Federal Drive with Tom Temin

A task force just released a massive study on race in the ranks of the Navy. The findings include 60 recommendations for improving the Navy's race relations and inclusivity. Federal News Network’s Scott Maucione asked about the study’s findings and what the Navy will change, with the Pentagon's Senior Advisor for Inclusion and Diversity, Charles Barber. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In both military and civilian life, automation is taking over a rising number of functions. The original market for simulation was aviation, and the military is using is more and more as a short cut to training and to save fuel. But increasingly, simulation developers are finding that software for ground combat simulation is totally different challenge. Joining the Federal Drive with what's ahead in military simulation, the CEO of Bohemia Interactive Simulations, Arthur Alexion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Diversity and inclusion, the term typically conjures up images of various races, ethnicities, and even gender IDs. And making sure everyone gets even handed treatment. There's another dimension to diversity, namely neurodiversity. Lots of people on the autism spectrum are capable of good and useful work. That's the idea behind a pilot project at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. For details, we turn to the deputy director for strategic transformation in the NGA's analysis and tradecraft technology shop, Michael Hales. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Two of the government's biggest research and research funding agencies have signed a new memorandum of understanding they say reaffirms a long history of cooperation. Joining the Federal Drive with the details, NASA's acting associate administrator for international and interagency affairs, Mike Gold. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In case you've lost track, President Biden signed a total of 28 executive orders in his first two weeks in office. That's more than his four predecessors combined, at least. The orders give agencies a long list of policies and regulations to review, new task forces to create and other actions to take. Yes, it's a lot to do. But career executives are generally used to all that work. For more on what goes into the process of preparing for and then implementing all those new executive orders, Federal News Network's Nicole Ogrysko joined the Federal Drive to explain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Events over the last couple of decades have shown that the federal government isn't all that great at responding to crises. No one connected the dots leading to 9/11. Hurricane Katrina, how'd that go? The pandemic, still scrambling. Now the longstanding Business Executives for National Security group has published what it terms a call to action to improve emergency national response. Here with highlights, the group's CEO, retired Army Gen. Joseph Votel, and its chairman, retired Booz Allen managing partner Mark Gerencser. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Enacted barely a month ago, federal contractors are still unpacking everything stuffed into the National Defense Authorization bill for 2021. For one assessment, the Federal Drive turned to Morris, Manning and Martin partner, attorney Kelly Kroll. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Entering a federal agency for the first time as an appointed manager, if you don't think it's daunting then you aren't awake. But there are some specific tips you can take to get oriented and become effective. My next guest has been there, done that. He's a former Office of Management and Budget controller and acting IRS commissioner, now with the Boston Consulting Group, Danny Werfel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Postal Service went to extraordinary lengths last year to process a record volume of mail-in ballots while also delivering the surge in packages that peaks during the holidays. That’s all behind the agency now, but it’s still struggling to improve on-time delivery for regular old mail. Now USPS plans to stand up a data dashboard for its biggest customers. For the latest on the state of the Postal Service, Federal News Network’s Jory Heckman joins the Federal Drive with more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made a big show this week of firing hundreds of advisory board members. Some because they were appointed at the last minute by former President Donald Trump, to the Defense Business and Defense Policy Boards. But also as the Pentagon starts to take a hard look at the value of the commissions in the first place. Federal News Network’s Scott Maucione has the details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Two weeks into the Biden presidency and many of the signature workforce policies from the Trump administration are gone. President Joe Biden repealed five key executive orders from the Trump administration during his first few days in office. Those executive orders got a lot of attention over the last four years. But agencies have been quietly working on other priorities from the Trump administration's management agenda. Federal News Network's Nicole Ogrysko joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin to explain what's left of that agenda, and how the Biden administration might actually build on the work from the last four years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the Maritime Administration, ship operations are often an outsourced affair. But when MARAD sought a vendor to buy, staff and maintain ships for its ready reserve fleet, it made a number of errors in its solicitation. Federal Drive with Tom Temin got details on the case from procurement attorney Joseph Petrillo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The CARES Act, a monumentally large relief bill enacted to take on the effects of the pandemic, passed what seems like a century ago. Now there's a COVID-19 vaccine - a few of them - and yet the government's distribution plan is, to be charitable, incomplete. Perhaps you've noticed? Nicole Clowers, the managing director for health care issues at the Government Accountability Office, joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin for the latest look at how implementation of the CARES Act is going. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Few agencies are more concerned with cybersecurity than the National Security Agency. One might say NSA has cyber in its DNA. Recently the agency's cybersecurity directorate marked a full year of operations. For details on what it's managed to get done, deputy director David Luber spoke to Federal Drive with Tom Temin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's enough to make the heart quicken. Imagine a sudden, 10% bump in federal spending on information technology. Yet that's exactly what the Biden administration has proposed in its request for $9 billion in the technology modernization fund. Congress has been super-stingy with the fund until now. That could change with Democratic control, though. Here with how the money might schmear around, federal sales and marketing consultant Larry Allen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices