is calling on agencies to transition the federal automobile fleet to zero-emission vehicles. But agencies have a long way to go to meet that goal. The current inventory of plug-in electric vehicles is less than 1 percent of the overall fleet and agencies have been slow to purchase more. Federal News Network’s Jory Heckman joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin to discuss more details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For a variety of reasons, many Black, Latino, Native American and other minorities had higher rates of COVID-19 - contracting it and and being hospitalized - than the national average. Last summer, Dr. Gary Gibbons decided to do something about it. He's the director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health, and he's a finalist in this year's Service to America Medals Program (Sammies). He spoke to Federal Drive with Tom Temin for more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices