Federal Drive with Tom Temin

Government shutdown threats and scrimping on contractor employee wages, those conflicts affect one group of working people perhaps more than any other. People with disabilities. Joining the Federal Drive with some of his current concerns, the president of the Alliance for Expanding America's Workforce, Dwight Davis. https://www.expandingamericasworkforce.org/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Biden administration has opened the bid for next year’s federal pay raise. And it may not be met with a whole lot of enthusiasm. If enacted, feds would receive a 2% raise in 2025. It’s well below what feds received this year. Federal News Network’s Drew Friedman joined the Federal Drive with more details from the budget request. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today's episode of the Federal Drive with Tom Temin: An update on cybersecurity at an agency that helps every other agency with cyber. From one of the Energy Department Labs, a new approach to electric grid cybersecurity. The 2024 budget is about to get lapped by the 2025 wish list. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Because Congress is so late establishing a appropriations for fiscal 2024, the year is getting lapped by the 2025. The administration releases its budget proposal, more a wish list today. It'll get ceremonial attention. But there's still some deadlines for this year. More now from WTOP Capitol Hill Correspondent Mitchell Miller. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Among the grand challenges for cybersecurity is how to make the nation's electrical grid safer. It's a big problem in a lot of ways. The grid contains nearly countless numbers of components, each of which has to be protected. And pieces of the grid are owned by thousands of companies, public utilities, and local governments. Now a team from the Energy Department's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has come up with a whole new idea for grid protection. Joining the Federal Drive with the outlines of it, PNNL data scientist Sumit Purohit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Agriculture Department’s is already seeing benefits from a $100 million dollar investment in one of its foundational programs. USDA is using money from the American Rescue Plan Act to modernize systems that run the Women, Infants and Children, or WIC program. For how they plan to expand the reach and appeal of WIC, Federal News Network's Jason Miller talked to the USDA's senior advisor for delivery for the Food and Nutrition Service, Rebecca Piazza. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It took two years of study – and more than 400 interviews – but the expert panel Congress commissioned to fix DoD aging budget system now has some answers. The Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution Reform delivered its final report last week, with 28 recommendations in all. If DoD and Congress adopt them, it would be the first significant update to DoD’s budget process since the Pentagon started using it, that was in the early days of the Cold War. Federal News Network’s Jared Serbu has been covering the PPBE reform process, including last week’s rollout, and he’s here now with some highlights.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is an eternal question. How much should government try to do? Now we present a view you may not hear all that often. An old book about a failed New Deal era agriculture project has been re-issued by the conservative American Enterprise Institute. First published in 1951, the book, "Government Project," detailed the Agriculture Department's attempt at establishing a cooperative farm from the ground up in Arizona. The author, Edward Banfield, was a Harvard urban studies professor and one-time federal information officer. He died in 1999. For more, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin spoke with Kevin Kosar, who wrote the forward to the reprint and is a Senior Fellow with the American Enterprise Institute. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Census Bureau counts people in the United States. The Agriculture Department counts farms. In fact, the National Agricultural Statistics Service recently issued its latest count of farms and ranches in the United States. For the details, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin spoke Bryan Combs, the USDA Chief of the Environmental, Economics and Demographics Branch. USDA Census AG Census Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode of the Federal Drive with Tom Temin: What the new USDA census of farms is telling the nation. Lesson learned: A long ago federal agriculture project that did not work out. The Air Force Intelligence Office is sending its workforce back to school. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Agencies have spent years trying to shift away from college degree requirements for federal jobs — now, the White House is now directing agencies to take things up a notch by using more apprenticeships. An executive order President Joe Biden signed Wednesday gives agencies a score of new requirements to try to make the government a leading example in skills-based hiring. The recruitment practice has employers focus on job candidates’ hands-on skills rather than their education. Specifically, agencies will have to begin taking better advantage of the Labor Department’s registered apprenticeship program, according to the executive order. The goal is to have agencies then convert apprentices into full-time federal employees — an effort that could also ramp up skills-based hiring and address mission-critical skills gaps. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A six-year experiment meant to help the federal government quickly sell or dispose of its underutilized real estate is running out of time. Congress created the Public Buildings Reform Board as a small, independent agency under the 2016 Federal Assets Sale and Transfer Act (FASTA), to help the federal government’s landlord, the General Services Administration, identify federal buildings and properties that agencies no longer need, and to sell or repurpose them. In fiscal 2022, the 24 largest federal agencies owned nearly a quarter million buildings, covering more than 2.4 billion square feet, according to the latest GSA data. That portfolio of owned buildings accounts for more than $16 billion in annual costs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Almost everyone has set foot in a YMCA. Did you know there are Armed Services YMCAs with programs tailored to military service members? It is devoted to the needs of junior enlisted service members. For what it is up to these days, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin spoke with CEO William French, who also happens to be a retired Navy vice admiral. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices