The Daily Scoop Podcast

The White House Office of Management and Budget released a pair of memos to provide agencies with guardrails for how they use and purchase artificial intelligence in the government, replacing Biden administration guidance but maintaining some of the same structures. Both memos, which are dated April 3, represent some of the first major policy actions President Donald Trump has taken on the government’s use of AI. Trump began his administration by rolling back former President Joe Biden’s AI executive order and later issuing one of his own that called for an AI action plan and a review of the previous administration’s work on the technology. Specifically, the order included directions to revise the Biden OMB’s AI governance and acquisition guidance. The first new memo (M-25-21) provides guardrails for use and replaces Biden’s directive on the same topic (M-24-10). That document states agencies are to focus on three priorities when accelerating the federal use of AI — innovation, governance and public trust — which align with an executive order on the technology from the first Trump administration. But that directive also maintains things that were established under the Biden administration, like chief AI officers and their council and a special management process for potentially risky AI uses it now calls “high-impact.” Similarly, the second memo on AI acquisition (M-25-22) replaces the Biden OMB’s guidance on government purchasing of the tech (M-24-18). A bipartisan pair of senators is taking another shot at their bill to expand the U.S. Secret Service’s investigative powers for financial cybercrime probes. The Combatting Money Laundering in Cyber Crime Act from Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, would update federal law to strengthen the Secret Service’s authority, enabling the agency to look into criminal activity tied to digital assets. Cortez Masto said in a statement: “Dangerous criminals are constantly changing their tactics and using new technology to avoid detection. Our law enforcement agencies need to adapt to keep communities safe. I will continue to fight to pass this bipartisan legislation that would help the Secret Service more effectively combat cybercrime.” Under current law, the Secret Service is empowered to investigate cybercrimes that threaten national security, but those that are conducted via unlicensed money transmitting businesses fall outside the agency’s purview. The legislation from Cortez Masto and Grassley, both members of the Senate Finance Committee, addresses that gap by allowing Secret Service members to probe digital asset transactions tied to transnational cyber criminal activity. 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.

Gen. Timothy Haugh, the commander of U.S. Cyber Command and the director of NSA, was fired Thursday, according to press reports and lawmakers. It was not immediately clear why Haugh was fired. However, his dismissal comes amid a purge of other national security officials at the National Security Council and NSA. It happened following a visit to the Oval Office of political activist Laura Loomer, who has urged President Donald Trump to fire certain officials due to their perceived disloyalty to him and his agenda. She posted a message last night on X saying Haugh and NSA Deputy Director Wendy Noble has been fired for being “disloyal” to Trump. Cybercom’s deputy commander, Army Lt. Gen. William Hartman, is in line to lead the command on an acting basis. The Defense Department’s top watchdog announced Thursday it will initiate a formal investigation into Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s participation in discussing impending military operations on unclassified networks. On March 24, Atlantic magazine’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg published a story revealing he was accidentally added to a group chat on Signal, an encrypted but unclassified commercial messaging app, where some of the Trump administration’s top national security officials discussed upcoming strikes against Houthi militants in Yemen — including Hegseth. “The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DoD personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business,” Steve Stebbins, acting inspector general at the Pentagon, wrote in a memo published Thursday. 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.

Members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency now have access to technical systems maintained by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, according to a recent memorandum viewed by FedScoop. The memo, which was sent from and digitally signed by USCIS Chief Information Officer William McElhaney, states that Kyle Shutt, Edward Coristine, Aram Mogahaddassi and Payton Rehling were granted access to USCIS systems and data repositories, and that a Department of Homeland Security review was required to determine whether that access should continue. Coristine, 19, is one of the more polarizing members of DOGE. He previously provided assistance to a cybercrime ring through a company he operated while he was in high school, according to other news outlets. Coristine worked for a short period at Neuralink, Musk’s brain implant company, and was previously stationed by DOGE at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The memo, dated March 28, asks DHS Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar to have his office review and provide direction for the four DOGE men regarding their access to the agency’s “data lake” — called USCIS Data Business Intelligence Services — as well as two associated enabling technologies, Databricks and Github. The document says DHS CIO Antoine McCord and Michael Weissman, the agency’s chief data officer, asked USCIS to enable Shutt and Coristine’s access to the USCIS data lake in mid-March, and Mogahaddassi requested similar access days later. A bipartisan bill to fully establish a National Science Foundation-based resource aimed at providing essential tools for AI research to academics, nonprofits, small businesses and others was reintroduced in the House last week. Under the Creating Resources for Every American To Experiment with Artificial Intelligence (CREATE AI) Act of 2025 (H.R. 2385), a full-scale National AI Research Resource would be codified at NSF. While that resource currently exists in pilot form, legislation authorizing the NAIRR is needed to continue that work. Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., who sponsors the bill, said in a written statement announcing the reintroduction: “By empowering students, universities, startups, and small businesses to participate in the future of AI, we can drive innovation, strengthen our workforce, and ensure that American leadership in this critical field is broad-based and secure.” The NAIRR pilot, as it stands, is a collection of resources from the public and private sectors — such as computing power, storage, AI models, and data — that are made available to those researching AI to make the process of accessing those types of tools easier. 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.

More details have emerged on the Department of Defense’s Deferred Resignation Program. According to a new memo, the DOD will offer the program to eligible DOD civilian employees for a week between April 7 and 14. Voluntary early retirement authority will also be offered. The initiatives, ordered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, come as the Pentagon is looking to reduce its reduce civilian workforce and implement the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) efforts. Jules Hurst III, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, wrote in an April 1 memo that the DRP provides a “generous opportunity for employees to enter a paid leave status for several months, prior to resigning or retiring,” adding that employees pending approval or approved for the program will not be subject to return to in-person work requirements. A bipartisan bill that would establish a nonprofit foundation aimed at boosting private-sector partnerships at the National Institute of Standards and Technology was reintroduced in the House and the Senate on Tuesday. The Expanding Partnerships for Innovation and Competitiveness (EPIC) Act would create a Foundation for Standards and Metrology at the Department of Commerce, which would be focused on fostering collaborations with academia, industry, and other organizations. That new foundation would ultimately help supplement NIST’s funding and — according to a release shared with FedScoop in advance of the Wednesday announcement — make the path to commercializing technologies developed by the agency easier. 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 State is continuing to expand its artificial intelligence chatbot known as StateChat, including working toward a mobile version and the ability to query internal messages called cables. That’s what John Silson, director of analytics in the State Department’s Center for Analytics, recently told FedScoop reporter Madison Alder during an SNG Live event on AI and Automation. During the conversation, they touched on how State is continuing to iterate on StateChat, how the department is working to maxmize adoption, the importance of context in prompting and what comes next. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is reopening the deferred resignation program and also offering early retirement to eligible civilian workers as he seeks to “maximize participation.” Hegseth signed a memo on Friday, “Initiating the Workforce Acceleration and Recapitalization Initiative,” that was directed to senior Pentagon leadership, combatant commands, and defense agency and field activity directors. The move comes as department leaders are looking to shed civilian employees and reinvest the savings elsewhere as part of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency efforts. Hegseth said DOD is offering the deferred resignation opportunity, as well as Voluntary Early Retirement Authority, to all eligible civilian employees, noting that exemptions wil be rare. He wrote in a March 28 memo: “My intent is to maximize participation so that we can minimize the number of involuntary actions that may be required to achieve the strategic objectives.” Karen Evans, a longtime government IT official who previously held the role that preceded the creation of the federal chief information officer, was nominated last week to serve as undersecretary for management at the Department of Homeland Security. Evans, whose nomination has been referred to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, joined the Trump administration earlier this year as executive assistant director for cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Evans’ role at CISA was one of the most prominent cyber jobs in the federal government, leading the agency’s “mission to protect and strengthen federal civilian agencies and the nation’s critical infrastructure against cyber threats,” per an official description of the position. Before joining CISA, Evans spent the previous three-plus years working as the managing director of the Cyber Readiness Institute, a nonprofit geared toward educating and creating free cyber tools for small- and medium-sized businesses. For much of George W. Bush’s administration, Evans served as administrator of the Office of Electronic Government and Information Technology. 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 Internal Revenue Service on Friday placed around 50 IT executives on administrative leave, according to five sources familiar with the situation, the latest in the Trump administration’s gutting of the tax agency during the heart of filing season. The decision to cut the IT executives was made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, according to one of the sources, and was carried out by acting IRS Commissioner Melanie Krause. Rajiv Uppal, the IRS’s chief information officer, and Kaschit Pandya, the agency’s chief technology officer, were not among the 50 dismissed staffers, a different source said. The 50 people were at the senior executive service level, two sources said, and most were associate chief information officers. One of the sources, an IT executive who left the IRS earlier this month, said the 50 staffers include experts working on cybersecurity, modernization, applications, development, contracts, networks, mainframe and data center operations, among other IT-related areas. An email sent to one of the affected employees Friday and viewed by FedScoop said they were being put on leave “effective immediately” and they were directed “not to perform any work-related tasks during this period.” They would continue to receive full pay and benefits during their administrative leave, per the email. Jeffrey King is now the acting chief information officer of the Treasury Department, according to an update to the CIO Council webpage. Tony Arcadi, who has served the position since 2021, told FedScoop on Saturday that he took the administration’s deferred resignation offer and was placed on administrative leave as of last Monday. Nick Totten is the deputy CIO for the agency. Another source within the agency confirmed King, who was previously deputy CIO, is now acting in the chief IT position. King had been deputy CIO since 2022. He also briefly served as acting CIO of the Internal Revenue Service, where he helped push forward modernization initiatives. The Trump administration has been cycling through CIOs somewhat rapidly. The Energy Department, the Small Business Administration, and the Social Security Administration have all already moved on from their first appointees to the position. 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 bipartisan group of House Oversight and Government Reform Committee members reintroduced a bill Thursday that aims to overhaul federal software purchasing for better efficiency and reduced costs. The Strengthening Agency Management and Oversight of Software Assets (SAMOSA) Act would make agencies conduct “comprehensive” software inventories and undergo independent assessments of management practices and contracts.The legislation, which is backed by several leading software trade groups, would also require agency chief information officers to create a plan to adopt enterprise licensing agreements in order to improve costs and negotiating power against vendors. Additionally, the Office of Management and Budget would have to publish a governmentwide strategy for software modernization based on audits and plans. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., who introduced the bill with Reps. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., April McClain Delaney, D-Md., and Pat Fallon, R-Texas, said in a statement that the government spends money on software that “it doesn’t need, doesn’t use or already has.” The Trump administration’s council of federal CIOs has so far been much like a carousel at some agencies, with officials who frequently associated with DOGE coming in and out of the top tech role. The Social Security Administraiton is the latest such agency to trade out one DOGE staffer for another. The Social Security Administration has tapped a DOGE associate named Scott Coulter as its new chief information officer, replacing another member of the Elon Musk-led group who spent a little more than a month in the role. Coulter, a Harvard graduate with a background in investment management, was added to SSA’s org chart this week as CIO. Mike Russo, who started as the agency’s top IT official Feb. 3, according to an SSA spokesperson, is now listed as senior advisor to the commissioner. 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.

