An exit interview with USDS Administrator Mina Hsiang

Mina Hsiang, administrator of the U.S. Digital Service, is one of the many technology officials who will depart federal service with the forthcoming change in administrations later this month. Hsiang, a longtime government digital services leader, was tapped to lead USDS as the beginning of the Biden administration and has now seen that role through to the term’s end. In a two-part exit interview with FedScoop report Caroline Nihill, Hsiang shares some of the highlights from the past four years — including a partnership with the Social Security Administraiton and the success of digital initiatives supporting COVID-19 vaccines and test kits — as well as her parting thoughts on her role, the need for technical leaders inside government agencies, and much more. The Defense Department has tapped Kratos to develop a testbed for hypersonic vehicles under the Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonic Test Bed 2.0 program, the company announced Monday. The other transaction authority agreement is for Task Area 1 of MACH-TB 2.0, an initiative that broadly aims to expand options for the Pentagon to demonstrate and validate hypersonic weapons and related technologies. If all options are exercised, the deal has a performance period of five years and a total value of $1.45 billion — the single largest contract ever awarded to the contractor. Former Defense Department Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy is now working at Boeing as the organization’s chief information digital officer and senior vice president for information technology and data analytics, the company announced Jan.3. Deasy served as the Pentagon CIO during the first Trump administration starting in May 2018 and oversaw a variety of high-profile modernization initiatives. He was at the helm when the department moved to large-scale telework as employees adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic, helped stand up the Joint AI Center and led the charge to enterprise cloud through the JEDI contract. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.