Podcasts about GSA

Whole Foods Market WebsiteWhole Foods Market: New Seafood Code of ConductCheck out our website!: https://www.globalseafood.org/podcastFollow us on social media!Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | InstagramShare your sustainability tips with us podcast@globalseafood.org!If you want to be more involved in the work that we do, become a member of the Global Seafood Alliance: https://www.globalseafood.org/membership/ The views expressed by external guests on Aquademia are their own and do not reflect the opinions of Aquademia or the Global Seafood Alliance. Listeners are advised to independently verify information and consult experts for any specific advice or decisions.

Understanding your water use is essential—whether it's regulated or not. Kevin Rost, Sales Representative for Apollo Ag Technologies in Fresno, California, shares how growers can get ahead of evolving water management expectations. Using California's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) as a case study, he explains acronyms like GSA and GSP, outlines affordable tools for monitoring water use, and highlights why participation in local decision-making matters. This episode offers valuable insights for any grower looking to protect their resources, reduce costs, and build a more resilient farm. Resources:         Appolo Ag Technologies Groundwater: Understanding and Managing this Vital Resource Kevin Rost on LinkedIn Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) Ultimate Irrigation Playlist Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate Online Courses – DPR & CCA Hours SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet   Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year – Discount Code PODCAST25 Vineyard Team – Become a Member

The Department of Health and Human Services has made ChatGPT available to all of its employees effective immediately, according to a Tuesday departmentwide email obtained by FedScoop. In that message, HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O'Neill said the rollout of the generative AI platform follows a directive from President Donald Trump's AI Action Plan for agencies to ensure that workers who could benefit from the technology have access to it. “This tool can help us promote rigorous science, radical transparency, and robust good health,” O'Neill said. “As Secretary Kennedy said, ‘The AI revolution has arrived.'” O'Neill provided workers with instructions on how to log on to use the tool, as well as some warnings about how to treat outputs. He told workers to “be skeptical of everything you read, watch for potential bias, and treat answers as suggestions,” and directed them to weigh original sources and counterarguments prior to making a major decision. The General Services Administration has created a new office within the Federal Acquisition Service focused on streamlining the agency's procurement of common goods and services, a GSA spokesperson confirmed Tuesday. Acting GSA Administrator Michael Rigas recently signed the order establishing the Office of Centralized Acquisition Services (OCAS), the spokesperson said, describing it as a “centralized, enterprise-wide approach.” “By leveraging one federal wallet, GSA will deliver significant savings to the taxpayer, greater efficiencies, and reduced duplication, enabling agencies to focus on their core missions,” the spokesperson said in a written statement. GSA senior executive Thomas Meiron will serve as the office's assistant commissioner, the GSA said. Meiron has been with the GSA for over three decades, according to his LinkedIn profile. He most recently served as the acting assistant commissioner for the agency's Office of Customer and Stakeholder Engagement. The move directly supports President Donald Trump's executive order, signed in March, to consolidate federal procurement in the GSA. 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.

Nachhaltigkeit braucht eine starke Stimme – und die German Speakers Association (GSA) macht sie hörbar! In unserer ersten Folge sprechen die Hosts Aline Pronnet (Speakerin für Nachhaltigkeit & Zero Waste) und Evelyn Rath (Expertin für Ökologisierung & Zukunftsvisionen) mit zwei inspirierenden Frauen, die die Nachhaltigkeit in der GSA vorantreiben: Silvia Ziolkowski – Zukunftscoach und Präsidentin der GSA Hanna-Sophie Welker – Geschäftsführerin der GSA

Brian Friel, co-founder of BD Squared, joins Off the Shelf, for a wide-ranging discussion of the state of interagency contracting in the new federal market. Friel provides an update on the GWAC landscape, including updates on NASA SEWP, CIO-SP4, Alliant 3, and Polaris and he talks about the consolidation of procurement operations at the General Services Administration (GSA) including the update FAR Part 8 rewrite establishing a hierarchy of contract vehicles.Friel also addresses GSA's Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) program, giving his thoughts on the new ordering procedures, the role of Blanket Purchase Agreements (BPAs) and the prospects for accelerated growth in use of the program. Finally, Brian explains how companies can position themselves to compete in a rapidly changing federal market. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Greg Hogan is out as the chief information officer of the Office of Personnel Management after roughly seven-and-a-half months on the job. Hogan was installed at the human capital agency on the first day of President Donald Trump's second administration, replacing Melvin Brown II after roughly a week on the job. According to an OPM spokeswoman, Hogan departed the agency earlier this week and Perryn Ashmore, who is currently assistant director of enterprise learning at the agency, is currently serving as CIO in an acting capacity. Although not much was shared by the agency about Hogan's background, a legal filing in a challenge brought by current and former federal employees over Department of Government Efficiency access to OPM data provided some details. According to that document, Hogan was the vice president of infrastructure at comma.ai — a self-driving car software company — before joining the Trump administration. He also told the court he had 20 years of experience in private sector IT and a computer engineering degree. Stephen Ehikian, the deputy administrator of the General Services Administration, has left the agency to take over as chief executive officer at the enterprise AI application software company C3 AI. Ehikian told GSA staff Tuesday in an email obtained by FedScoop that he would “transition out” of the agency's deputy administrator role, but remain an adviser to the leadership team during the transition process. On Wednesday, C3 AI announced Ehikian's hiring as CEO. He said in a statement he is “honored” to join the company “at such a pivotal time in the AI era.” He served as the GSA's acting head for the first half of this year until July, when President Donald Trump tapped State Department leader Michael Rigas for the role and Ehikian moved into the deputy spot. “I want to thank Stephen Ehikian for his service and wish him well,” Rigas said in a statement shared by GSA. Edward Forst, a longtime financial services executive, was nominated by Trump in July to serve as the next administrator of the GSA. A nomination hearing date has not been scheduled, according to congressional records. 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.

OpenAI has cleared another critical hurdle to selling its ChatGPT tool directly to the federal government. As of Tuesday, ChatGPT is listed as “in process” on the FedRAMP Marketplace, an online repository that tracks where companies stand in the FedRAMP security review process. While federal agencies can issue their own approvals to use technology platforms, FedRAMP is the government's primary security review program and is designed to clear widespread cloud-based technologies for use across federal agencies. OpenAI received prioritized authorization through 20x, a person familiar with the matter told FedScoop. It's the first company to receive this prioritization, which, in effect, eliminates the need for companies to find federal agencies to sponsor them for review. At one point, OpenAI had engaged USAID, its first enterprise customer, about helping them with the process, FedScoop previously reported, but the agency was mostly shuttered in the early days of the second Trump administration. The General Services Administration created the prioritized review for AI cloud services just last month. Microsoft will offer a host of its cloud services at a discounted price to the federal government, the General Services Administration announced Tuesday, including its artificial intelligence assistant Copilot at no cost to some agencies. The OneGov deal makes Microsoft the latest technology firm to leverage steep discounts on its cloud products to expand adoption within the federal government. It comes on the heels of GSA's deals with industry competitors like OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, which are separately offering their AI models to the government for a dollar or less. Under the new agreement, Microsoft will offer its subscription service, Microsoft 365, Azure Cloud Services, and Dynamics 365 — the company's suite of business management apps — for a “discounted price” for up to 36 months. 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.

At the GSA meetings, teachers and guest speakers encouraged discussion on gender identity to the point of handing out prizes for those who “came out” as gender confused. Constitutional expert, lawyer, author, pastor, and founder of Liberty Counsel Mat Staver discusses the important topics of the day with co-hosts and guests that impact life, liberty, and family. To stay informed and get involved, visit LC.org.

In this episode of Game Changers for Government Contractors, Michael LeJeune talks with Kim Ali of Kim Ali Consulting about her remarkable comeback after losing 80% of her revenue in early 2025 due to sweeping executive orders. Kim shares how she used equitable adjustments to create a financial cushion, analyzed shifting federal priorities, and rebuilt her pipeline to $40M in just months. They discuss emerging trends that every contractor must watch, including the potential removal of the Rule of Two, changes to past performance requirements, and the importance of securing a GSA schedule. Kim also offers practical advice on diversifying beyond federal contracts, leveraging teaming opportunities, and above all, building strong relationships. This is a masterclass in resilience, strategy, and thriving in uncertain markets. ----- Frustrated with your government contracting journey? Join our group coaching community here: federal-access.com/gamechangers Grab my #1 bestselling book, "I'm New to Government Contracting. Where Should I Start?" Here: https://amzn.to/4hHLPeE Book a call with me here: https://calendly.com/michaellejeune/govconstrategysession

On today's episode of Govcon Giants, I sit down with Jason Miller, Executive Editor of Federal News Network, to unpack the chaos shaking the government contracting community. Over the last 4–6 months, we've seen partnerships shrink, contracts cut, and entire workforces pushed into early retirement. Jason pulls back the curtain on GSA consolidation, NASA SEWP, consulting contract crackdowns, and the uncertainty surrounding CMMC, NIST 800-171, and small business programs like 8(a). This isn't just noise—it's a direct hit on how small businesses survive and thrive in the federal marketplace. Jason and I go deep on the big numbers—25,000 fewer staff at GSA, programs like CIO-SP3 still stuck in protest, and the seven-year delay of CMMC rollout that's left contractors dangerously exposed. We also discuss how the Trump administration's aggressive cost-cutting, paired with industry silence, could cripple government contractors who refuse to speak up. If you're counting on the old rules to keep you safe, think again—this episode is your wake-up call. Connect with Jason: LinkedIn account: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmillerfnn/ LinkedIn corporate: https://www.linkedin.com/company/federal-news-network/posts/?feedView=all Link to your company: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/  

FedRAMP 20x is redefining how federal cloud services get authorized —making them faster, smarter and more secure. Earlier this year GSA released the 20x pilot in an effort to increase the efficiency of authorizations and enhance security. Pete Waterman, FedRAMP director at the General Services Administration, unpacks how the program is streamlining approvals, enhancing continuous monitoring and leveraging automation to detect and resolve security risks in real time. Waterman explains how FedRAMP 20x is helping agencies and providers build services that make sense from the start, leading to stronger security and better mission outcomes.

This week, the GovNavigators welcome Jason Miller, Executive Editor at Federal News Network, for a wide-ranging conversation on the state of federal acquisition and IT leadership. From the long-awaited FAR overhaul and GSA's contracting shifts to the evolving role of the federal CIO, Jason unpacks what these changes mean for agencies, industry, and small businesses alike.Show NotesOMB: Improper Payments MemoEO: Improving our Nation Through Better DesignEvents on the GovNavigators' RadarAugust 25, 2025: A Hole in One with ACT-IACSeptember 16-18, 2025: Partnership for Public Service's GovHR Conference September 18, 2025: GAIN 2025 (Marketing Conference)

President Donald Trump called for improvements to federal government websites in a Thursday executive order, arguing the U.S. government “has lagged behind in usability and aesthetics.” The new directive is focused on both digital and physical spaces and launches an initiative it calls “America by Design” to achieve the administration's goals. That effort will be led by a new National Design Studio and chief design officer that will coordinate agency actions. Federal agencies, for their part, will be required to “produce initial results” by July 4, 2026. The executive order states that “the National Design Studio will advise agencies on how to reduce duplicative design costs, use standardized design to enhance the public's trust in high-impact service providers, and dramatically improve the quality of experiences offered to the American public.”Specifically, agencies are required to prioritize improving websites and physical spaces “that have a major impact on Americans' everyday lives.” The administrator of the General Services Administration is also instructed to consult with the new design official to update the U.S. Web Design System consistent with the order. The U.S. Web Design System is a community to help agencies with design and maintenance of their digital presence that was initially established by 18F, which the Trump administration eliminated, and the U.S. Digital Service, which was turned into the DOGE. Google will make its Gemini AI models and tools available to the federal government for less than 50 cents through a new General Services Administration deal, making the company the latest to offer its technology to agencies at just a marginal cost. Google, which announced the launch of “Gemini for Government” on Thursday, said the tool is a “complete AI platform” that will include high-profile Gemini models. The new government-focused product suite comes as other AI companies — including xAI, Anthropic, and OpenAI — begin to offer similar public sector versions of their enterprise AI products. Unlike those other companies, though, Google already has an extensive federal government cloud business. For now, the government Gemini product will be limited to Google's cloud programs. The platform will include access to NotebookLM AI, a research and note taking tool, and AI agents for deep research and idea generation. The platform will cost 47 cents per agency for one year and the offer will stand through 2026, according to the GSA. 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 part of its ongoing work with the National Nuclear Security Administration, Anthropic is now working on a new tool designed to help detect when new AI systems output troubling discussions of nuclear weapons. Artificial intelligence systems have the potential to uncover all sorts of new chemical compounds. While many of those discoveries might be promising, and yield, for example, formulas to help propel nuclear energy sources, they might also risk outputting information that could make it easier to design a nuclear weapon. In a new blog post, the company said that along with the NNSA and the Energy Department's national laboratories, it's developed a classifier that's able to automatically determine whether nuclear conversation with an AI chatbot is benign or concerning, with 96% accuracy. The system was developed based on an NNSA-curated list of nuclear risk indicators. Individuals will soon be able to verify their identities using their passports on the General Services Administration's Login.gov platform, marking the agency's latest efforts to boost user friendliness on the single-sign-on service. According to a GSA announcement published Wednesday, individuals will soon be able to submit a picture of their passport's biographical page during Login.gov's identity proofing process. Once Login.gov receives a passport photo, it will then check the photo against passport records managed by the State Department, the GSA said, noting State manages a “privacy-preserving” API for this. Login.gov gives the public the option to log into multiple federal, state and local government websites using just one account once a user's identity is verified. Under its current format, users looking to create a Login.gov account are often required to take a picture of themselves and submit that with a photo of their state-issued ID or driver's license for comparison. The move to accept passports is part of a new partnership between GSA's Technology Transformation Services and the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs, with the GSA describing it as a “first-of-its-kind partnership between federal agencies to use authoritative government records as a source for identity verification.” 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.

Today I'm talking to economic historian Judge Glock, Director of Research at the Manhattan Institute. Judge works on a lot of topics: if you enjoy this episode, I'd encourage you to read some of his work on housing markets and the Environmental Protection Agency. But I cornered him today to talk about civil service reform.Since the 1990s, over 20 red and blue states have made radical changes to how they hire and fire government employees — changes that would be completely outside the Overton window at the federal level. A paper by Judge and Renu Mukherjee lists four reforms made by states like Texas, Florida, and Georgia: * At-will employment for state workers* The elimination of collective bargaining agreements* Giving managers much more discretion to hire* Giving managers much more discretion in how they pay employeesJudge finds decent evidence that the reforms have improved the effectiveness of state governments, and little evidence of the politicization that federal reformers fear. Meanwhile, in Washington, managers can't see applicants' resumes, keyword searches determine who gets hired, and firing a bad performer can take years. But almost none of these ideas are on the table in Washington.Thanks to Harry Fletcher-Wood for his judicious transcript edits and fact-checking, and to Katerina Barton for audio edits.Judge, you have a paper out about lessons for civil service reform from the states. Since the ‘90s, red and blue states have made big changes to how they hire and fire people. Walk through those changes for me.I was born and grew up in Washington DC, heard a lot about civil service throughout my childhood, and began to research it as an adult. But I knew almost nothing about the state civil service systems. When I began working in the states — mainly across the Sunbelt, including in Texas, Kansas, Arizona — I was surprised to learn that their civil service systems were reformed to an absolutely radical extent relative to anything proposed at the federal level, let alone implemented.Starting in the 1990s, several states went to complete at-will employment. That means there were no official civil service protections for any state employees. Some managers were authorized to hire people off the street, just like you could in the private sector. A manager meets someone in a coffee shop, they say, "I'm looking for exactly your role. Why don't you come on board?" At the federal level, with its stultified hiring process, it seemed absurd to even suggest something like that.You had states that got rid of any collective bargaining agreements with their public employee unions. You also had states that did a lot more broadbanding [creating wider pay bands] for employee pay: a lot more discretion for managers to reward or penalize their employees depending on their performance.These major reforms in these states were, from the perspective of DC, incredibly radical. Literally nobody at the federal level proposes anything approximating what has been in place for decades in the states. That should be more commonly known, and should infiltrate the debate on civil service reform in DC.Even though the evidence is not absolutely airtight, on the whole these reforms have been positive. A lot of the evidence is surveys asking managers and operators in these states how they think it works. They've generally been positive. We know these states operate pretty well: Places like Texas, Florida, and Arizona rank well on state capacity metrics in terms of cost of government, time for permitting, and other issues.Finally, to me the most surprising thing is the dog that didn't bark. The argument in the federal government against civil service reform is, “If you do this, we will open up the gates of hell and return to the 19th-century patronage system, where spoilsmen come and go depending on elected officials, and the government is overrun with political appointees who don't care about the civil service.” That has simply not happened. We have very few reports of any concrete examples of politicization at the state level. In surveys, state employees and managers can almost never remember any example of political preferences influencing hiring or firing.One of the surveys you cited asked, “Can you think of a time someone said that they thought that the political preferences were a factor in civil service hiring?” and it was something like 5%.It was in that 5-10% range. I don't think you'd find a dissimilar number of people who would say that even in an official civil service system. Politics is not completely excluded even from a formal civil service system.A few weeks ago, you and I talked to our mutual friend, Don Moynihan, who's a scholar of public administration. He's more skeptical about the evidence that civil service reform would be positive at the federal level.One of your points is, “We don't have strong negative evidence from the states. Productivity didn't crater in states that moved to an at-will employment system.” We do have strong evidence that collective bargaining in the public sector is bad for productivity.What I think you and Don would agree on is that we could use more evidence on the hiring and firing side than the surveys that we have. Is that a fair assessment?Yes, I think that's correct. As you mentioned, the evidence on collective bargaining is pretty close to universal: it raises costs, reduces the efficiency of government, and has few to no positive upsides.On hiring and firing, I mentioned a few studies. There's a 2013 study that looks at HR managers in six states and finds very little evidence of politicization, and managers generally prefer the new system. There was a dissertation that surveyed several employees and managers in civil service reform and non-reform states. Across the board, the at-will employment states said they had better hiring retention, productivity, and so forth. And there's a 2002 study that looked specifically at Texas, Florida, and Georgia after their reforms, and found almost universal approbation inside the civil service itself for these reforms.These are not randomized control trials. But I think that generally positive evidence should point us directionally where we should go on civil service reform. If we loosen restrictions on discipline and firing, decentralize hiring and so forth — we probably get some productivity benefits from it. We can also know, with some amount of confidence, that the sky is not going to fall, which I think is a very important baseline assumption. The civil service system will continue on and probably be fairly close to what it is today, in terms of its political influence, if you have decentralized hiring and at-will employment.As you point out, a lot of these reforms that have happened in 20-odd states since the ‘90s would be totally outside the Overton window at the federal level. Why is it so easy for Georgia to make a bipartisan move in the ‘90s to at-will employment, when you couldn't raise the topic at the federal level?It's a good question. I think in the 1990s, a lot of people thought a combination of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act — which was the Carter-era act that somewhat attempted to do what these states hoped to do in the 1990s — and the Clinton-era Reinventing Government Initiative, would accomplish the same ends. That didn't happen.That was an era when civil service reform was much more bipartisan. In Georgia, it was a Democratic governor, Zell Miller, who pushed it. In a lot of these other states, they got buy-in from both sides. The recent era of state reform took place after the 2010 Republican wave in the states. Since that wave, the reform impetus for civil service has been much more Republican. That has meant it's been a lot harder to get buy-in from both sides at the federal level, which will be necessary to overcome a filibuster.I think people know it has to be very bipartisan. We're just past the point, at least at the moment, where it can be bipartisan at the federal level. But there are areas where there's a fair amount of overlap between the two sides on what needs to happen, at least in the upper reaches of the civil service.It was interesting to me just how bipartisan civil service reform has been at various times. You talked about the Civil Service Reform Act, which passed Congress in 1978. President Carter tells Congress that the civil service system:“Has become a bureaucratic maze which neglects merit, tolerates poor performance, permits abuse of legitimate employee rights, and mires every personnel action in red tape, delay, and confusion.”That's a Democratic president saying that. It's striking to me that the civil service was not the polarized topic that it is today.Absolutely. Carter was a big civil service reformer in Georgia before those even larger 1990s reforms. He campaigned on civil service reform and thought it was essential to the success of his presidency. But I think you are seeing little sprouts of potential bipartisanship today, like the Chance to Compete Act at the end of 2024, and some of the reforms Obama did to the hiring process. There's options for bipartisanship at the federal level, even if it can't approach what the states have done.I want to walk through the federal hiring process. Let's say you're looking to hire in some federal agency — you pick the agency — and I graduated college recently, and I want to go into the civil service. Tell me about trying to hire somebody like me. What's your first step?It's interesting you bring up the college graduate, because that is one recent reform: President Trump put out an executive order trying to counsel agencies to remove the college degree requirement for job postings. This happened in a lot of states first, like Maryland, and that's also been bipartisan. This requirement for a college degree — which was used as a very unfortunate proxy for ability at a lot of these jobs — is now being removed. It's not across the whole federal government. There's still job postings that require higher education degrees, but that's something that's changed.To your question, let's say the Department of Transportation. That's one of the more bipartisan ones, when you look at surveys of federal civil servants. Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, they tend to be a little more Republican. Health and Human Services and some other agencies tend to be pretty Democrat. Transportation is somewhere in the middle.As a manager, you try to craft a job description and posting to go up on the USA Jobs website, which is where all federal job postings go. When they created it back in 1996, that was supposedly a massive reform to federal hiring: this website where people could submit their resumes. Then, people submit their resumes and answer questions about their qualifications for the job.One of the slightly different aspects from the private sector is that those applications usually go to an HR specialist first. The specialist reviews everything and starts to rank people into different categories, based on a lot of weird things. It's supposed to be “knowledge, skills, and abilities” — your KSAs, or competencies. To some extent, this is a big step up from historical practice. You had, frankly, an absurd civil service exam, where people had to fill out questions about, say, General Grant or about US Code Title 42, or whatever it was, and then submit it. Someone rated the civil service exam, and then the top three test-takers were eligible for the job.We have this newer, better system, where we rank on knowledge, skills, and abilities, and HR puts put people into different categories. One of the awkward ways they do this is by merely scanning the resumes and applications for keywords. If it's a computer job, make sure you say the word “computer” somewhere in your resume. Make sure you say “manager” if it's a managerial job.Just to be clear, this is entirely literal. There's a keyword search, and folks who don't pass that search are dinged.Yes. I've always wondered, how common is this? It's sometimes hard to know what happens in the black box in these federal HR departments. I saw an HR official recently say, "If I'm not allowed to do keyword searches, I'm going to take 15 years to overlook all the applications, so I've got to do keyword searches." If they don't have the keywords, into the circular file it goes, as they used to say: into the garbage can.Then they start ranking people on their abilities into, often, three different categories. That is also very literal. If you put in the little word bubble, "I am an exceptional manager," you get pushed on into the next level of the competition. If you say, "I'm pretty good, but I'm not the best," into the circular file you go.I've gotten jaded about this, but it really is shocking. We ask candidates for a self-assessment, and if they just rank themselves 10/10 on everything, no matter how ludicrous, that improves their odds of being hired.That's going to immensely improve your odds. Similar to the keyword search, there's been pushback on this in recent years, and I'm definitely not going to say it's universal anymore. It's rarer than it used to be. But it's still a very common process.The historical civil service system used to operate on a rule of three. In places like New York, it still operates like that. The top three candidates on the evaluation system get presented to the manager, and the manager has to approve one of them for the position.Thanks partially to reforms by the Obama administration in 2010, they have this category rating system where the best qualified or the very qualified get put into a big bucket together [instead of only including the top three]. Those are the people that the person doing the hiring gets to see, evaluate, and decide who he wants to hire.There are some restrictions on that. If a veteran outranks everybody else, you've got to pick the veteran [typically known as Veterans' Preference]. That was an issue in some of the state civil service reforms, too. The states said, “We're just going to encourage a veterans' preference. We don't need a formalized system to say they get X number of points and have to be in Y category. We're just going to say, ‘Try to hire veterans.'” That's possible without the formal system, despite what some opponents of reform may claim.One of the particular problems here is just the nature of the people doing the hiring. Sometimes you just need good managers to encourage HR departments to look at a broader set of qualifications. But one of the bigger problems is that they keep the HR evaluation system divorced from the manager who is doing the hiring. David Shulkin, who was the head of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), wrote a great book, It Shouldn't Be This Hard to Serve Your Country. He was a healthcare exec, and the VA is mainly a healthcare agency. He would tell people, "You should work for me," they would send their applications into the HR void, and he'd never see them again. They would get blocked at some point in this HR evaluation process, and he'd be sent people with no healthcare experience, because for whatever reason they did well in the ranking.One of the very base-level reforms should be, “How can we more clearly integrate the hiring manager with the evaluation process?” To some extent, the bipartisan Chance to Compete Act tries to do this. They said, “You should have subject matter experts who are part of crafting the description of the job, are part of evaluating, and so forth.” But there's still a long road to go.Does that firewall — where the person who wants to hire doesn't get to look at the process until the end — exist originally because of concerns about cronyism?One of the interesting things about the civil service is its raison d'être — its reason for being — was supposedly a single, clear purpose: to prevent politicized hiring and patronage. That goes back to the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883. But it's always been a little strange that you have all of these very complex rules about every step of the process — from hiring to firing to promotion, and everything in between — to prevent political influence. We could just focus on preventing political influence, and not regulate every step of the process on the off-chance that without a clear regulation, political influence could creep in. This division [between hiring manager and applicants] is part of that general concern. There are areas where I've heard HR specialists say, "We declare that a manager is a subject matter expert, and we bring them into the process early on, we can do that." But still the division is pretty stark, and it's based on this excessive concern about patronage.One point you flag is that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which is the body that thinks about personnel in the federal government, has a 300-page regulatory document for agencies on how you have to hire. There's a remarkable amount of process.Yes, but even that is a big change from the Federal Personnel Manual, which was the 10,000-page document that we shredded in the 1990s. In the ‘90s, OPM gave the agencies what's called “delegated examining authorities.” This says, “You, agency, have power to decide who to hire, we're not going to do the central supervision anymore. But, but, but: here's the 300-page document that dictates exactly how you have to carry out that hiring.”So we have some decentralization, allowing managers more authority to control their own departments. But this two-level oversight — a local HR department that's ultimately being overseen by the OPM — also leads to a lot of slip ‘twixt cup and lip, in terms of how something gets implemented. If you're in the agency and you're concerned about the OPM overseeing your process, you're likely to be much more careful than you would like to be. “Yes, it's delegated to me, but ultimately, I know I have to answer to OPM about this process. I'm just going to color within the lines.”I often cite Texas, which has no central HR office. Each agency decides how it wants to hire. In a lot of these reform states, if there is a central personnel office, it's an information clearinghouse or reservoir of models. “You can use us, the central HR office, as a resource if you want us to help you post the job, evaluate it, or help manage your processes, but you don't have to.” That's the goal we should be striving for in a lot of the federal reforms. Just make OPM a resource for the managers in the individual departments to do their thing or go independent.Let's say I somehow get through the hiring process. You offer me a job at the Department of Transportation. What are you paying me?This is one of the more stultified aspects of the federal civil service system. OPM has another multi-hundred-page handbook called the Handbook of Occupational Groups and Families. Inside that, you've got 49 different “groups and families,” like “Clerical occupations.” Inside those 49 groups are a series of jobs, sometimes dozens, like “Computer Operator.” Inside those, they have independent documents — often themselves dozens of pages long — detailing classes of positions. Then you as a manager have to evaluate these nine factors, which can each give points to each position, which decides how you get slotted into this weird Government Schedule (GS) system [the federal payscale].Again, this is actually an improvement. Before, you used to have the Civil Service Commission, which went around staring very closely at someone over their typewriter and saying, "No, I think you should be a GS-12, not a GS-11, because someone over in the Department of Defense who does your same job is a GS-12." Now this is delegated to agencies, but again, the agencies have to listen to the OPM on how to classify and set their jobs into this 15-stage GS-classification system, each stage of which has 10 steps which determine your pay, and those steps are determined mainly by your seniority. It's a formalized step-by-step system, overwhelmingly based on just how long you've sat at your desk.Let's be optimistic about my performance as a civil servant. Say that over my first three years, I'm just hitting it out of the park. Can you give me a raise? What can you do to keep me in my role?Not too much. For most people, the within-step increases — those 10 steps inside each GS-level — is just set by seniority. Now there are all these quality step increases you can get, but they're very rare and they have to be documented. So you could hypothetically pay someone more, but it's going to be tough. In general, the managers just prefer to stick to seniority, because not sticking to it garners a lot of complaints. Like so much else, the goal is, "We don't want someone rewarding an official because they happen to share their political preferences." The result of that concern is basically nobody can get rewarded at all, which is very unfortunate.We do have examples in state and federal government of what's known as broadbanding, where you have very broad pay scales, and the manager can decide where to slot someone. Say you're a computer operator, which can mean someone who knows what an Excel spreadsheet is, or someone who's programming the most advanced AI systems. As a manager in South Carolina or Florida, you have a lot of discretion to say, "I can set you 50% above the market rate of what this job technically would go for, if I think you're doing a great job."That's very rare at the federal level. They've done broadbanding at the Government Accountability Office, the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The China Lake Experiment out in California gave managers a lot more discretion to reward scientists. But that's definitely the exception. In general, it's a step-wise, seniority-based system.What if you want to bring me into the Senior Executive Service (SES)? Theoretically, that sits at the top of the General Service scale. Can't you bump me up in there and pay me what you owe me?I could hypothetically bring you in as a senior executive servant. The SES was created in the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act. The idea was, “We're going to have this elite cadre of about 8,000 individuals at the top of the federal government, whose employment will be higher-risk and higher-reward. They might be fired, and we're going to give them higher pay to compensate for that.”Almost immediately, that did not work out. Congress was outraged at the higher pay given to the top officials and capped it. Ever since, how much the SES can get paid has been tightly controlled. As in most of the rest of the federal government, where they establish these performance pay incentives or bonuses — which do exist — they spread them like peanut butter over the whole service. To forestall complaints, everyone gets a little bit every two or three years.That's basically what happened to the SES. Their annual pay is capped at the vice president's salary, which is a cap for a lot of people in the federal government. For most of your GS and other executive scales, the cap is Congress's salary. [NB: This is no longer exactly true, since Congress froze its own salaries in 2009. The cap for GS (currently about $195k) is now above congressional salaries ($174k).]One of the big problems with pay in the federal government is pay compression. Across civil service systems, the highest-skilled people tend to be paid much less than the private sector, and the lowest-skilled people tend to get paid much more. The political science reason for that is pretty simple: the median voter in America still decides what seems reasonable. To the median voter, the average salary of a janitor looks low, and the average salary of a scientist looks way too high. Hence this tendency to pay compression. Your average federal employee is probably overpaid relative to the private sector, because the lowest-skilled employees are paid up to 40% higher than the private sector equivalent. The highest-paid employees, the post-graduate skilled professionals, are paid less. That makes it hard to recruit the top performers, but it also swells the wage budget in a way that makes it difficult to talk about reform.There's a lot of interest in this administration in making it easier to recruit talent and get rid of under-performers. There have been aggressive pushes to limit collective bargaining in the public sector. That should theoretically make it easier to recruit, but it also increases the precariousness of civil service roles. We've seen huge firings in the civil service over the last six months.Classically, the explicit trade-off of working in the federal government was, “Your pay is going to be capped, but you have this job for life. It's impossible to get rid of you.” You trade some lifetime earnings for stability. In a world where the stability is gone, but pay is still capped, isn't the net effect to drive talent away from the civil service?I think it's a concern now. On one level it should be ameliorated, because those who are most concerned with stability of employment do tend to be lower performers. If you have people who are leaving the federal service because all they want is stability, and they're not getting that anymore, that may not be a net loss. As someone who came out of academia and knows the wonder of effective lifetime annuities, there can be very high performers who like that stability who therefore take a lower salary. Without the ability to bump that pay up more, it's going to be an issue.I do know that, internally, the Trump administration has made some signs they're open to reforms in the top tiers of the SES and other parts of the federal government. They would be willing to have people get paid more at that level to compensate for the increased risks since the Trump administration came in. But when you look at the reductions in force (RIFs) that have happened under Trump, they are overwhelmingly among probationary employees, the lower-level employees.With some exceptions. If you've been promoted recently, you can get reclassified as probationary, so some high-performers got lumped in.Absolutely. The issue has been exacerbated precisely because the RIF regulations that are in place have made the firings particularly damaging. If you had a more streamlined RIF system — which they do have in many states, where seniority is not the main determinant of who gets laid off — these RIFs could be removing the lower-performing civil servants and keeping the higher-performing ones, and giving them some amount of confidence in their tenure.Unfortunately, the combination of large-scale removals with the existing RIF regs, which are very stringent, has demoralized some of the upper levels of the federal government. I share that concern. But I might add, it is interesting, if you look at the federal government's own figures on the total civil service workforce, they have gone down significantly since Trump came in office, but I think less than 100,000 still, in the most recent numbers that I've seen. I'm not sure how much to trust those, versus some of these other numbers where people have said 150,000, 200,000.Whether the Trump administration or a future administration can remove large numbers of people from the civil service should be somewhat divorced from the general conversation on civil service reform. The main debate about whether or not Trump can do this centers around how much power the appropriators in Congress have to determine the total amount of spending in particular agencies on their workforce. It does not depend necessarily on, "If we're going to remove people — whether for general layoffs, or reductions in force, or because of particular performance issues — how can we go about doing that?" My last-ditch hope to maintain a bipartisan possibility of civil service reform is to bracket, “How much power does the president have to remove or limit the workforce in general?” from “How can he go about hiring and firing, et cetera?”I think making it easier for the president to identify and remove poor performers is a tool that any future administration would like to have.We had this conversation sparked again with the firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner. But that was a position Congress set up to be appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and removable by the President. It's a separate issue from civil service at large. Everyone said, “We want the president to be able to hire and fire the commissioner.” Maybe firing the commissioner was a bad decision, but that's the situation today.Attentive listeners to Statecraft know I'm pretty critical, like you are, of the regulations that say you have to go in order of seniority. In mass layoffs, you're required to fire a lot of the young, talented people.But let's talk about individual firings. I've been a terrible civil servant, a nightmarish employee from day one. You want to discipline, remove, suspend, or fire me. What are your options?Anybody who has worked in the civil service knows it's hard to fire bad performers. Whatever their political valence, whatever they feel about the civil service system, they have horror stories about a person who just couldn't be removed.In the early 2010s, a spate of stories came out about air traffic controllers sleeping on the job. Then-transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, made a big public announcement: "I'm going to fire these three guys." After these big announcements, it turned out he was only able to remove one of them. One retired, and another had their firing reduced to a suspension.You had another horrific story where a man was joking on the phone with friends when a plane crashed into a helicopter and killed nine people over the Hudson River. National outcry. They said, "We're going to fire this guy." In the end, after going through the process, he only got a suspension. Everyone agrees it's too hard.The basic story is, you have two ways to fire someone. Chapter 75, the old way, is often considered the realm of misconduct: You've stolen something from the office, punched your colleague in the face during a dispute about the coffee, something illegal or just straight-out wrong. We get you under Chapter 75.The 1978 Civil Service Reform Act added Chapter 43, which is supposed to be the performance-based system to remove someone. As with so much of that Civil Service Reform Act, the people who passed it thought this might be the beginning of an entirely different system.In the end, lots of federal managers say there's not a huge difference between the two. Some use 75, some use 43. If you use 43, you have to document very clearly what the person did wrong. You have to put them on a performance improvement plan. If they failed a performance improvement plan after a certain amount of time, they can respond to any claims about what they did wrong. Then, they can take that process up to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) and claim that they were incorrectly fired, or that the processes weren't carried out appropriately. Then, if they want to, they can say, “Nah, I don't like the order I got,” and take it up to federal courts and complain there. Right now, the MSPB doesn't have a full quorum, which is complicating some of the recent removal disputes.You have this incredibly difficult process, unlike the private sector, where your boss looks at you and says, "I don't like how you're giving me the stink-eye today. Out you go." One could say that's good or bad, but, on the whole, I think the model should be closer to the private sector. We should trust managers to do their job without excessive oversight and process. That's clearly about as far from the realm of possibility as the current system, under which the estimate is 6-12 months to fire a very bad performer. The number of people who win at the Merit Systems Protection Board is still 20-30%.This goes into another issue, which is unionization. If you're part of a collective bargaining agreement — most of the regular federal civil service is — first, you have to go with this independent, union-based arbitration and grievance procedure. You're about 50/50 to win on those if your boss tries to remove you.So if I'm in the union, we go through that arbitration grievance system. If you win and I'm fired, I can take it to the Merit Systems Protection Board. If you win again, I can still take it to the federal courts.You can file different sorts of claims at each part. On Chapter 43, the MSPB is supposed to be about the process, not the evidence, and you just have to show it was followed. On 75, the manager has to show by preponderance of the evidence that the employee is harming the agency. Then there are different standards for what you take to the courts, and different standards according to each collective bargaining agreement for the grievance procedure when someone is disciplined. It's a very complicated, abstruse, and procedure-heavy process that makes it very difficult to remove people, which is why the involuntary separation rate at the federal government and most state governments is many multiples lower than the private sector.So, you would love to get me off your team because I'm abysmal. But you have no stomach for going through this whole process and I'm going to fight it. I'm ornery and contrarian and will drag this fight out. In practice, what do managers in the federal government do with their poor performers?I always heard about this growing up. There's the windowless office in the basement without a phone, or now an internet connection. You place someone down there, hope they get the message, and sooner or later they leave. But for plenty of people in America, that's the dream job. You just get to sit and nobody bothers you for eight hours. You punch in at 9 and punch out at 5, and that's your day. "Great. I'll collect that salary for another 10 years." But generally you just try to make life unpleasant for that person.Public sector collective bargaining in the US is new. I tend to think of it as just how the civil service works. But until about 50 years ago, there was no collective bargaining in the public sector.At the state level, it started with Wisconsin at the end of the 1950s. There were famous local government reforms beginning with the Little Wagner Act [signed in 1958] in New York City. Senator Robert Wagner had created the National Labor Relations Board. His son Robert F. Wagner Jr., mayor of New York, created the first US collective bargaining system at the local level in the ‘60s. In ‘62, John F. Kennedy issued an executive order which said, "We're going to deal officially with public sector unions,” but it was all informal and non-statutory.It wasn't until Title VII of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act that unions had a formal, statutory role in our federal service system. This is shockingly new. To some extent, that was the great loss to many civil service reformers in ‘78. They wanted to get through a lot of these other big reforms about hiring and firing, but they gave up on the unions to try to get those. Some people think that exception swallowed the rest of the rules. The union power that was garnered in ‘78 overcame the other reforms people hoped to accomplish. Soon, you had the majority of the federal workforce subject to collective bargaining.But that's changing now too. Part of that Civil Service Reform Act said, “If your position is in a national security-related position, the president can determine it's not subject to collective bargaining.” Trump and the OPM have basically said, “Most positions in the federal government are national security-related, and therefore we're going to declare them off-limits to collective bargaining.” Some people say that sounds absurd. But 60% of the civilian civil service workforce is the Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Homeland Security. I am not someone who tries to go too easy on this crowd. I think there's a heck of a lot that needs to be reformed. But it's also worth remembering that the majority of the civil service workforce are in these three agencies that Republicans tend to like a lot.Now, whether people like Veterans Affairs is more of an open question. We have some particular laws there about opening up processes after the scandals in the 2010s about waiting lists and hospitals. You had veterans hospitals saying, "We're meeting these standards for getting veterans in the door for these waiting lists." But they were straight-up lying about those standards. Many people who were on these lists waiting for months to see a doctor died in the interim, some from causes that could have been treated had they seen a VA doctor. That led to Congress doing big reforms in the VA in 2014 and 2017, precisely because everyone realized this is a problem.So, Trump has put out these executive orders stopping collective bargaining in all of these agencies that touch national security. Some of those, like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), seem like a tough sell. I guess that, if you want to dig a mine and the Chinese are trying to dig their own mine and we want the mine to go quickly without the EPA pettifogging it, maybe. But the core ones are pretty solid. So far the courts have upheld the executive order to go in place. So collective bargaining there could be reformed.But in the rest of the government, there are these very extreme, long collective bargaining agreements between agencies and their unions. I've hit on the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) as one that's had pretty extensive bargaining with its union. When we created the TSA to supervise airport security, a lot of people said, "We need a crème de la crème to supervise airports after 9/11. We want to keep this out of union hands, because we know unions are going to make it difficult to move people around." The Obama administration said, "Nope, we're going to negotiate with the union." Now you have these huge negotiations with the unions about parking spots, hours of employment, uniforms, and everything under the sun. That makes it hard for managers in the TSA to decide when people should go where or what they should do.One thing we've talked about on Statecraft in past episodes — for instance, with John Kamensky, who was a pivotal figure in the Clinton-Gore reforms — was this relationship between government employees and “Beltway Bandits”: the contractors who do jobs you might think of as civil service jobs. One critique of that ‘90s Clinton-Gore push, “Reinventing Government,” was that although they shrank the size of the civil service on paper, the number of contractors employed by the federal government ballooned to fill that void. They did not meaningfully reduce the total number of people being paid by the federal government. Talk to me about the relationship between the civil service reform that you'd like to see and this army of folks who are not formally employees.Every government service is a combination of public employees and inputs, and private employees and inputs. There's never a single thing the government does — federal, state, or local — that doesn't involve inputs from the private sector. That could be as simple as the uniforms for the janitors. Even if you have a publicly employed janitor, who buys the mop? You're not manufacturing the mops.I understand the critique that the excessive focus on full-time employees in the 1990s led to contracting out some positions that could be done directly by the government. But I think that misses how much of the government can and should be contracted out. The basic Office of Management and Budget (OMB) statute [OMB Circular No. A-76] defining what is an essential government duty should still be the dividing line. What does the government have to do, because that is the public overseeing a process? Versus, what can the private sector just do itself?I always cite Stephen Goldsmith, the old mayor of Indianapolis. He proposed what he called the Yellow Pages test. If you open the Yellow Pages [phone directory] and three businesses do that business, the government should not be in that business. There's three garbage haulers out there. Instead of having a formal government garbage-hauling department, just contract out the garbage.With the internet, you should have a lot more opportunities to contract stuff out. I think that is generally good, and we should not have the federal government going about a lot of the day-to-day procedural things that don't require public input. What a lot of people didn't recognize is how much pressure that's going to put on government contracting officers at the federal level. Last time I checked there were 40,000 contracting officers. They have a lot of power. In the most recent year for which we have data, there were $750 billion in federal contracts. This is a substantial part of our economy. If you total state and local, we're talking almost 10% of our whole economy goes through government contracts. This is mind-boggling. In the public policy world, we should all be spending about 10% of our time thinking about contracting.One of the things I think everyone recognized is that contractors should have more authority. Some of the reform that happened with people like [Steven] Kelman — who was the Office of Federal Procurement Policy head in the ‘90s under Clinton — was, "We need to give these people more authority to just take a credit card and go buy a sheaf of paper if that's what they need. And we need more authority to get contract bids out appropriately.”The same message that animates civil service reform should animate these contracting discussions. The goal should be setting clear goals that you want — for either a civil servant or a contractor — and then giving that person the discretion to meet them. If you make the civil service more stultified, or make pay compression more extreme, you're going to have to contract more stuff out.People talk about the General Schedule [pay scale], but we haven't talked about the Federal Wage Schedule system at all, which is the blue-collar system that encompasses about 200,000 federal employees. Pay compression means those guys get paid really well. That means some managers rightfully think, "I'd like to have full-time supervision over some role, but I would rather contract it out, because I can get it a heck of a lot cheaper."There's a continuous relationship: If we make the civil service more stultified, we're going to push contracting out into more areas where maybe it wouldn't be appropriate. But a lot of things are always going to be appropriate to contract out. That means we need to give contracting officers and the people overseeing contracts a lot of discretion to carry out their missions, and not a lot of oversight from the Government Accountability Office or the courts about their bids, just like we shouldn't give OPM excess input into the civil service hiring process.This is a theme I keep harping on, on Statecraft. It's counterintuitive from a reformer's perspective, but it's true: if you want these processes to function better, you're going to have to stop nitpicking. You're going to have to ease up on the throttle and let people make their own decisions, even when sometimes you're not going to agree with them.This is a tension that's obviously happening in this administration. You've seen some clear interest in decentralization, and you've seen some centralization. In both the contract and the civil service sphere, the goal for the central agencies should be giving as many options as possible to the local managers, making sure they don't go extremely off the rails, but then giving those local managers and contracting officials the ability to make their own choices. The General Services Administration (GSA) under this administration is doing a lot of government-wide acquisition contracts. “We establish a contract for the whole government in the GSA. Usually you, the local manager, are not required to use that contract if you want computer services or whatever, but it's an option for you.”OPM should take a similar role. "Here's the system we have set up. You can take that and use it as you want. It's here for you, but it doesn't have to be used, because you might have some very particular hiring decisions to make.” Just like there shouldn't be one contracting decision that decides how we buy both a sheaf of computer paper and an aircraft carrier, there shouldn't be one hiring and firing process for a janitor and a nuclear physicist. That can't be a centralized process, because the very nature of human life is that there's an infinitude of possibilities that you need to allow for, and that means some amount of decentralization.I had an argument online recently about New York City's “buy local” requirement for certain procurement contracts. When they want to build these big public toilets in New York City, they have to source all the toilet parts from within the state, even if they're $200,000 cheaper in Portland, Oregon.I think it's crazy to ask procurement and contracting to solve all your policy problems. Procurement can't be about keeping a healthy local toilet parts industry. You just need to procure the toilet.This is another area where you see similar overlap in some of the civil service and contracting issues. A lot of cities have residency requirements for many of their positions. If you work for the city, you have to live inside the city. In New York, that means you've got a lot of police officers living on Staten Island, or right on the line of the north side of the Bronx, where they're inches away from Westchester. That drives up costs, and limits your population of potential employees.One of the most amazing things to me about the Biden Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was that it encouraged contracting officers to use residency requirements: “You should try to localize your hiring and contracting into certain areas.” On a national level, that cancels out. If both Wyoming and Wisconsin use residency requirements, the net effect is not more people hired from one of those states! So often, people expect the civil service and contracting to solve all of our ills and to point the way forward for the rest of the economy on discrimination, hiring, pay, et cetera. That just leads to, by definition, government being a lot more expensive than the private sector.Over the next three and a half years, what would you like to see the administration do on civil service reform that they haven't already taken up?I think some of the broad-scale layoffs, which seem to be slowing down, were counterproductive. I do think that their ability to achieve their ends was limited by the nature of the reduction-in-force regulations, which made them more counterproductive than they had to be. That's the situation they inherited. But that didn't mean you had to lay off a lot of people without considering the particular jobs they were doing now.And hiring quite a few of them back.Yeah. There are also debates obviously, within the administration, between DOGE and Russ Vought [director of the OMB] and some others on this. Some things, like the Schedule Policy/Career — which is the revival of Schedule F in the first Trump administration — are largely a step in the right direction. Counter to some of the critics, it says, “You can remove someone if they're in a policymaking position, just like if they were completely at-will. But you still have to hire from the typical civil service system.” So, for those concerned about politicization, that doesn't undermine that, because they can't just pick someone from the party system to put in there. I think that's good.They recently had a suitability requirement rule that I think moved in the right direction. That says, “If someone's not suitable for the workforce, there are other ways to remove them besides the typical procedures.” The ideal system is going to require some congressional input: it's to have a decentralization of hiring authority to individual managers. Which means the OPM — now under Scott Kupor, who has finally been confirmed — saying, "The OPM is here to assist you, federal managers. Make sure you stay within the broad lanes of what the administration's trying to accomplish. But once we give you your general goals, we're going to trust you to do that, including hiring.”I've mentioned it a few times, but part of the Chance to Compete Act — which was mentioned in one of Trump's Day One executive orders, people forget about this — was saying, “Implement the Chance to Compete Act to the maximum extent of the law.” Bring more subject-matter expertise into the hiring process, allow more discretion for managers and input into the hiring process. I think carrying that bipartisan reform out is going to be a big step, but it's going to take a lot more work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub

Larry Allen, GSA's associate administrator for the Office of Government-wide Policy, joins Off the Shelf for an engaging procurement policy discussion. Allen addresses the ongoing changes in policy that are shaping procurement operations government-wide. Much of the discussion focuses on the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul (RFO), highlighting the policy goals and operational imperatives driving the RFO. Allen also highlights the progress to date and shares key takeaways regarding recent deviations addressing FAR parts 8 and 12. He also gives an update on procurement consolidation, and the impact of the Schedules program moving to Transactional Data Reporting (TDR) and the resulting demise of the Price Reduction Clause (PRC). Finally, Allen explains the wide-ranging policy management role his office plays in supporting department and agencies across government. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this Big Ideas for Smaller Government episode of American Potential, host David From is joined by Jeremiah Mosteller, Policy Director at Americans for Prosperity, to expose the wasteful spending and inefficiencies at the General Services Administration (GSA)—the federal agency responsible for managing office buildings, procurement, and travel across the U.S. government. They revisit the infamous $800,000 Las Vegas conference scandal, complete with a $30,000 pool party and a 2,400 sq. ft. hotel suite—paid for by taxpayers. They also uncover the GSA's multi-billion-dollar mismanagement of a long-delayed Department of Homeland Security headquarters and reveal that the federal government is using just 25% of the office space it occupies. David and Jeremiah lay out a plan to save $1.88 billion over the next decade by selling underused federal buildings—many of which are sitting empty—and call on Congress to step up and demand accountability. This episode is a revealing look at how cutting GSA waste is one more step toward saving taxpayers trillions.

Federal employees traveling for business will not see an increase in the rates the government will pay for hotels, meals and incidentals in fiscal 2026. The General Services Administration says the per diem rates for the continental United States will stay the same for next fiscal year. GSA says the decision not to increase the rates reflects the government's commitment to being a responsible steward of taxpayer dollars, ensuring that federal funds are utilized appropriately, cost-effectively and for core mission-related activities. The standard rate applies to most of CONUS, which for lodging is $110 dollars. There are 296 non-standard areas with individual rates that are higher than the standard rate. The meals and incidental rates range from $59 to $92.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Friday, August 15th, 2025Today, Governor Gavin Newsom announces a special election in California to fight back against Republican gerrymandering in Texas; a DC man who threw a sandwich at law enforcement was a Department of Justice employee; an inspector general report finds severe shortages at VA hospitals; Kari Lake defends her Voice of America cuts as lawmakers warn her she overstepped; the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals sides with Black Louisianians by striking down their racists state legislative map; Trump announces his Kennedy Center Honorees and says he might include himself among them; and Allison and Dana read your Good News.Thank You, IQBARText DAILYBEANS to 64000 to get 20% off all IQBAR products, plus FREE shipping. Message and data rates may apply. Guest: John FugelsangTell Me Everything - John Fugelsang, The John Fugelsang PodcastJohn Fugelsang - Substack@johnfugelsang.bsky.social - Bluesky, @JohnFugelsang -TwitterSeparation of Church and Hate by John Fugelsang - Pre-order StoriesCalifornia will move forward with redistricting vote to counter Texas, Newsom says | ABC NewsTrump leaves his mark on the Kennedy Center Honors | POLITICO‘Severe' staff shortages at US veterans' hospitals, watchdog finds | Trump administration | The GuardianKari Lake defends VOA cuts in court after warnings from Capitol Hill | The Washington PostFifth Circuit Sides with Black Louisianians, Strikes Down Racially Discriminatory State Legislative Map | American Civil Liberties UnionFired DOJ employee could face prison for throwing sandwich at officers | The Washington PostGood Trouble “I just received an email from the Center for Reproductive Rights saying that Trump's GSA cut off the connection that let visitors to their website send comments to regulations.gov. The CCR has been asking people to use that link to voice their opposition to the Trump administration's attempt to ban abortion care for veterans and their families, even in cases of rape, incest or medical emergencies.  Wouldn't it be great if Beans listeners made up for the lost  comments by sending thousands today?” Go to regulations.gov and search for Reproductive Health Services or use this link: regulations.gov/commenton/VA-2025-VHA-0073-0002 From The Good Newsregulations.gov/commenton/VA-2025-VHA-0073-0002Lessons from Cats for Surviving Fascism by Stewart Reynolds | Hachette Book GroupErika EvansReminder - you can see the pod pics if you become a Patron. The good news pics are at the bottom of the show notes of each Patreon episode! That's just one of the perks of subscribing! patreon.com/muellershewrote Our Donation LinksNational Security Counselors - DonateMSW Media, Blue Wave California Victory Fund | ActBlueWhistleblowerAid.org/beansFederal workers - feel free to email AG at fedoath@pm.me and let me know what you're going to do, or just vent. I'm always here to listen. Find Upcoming Actions 50501 Movement, No Kings.org, Indivisible.orgDr. Allison Gill - Substack, BlueSky , TikTok, IG, TwitterDana Goldberg - BlueSky, Twitter, IG, facebook, danagoldberg.comCheck out more from MSW Media - Shows - MSW Media, Cleanup On Aisle 45 pod, The Breakdown | SubstackShare your Good News or Good TroubleMSW Good News and Good TroubleHave some good news; a confession; or a correction to share?Good News & Confessions - The Daily Beanshttps://www.dailybeanspod.com/confessional/ Listener Survey:http://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx?pubid=BffJOlI7qQcF&ver=shortFollow the Podcast on Apple:The Daily Beans on Apple PodcastsWant to support the show and get it ad-free and early?The Daily Beans | SupercastThe Daily Beans & Mueller, She Wrote | PatreonThe Daily Beans | Apple Podcasts

Send us fan responses! What if everything you thought you knew about your legal identity was actually designed to limit your financial sovereignty? Don Kilam pulls back the curtain on a system few truly understand: how courts, banks, and governments use your name as a financial instrument.This eye-opening exploration takes you through the historical roots of admiralty jurisdiction, explaining how the Cesti Que Vie Act effectively declared individuals "lost at sea," allowing governments to assume custody of people and property. You'll discover why your name appears in all capital letters on official documents and how this represents not you as a living being but a legal entity functioning as a "special purpose vehicle."Kilam meticulously connects the dots between the Social Security Trust Fund, where citizens function only as beneficiaries rather than trustees, and how courts operate as banks—complete with judges sitting on "banks" and clerks functioning as CPAs for your legal identity. Most importantly, he reveals how GSA bond forms can be used to reclaim your position in this legal-financial framework.Whether you're struggling with court cases, seeking financial sovereignty, or simply curious about the hidden mechanics of our legal system, this episode provides practical knowledge you won't find in conventional education. Learn how to transform from a mere beneficiary of a public trust to a position more akin to a trustee with greater control over your financial affairs.Ready to take control of your legal and financial identity? Text "Private Life" to 702-200-4900 or join Kilam's upcoming in-depth class on July 23, 2025, where he'll explain these concepts in greater detail. Your prosperity isn't just possible—it's your divine birthright.https://donkilam.com FOLLOW THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD - DON KILAMGO GET HIS BOOK ON AMAZON NOW! https://www.amazon.com/Cant-Touch-This-Diplomatic-Immunity/dp/B09X1FXMNQ https://open.spotify.com/track/5QOUWyNahqcWvQ4WQAvwjj?autoplay=trueSupport the showhttps://donkilam.com

Responsible Seafood Summit - REGISTER NOW Responsible Seafood Summit - AGENDAEmail the Summit team - summit@globalseafood.org* Episode Clarification: Oceanariums are not always located directly in the ocean. While many oceanariums are situated near the coast and utilize natural seawater, some are located inland and rely on transported seawater or artificial seawater systems. Check out our website!: https://www.globalseafood.org/podcastFollow us on social media!Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | InstagramShare your sustainability tips with us podcast@globalseafood.org!If you want to be more involved in the work that we do, become a member of the Global Seafood Alliance: https://www.globalseafood.org/membership/ The views expressed by external guests on Aquademia are their own and do not reflect the opinions of Aquademia or the Global Seafood Alliance. Listeners are advised to independently verify information and consult experts for any specific advice or decisions.

The General Services Administration rolled out a new governmentwide tool Thursday that gives federal agencies the ability to test major artificial intelligence models, a continuation of Trump administration efforts to ramp up government use of automation. The AI evaluation suite, titled USAi.gov, launched Thursday morning and allow federal agencies to test various AI models, including those from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Meta to start, two senior GSA officials told FedScoop. The launch of USAi underscores the Trump administration's increasing appetite for AI integration into federal government workspaces. The GSA has described these tools as a way to help federal workers with time-consuming tasks, like document summaries, and give government officials access to some of the country's leading AI firms. The GSA, according to one of the officials, will act as a “curator of sorts” for determining which models will be available for testing on USAi. The official noted that additional models are being considered for the platform, with input from GSA's industry and federal partners, and that American-made models are the primary focus. Grok, the chatbot made by Elon Musk's xAI firm, is notably not included on the platform for its launch Thursday. Anthropic and OpenAI, two of the country's leading AI companies, recently announced that they're offering their powerful models to federal agencies for $1 for the next year. But the new deals, which are both available through a General Services Administration OneGov contract vehicle, don't on their own clear the way for widespread government adoption of artificial intelligence. Instead, the new financial incentive seems to be daring government officials to move quickly and approve the technology as soon as possible. Currently, no major AI provider is authorized under FedRAMP, a critical security program that allows agencies to use a company's cloud services — including software or models offered on a cloud service — across government. While several companies — including Anthropic, xAI and OpenAI — have released government-focused product suites, they're still somewhat dependent on cloud providers like Microsoft and Amazon that have already cleared the FedRAMP process. If AI companies want to sell much of their technology directly to the government, they need their own authorization-to-operate or ATO. What's changed, though, is that federal officials now have a new reason to move through security review processes more quickly, a former GSA employee and another person familiar with the matter both told FedScoop. That strategy could involve going through an authorization-to-operate process through an agency's authorizing official — typically, their chief information officer — as well as the security review process explicated by FedRAMP, both people said. GSA is now looking at strategies to speed up the process. An agency spokesperson confirmed that these companies still need to seek FedRAMP authorization if they want to offer their technology directly. But to make that happen faster, GSA is now consulting with the Chief Information Officers Council and the board that oversees FedRAMP about “prioritization for AI companies” that are added to GSA's multiple award schedule. 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.

“If you're as good as you say you are, you should be able to keep your cost structure down, deliver the mission and the outcome, and still make a margin.” - Josh Gruenbaum, Commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service at the GSA The General Services Administration (GSA), responsible for Federal contracting, has been making DOGE-style headlines of their own this year. In late June, they sent a letter to a number of large consulting firms under contract, looking for opportunities to reduce spending and better understand the work that is underway. Josh Gruenbaum, who is overseeing the review, specifically requested “No consultant gobbledygook” in the responses. The GSA has signaled a mindset shift from time-and-materials to outcome based contracts, a dynamic that is likely to impact private sector consulting contracts and spending as well. In this episode of the Art of Supply podcast, Kelly Barner looks into this shift and what it will require from all involved parties: How the government defines consulting services The multi-round outreach process being led by the Federal government and how firms are responding How to shift to outcome based agreements and the pressure of AI is likely to change the future of consulting Links: Kelly Barner on LinkedIn Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter  Art of Supply on AOP Art of Supply on YouTube Subscribe to This Week in Procurement

Two-time Trump administration vet Lynne Parker has exited as principal deputy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy following the release of the administration's AI plan. In a LinkedIn post Tuesday, Parker said she was “passing the torch” and had fulfilled her mission of helping the Trump administration “hit the ground running,” citing the launch of AI innovation and education initiatives as well as drone-focused policy, and the administration's “gold standard” science initiative. She said she plans to return to her retirement in Tennessee. Parker joined the administration in January, working alongside OSTP Director Michael Kratsios. In addition to her OSTP title, she was also named executive director of the President's Council of Advisors for Science and Technology. Parker had returned to the current Trump administration after serving as deputy CTO and founding director of the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Office. The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on her departure. In addition to Parker, OSTP senior policy advisor Dean Ball also recently announced he was leaving the White House following the release of the administration's anticipated AI Action Plan last month. Ball rejoined the Foundation for American Innovation, a technology-focused think tank formerly known as the Lincoln Network, as a fellow focused on AI policy and governance models for emerging technology. The cloud management company Box is the latest agency to strike a deal with the General Services Administration to offer its artificial intelligence services to the federal government at a fraction of the normal price. The GSA said in an announcement Wednesday that federal agencies can buy Box's Enterprise Plus for Government software for up to 75% off and the company's Enterprise for Advanced Government software discounted by up to 65% of the listed price for a year-long term. The announcement follows a series of other deals with major AI firms like OpenAI and Anthropic that aim to increase the use of AI across the federal government. Like the other OneGov collaborations, the GSA said Box's AI platform will help boost productivity at agencies, automate workflows and assist with tasks like document generation, e-signatures and forms. 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.

In this episode of the Survive & Thrive series on the Quality Hub podcast, host Xavier Francis is joined by Scott Dawson, President of Core Business Solutions, and Michael LeJeune, host of the Game Changers for Government Contractors podcast, to explore how small businesses can navigate the evolving landscape of government contracting during times of crisis. The conversation covers market volatility, the importance of diversification, rising use of GSA schedules, and the implications of CMMC compliance. Michael shares actionable strategies for businesses in distress, outlines three contractor mindsets, and underscores the critical role of relationships and proactive pipeline development in weathering market shifts. With a blend of humor, optimism, and seasoned advice, this episode equips listeners with the clarity and tools needed to survive now—and win later.   Helpful Resources: Michael LeJeune: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeljlejeune/  Email: mlejeune@rsmfederal.com Website: www.rsmfederal.com How is ISO 9001 Implemented?:  https://www.thecoresolution.com/how-is-iso-9001-implemented For All Things ISO 9001:2015: https://www.thecoresolution.com/iso-9001-2015 Contact us at 866.354.0300 or email us at info@thecoresolution.com A Plethora of Articles: https://www.thecoresolution.com/free-learning-resources ISO 9001 Consulting: https://www.thecoresolution.com/iso-consulting

Federal agencies will now have access to Anthropic's Claude model for $1, the General Services Administration announced Tuesday, continuing the agency's push for artificial intelligence products across government. Under the OneGov deal, all three branches of government will be able to use Anthropic's Claude for Enterprise and Claude for Government for a nominal $1 fee. Approval for members of Congress and the judiciary is pending, the GSA noted. It is the latest in a series of deals between private AI firms and the federal government to increase the use of automation in agency workflows and boost workers' productivity and efficiency. Anthropic said in a release Tuesday: “We believe the U.S. public sector should have access to the most advanced AI capabilities to tackle complex challenges, from scientific research to constituent services. By combining broad accessibility with uncompromising security standards, we're helping ensure AI serves the public interest.” Anthropic's Claude for Government models have FedRAMP High certification and can be used by federal workers dealing with “sensitive unclassified work,” while Claude for Enterprise models have expanded features for data protection, Anthropic said. Anthropic said it will also offer technical support for agencies to implement its products into workflows. The Federal Risk Management and Authorization Program has already approved more than twice as many government cloud services in fiscal year 2025 as all of fiscal 2024, the General Services Administration announced Monday. FedRAMP reached 114 authorizations in July for fiscal 2025, along with four new cloud services through the FedRAMP 20x revamp program, according to a GSA statement. In fiscal 2024, FedRAMP authorized 49 cloud service providers, according to a GSA spokesperson. The reform program, unveiled in March, is focused on simplifying the authorization process and shaving the approval timeline from months to weeks. Eventually, agency sponsorship will no longer be needed to win authorization, a process that is often expensive and time-consuming. The new numbers come just over a year since the Office of Management and Budget published a memo calling for the modernization of the cloud authorization process. GSA said FedRAMP had a “significant backlog” at the time of the memo, with authorizations taking more than a year. A year later, FedRAMP's increased use of automation and streamlined workflows cut the wait time to about five weeks, the GSA said.

Ep. 264 How Automation Is Accelerating Digital Transformation Across Federal Agencies Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn   https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Want to listen to other episodes? www.Federaltechpodcast.com In this episode of the Federal Tech Podcast, host John Gilroy interviews Nabil Amiri, Vice President of Business Development for the federal practice at NWN. The discussion introduces NWN's expanding role in helping federal agencies adopt advanced technologies, particularly artificial intelligence (AI), as part of broader digital transformation efforts. Amiri explains NWN's recent acquisition of Leverage Information, a move that brought deep federal experience—especially with defense, intelligence, and civilian agencies—into NWN's already strong commercial portfolio. This merger allows NWN to deliver robust, secure IT solutions tailored to the complexities of federal requirements such as FedRAMP, STIGs, and Zero Trust. He emphasizes that innovation and compliance can—and must—coexist in the federal space. The conversation touches on the real-world challenges federal agencies face, like outdated systems, budget cuts, workforce reductions, and tool sprawl. Amiri critiques the proliferation of “single panes of glass” in IT environments, which often complicate rather than simplify operations. NWN's strength lies in delivering visibility across systems, reducing complexity, and enabling security and automation through integrated, scalable platforms. Key themes include Zero Trust architecture, infrastructure modernization, automation, and streamlining tech procurement. NWN's flexible acquisition pathways (e.g., via GSA and SEWP contracts) make it easier for agencies to respond quickly to crises like COVID or cyberattacks. On AI, Amiri emphasizes its role in real-time data analysis to improve visibility and prevent outages, critical for mission continuity. NWN remains vendor-neutral, working with a broad ecosystem of partners to deliver best-in-class, mission-focused outcomes. Looking ahead, Amiri confidently predicts that AI will become foundational to all federal IT strategies, driving operational resilience and transformation in the next five years. The interview sets the stage for deeper dives into emerging topics like agentic AI and cloud-native strategies in future discussions.

If you're even thinking about government contracting or consulting, let me give you the inside scoop—the #1 bottleneck in the industry is finding good contractors. In today's windup, I break down exactly how having a list of reliable, responsible contractors (even just five!) can make you a go-to source overnight and potentially earn you thousands a day in referrals or direct contract opportunities. Whether it's concrete in the Keys, painters in Florida, or drivers in California, everyone is scrambling to fill the gap. I share real examples from my own team—projects delayed, opportunities missed—simply because we didn't have people to call. You don't need certifications or a GSA schedule to start. All you need is a spreadsheet, a phone number, and some hustle. If you know contractors, you've already got leverage. And if you don't get out from behind the screen and attend a job site visit or contractor event—you're missing massive opportunity. I challenge you to become a solution to this billion-dollar problem. Let's get it!

The General Services Administration has been on a roll lately, negotiating what it calls OneGov agreements with some of the federal government's biggest IT vendors. On Thursday, GSA announced it has negotiated a governmentwide purchasing agreement with Amazon Web Services that could save agencies up to $1 billion through credits for AWS services. The deal is the latest in a flurry of OneGov agreements GSA has initiated under the Trump administration to consolidate and centralize IT purchasing at scale and unlock greater, consistent savings for civilian agencies, rather than agencies negotiating one-off contracts with vendors themselves. As part of the governmentwide package, AWS has come to the table offering direct incentive credits that could total up to $1 billion in value for cloud services, modernization support and training. The deal will run through Dec. 31, 2028. In addition to streamlining federal IT procurement by working as a single, unified federal entity, GSA's OneGov initiative also aims to work directly with technology developers themselves, rather than intermediaries such as value-added resellers. As such, GSA touts the potential for additional savings by contracting directly with the cloud giant for its services. That deal comes just a day after GSA announced a similar one with OpenAI that will offer its ChatGPT tool to federal agencies for just $1. It marks the artificial intelligence firm's latest effort to expand use of its generative AI chatbot across the federal government. Like the AWS deal, GSA said the agreement with OpenAI supports the White House's AI Action Plan, which encourages widespread adoption of AI in the federal government. Through the partnership, OpenAI's ChatGPT Enterprise product can be purchased by federal agencies for $1 per agency for one year. GSA called this a “deeply discounted rate.” Commenting on the deal, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement: “One of the best ways to make sure AI works for everyone is to put it in the hands of the people serving the country.” 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.

Organizations and leaders representing the interests of statistical professionals and public data access strongly criticized President Donald Trump's order to fire the leader of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after lower than expected jobs numbers Friday, saying his comments undermine public trust in that information. Their responses came after Trump posted on his social media site Friday afternoon with allegations that Commissioner Erika McEntarfer “faked” BLS statistics in an effort to help Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, pointing to instances of revisions — which are a standard part of the agency's process. Trump's comments and order to fire McEntarfer appeared to primarily be in response to a BLS jobs report that showed lower figures than anticipated, which sent shockwaves through the statistical community. Multiple leaders, including his own former BLS commissioner, spoke out against the action in no uncertain terms, saying the president's comments politicize the data. President Donald Trump has nominated Edward Forst, a longtime financial services executive, to serve as the next administrator of the General Services Administration. The nomination was received in the Senate and referred to the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Thursday, congressional records show. According to his LinkedIn profile, Forst was most recently the chairman of Lion Capital, a private equity firm, and previously served as president and CEO of Cushman and Wakefield, a real estate services firm. Earlier in his career, Forst spent nearly 17 years at Goldman Sachs, and in 2008, he served as an adviser to the Treasury secretary for a year, per his LinkedIn. The nomination follows various staff shakeups at GSA and comes just weeks after Trump tapped State Department leader Michael Rigas to serve as GSA's acting administrator. 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.