Newly installed Federal CIO Greg Barbaccia has called for agency CIOs to inventory licenses with the five software vendors that earn the most from federal contracts by April 2 as part of a larger software accounting initiative. Barbaccia sent an email, obtained by FedScoop, to all federal CIOs on Monday requesting that agencies “complete a software license inventory to account for the full universe of software licenses at your agency.” To start, Barbaccia called for CIOs to identify licenses with the five software vendors who do the most business with the federal government: Microsoft, Adobe, Salesforce, Oracle and ServiceNow, per a 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office. The information technology staff of the now-hobbled U.S. Agency for International Development is down to a skeleton crew capable of providing only limited support, FedScoop has learned. The group is what remains of a once-large team as the Trump administration massively scales down American foreign aid and questions emerge about the future of USAID assets and the security of government data. Only three information technology operations employees, a project manager and a contracting officer are currently working on the agency’s IT staff, according to someone within USAID. That’s a tiny fraction of the approximately 100 or so staffers devoted to IT before the Trump administration started in January. Jason Gray, the chief information officer who briefly served as acting administrator of the agency, is now assisting the front office with their plans for USAID, the agency source said. He’s also helping to manage account activation, another USAID source said. 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 federal government will shift from paper-based payments to electronic methods, part of what the White House said in a Tuesday executive order is an attempt to cut costs and reduce fraud. President Donald Trump’s EO on “modernizing payments to and from America’s bank account” requires the Treasury Department to phase out paper check disbursements and receipts by Sept. 30. That includes intergovernmental payments, benefits payments, vendor payments and tax refunds. Federal agencies will be expected to transition to electronic funds transfer (EFT) methods, including direct deposit, prepaid card accounts and other digital options. “The continued use of paper-based payments by the Federal Government, including checks and money orders, flowing into and out of the United States General Fund, which might be thought of as America’s bank account, imposes unnecessary costs; delays; and risks of fraud, lost payments, theft, and inefficiencies,” the order states. A Republican-backed bill to reorganize the federal government and grant the executive branch more power passed out of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday, while a Democratic effort to protect sensitive data was blocked. The Reorganizing Government Act of 2025 (H.R. 1295) from Chairman James Comer, R-Ky. seeks to give the president reorganizational authorities that would include the ability to amend rules, regulations and requirements to decrease cost and eliminate operations that do not serve the public. Rep. Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, offered an amendment that would have required the president’s reorganization plan to include a list of executive databases that “contain personal and private information of American citizens that DOGE has accessed” and prohibit employees of the Elon Musk-led group and its partners from accessing this information. The amendment was struck down in a vote. 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 serving for nearly 18 months as the Department of Defense’s first-ever customer experience officer in the Office of the CIO, Savan Kong earlier this month parted ways with the Pentagon. Previously a member of the Defense Digital Service during his first tour of duty with the DOD, Kong helped build the department’s CXO office from scratch, fostering a culture that prioritizes the needs of service members, civilians, and mission partners and striving to streamline governance processes, improve transparency, and ensure that IT solutions meet operational needs. Kong joins the Daily Scoop for a conversation to share the progress his office ushered in to improve customer experience for DOD’s personnel, where things are headed under this administration and how AI will impact the CX space. FedRAMP is getting another overhaul, one that will involve far more automation and a greater role for the private sector, the program’s chief announced Monday. Through FedRAMP 20x, the General Services Administration-based team focused on the program aims to simplify the authorization process and reduce the amount of time needed to approve a service from months to weeks, Director Pete Waterman said during an Alliance for Digital Innovation event. The private sector will also have increased responsibility over monitoring of their systems, he noted. In a critical change, agency sponsorship will — eventually — no longer be necessary to win authorization. As a first step, FedRAMP has launched four community working groups, which give the public a chance to share feedback, and focus on creating “innovative solutions” to formalize the program’s standards. But in the meantime, Waterman said existing baselines will remain in place and there are no immediate changes to the program. The Office of Personnel Management and the departments of Treasury and Education are now barred from sharing individuals’ personally identifiable information with DOGE representatives, a federal judge ruled Monday. Judge Deborah L. Boardman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland said in her decision that in granting associates with Elon Musk’s so-called government efficiency initiative access to systems containing plaintiffs’ PII, the agencies “likely violated” the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. The lawsuit was filed by the American Federation of Teachers, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, the National Federation of Federal Employees, and six military veterans. 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.