The Daily Scoop Podcast

The Army is initiating massive organizational reforms for how it buys new weapons and capabilities in an effort to drastically shorten procurement timelines and promote innovation, according to top service officials. Announced Friday, the Army’s acquisition portfolio overhaul will consolidate the service’s program executive offices (PEOs) responsible for buying new weapons into six new offices called “portfolio acquisition executives” (PAEs). The plan also creates a new office dedicated to rapidly injecting and scaling emerging technologies into Army formations. The transformation comes after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced his intent to revamp acquisition processes across the entire Pentagon on Nov. 7, as well as an April directive from Hegseth that called on the Army to consolidate many aspects of the service — including its procurement organizations. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told reporters Wednesday ahead of the announcement that the new structure aims to mimic best practices from private industry, creating a new system that accepts risk and streamlines capability delivery. The Defense Department’s civilian employees whose pay was impacted by the record-setting government shutdown and lapse in appropriations that ended this week are expecting to receive their missed paychecks retroactively. However, questions are swirling about the Pentagon’s plans as it reopened Thursday — including the timeline for that out-of-cycle backpay process, whether it will arrive in the form of lump sum payments, and more. According to a new policy memorandum from the White House Office of Personnel Management issued Wednesday after President Donald Trump signed legislation to fund the government: “Federal employees who did not receive pay because of the lapse in appropriations that began on October 1, 2025, must receive retroactive pay at the employee’s standard rate of pay for the lapse period as soon as possible after the lapse ends,” pursuant to the U.S. Code. That guidance applies explicitly to the department’s personnel affected by the lapse who were either furloughed or performed excepted work activities. Service members and some DOD civilians designated “essential” reported to work during the shutdown — but only military officials were paid. More than 1 million federal employees reportedly missed one partial and two full paychecks during this shutdown, which caused serious financial strain for public servants across the nation. Several reports surfaced this week regarding when the Pentagon might begin processing paychecks and how soon they could start to arrive. The DOD did not appear to publicly release final, comprehensive guidance with details on its workforce repayment schedule and plans. 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.

After 43 days, the longest federal government shutdown in history has ended. President Donald Trump signed the legislative spending package into law late Wednesday night after the House passed it 222-209. While the reopening of the government is certainly a step in a positive direction, it comes with lingering questions. First and foremost on that list is whether much of the government will be right back facing the threat of a second shutdown come the end of January, when the continuing resolution is set to expire for a large block of federal agencies. However some agencies, like the Department of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, as well as the legislative branch, will receive full appropriations through fiscal 2026 as lawmakers on the subcommittees that oversee them were able to pass full funding bills as part of the package. On top of that, though the government’s doors are officially back open for business, there will be some lag in getting key services back online and returning workers to their posts. Issues that were key during the 43-day saga like air travel operations and SNAP benefits will take some time to return to normal. As will paying federal employees who were furloughed without pay during the shutdown. And, it’s not clear yet what the end of the shutdown could mean for federal employees who were removed from their jobs via reductions in force since Oct. 1. The congressional package that reopened the government placed a caveat on funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Electronic Health Record system, putting new pressure on the agency to resolve its yearslong challenges with the rollout. The bill to fund the VA through fiscal 2026 will dish out $3.4 billion for the EHR rollout, but the full amount is contingent on the agency updating Congress on the revised timeline and cost estimates. The provision, tucked into the 394-page spending package, would withhold 30% of the funding until July of next year and gives the agency secretary until June 1 to hand over the requested information. This information includes an updated life-cycle cost estimate for the EHR Modernization program, based on the VA’s announcement earlier this year to accelerate deployments in nine facilities. The Senate also requested a facility-by-facility deployment schedule for all facilities expected to receive the EHRM program, along with the projected federal VA staffing levels and required resources. The secretary is also expected to certify that all VA facilities using the EHR have exceeded or met health care performance metrics and certify that the department has at least four consecutive, successful site deployments without delays or patient harm. It comes after Senate staff was informed in 2023 that the rollout of the EHR system was linked to six cases of “catastrophic harm,” including four deaths. Later that year, the Biden administration paused the EHR rollout. 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.

Senate Democrats are ratcheting up pressure on the White House over artificial intelligence data centers and the surging utility costs that have accompanied their nationwide buildout. In a letter sent Monday to Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, five senators blasted the Trump administration for the “sweetheart deals” it has made with Big Tech companies on data centers, and its “reckless abandonment” of consumers as their electricity bills soar. The letter, which was led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., states: “​​Since his second inauguration, President Trump has cozied up to Meta, Google, Oracle, OpenAI, and other Big Tech companies, fast-tracking and pushing for the buildout of power-hungry data centers across the country.” According to the letter — which was also signed by Democratic Sens. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Ron Wyden of Oregon, Ed Markey of Massachusetts and independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont — national power consumption from data centers could jump from 5% to 12% within three years, and even the White House noted in its AI Action Plan that “technological advancements of AI are increasing pressures on the grid.” At the same time, the second Trump administration has seemingly traded in the all-of-the-above approach to energy sources pursued during the president’s first term for a decidedly anti-renewables bent that the senators said has “supercharged this cost-of-living crisis by making it harder to increase and diversify sources of household electricity sources.” The Department of Veterans Affairs’ push to modernize decades-old systems faced a technical issue earlier this year, delaying education benefits payments for tens of thousands of students at the start of the school year. A group of veterans’ service organizations, including the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), highlighted the issue this week, telling reporters that the technical glitch occurred in August, when the VA began converting benefits claims from its legacy system to a new processing system for Chapter 35 Survivors’ and Dependents’ Educational Assistance. The VA launched its initiative to modernize the GI Bill process in 2022, and the Digital GI Bill platform was set to be fully operational by April 2024 but faced its own delays last year. A part of the multi-billion-dollar initiative involves overhauling multiple legacy systems, including those related to the education benefits process. Ashlynne Haycock-Lohmann, the director of government and legislative affairs at TAPS, told FedScoop in an interview that the veterans’ service community welcomes the changes to decades-old systems, but the timing around the school year could present risks. 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.

U.S. service members transitioning out of the military will now be able to access ChatGPT Plus for a year under a new offer from OpenAI that’s aimed at helping them with their job hunt. The new offer, announced Monday ahead of Veterans Day, is available to service members who are within 12 months of separation or retirement, and any veteran within their first year of leaving service. Katrina Mulligan, OpenAI for Government’s head of national security partnerships, said on a call with reporters ahead of the announcement. “We know that nearly 70% of veterans say finding employment is their biggest challenge, and we want to make that transition a little bit easier by providing support that’s available anytime.” Mulligan said the idea for the offer started with OpenAI’s own veteran employees who used the platform for their own career navigation. “They urged us to make these tools available to others going through the same experience, and we were really glad to support it,” she said.Through the new offer, eligible service members and veterans are able to access ChatGPT Plus — which is typically a $20 per month subscription, and boasts faster response time as well as priority access to new features — as well as some personalized content for veterans. That includes a “getting started” video targeted toward veterans, and over 100 example chats that Mulligan said were developed by veterans based on real tasks during a transition. The offer is not a direct partnership with the U.S. government via the Department of Veterans Affairs or Department of Defense — which the Trump administration calls the Department of War — but such collaboration isn’t out of the question. The Department of Energy officially installed Dawn Zimmer as its chief information officer Friday, putting a pause — for now — on the revolving door at the agency’s IT leadership office. According to an internal email obtained by FedScoop, Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced that Zimmer had been named Energy’s permanent CIO. Her appointment comes after the installation — and subsequent departures — of two other permanent CIOs during the Trump administration. Zimmer joined Energy in 2024 as principal deputy CIO and has been serving as the acting IT chief between the appointments of permanent officials throughout this year. She was acting CIO before SpaceX engineer Ryan Riedel was named to the role and briefly took over in an acting capacity again when he left after one month. Days later, Google and Twitter alum Ross Graber was named CIO, but he left after less than two months in the role. That has left the agency without a permanent official since the end of April. Wright said in the email that “Dawn will continue her stellar oversight of the Department’s information technology and cybersecurity initiatives, ensuring that our systems are secure, efficient, and innovative.” 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.

A federal agency that supplies budget and economic information to Congress has suffered a cybersecurity incident, reportedly at the hands of a suspected foreign party. A spokesperson for the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) acknowledged the incident Thursday after The Washington Post reported that the office was hacked, with the attackers potentially accessing communications between lawmakers and researchers at the agency. CBO spokeswoman Caitlin Emma said: “The Congressional Budget Office has identified the security incident, has taken immediate action to contain it, and has implemented additional monitoring and new security controls to further protect the agency’s systems going forward.” Congress established the office in 1974 to serve as a nonpartisan research organization for the legislative branch. Republicans took aim at the CBO this year when it assessed that a GOP tax and spending policy bill would add trillions to the national debt, prompting conservatives to criticize its conclusions. It’s not unprecedented for unauthorized parties to obtain access to sensitive information from congressional offices. Hackers who broke into the Library of Congress last year were able to read email correspondence with offices on Capitol Hill. And a breach of a health insurance marketplace two years ago exposed the data of House staffers. The Trump administration’s ongoing decimation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has rendered the agency’s overall information security program ineffective, a federal watchdog revealed Monday. In an audit of CFPB’s cybersecurity program, the Federal Reserve’s Office of Inspector General found that the agency is no longer keeping up with its authorizations to operate many systems, and is “using risk acceptance memorandums without a documented analysis of cybersecurity risks.” As a result of those floundering protocols, the Fed OIG said the CFPB’s overall information security program has declined to level-2 maturity (defined) in fiscal 2025, down from level-4 (managed and measurable), and overall is not effective. Backsliding on these security measures can be at least partially attributed to a loss of contractor support for continuous security monitoring and testing, per the audit, as well as the mass exodus under the Trump administration of CFPB staff. 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.

When a pair of high-profile internet outages took down large chunks of the internet last month, the events briefly brought hundreds of organizations to a near-halt and prevented millions of users from accessing core services for everyday business needs. From Starbucks to crypto exchanges to the messaging app Signal, the outages rippled across nearly every sector, shining a spotlight onto the country’s — and even the government’s — reliance on a mere handful of cloud service providers. In the wake of those incidents, watchdog groups are calling on federal regulators to scrutinize the role that massive cloud companies like Amazon and Microsoft play in owning and maintaining much of our collective backend IT infrastructure. Meanwhile, technology and cybersecurity experts point out that, because of financial and business realities, there are very few alternatives to the large companies that now dominate the market. The Amazon Web Services outage began Oct. 19 and lasted into Oct. 20. According to Amazon’s post-mortem, a single software bug in DynamoDB — the system that manages website addresses, along with efforts to repair it — caused all services in the Northern Virginia region that relied on the tool to go down for 15 hours. Just over a week later, Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform experienced an outage impacting several of its services. According to Microsoft, an “inadvertent tenant configuration change” occurred in Azure Front Door, the company’s content delivery network. The outages exposed just how fragile the country’s digital infrastructure is and showed the risks of letting a few companies hold so much power. As a result, some groups are urging federal regulators to address the issue. Federal agencies would be required to report artificial intelligence-related layoffs to the Department of Labor under a new bill from a bipartisan pair of senators. The AI-Related Job Impacts Clarity Act from Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., calls on agencies and major companies to deliver quarterly reports to DOL on the impact AI has on their workforces, detailing job cuts and displacements. Hawley said in a press release“Artificial intelligence is already replacing American workers, and experts project AI could drive unemployment up to 10-20% in the next five years. The American people need to have an accurate understanding of how AI is affecting our workforce, so we can ensure that AI works for the people, not the other way around.” The bill would also require agencies and companies to report hirings that can be “substantially” credited to AI, as well as the number of individuals they are retraining because of AI. There’s also a callout to keep track of open positions an agency or company decided not to fill because of automation. 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.

As the Office of Personnel Management makes progress toward a long-pursued goal to move the government’s paper-based retirement system into the 21st century, its director said a “fully automated” process is about six months away. OPM Director Scott Kupor said in an interview with FedScoop: “That’s not going to happen overnight.” But, Kupor said he believes the agency can get there within six months “for sure.” The human capital agency hit a milestone in May with the launch of its Online Retirement Application, operationalizing a yearslong development effort and marking the end of paper file submissions. Yet behind the scenes at OPM, there’s still much work to do to bring about a truly automated process. Though the application submissions are now online, humans still currently check the information coming in to make sure they’ve been completed properly and manually key in information into a calculator in “a significant number of cases,” Kupor said. That introduces “a huge amount of delay in the system” and is something the agency is working to fix. The aim is to ultimately have a system where the retiree, human resources, and the payroll provider all submit their information online and route that package electronically — not to a person in the agency’s retirement services division, but to a Digital File System that can fill in the application and do the calculations, Kupor said. Under that future process, he said, all individuals at OPM will be doing is reviewing and spot checking. The simple target of what OPM is trying to do with retirement services, Kupor said, is to go paperless “as quickly as possible.” The Department of Energy is refreshing its investment in five research centers focused on quantum information science after five years of operation. In a Tuesday announcement, DOE said it’s putting up $625 million to keep all of the existing National Quantum Information Science Research Centers (QIS) going for up to five more years, matching the same investment that launched those centers in 2020. Darío Gil, DOE undersecretary for science, said in a written statement: “President Trump positioned America to lead the world in quantum science and technology and today, a new frontier of scientific discovery lies before us. Breakthroughs in QIS have the potential to revolutionize the ways we sense, communicate, and compute, sparking entirely new technologies and industries.” The centers were authorized by Congress and signed into law in 2018 during the first Trump administration as part of the National Quantum Initiative Act. Since the first January 2020 investment from DOE — which envisioned “two to five multidisciplinary Quantum Initiatives” — centers led by its Brookhaven, Argonne, Lawrence Berkeley, Oak Ridge, and Fermi National Laboratories have been established. According to a DOE press release, the work of each center includes supporting science that has “disruptive potential across quantum computing, simulation, networking, and sensing,” as well as establishing “community resources, workforce opportunities, and industry partnerships.” 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.

The Department of Homeland Security’s non-federal government partners in communities across the U.S. can now apply for funding grants for certain counter-drone capabilities to address national security and safety threats posed by the illegal and nefarious use of unmanned aircraft systems. Officials wrote in a notice published online last week: “The funding enables state, local, tribal, and territorial governments, along with first responders and public safety entities, to acquire detection and tracking technologies designed to safeguard public spaces and critical infrastructure.” DHS estimates that $250 million will be obligated for the program in fiscal 2026 alone, and more money is expected to flow. Decisions about individual awards will happen between 30 and 60 days of the application submissions. The department expects to make 12 awards, with the financial assistance amounts to-be-decided and ranging across the winners. All projects will have a performance period of 36 months. Notably, the awardees will not be permitted to use the federal funding to purchase “Enhanced Detect, Track, Identification (DTI) systems,” including those that “capture, record, intercept, demodulate, decrypt, or decode signals” between UAS and ground control stations. Due to significant legal restrictions, privacy concerns and federal airspace regulations, SLTT entities don’t currently have official authorization to employ those types of technologies. Drone threats associated with surveillance, disruption, or attacks, have intensified across the nation in recent years. The U.S. military is significantly expanding work and investments to deploy defensive weapons, modernize electronic warfare capabilities, enhance sensor protection and other tools to protect its facilities in the United States and abroad. And with America hosting major, upcoming global events, agencies and officials have been calling for coordinated efforts to more aggressively confront the risks. Anduril’s prototype drone developed for the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program has taken its first live flight, the service announced Friday. The company conducted the flight of the unmanned fighter jet — known as the YFQ-44A — on Friday at a test location in California, the Air Force said in a press release. Beginning live flight tests of the CCA prototype “expands the program’s knowledge base on flight performance, autonomous behaviors and mission systems integration,” the service noted. The announcement that Anduril has moved into the flight test stage comes after General Atomics conducted the first flight of its CCA offering in August. Both companies are vying for Increment 1 of the CCA program, which is part of the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) family of systems. General Atomics and Anduril received contracts for the first CCA increment in 2024, while the Air Force is also working with Shield AI and RTX to provide the drone’s mission autonomy. With both airframe vendors now in the next stage of the program, the Air Force is one step closer to making a final production decision for Increment 1 — expected in 2026. 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.

Nearly two months after calling on the Office of Management and Budget to bar use of xAI’s Grok chatbot in government, a coalition of advocacy groups is pressing its case further after the General Services Administration struck a deal with Elon Musk’s AI company to deploy Grok across the federal government. In a letter sent Wednesday to OMB Director Russell Vought, the advocacy groups reiterated their concerns in the wake of the GSA OneGov deal, along with recent comments from Michael Kratsios, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “OMB is entrusted with ensuring that AI systems procured by the federal government meet the highest standards of truth-seeking, accuracy and neutrality,” the letter, led by Public Citizen, stated. “Grok has repeatedly demonstrated failures in these areas and Director Kratsios himself has confirmed that such behavior is the precise type that Executive Order 14319 was designed to prevent.” The letter refers to an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in July that seeks to prevent “woke AI,” or ideological biases in models that are used by the federal government. The groups argued in their August letter to Vought that the use of Grok contradicts this order, given its past controversies with spewing antisemitic and pro-Hitler content. Weeks after the letter was sent, GSA inked a deal with xAI to offer Grok models to the government for a nominal cost. Under the deal, federal agencies can buy Grok 4 and Grok 4 Fast for 42 cents until March 2027. The White House appears to be moving forward with plans to redesign federal government websites, registering a new government domain — techforce.gov — this week. The new URL, which was first discovered Thursday by a bot tracking new government domains, leads to a sign-in page that states “National Design Studio” and “Tech Force” at the top. It includes a form for users to submit their email and receive a code to access the website. Records maintained by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency show the domain was registered Oct. 24 and last changed Wednesday. The domain registration comes more than two months after President Donald Trump signed an executive order launching an “America by Design” initiative focused on both digital and physical spaces. A new National Design Studio and chief design officer will lead the initiative and coordinate agency actions. 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.

The Army’s top acquisition official told DefenseScoop that he expects to see further growth in resources for the service’s FUZE initiative. FUZE, which was announced last month by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, combines elements of multiple technology innovation programs — including the xTech, Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR), ManTech, and Technology Maturation Initiative efforts — under a more integrated framework to accelerate the delivery of new capabilities to soldiers, according to the service. Driscoll has described it as the Army’s “new cradle-to-grave capital funding model.” Driscoll said at the recent AUSA event that the Army’s goal with FUZE is to contract with startups that have never, ever worked with the United States Army before in just 60 to 70 days. And for companies that the Army has worked with that have prototypes, the intent is to contract in 10 and start “soldier iterations in 30 to 45 days,” he said, adding, “We train like we fight. Acquisition should be no different.” The Army has already aligned $750 million to this model under FUZE, according to Driscoll. Next year, it plans to raise that slightly to $765 million. Brent Ingraham, the new assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, said he anticipates that funding levels for those efforts will be higher in subsequent years. The federal judiciary has distributed interim guidance on artificial intelligence that allows for use of the technology, while also addressing procurement and security of the tools, according to a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee leadership that was made public Thursday. In correspondence to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Director Judge Robert J. Conrad said an AI task force formed earlier this year developed the guidance and it was distributed to federal courts across the country July 31. Although the policy is a temporary measure while the courts work on more permanent guidance, courts can explore the budding technology in the meantime. Disclosure of the guidance came as part of a response to Grassley’s inquiry about the use of AI in error-ridden orders from two federal judges. In addition to letters from the two judges admitting to clerks’ use of generative AI tools and assurances that they’d implemented measures to prevent future issues, Conrad provided detail on the broader efforts to address the technology within the third branch and the balance between use and risk management. A spokesperson for the judiciary declined to share a copy of the guidance with FedScoop. Conrad, however, provided a description of its scope to Grassley. 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.