Today's guest is Anthony Miller, Partner and CEO at CGS Federal. Founded in 2017, Contact Government Services (CGS) simplifies and enhances government operations by optimizing human, technical and financial resources. They combine cutting-edge technology with world-class personnel to deliver sustainable, customized solutions that meet your specific needs. With an agile and empathetic approach, they work closely with you to solve complex challenges because they care as much about your agency's success as you do.In this episode, Anthony talks about:0:00 His journey from GSA building tech to launching CGS Federal in 20172:27 From overcoming early setbacks to now thriving in the govtech industry3:57 Their three-prong approach - introduce, integrate, innovate5:46 Introducing AI to law enforcement as mission-enhancing tool6:56 Integrating AI through low/no-code tools to empower non-tech staff8:38 Innovating legal tech with AI to simplify government eDiscovery11:18 Focus on building talent, being authentic and truly serving the government13:46 Expanding AI with customers and guiding government with trusted tools17:03 Why CGS Federal is a great place to work

The General Services Administration continues to shake up its leadership ranks. The top federal buildings official at GSA is out before implementing a reorganization plan for his part of the agency under his leadership, GSA set a goal of cutting the federal real estate portfolio in half. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has nominated a new permanent head to lead GSA Federal News Network story Heckman is here with more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The General Services Administration is looking into how it can implement its internal artificial intelligence chatbot across the federal government, the agency's top AI and data official said Thursday, the latest indication that the Trump administration is planning on streamlining government access to AI. The new initiative marks the “next iteration” of the GSAi platform, Zach Whitman, the agency's chief AI officer and data officer, said during a speech at the Digital Government Institute's annual convention in Washington, D.C. The GSA rolled out GSAi internally in March after a lengthy research and development process, which involved an AI safety team that evaluated a number of major AI vendors. Like other AI chatbots available to the public, the tool was initially designed to respond to user prompts and assist in basic tasks. GSAi gives users access to a number of models, including ones from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, and aims to increase workflow efficiency at the agency. This next chapter, Whitman said, is “one where other agencies could use what we have, use it in an isolated environment, use it for their specific purposes and own it in a tenant-based model.” The Trump administration on Wednesday announced an initiative to improve the digital health ecosystem for patients and providers, leaning on the voluntary support of dozens of health and tech companies. More than 60 companies — including data networks, health systems and providers, and developers of AI and other applications — have committed to improving the flow of electronic health information, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That group of adopters includes tech leaders such as Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, Google, and OpenAI. The announcement comes after a May request for information that generated nearly 1,400 comments, which “were instrumental” in forming the initiative, according to CMS. It also appears to primarily be a collaborative effort between CMS and the Department of Government Efficiency. In addition to CMS's announcement, the White House held an event Wednesday with remarks from CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz, DOGE acting director Amy Gleason, President Donald Trump, and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In her remarks, Gleason spoke about her daughter's experience navigating the health system as someone with a rare disease and the difficulty posed by transferring physical copies of her medical history from place to place. 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.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee sent a letter to the General Services Administration on Friday demanding more information about how the agency is using Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot built by Elon Musk's xAI. The correspondence comes after FedScoop reporting earlier this month revealed that government coders at GSA seemed to be looking at integrating Grok into their artificial intelligence work. Other sources told FedScoop that Grok had recently been approved for integration as an option into the GSAi app, a platform the agency has built to help federal workers access various generative AI models. Four days after the publication of FedScoop's story, xAI officially announced a “Grok for Government” service and confirmed that the company had been working to make its product available through GSA. As a result, Grok said ”every federal government department, agency, or office” could now access the company's tools. xAI also announced a $200 million Defense Department contract. The federal government's interest in using Grok — which recently espoused antisemitic and pro-Hitler content — has received pushback from Democrats. A group of Jewish Democrats recently wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about their concerns with the tool. Democrats in the House AI Caucus have also raised issues with the use of Grok, as has Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who condemned the Pentagon contract on the chamber's floor. But the latest letter, obtained by FedScoop, demands more information on the GSA's work with Grok. The letter was addressed to Stephen Ehikian, the deputy GSA administrator who led the agency on an acting basis until earlier this week, and signed by Reps. Robert Garcia of California and Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts, the current and former ranking members of the committee, respectively. An outage last week of Starlink, the satellite internet service run by Elon Musk's company SpaceX, did have an impact on some services in the federal government. While several civilian federal agencies told FedScoop that the service interruption didn't disrupt operations, the U.S. Space Force confirmed that Starshield, the military-focused communications service on the Starlink network, was taken offline during the outage. “The Space Systems Command Commercial SATCOM Communications Office procures Starshield Global Access services over the Starlink Satellites/network,” a spokesperson for Space Systems Command told FedScoop. The spokesperson continued: “As such, the global outage did affect CSCO customers for the entire duration of the outage (~2.5hrs for most users). Services had a partial restoration midway through the outage and a complete restoration by the stated end time.” Defense customers are currently able to access Starshield through the Space Force, among other procurement mechanisms, SpaceX's website states. SpaceX says Starshield is for “national defense use cases” while Starlink “is not intended for any military end-uses or end-users.” Several branches of the U.S. military are currently testing or using Starshield, including the Air Force and the Navy. A spokesperson for the U.S. Coast Guard told FedScoop earlier this month that the agency began installing both Starlink and Starshield back in 2023. 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.

Uber is the newest example of a consumer technology company entering into a government-wide arrangement with the General Services Administration, which negotiated the pact on behalf of every federal agency.Frank Konkel, editor-in-chief for all GovExec publications including WT, joins for this episode to break down the finer details of that agreement and how contractors are a part of it too. Then there is the bigger picture theme for Frank and Ross to talk about: how GSA views it as fitting into the agency's OneGov strategy for more consolidated buys of common tech goods and services.Which also was the subject of Frank's interview with GSA's deputy administrator Stephen Ehikian at GovExec's Government Efficiency Summit on July 17. Frank and Ross share their takeaways from that conversation with each other.Click here to watch the Summit, which was recorded by C-SPAN.WT 360: All roads lead back to GSA in this ‘Editor's Summit' episodeGSA, Uber partner to cut travel costs for feds, military and select contractorsGSA's vision for procurement is about having 'one wallet'GSA plans to optimize operations following cost-cutting, agency head saysNew OMB memo lays out GSA's plan to consolidate contractsIndustry awaits significant disruption as GSA works on contract takeoversGSA prepping plans to move NASA SEWP and NIH contract vehicles under its managementGSA's procurement chief details administration's acquisition reform plansGSA unveils new unified procurement strategyANALYSIS: GSA's new procurement strategy begins with consumer tech

Contact Ethical Seafood ResearchEthical Seafood Research WebsiteTilapia Welfare App and Online CoursesCheck out ESR's new Activity Book for childrenNewly Released Educational module: Intro to Fish WelfareCheck out our website!: https://www.globalseafood.org/podcastFollow us on social media!Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | InstagramShare your sustainability tips with us podcast@globalseafood.org!If you want to be more involved in the work that we do, become a member of the Global Seafood Alliance: https://www.globalseafood.org/membership/ The views expressed by external guests on Aquademia are their own and do not reflect the opinions of Aquademia or the Global Seafood Alliance. Listeners are advised to independently verify information and consult experts for any specific advice or decisions.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has made it a top priority to dismantle what it perceives as federal bureaucratic bloat. But it's the belief of some that those cuts to the federal workforce and federal programs have gone too far, damaging the government's capacity to meet its mission and serve the American public. Rob Shriver, former acting OPM director during the Biden administration, is one of those. And in his new role as Managing Director of Democracy Forward's Civil Service Strong initiative, he's helping launch a new Civil Service Defense and Innovation Fellowship Program that aims to rebuild that lost capacity by calling on former government officials to “produce research and analysis documenting the scope and consequences of cuts to federal agencies, and develop and incubate innovative work to inform future policymaking and to rebuild government capacity.” Shriver joins the podcast to discuss the state of the federal workforce, the new fellowship and what he sees ahead. Let's go now to that interview. The Department of Defense's No. 2 IT official for the past two years is leaving the role, the department announced Monday. Leslie Beavers, who also served as acting DOD CIO for a period at the end of the Biden administration and during the early days of the second Trump administration, will step down as DOD principal deputy CIO at the end of September. In a social media post, the DOD Office of the CIO congratulated Beavers who announced Monday that she will be stepping down from her position at the end of September after more than 30 years of uniformed and civilian service. Beavers played a key role in the Office of the CIO's delivery of its Fulcrum IT strategy in 2024 with then-CIO John Sherman. When Sherman stepped down from the CIO role at the end of June 2024, Beavers filled it temporarily until Katie Arrington was appointed to perform the duties of CIO in March. Since then, Beavers retained her deputy role, supporting new efforts under Arrington's leadership like the Software Fast Track initiative and “blowing up” the Risk Management Framework. It's unclear what Beavers' next role will be after her departure or who will take her place when she officially leaves. President Donald Trump has tapped State Department leader Michael Rigas to serve as the General Services Administration's new acting chief, the agency announced Monday. It marks the third GSA appointment for Rigas, who has spent the past few months at the State Department as the deputy secretary for management and resources, according to a statement from Marianne Copenhaver, associate administrator for the GSA. Copenhaver wrote in a statement to FedScoop: “We're thrilled to have his institutional knowledge, leadership, and decades of experience in the private and public sector. Under Mike's leadership, GSA will continue to deliver effective and efficient government services in real estate, acquisition, and technology.” Stephen Ehikian, who has served since January as GSA's acting administrator, will continue his role as deputy administrator, Copenhaver added. Ehikian is a former Salesforce vice president and self-proclaimed “serial entrepreneur.” 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.

he GSA schedule just became the hottest asset in government contracting. In this episode of Game Changers for Government Contractors, host Michael LeJeune sits down with RSM Federal sales strategist Rich Ernest to break down why GSA schedules are more critical than ever thanks to a recent executive order pushing 400–500% more spending through them. They expose costly myths, explain why getting a schedule doesn't guarantee success, and outline how to market your schedule effectively. Whether you go the DIY route or hire help, this episode shows you how to do it smartly, avoid rip-offs, and position your company to win once you're on schedule. Don't wait! Missing out on this shift could lock you out of the federal market. ----- Frustrated with your government contracting journey? Join our group coaching community here: federal-access.com/gamechangers Grab my #1 bestselling book, "I'm New to Government Contract. Where Should I Start?" Here: https://amzn.to/4hHLPeE Book a call with me here: https://calendly.com/michaellejeune/govconstrategysession

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday to establish a new classification of federal workers in policy-related roles who aren't career civil servants called “Schedule G.” The schedule appears to create another avenue for political officials in the U.S. government and follows myriad efforts by the Trump administration to reshape the federal workforce, including reductions-in-force, terminations, and programs to incentivize worker departures. In a fact sheet accompanying the order, the White House described Schedule G as an effort to increase “the horsepower for agency implementation of Administration policy” and fill a gap in federal hiring classifications. Per the fact sheet, existing schedules don't “provide for non-career appointments to policy-making or policy-advocating roles.” Federal workers at the General Services Administration are increasingly using the agency's internal AI chatbot GSAi on an everyday basis, the agency's acting head said Thursday. Stephen Ehikian, GSA's acting administrator and deputy administrator, offered a glimpse into how the agency is utilizing AI for its day-to-day activities during an appearance at GovExec's Government Efficiency Summit. “Fifty percent, on average, of GSA employees are using this tool every single day,” Ehikian said of GSAi. It is not clear how this percentage was determined. The agency revealed the tool in March, touting it as a way to boost efficiency and help automate repetitive tasks within the federal government. Like other AI chatbots available to the public, the GSAi tool was designed to respond to user prompts and assist in basic tasks. Nearly four months later, workers are now turning to GSAi for a range of activities, Ehikian said, “from writing descriptions of properties before we send them to markets, to contracting officers using it to review contracts or thinking of outcome-based pricing initiatives, to people learning how to code.” 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.

From the beginning of the Trump administration's crusade to remake federal contracting, political leaders made it clear how they saw industry and what they thought of the value of what they considered consulting contracts. As one industry executive told us it has been very adversarial. Now five months into the review of consulting contracts, vendors and Industry observers say they've adjusted to the new normal. Many are now waiting for GSA to act on the data and ideas they provided. Federal News Network's Executive Editor Jason Miller joins me now to discuss how the last five months have turned GSA and vendor relationships inside out, and what the new normal looks like today. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

xAI, the artificial intelligence company led by Elon Musk, announced new efforts Monday to get its generative AI tool, Grok, into the hands of federal government officials. In a post to X, the company announced “Grok for Government,” which it described as a suite of products aimed at U.S. government customers. FedScoop reported on the General Services Administration's interest in Grok last week. xAI disclosed two new government partnerships: a new contract with the Defense Department, which we'll get to in a moment, and that the tool was available to purchase through GSA. “This allows every federal government department, agency, or office, to purchase xAI products,” the post added. “We're hiring mission driven engineers who want to join the cause.” The new products from xAI follow the introduction of government-specific AI intelligence platforms from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. The announcement was made just days after xAI's formal apology for the chatbot's recent antisemitic outputs. Last Thursday, FedScoop reported that government coders at GSA were discussing, on GitHub, incorporating Grok into a testing sandbox associated with a yet-to-launch tool called AI.gov and GSAi, a GSA-created AI platform. Anthropic, Google and xAI will join OpenAI on the CDAO's nascent effort to partner with industry on pioneering artificial intelligence projects focused on national security applications. Under the individual contracts — each worth up to $200 million — the Pentagon will have access to some of the most advanced AI capabilities developed by the four companies, including large language models, agentic AI workflows, cloud-based infrastructure and more. Chief Digital and AI Officer Doug Matty said in a statement: “The adoption of AI is transforming the Department's ability to support our warfighters and maintain strategic advantage over our adversaries. Leveraging commercially available solutions into an integrated capabilities approach will accelerate the use of advanced AI as part of our Joint mission essential tasks in our warfighting domain as well as intelligence, business, and enterprise information systems.” OpenAI received the first contract for the effort June 17 and will create prototypes of agentic workflows for national security missions. According to CDAO, work with all four vendors will expand the Pentagon's experience with emerging AI capabilities, as well as give the companies better insights into how their technology can benefit the department. 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.

Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn   https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Want to listen to other episodes? www.Federaltechpodcast.com   Artificial Intelligence can dazzle people to the point where they lose focus on the objectives of the federal agency. In today's interview, Adam Lurie from Knexus begins by discussing a corporate strategy that combines research and innovation with engineering. This approach has been consistent over decades of serving the federal government. One stellar example of this fusion was their success in the $919 million 10-year Supply Chain Risk Illumination Professional Tools and Services (SCRIPTS) Blanket Purchase Agreement from the GSA. One of the challenges in “applied” AI is the data itself. Often, particularly in the federal government, there are strict rules governing the handling of data. We have all heard about the encryption of data at rest and data in transit. Given this limitation, it may be challenging to establish an iterative process that optimizes security and reliability. The answer from Knexus is to use synthetic data to emulate an actual sensitive federal data set. That way, several methods can be used to rapidly identify foreign influence, monitor vendor integrity, and visualize complex risk management scenarios. This innovation enables developers to optimize the security of a supply chain, taking into account variations that incorporate modern technologies and adapt to emerging threats. A key partner in this creative approach is Google. Knexus was recently named 2025's Google Cloud Business Application Partner of the Year for Government. Retaining security while innovating will be the key to applying AI to solve federal business needs now and in the future.  

Employees at the General Services Administration appear poised to test Grok 3, the artificial intelligence tool built by Elon Musk's company xAI, according to a GitHub page referencing the agency's work. The GitHub page operated by GSA and its digital government group Technology Transformation Services references the Grok AI model as one it is testing and that the team is actively discussing as part of its 10x AI Sandbox. A GSA spokesperson told FedScoop in a response to an inquiry about the agency's work with Grok “GSA is evaluating the use of several top-tier AI solutions to empower agencies and our public servants to best achieve their goals. We welcome all American companies and models who abide by our terms and conditions.”A post from Tuesday shows what appears to be one GSA employee trying to access Grok 3 for testing, but struggling to do so. Several names of the people active on the GitHub page match those of workers affiliated with GSA. The 10x AI Sandbox project is described on GitHub as “a venture studio in collaboration with the General Services Administration (GSA). Its primary goal is to enable federal agencies to experiment with artificial intelligence (AI) in a secure, FedRAMP-compliant environment.” It continues: “By providing access to base models from leading AI companies and offering advanced UI features, the sandbox empowers agencies to test and validate new AI use cases efficiently.” The public version of the 10x AI Sandbox project page on GitHub was taken down after the publication of this story, redirecting now to a 404 error page. Interest in testing Grok comes as GSA continues to work on GSAi, an artificial intelligence tool built by the agency and meant to help employees access multiple AI models. At launch, the GSAi tool included access to several systems, including tools from Anthropic and Meta. Notably, Grok came under fire last week after promoting various antisemitic statements on the Musk-owned social media platform X. A top digital rights group is pushing back on the IRS's data-sharing agreement with the Department of Homeland Security, writing in a new court filing that the pact violates federal tax code and fails to take into account the real-world consequences of bulk data disclosure. In an amicus brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the Electronic Frontier Foundation argued that the “historical context” of the tax code section that ensures confidentiality of returns and return information “favors a narrow interpretation of disclosure provisions.” EFF also made the case for why the bulk disclosure of taxpayer information — in this case to Immigration and Customs Enforcement — is especially harmful due to “record linkage errors” that set the stage for “an increase in mistaken and dangerous ICE enforcement actions against taxpayers.” Nonprofit groups sued the Trump administration in March, shortly after the data-sharing deal between the IRS and ICE was announced. Soon after, the tax agency's then-acting commissioner resigned, reportedly in protest. In May, a Trump-appointed federal judge refused to block the agreement, allowing the IRS to continue delivering taxpayer data to ICE. The ruling, DHS said in a statement, was “a victory for the American people and for common sense.” As the D.C. Circuit Court considers the appeal, the Electronic Frontier Foundation wants to make sure that the “historical context” of tax and privacy law is taken into account. 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.

Episode 205  -  Epstein is a DISTRACTION, KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE PRIZE, OBUMMER Mate Makes $122000 a month from GSA and MORE!   Join Alpha Sierra 288, Bravo Golf 592, and Kilo Romeo for discussions regarding the #HardTurth about today's stories the lamestream won't talk about.    (X): https://x.com/Signal50Podcast   GETTR: Follow Bravo Golf 592 below: https://gettr.com/user/bravogolf592   Truth Social: Follow Bravo Golf 592: https://truthsocial.com/@BravoGolf592   Truth Social: Follow Alpha Sierra 288: https://truthsocial.com/@AlphaSierra288   GETTR: Follow Alpha Sierra 288 below: https://gettr.com/user/alphasierra288   Parler Link to Signal50 Page: https://parler.com/#/user/Signal50podcast   Message Us on Telegram: https://t.me/Signal50podcast   Join our Telegram Group Channel: https://t.me/joinchat/HjXf6ZPLfWl9REdi     Watch us on RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/Signal50Podcast   Apple Podcast: Audio Only  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/signal-50-podcast/id1533557486     Google Podcast: Audio Only https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkLnBvZGJlYW4uY29tL3NpZ25hbDUwcG9kY2FzdC9mZWVkLnhtbA%3D%3D     Podbean: Audio Only https://signal50podcast.podbean.com     Spotify: Audio Only https://open.spotify.com/show/6uO9fsmbEbhwfKaNYYAFYR   Signal 50 on the web:  www.signal50.com   Email Alpha Sierra 288 and Bravo Golf 592 with your comments: Sig50podcast@protonmail.com

This week's guest on Off the Shelf is Jason Workmaster from Miller & Chevalier. Workmaster discusses the potential legal implications of the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul (RFO), and analyzes the key features of the RFO and the implications for contractors and contracting officers. He highlights the potential ramifications for the bid protest process and the roles of GAO and the Court of Claims. Turning to GSA's Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) program, Workmaster gives his thoughts on the expansion of Transactional Data Reporting (TDR) across the program and what contractors need to focus on during the expansion. Finally, he outlines the Department of Justice's enforcement priorities for government contractors under the new Trump administration. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week's guest on Off the Shelf, is Ken Dodds, executive vice president, and general counsel for the Coalition for Common Sense in Government Procurement.During the show, Dodds shares his insights on implementing the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul (RFO) and how the reform will likely reshape key aspects of the procurement process. Dodds also highlights some the key parts of the FAR that will have the biggest potential impact on contracting officers and contractors, and he gives his thoughts on the current round of acquisition reform legislation being considered by Congress. Dodds also addresses GSA's expansion of Transactional Data Reporting (TDR) and the implications for the program, including the demise of the Price Reduction Clause.Finally he alks about small business issues and the procurement system. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Alan Sim, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's chief data officer, announced his departure from the agency after nearly five years in the position, per a post he wrote on social media Monday. Sim took on the role of chief data officer in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic and over the years has been a leader on initiatives such as the agency's generative AI projects. Reflecting on his time, Sim pointed to several “firsts” the agency achieved, including launching its enterprise data catalog and using data and cloud technologies to improve emergency response. “It is with mixed emotions that I announce my departure from the CDC,” Sim wrote in a post to LinkedIn. His time as CDC's data leader was his second run at the agency. Sim, who has a PhD in epidemiology, had also been a graduate fellow and then a health informatics scientist at CDC early on in his career in the late 90s to the early 2000s. In his post, Sim said that period was “defined by concerns like bioterrorism, Anthrax, and SARS.” “Returning in 2020 as CDC's Chief Data Officer during the worst pandemic in our nation's history was both a significant challenge and a profound opportunity,” Sim said. Sim didn't include details about his next steps but said he would be sharing more soon. It is unclear who the acting CDO is in his absence. The General Services Administration struck a deal with Oracle as part of its OneGov strategy to provide a variety of cheaper services to federal agencies, including a 75% discount for license-based Oracle Technology Programs. Under OneGov, GSA wants to work directly with original equipment manufacturers like Oracle to negotiate better governmentwide terms for commercial technology. On top of the 75% discount for licensed technology such as database, integration, security, and analytics services, Oracle will also offer “substantial base discounts” for its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services, GSA announced Monday. Oracle is now the latest of several technology vendors, including Adobe, Google, Salesforce and others, to negotiate a OneGov deal with GSA. This deal, however, comes with some additional terms beyond discounts that stand to benefit federal agencies as they modernize their IT infrastructures. In particular, Oracle won't charge data egress fees when agencies move their “existing workloads from Oracle Government Clouds to another cloud service provider's FedRAMP Moderate, High or DOD IL 4, 5 Cloud,” GSA said in its release. The company will also promote pricing parity with other competing commercial cloud providers, “with no additional security or government uplifts ever charged in the Oracle cloud.” 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.

You ever felt like the rules of government contracting change before you can even understand them? In this episode, I sat down with Emily Murphy—former GSA Administrator and current head of Government Procurement Strategies—to break down everything you need to know about the FAR Rewrite and how it impacts small businesses, AI, commercial solutions, and contract consolidation. We're talking about sweeping changes being implemented within 24 hours, missing references to small businesses in key parts of the FAR (yes, even the Rule of Two!), and the major shift toward modular IT procurement and AI oversight. If you think the FAR rewrite is just another bureaucratic update, think again. Emily didn't just drop buzzwords—she revealed why small businesses might be squeezed out if they're not proactive, how a $10K change in micro-purchase thresholds could save $30M, and what this means for the future of contracting officers, procurement strategies, and vendor access. We also dove into the executive orders pushing these changes, what consolidation under GSA means for your pipeline, and why contracting delays are costing your business more than you think. This is essential listening for every BD lead, small business owner, or contractor trying to survive FY25. Watch this episode on Youtube: https://youtu.be/zpvM1bU269Y Emily's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilywebstermurphy/  Acquisition Website: https://www.acquisition.gov/  For trusted government contract financing, visit encoregov.com. To level up your skills, watch free trainings and connect with our expert coaches at federalhelpcenter.com.

We're answering all the questions people are asking about GSA.We cover: GSA Advantage, GSA rates and GSA labor rates, e-library GSA, what is GSA? We give you the history, talk about GSA schedules, and how to apply for the schedules. Learn from GSA government officials that I have interviewed and what the GSA catalog looks like. Learn how to shape deals, work directly with federal agencies, and master category-driven acquisition.

Episode Resources & Links: