Federal Drive with Tom Temin

If you like electric cars, then you've got to have ample supplies of critical elements needed to make them, like lithium and cobalt. Trouble is, the U.S. is highly dependent on foreign sources for most of the 35 rare-earth elements needed for batteries, wind turbines and other items. Now the Energy Department has launched a $30 million grant program to support increasing domestic supplies of rare-earth element. For details, we'll have two guests. We'll hear from Mike McKittrick, Energy's Research and Development Consortia Program Manager. But first, for an overview of the program, we'll hear from the acting director of the Materials Sciences and Engineering Division in Energy's basic research unit, Dr. Andy Schwartz. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Army might be a ground-based force, but it's spending more time in the clouds, commercial cloud computing. In fact, with some solid experience in migrating computing workloads to the cloud, Army brass are considering a revised strategy for large scale migrations. Just one story in this week's DOD Reporters Notebook with Federal News Network's Jared Serbu and Scott Maucione. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The last 15 years of federal agency IT modernization seems to be culminating under the Biden administration...a perfect combo of technology maturation, pandemic's impact and real funding from Congress. In his weekly feature, the reporter's notebook, executive editor Jason Miller writes about how the Biden administration is trying to pull all of these pieces together to finally make sustained progress on moving off legacy systems. Jason joined the Federal Drive to discuss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A busy and contentious agenda on Capitol Hill doesn't mean the budget and priorities for your agency are off the table. In fact, the House budget committee chairwoman says she's hoping to have bills on the floor this summer. The Federal Drive got more now from Bloomberg Government congress reporter Jack Fitzpatrick. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Feds will eventually travel again on business. And when they do, their personal data will end up in property management systems. The systems hotels use to manage and book space. Turns out these systems are vulnerable to hackers seeing personal information. Now the National Institute of Standards and Technology has released results of focused work with the industry to help the situation. Joining the Federal Drive with more, National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence engineer Bill Newhouse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the State Department, diplomacy and projecting American values around the world relies on the foreign service staff had ambassadors. But it uses other means to enhance the mission. Like art and artists. For more on the Art in Embassies program, the acting director of State's Bureau of Overseas Building Operations, Henry Jardine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After a decade of budget and workforce cuts, the IRS says it has limited manpower to go after tax cheats. That means the tax gap between what taxpayers owe and what the agency collects is growing. But a bigger budget for the agency doesn’t mean it can bring on new employees as quickly as it would like. Federal News Network’s Jory Heckman has more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Military Coalition, a group representing millions of service members and their families has appealed right to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Their concern: Rising out-of-pocket costs for Tricare, planned cuts to medical billets, and possible lower funding for the Uniformed Services University of the Health Science. Joining the Federal Drive with more, the director of health affairs of Military Officers Association of America, Karen Ruedisueli. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You might not have realized the Drug Enforcement Administration has a foundation. It's been working for 20 years to help young people find healthy alternatives to drug use. It recently held a major fundraiser in connection with some big stars of Broadway. Joining the Federal Drive with details, the DEA Educational Foundation's chairman of the board, Bill Alden. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new working group has arisen at the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, the collective of all the federal IG's. The new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Work Group aims to make sure the IG offices' workforces are sufficiently diverse. Joining the Federal Drive with what the work group will do and how it will operate, the acting inspector general of the Education Department, Sandra Bruce. And Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation IG, Jay Lerner. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Defense Department was just about as exposed as anyone else, to the global-scale cyber vulnerabilities involving SolarWinds and Microsoft Exchange software. But even after months of probing their own networks for signs of compromise, Defense officials say it looks as though they dodged a bullet. As Federal News Network’s Jared Serbu reports, there are no signs that foreign hackers managed to actually make use of those cyber flaws. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Department of Veterans Affairs says it has some challenges to work through with its electronic health record. But it's confident it can fix them. And it's confident the Cerner Millennium platform will eventually be an improvement over VA's legacy health record. Some members of Congress are skeptical. And they don't see how it's possible for VA pause the rollout and still meet its $16 billion, 10-year budget and timeline. More from Federal News Network's Nicole Ogrysko. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A recent award by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, to the University of Massachusetts is aimed at advancing machine learning in a way that mimics the human mind. The award went to the university's Biologically Inspired Neural and Dynamical Systems, or BINDS, lab. For what this research is all about and why it's important, the BINDS Lab director, Hava Siegelmann. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Each year the Federal Managers Association honors one of its own, as Manager of the Year. Joining the Federal Drive is this year's honoree. She's the director of policy and systems for the Railroad Retirement Board, Kimberly Price. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Defense Department brass have fretted about readiness for years. After getting budget bumps, the Pentagon still isn’t prepared for the missions it’s setting itself up for. That’s according to a recent Government Accountability Office. Is DoD is setting itself up for failure? Federal News Network’s Scott Maucione joined the Federal Drive to discuss what he's been finding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices