The Daily Scoop Podcast

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.

Federal agencies must now allow any officials designated by the president or agency leadership to have complete access to unclassified records, data, software systems and IT systems, President Donald Trump declared in an executive order late Thursday night. Trump’s directive aims to stop waste, fraud and abuse by eliminating information silos, requiring agency heads to “ensure Federal officials designated by the President or Agency Heads (or their designees) have full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, data, software systems, and information technology systems — or their equivalents if providing access to an equivalent dataset does not delay access — for purposes of pursuing Administration priorities related to the identification and elimination of waste, fraud, and abuse.” “This includes authorizing and facilitating both the intra- and inter-agency sharing and consolidation of unclassified agency records,” the executive order states. A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order last Thursday blocking Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from further access to any Social Security Administration systems that contain personally identifiable information. Judge Ellen Hollander of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland also ordered that all DOGE team members associated with the organization’s work at SSA, including Elon Musk and U.S. DOGE Service leader Amy Gleason, must disgorge and delete all non-anonymized personal information they obtained from the agency’s systems. The decision is an initial victory in the case where Democracy Forward led a group of unions and an advocacy organization in suing the Social Security Administration and its acting Commissioner Leland Dudek for giving DOGE access to “some of the nation’s most sensitive data, including the financial data, employment information, medical data, and personal addresses of millions of Americans,” according to the initial complaint. 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.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday to consolidate the contracting of common goods and services, including information technology, under the General Services Administration. Within 30 days of the order’s issuance, GSA will take over as the executive agent of all governmentwide acquisition contracts (GWACs) for IT, as designated by the Office of Management and Budget. “Consolidating domestic Federal procurement in the General Services Administration — the agency designed to conduct procurement — will eliminate waste and duplication, while enabling agencies to focus on their core mission of delivering the best possible services for the American people,” the order says. As part of GSA’s new role, the administrator will be able to “defer or decline” being the executive agent of IT governmentwide contracts “when necessary to ensure continuity of service or as otherwise appropriate.” Other major GWACs for technology across the federal government include the National Institutes of Health Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center’s vehicles like its CIO-SP3 and embattled CIO-SP4, as well as NASA’s Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) contracts. The General Services Administration on Thursday revealed a new generative AI tool designed to boost efficiency and help automate repetitive tasks. The platform, now available to GSA staff, comes amid anxiety that the Department of Government Efficiency might use artificial intelligence to surveil or replace federal workers, who are being laid off in large swaths across the government. The GSA chatbot can access a series of large language models, including technology from Anthropic and Meta. The system resembles other AI chatbots, and it’s designed to respond to user prompts and help staff with basic tasks, like writing. Earlier this month, Wired first reported that the DOGE had deployed a chatbot called GSAi for 1,500 workers. According to Wired, the tool had been in development for several months, but DOGE accelerated the rollout of the platform and eventually wants to use it for data analysis of contracts and procurements. GSA said in a Thursday statement it is encouraging all of its staff to test the tool.

The Pentagon is currently placing more than 20,000 employees on administrative leave and a path to full termination, following staff approval for voluntary participation in the Trump administration’s Elon Musk-inspired “fork in the road” initiative, according to top officials involved in the major workforce reduction plans. In an off-camera press briefing Tuesday, two senior defense officials provided new information (on the condition of anonymity) regarding the Defense Department’s unfolding effort to shrink its massive civilian employee pool using three main mechanisms. An official stressed to DefenseScoop that this is a very active process and things are fluid as the department’s leadership engages with services and components. At the start of his second administration, President Donald Trump immediately directed federal agencies to drastically reduce their workforces and review existing contracts as part of a broader move to ultimately cut back on what his team views as wasteful spending and inefficiencies. Inside the DOD, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered a “strategic reduction” of 5-8% of civilian personnel — with a sharp focus on “promoting the department’s lethality, readiness and warfighting ability” while meeting Trump’s mandate, a senior defense official noted. As the Defense Department anticipates the wireless networks of the future for warfighting missions, it has shifted its focus for research and development primarily to 6G wireless technologies, Marlan Macklin, deputy principal director for the Pentagon’s FutureG Office, said Wednesday. The DOD is looking to the next-generation wireless tech to further build on the improved speeds, latency and capacity it gained with 5G and support the U.S. military’s use of new capabilities at the edge. With that, Macklin said the Pentagon is beginning to experiment with 6G in a variety of ways. As an example, the FutureG Office has been experimenting with a concept called Integrated Sensing and Communication, which uses radio frequencies of all objects — including those not actively transmitting data — connected to a network to create situational awareness of the surrounding environment, according to Macklin. One way in which the U.S. military could apply this emerging concept is to improve awareness and management of drones in a given environment, Macklin 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.

Several federal agencies responsible for terminating nearly 25,000 federal probationary status workers told a federal court Monday evening that they’re complying with an order to reinstate those employees, giving thousands of people their jobs back for the time being. According to a status report and corresponding declarations filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, 18 federal agencies and their subcomponents said they were working to reinstate their fired probationary employees following the court order. Most of those agencies said those workers would be placed on administrative leave. While the court order doesn’t cover all fired probationary workers, the declarations in the case offer one of the first clear windows into the breadth of firings under President Donald Trump. Per figures in those declarations, the agencies initially terminated 24,813 probationary workers. Of that total, 15,499 were offered reinstatement as a direct result of the court’s order. An additional 5,925 employees, at least, were previously offered reinstatement by those respective agencies before the court’s order. That includes the 5,714 terminated employees in the U.S. Department of Agriculture who got their jobs back for 45 days as the result of a ruling by a quasi-judicial body within the executive branch known as the Merit Systems Protection Board. As litigation plays out on DOGE access to individuals’ sensitive data, a House lawmaker is asking civil society groups, privacy experts, government technologists and others to inform legislation seeking to modernize the Privacy Act of 1974. Rep. Lori Trahan, D-Mass., said in a press release that she is beginning an effort to reform the Privacy Act, which has been cited in various lawsuits against agencies over allegedly allowing unauthorized DOGE staffers to access data that could contain personally identifiable information. “Unaccountable billionaires, inexperienced programmers and unvetted political appointees are perpetrating the biggest government privacy scandal since Watergate,” Trahan said in the release. In order to begin this effort, Trahan is asking the public to respond to a series of questions, including the federal government’s need to balance privacy with other priorities like reducing waste, how the government can effectively leverage privacy-enhancing technologies, the privacy risks associated with artificial intelligence and more. 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.