Federal Drive with Tom Temin

Most of Congress is shuttered for the remainder the summer. But that doesn't mean negotiations have stopped. One reason may be the sheer amount of work left undone with only a couple of months left in the session. Roll Call Senior Editor David Hawkings tells Federal Drive with Tom Temin what the rest of August will look like.

The White House Office of American Innovation has a great title, and the ambitious goal of a government that runs like a great American company. That might sound close to impossible, but thinkers at Information Technology and Innovation Foundation said it can be done if the White House takes certain steps. Steve Ezell, the vice president for innovation policy at the ITIF, shares the details on Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Acquisition and cyber experts say the governments decision to remove Kaspersky Lab from the GSA schedule and a continued push by lawmakers to ban the technology is highly unusual and could create a trade war.

The State Department quietly launched a new Cyber and Technology Security (CTS) directorate, which falls within the Diplomatic Security Service, to address threats and vulnerabilities for embassies, consulates and foreign affairs officers.

The only sure thing about federal retirement rules is that they're changing. Even now, Congress is considering boosting the level of employee contributions to the retirement system. In the meantime, several changes have taken place you need to know about. Tammy Flanagan, senior benefits director at the National Institute of Transition Planning , joins Federal Drive with Tom Temin with a few reminders.

The Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund program for cleaning up severely polluted lands has been around since 1980. But in recent years, its had a very hard time keeping up. There are now more than 1,300 polluted sites on the agency's National Priorities List, and in all of last year, only two sites were sufficiently cleaned up to be removed from the list. Scott Pruitt, the new EPA administrator, says that's unacceptable, so he put a new commission in charge of accelerating the cleanup process. The panel came up with 42 recommendations, 11 of which Pruitt has ordered the agency to implement right away. Jim Woolford the director of EPA's office of superfund remediation and technology innovation, and Dana Stalcup, the offices deputy director, joins Federal Drive with Tom Temin to explain what's changing.

The House passed a "minibus" of appropriations bill before leaving town for the August recess. The minibus has appropriations for the departments of Defense, Energy, Interior and Veterans Affairs, plus a few other agencies and the legislative branch. But the topline figures in the bill exceed the spending caps set in the Budget Control Act of 2011. Budget experts say the minibus has little chance of passing the Senate for several reasons. Federal News Radio's Nicole Ogrysko joins Jared Serbu on Federal Drive with Tom Temin to explain what these budget negotiations will sounds like when lawmakers get back in September.

Federal News Radio Reporter Meredith Somers spoke with acting Agriculture Undersecretary Ann Bartuska about the research and development going on within USDA's many components.