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Jennifer Hill, a former banking executive, will lead a government contracting operation worth more than $125 billion as the new commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service, the General Services Administration announced last week. Hill has been a GSA advisor since February, where she has helped to “improve government operations through procurement consolidation, streamlined processes, and more strategic use of the federal government’s purchasing power,” a press release said. GSA Administrator Ed Forst said Hill brings a record “of strategic execution, operational discipline, and results-driven leadership that will strengthen GSA’s ability to deliver best-in-class value across acquisition and real estate.” Hill was previously chief financial officer of Bank of America Merrill Lynch and managing director of Goldman Sachs, according to her LinkedIn. FAS oversees more than $125 billion in business volume with about 16,000 companies and provides “comprehensive procurement, technology, fleet, travel, and charge card solutions to more than 80 federal agencies.” A Delaware-based defense and aerospace company has settled a case with federal agencies over government allegations that the firm neglected its cybersecurity obligations in its contracts. The contractor ILC agreed to pay $13 million to resolve the False Claims Act allegations involving its contracts with the Department of the Army, Missile Defense Agency and National Aeronautics and Space Administration. ILC, according to the government, submitted false or fraudulent claims for payment on contracts with the agencies because it knew it hadn’t complied with the contracts’ cybersecurity requirements over a period between 2018 and 2024. For instance, ILC allegedly used a third-party company to store sensitive data in the cloud without proper safeguards, and didn’t develop and update mandated security plans for each of its covered information systems. American industrial manufacturing giant Ingersoll Rand, the parent company of ILC, said it inherited the issue when it purchased the firm. A spokesperson for Ingersoll Rand said the company took prompt action to address the identified issues after acquiring the company and was in compliance with applicable requirements by October 2024, adding that the firm resolved the allegations with the U.S. Department of Justice without an admission of liability. The $13 million settlement is one of the bigger settlements since the Justice Department began using the False Claims Act in 2022 to penalize contractors over cybersecurity shortcomings. The False Claims Act is a Civil War-era law passed to deal with fraudulent contractors. Under the law, a private citizen can raise allegations that the contractor defrauded the government and is entitled to receive a portion of any settlement. The whistleblower in the ILC case, Philip Root, the company’s former director of cybersecurity, will receive $2.35 million. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

A bipartisan bill to resurrect Congress’ Office of Technology Assessment and rebuild it as the Congressional Office of Technology was introduced last week, with just about two months left on the congressional calendar to pass the legislation. This new bill is the latest attempt to restore the OTA, which provided bipartisan tech-based information for Congress from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s before it was defunded. Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., the bill’s lead sponsor, said the shuttering the office amounted to “stripping Congress of the ability to access unbiased scientific and technological expertise as we entered the digital age.” The bill is co-sponsored by California Republican Rep. Jay Obernolte, as well as Democratic Reps. Sean Casten and Bill Foster of Illinois and Don Beyer of Virginia. Similar bills to revitalize the office have been introduced but did not advance in previous congresses. The office would coordinate with the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Research Service so it doesn’t duplicate work, as GAO and CRS have filled in the gaps left by the OTA since it was defunded. The office would report on emerging science and tech trends “of national importance” with a staff possibly consisting of scientists and engineers on leave from universities, industry, or research groups, who could serve for up to one year. The General Services Administration is “not effectively” protecting controlled unclassified information in its Google Drive, exposing it to all GSA users and contractors, its Office of the Inspector General found in a recent report. The OIG found that 116 files in its search included physical security information, personally identifiable information, general proprietary business information or other CUI that were shared agency-wide. This included Social Security numbers, dates of birth, phone numbers, addresses and vendor proposals with pricing information, as well as site and floor plans, with details on building vulnerabilities and security areas, it said. The report said: “These exposures leave GSA vulnerable to significant reputational risk and potential litigation.” More than half of the files identified contained physical security information, and five of the files contained PII. The OIG put some blame on ineffective management of the agency’s third-party data loss prevention tool, which it did not explicitly name, though GSA Chief Information Officer David Shive mentioned a tool called Cloudlock in his response. This tool, which GSA has spent $7.8 million on as of September, did not detect exposed documents with current search terms and can only handle files up to 15 megabytes. About a third of the files contained the phrase “for official use only” or some variant of it, which was not caught by the tool. 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.

Two top congressional leaders are pressing for answers on President Donald Trump’s use of AI chatbots, potentially to make decisions about U.S. military operations. Democratic Reps. Jamie Raskin and Robert Garcia requested a closed-door briefing with a White House representative to discuss document retention policies with AI, cybersecurity safeguards and data access controls, among other things. The duo also asked for information on any past incidents involving AI chatbots that raised concerns. In a letter to the White House the Democrats cite reports that in December 2025, during an Oval Office meeting with Elon Musk, the president allegedly used Grok to seek advice on carrying out presidential duties, including asking it to opine on how Venezuelans would respond to the capture of President Nicolás Maduro. Raskin and Garcia cited the U.S. military’s strike on an Iranian elementary school and a near-miss in which the military prepared to intercept a misidentified ship as other examples of AI misuse. The former led to the deaths of 123 children, and the latter, they said, “could have easily precipitated a war with China.” The congressional leaders requested a briefing by Nov. 11 to give their respective committees time to take appropriate legislative and remedial actions. The lawmakers argued that inputs by Trump and his staff, as well as the outputs they received, fall under the Presidential Records Act of 1978. The rule changes the legal ownership of official records of the president from private to public and sets up a structure for document release and management following the end of a presidential term. The Treasury Department last week began requiring the use of ID.me to access the agency’s platform to buy and redeem U.S. savings bonds. Two Senate Democrats want the department to rethink that decision. In a letter sent last Thursday to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and IRS CEO Frank Bisignano, Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said the “needlessly rushed deadline for transitioning to” ID.me to gain access to TreasuryDirect should be delayed “at a minimum” until after the 2027 tax filing deadline. The lawmakers argued that U.S. savings bonds are mostly held by older Americans who may not have “the digital proficiency” to make the change to ID.me. TreasuryDirect is the only electronic platform where users can buy and claim those bonds, which are backed by the U.S. government and considered among the safest investments a person can make. A Treasury official said in an email that ID.me is a government-trusted tool that will safeguard the personal and financial information of users and protect against unauthorized access and identity theft. ID.me has for years been in the crosshairs of Democratic lawmakers and privacy advocates over concerns about the digital identity verification and login service’s security practices and use of biometric data. Wyden and Warren, ranking members of the Senate Finance and Banking committees, respectively, hit on those points in their letter. An ID.me spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the service, which the Treasury Department has used since 2021, “has consistently outperformed alternatives in customer service, ease of use, expanding access, protecting taxpayer data, and fighting fraud that costs American taxpayers billions each year.” The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Newly obtained FOIA records reveal details about the level of White House and DOGE involvement in terminating grants last year at the National Science Foundation. The FOIA documents were obtained by Democracy Forward, which has frequently gone toe to toe with the Trump administration in federal court, and show NSF communications involving DOGE affiliate Zachary Terrell from April and May 2025. The correspondence suggests Terrell recommended terminating grants from congressionally mandated programs and, notably, indicated that the White House had provided a list of grants to cut. The records show that Terrell wrote in a message sent May 19, 2025 that he claims the White House sent him “a list of misinformation related grants that should be terminated,” and he then provided a list the agency hadn’t terminated yet. It’s not clear who the recipient was, but the message was sent through an account associated with Terrell’s NSF email. The list that followed his message was redacted. While DOGE’s presence at NSF and role in grant terminations was generally known, questions remained about the details of that involvement as well as the role of the White House in the science agency’s operations. With the end of an already-extended deal in sight, the General Services Administration has secured an expanded OneGov agreement with Anthropic for its Claude models. GSA said Tuesday that federal agencies will have access to a 40% discount on token-based usage across Claude models with consumption-based pricing and no minimum purchase required. Anthropic is in an ongoing legal battle with the Pentagon, though its relationship with officials elsewhere in the federal government appears to be solid. The new OneGov agreements have been highly anticipated as agencies contend with dependency on promotional pricing. Anthropic initially extended its original deal until the end of October, offering a $1 per user offering for Claude for Government. The new agreement follows the lead of OpenAI, which switched to consumption-based pricing last month as part of its new OneGov deal. Consumption-based pricing has rapidly replaced seat-based pricing in private-sector enterprises, and the trend is bleeding into the federal government. GSA sees the pricing model as one that “scales with actual use.” The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The Pentagon issued new guidance last week focused on implementing the Trump administration’s so-called “truth-seeking” and “ideological neutrality” principles in AI procurements. A memo dated Oct. 20 from John Tenaglia, the Pentagon’s head of acquisition, noted that the initiative is “in direct support” of a previous executive order from President Donald Trump on “Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government” and a White House Office of Management and Budget memo on “Increasing Public Trust in Artificial Intelligence Through Unbiased AI Principles.” Trump’s EO, issued last year, laid out the administration’s “truth-seeking” and “ideological neutrality” edicts for AI procurements, stating that large language models purchased by federal agencies “shall be truthful in responding to user prompts seeking factual information or analysis” and “prioritize historical accuracy, scientific inquiry, and objectivity, and shall acknowledge uncertainty where reliable information is incomplete or contradictory.” The models must be “neutral, nonpartisan tools that do not manipulate responses in favor of ideological dogmas such as DEI,” Trump wrote, adding that developers “shall not intentionally encode partisan or ideological judgments into an LLM’s outputs unless those judgments are prompted by or otherwise readily accessible to the end user.” Tenaglia noted in his memo that compliance with the White House directives is mandatory. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency published a strategy Monday that focuses on taking a leading role in cyber defense, prioritizing protection of critical infrastructure and building the ability to withstand attacks. The 10-page strategy — “CISA 2030: Defend, Harden, Prevail” — largely reaffirms existing roles for the agency, but CISA will begin reviewing its core services and capabilities within 60 days to make sure they meet key objectives, followed by implementation over the next 180 days and an update on its progress after one year. Acting CISA Director Nick Andersen said in a foreword that the agency needs to act with “renewed purpose” in the face of threats, saying: “The threat landscape we face today is not static.” The strategy is also meant to align with the administration’s broader cyber strategy, published in March, and last year’s executive order on state and local preparedness. “I call on every company and organization in the critical infrastructure community — from owners and operators to vendors and technology manufacturers — to act now,” Andersen said in a comment released with the strategy. “CISA 2030 provides a focused roadmap to strengthen defenses, eliminate adversarial footholds, and deny them any advantage that could endanger the nation’s security, economy, or public health.” The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

A U.S. district judge in New York found that the Office of Personnel Management violated federal privacy law and flouted cybersecurity practices when it shared federal employee records with members of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency. In a Tuesday ruling, Judge Denise Cote of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York said that OPM granted DOGE agents access to systems holding records for tens of millions of past, current and aspiring federal workers without a credible reason. Cote said the government provided no explanation for why DOGE’s purported modernization efforts needed access to personally identifiable information (PII) when that access wasn’t needed in past modernization efforts. “The record also provides no support for a finding that it was the pursuit of a modernization agenda that prompted OPM to grant sweeping and expedited access to a score of DOGE Agents to its systems of records containing PII,” Cote said. The decision is a win for federal workers and their advocates in a long-running challenge to DOGE’s controversial activities premised on an aspiration of efficiency. The Department of Housing and Urban Development officially has a new chief information officer — a familiar face with an exceptionally similar background to his predecessor.David Julian, who has served as HUD’s assistant CIO since July 2025, wrote in a LinkedIn post last month that he had taken over as the agency’s top IT official. HUD did not respond to multiple requests for comment at the time, but an update to the agency’s website this week confirmed the news. Julian replaces Eric Sidle, who left HUD in July to become the Interior Department’s CIO. Like Sidle, Julian worked for several years in the electric vehicle industry — at the same two companies. He was a senior staff autonomy program manager for the EV maker NIO from 2018 to 2019, according to his LinkedIn profile, before spending the next three-plus years in various engineering roles at Chargepoint, an EV charging network and hardware provider. Prior to his move into the EV world, Julian spent a decade at Apple, where he was head of data pipeline operations for autonomous systems, per his bio. He overlapped with Sidle at Apple for about five years. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The Department of Homeland Security is banning the use of Chinese AI model DeepSeek and its affiliates by civilian federal agencies. The notice, published Tuesday in the Federal Register, cites the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Act and a review by the Federal Acquisition Security Council to bar federal agencies from buying all information technology products and services from parent company Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence. The notice includes a copy of a letter from Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin ordering the exclusion of DeepSeek products on June 26, indicating the ban has been in place for months. Mullin claimed that DeepSeek’s models present “multiple threat vectors” to civilian federal agency IT systems. Some are unique to the company’s country of origin, while others identify potential privacy and mass data collection concerns that could also apply to other Chinese and U.S. AI models. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The Pentagon recently established a new task force that’s charged with rapidly iterating and advancing weaponized drones and small uncrewed ground vehicles across the U.S. military. Col. Michael Penn, the Army official who is commanding the team — dubbed Task Force Easy — shed new light on its origin and Defense Department leaders’ overarching vision for it during the annual AUSA conference on Tuesday. “We’re slower, less effective. We don’t outpace our enemy and our threat in how quickly we adapt new technology. So we’re trying to fix that in our task force,” Penn said. Task Force Easy was initiated as DOD personnel have been hustling to solve technical and structural challenges associated with acquiring and deploying affordable drones and other unmanned capabilities en masse for modern combat operations. Democrats on the House and Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committees recently sent letters to the Department of Veterans Affairs and Oracle demanding answers about the increase in the electronic health record modernization contract ceiling. In a letter dated last week, ranking members Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., asked VA Secretary Doug Collins for several documents related to the increase and answers to 13 questions by Oct. 30. In August, the VA-Oracle EHRM contract ceiling jumped from almost $10 billion to nearly $27 billion without widespread knowledge in Congress — but the VA says Congress was told of the estimated total rollout cost last year. Citing FedScoop reporting, the lawmakers asked for documentation supporting the VA-Oracle EHRM contract modification, including market research and documents explaining the increase and “unanticipated complexities” the VA cited in the redacted modification. They also asked for written responses to questions about how the contract increase happened — including why it did, given that Oracle co-CEO Mike Sicilia told the Senate committee in a 2022 statement that the company would absorb any “performance or workflow” issue costs. The letter also includes several questions about the new EHR’s compliance with federal disability regulations, additional costs and patient safety. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Federal civilian agencies have long faced a fragmented cybersecurity landscape – each operating its own tools, budgets, and detection logic, leaving gaps in whole-of-government visibility. In December 2025, there was a landmark shift in how the U.S. government can now defend itself: CISA launched its shared, cloud-hosted Security Information and Event Management -as-a-Service (SIEMaaS) offering to Federal Civilian Executive Branch agencies, at no cost. The initiative consolidates security telemetry across agencies onto FedRAMP-authorized Elastic Cloud, and is managed by CISA's Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program. Now nearly a year into that initiative, Chris Townsend, Global VP of Public Sector for Elastic, joins the Daily Scoop Podcast to explore how the SIEMaaS model represents a fundamental rethinking of federal cyber operations, how it tackles OMB M-26-14 logging requirements and why partnerships like this one are key to the future of coordinated national cyber resilience. The Office of Personnel Management released an artificial intelligence chatbot focused on answering questions about federal workforce data in plain English. Now, it wants people to try to break it. FWD Chat, or Federal Workforce Data Chat, was officially released to the public Wednesday in a testing phase, with the intention of making improvements on the tool as officials get user feedback. Sample prompts invite users to ask how many federal employees were hired last year, what the average salary is by state, and the most common types of employee separations. Outputs are accompanied by suggested follow-up questions and data downloads. “It’s a beta. Use it, try to break it, and hit the feedback button,” Adam Starr, chief information officer of OPM, said in a LinkedIn post announcing the tool. In emailed responses to FedScoop, Starr said the chatbot is built on an OpenAI model, leverages a data programming language, and is planned for integration with the Trump administration’s America.gov chatbot. Per Starr, the project took the agency roughly three months to complete. The Pentagon is launching a pilot program that will use artificial intelligence to manage its classification processes and handling of sensitive military information, according to a memorandum reviewed by DefenseScoop and sources familiar. Within the next six months, the department will start an “initial small-scale deployment of an automated security classification capability” intended to “overhaul” the way the department classifies info, according to a memorandum issued Monday by Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg. The DOD will use an AI-backed system the Air Force recently developed, known as the Automated Classification Management Environment (ACME), for the trial program while tapping the service’s top civilian official as the executive agent for the pilot. If the pilot is successful, according to the memo, the automated system will eventually serve as “the single, digital authoritative reference” for all of the DOD’s original classification decisions, a responsibility historically reserved for specially designated human officials who determine how sensitive information is categorized. 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.

Former Department of Homeland Security CIO Antoine McCord has returned to defense technology company Anduril, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. McCord helmed DHS’s multibillion-dollar IT portfolio from March 2025 to August 2026. The official wore a number of other hats, including acting CISO and head of the Office of Biometric and Identity Management. Under his leadership, DHS prioritized surveillance systems, expanded its data estate, accelerated AI use and boosted investment in biometric technologies. Privacy experts and transparency advocates raised concerns about the efforts, pointing to seemingly sluggish governance controls and accountability levers. Following McCord’s appointment, DHS also increased its spending on his former — and now current — company. DHS spent roughly $148 million on Anduril’s services in fiscal 2025 and $431 million in fiscal 2026, nearly tripling its annual investment. DHS welcomed Kyle Schutt to its ranks in August to fill the gap left by McCord’s departure. The Department of Veterans Affairs has launched an identity verification pilot on its website through CLEAR, according to Wednesday press releases. Billed as “one of the first steps of a larger VA modernization effort,” the announcement said veterans can use “CLEAR1” for free to access and create their VA-dot-gov accounts, though it is not mandatory and choosing not to enroll will not affect veterans’ ability to access VA benefits or services. VA-dot-gov is the front door to veterans’ benefits, serving roughly 17 million veterans — 9.1 million of which are enrolled in VA healthcare, the release said. Currently, users can access the site through Login-dot-gov or ID.me. Veterans can now set up their CLEAR accounts or visit CLEAR locations at six VA medical centers across 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.

David Shive is one of the longest-tenured CIOs in all of the federal government. Also vice chair of the Federal CIO Council, Shive has a wealth of knowledge on what it means to be a CIO at the federal level and how the role has evolved over the last decade-plus. Shive, a nominee for the 2026 FedScoop 50 Awards, recently joined the Daily Scoop Podcast to share how he thinks about his role as GSA CIO amid the ongoing AI boom and why IT management inside the government has become as much about good business practices as the technology itself. The Trump administration and Anduril Industries unveiled plans Tuesday for a new “software-defined” shipyard that will help build attack submarines for the Navy. The announcement comes as the Navy aims to boost its undersea arsenal, which could play a key role in a potential future conflict with China in the Pacific, and President Donald Trump seeks to enhance domestic manufacturing. The Navy has awarded Anduril a contract worth up to $2.9 billion to support the effort, according to a press release from the contractor. The firm plans to invest $3.7 billion of its own funding to help stand up the facility, grow the workforce, and add new tech and other capabilities that will be required for the project. The facility, dubbed Arsenal-2, will be constructed at Tradepoint Atlantic in Baltimore County. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a memorandum that was publicly released on Friday with updated policies to expedite counter-drone technology deployments across U.S. military bases, critical infrastructure, and other domestic assets, as unmanned systems continue to disrupt national security and transform global warfare. The five-page directive, dated Sept. 28, targets specific administrative and procedural bottlenecks that have historically slowed the Defense Department’s counter-drone hardware and software adoption — like radio spectrum and frequency authorization delays and often arduous safety review processes. Notably, this new policy requires review and approval authorities to treat any delays in handling requests associated with DOD’s counter-drone needs as operational risks. Hegseth’s memo appears to serve as an enforcement mechanism for Joint Interagency Task Force 401, which he previously launched to lead the Pentagon’s high-priority counter-drone initiatives. Also in this episode: SAP NS2’s Hunter Downey explains how federal agencies can accelerate AI adoption by using tools embedded in enterprise applications on government-authorized sovereign cloud platforms. Downey argues that established security controls can help agencies navigate compliance requirements, modernize legacy systems and protect sensitive data. He also discusses the differences between generative and agentic AI, why trusted cloud operations and secure data connections matter, and how agencies can measure AI’s value through faster, better-informed mission decisions. This segment was sponsored by SAP NS2. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The General Services Administration has issued its artificial intelligence acquisition clause as a class deviation from its regulations, according to a regulation overhaul memo updated Monday, making it a policy that can be used immediately. GSA previously proposed a rule to amend federal regulations for AI acquisitions and took two rounds of public comment on drafts. Since then, the agency decided on a class deviation from the GSA’s Acquisition Regulation first. While the memo says the deviation will be effective Oct. 19, contracting officers could use it now and existing contracts may be changed at the discretion of the officer, it said. As a deviation, it is essentially policy until GSA rescinds it or codifies it through formal rulemaking, which the memo says will include a public comment period. A bill to eliminate educational requirements in federal contracting jobs unanimously passed the Senate late Wednesday night, putting the legislation a presidential signature away from becoming law. The Skills-Based Federal Contracting Act (H.R. 5235), led by Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., and co-sponsored by Democrats Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, cleared the House in February and advanced out of committee in the upper chamber in August. The bill would ban federal agencies from putting minimum education standards into contract solicitations — unless the agency includes a written explanation showing why those requirements are critical to the mission. Mace said in a press briefing Thursday this “is a middle-class American workers bill. If you have the skills, you should get the job.” Mace, who’s retiring from Congress at the end of this term, said the bill will be transmitted to the White House within “the next couple of days” or “up to a week.” 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.

Carter Farmer, the Environmental Protection Agency’s chief information officer, is said to be the White House’s pick for the new federal CIO, according to several sources familiar with the matter. Farmer replaces Greg Barbaccia as the federal government’s top IT official. Barbaccia left government and returned to Palantir at the end of August. Barbaccia told FedScoop: “I’ve always enjoyed working with Carter, and I think he’s a great fit for the role. We share a very similar culture and approach to getting things done, and he knows his competencies exceptionally well.” Farmer was added to the Technology Modernization Fund Board as a fully voting member last month, a position he would hold permanently as the federal CIO, along with General Services Administration CIO David Shive. The EPA posted its open CIO position on USAJobs-dot-gov on Monday. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is looking to build out its AI ecosystem by assigning software development work to AI agents and expanding existing platforms, per a request for information published Friday. An agentic software factory, which ICE wants to build, has AI agents handling a significant share of the planning, implementation, testing and review process of the development lifecycle. ICE’s IT shop wants help across three layers of the agentic software factory, which are “desired future-state capabilities, not existing ICE implementations,” the unit explained in its documentation. The first layer is an enterprise control plane that will include the governance, architecture, infrastructure, shared services and cost-reporting mechanisms. The next layer contains the agentic orchestration, allowing ICE to coordinate AI agents and map out protocols for tool access, human escalation and stop conditions. The third layer that’s top of mind for ICE is its independent assurance boundary, which will provide cybersecurity, accessibility and mission ac ceptance testing before production. The STELLA platform, which stands for Secure Technology Environment for Large Language Agents, was implemented earlier this summer, FedScoop previously reported. Documents obtained via a public records request outlined ICE’s plans to use the platform as a way to develop, test and deploy AI use cases. At least a dozen fully deployed, production-ready AI applications are already live on the platform, per ICE’s background documentation provided in the RFI. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The Trump administration unveiled an artificial intelligence chatbot Tuesday that it views as a new front door for services from the federal government. America.gov, which launched Tuesday morning, opens with a search bar inviting users to ask anything — from booking a campsite at a national park, to getting a passport for their child, to replacing their Social Security card. “Whatever you need from the government, start here,” the homepage says. “Under the hood, America.gov is an extraordinary use of AI designed to improve your life. It’s trained specifically on one official source of truth: The United States Government,” Joe Gebbia, the U.S. Chief Design Officer and co-founder of Airbnb, said during the launch event in Washington, D.C. According to remarks Gebbia made to CNBC’s Squawk Box on Tuesday, the platform is powered by Google’s Gemini and Elon Musk’s Grok. The initiative comes as the Trump administration has, generally, sought to increase the use of AI in government and decrease restrictions on the technology. Google has extended its OneGov deal with the General Services Administration for its artificial intelligence Gemini, according to a Tuesday website update. The deal, which charged $0.47 per agency for one year for Gemini for Government and gave 20% off list for first-party cloud services, was set to expire Wednesday but will now last until Nov. 15. The deal includes Gemini, Google AI platform and tools, FedRAMP High authorized Google Cloud Platform products and builds upon a previous 71% discount Google Workspace agreement, the website says. GSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Google declined to comment. The extension follows a recent OneGov extension for Anthropic’s Claude and a new deal for OpenAI’s ChatGPT models. 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.

For the U.S. federal government in the age of AI, data policy is critical to building better outcomes for the American people. That’s the chartering mission of the Federation of American Scientists’ new Data Policy Institute, which is led by former U.S. Chief Data Scientist Denice Ross. Ross sits down with FedScoop Senior Reporter Madison Alder to discuss her time supporting the federal government’s data utility and accessibility as U.S. chief data scientist and how her new role within the Federation of American Scientists continues that effort, particularly as many federal datasets have vanished from the public domain. A coalition of dozens of software developers and former government employees is calling on the General Services Administration to reverse recent actions related to the U.S. Web Design System, warning that its current direction could have widespread impact on website accessibility. In an open letter shared exclusively with FedScoop, the coalition warned GSA leaders that recent moves to put the lead official at USWDS on administrative leave, implement new leadership, remove contributors to a public GitHub repository for the system, delete public comments and add in new AI programs have put the system and thousands of websites it powers “in jeopardy.” Those actions leave agencies with a difficult question: “Can we continue to treat USWDS as trusted government infrastructure?” the signatories wrote. “Given the removal of experienced community maintainers and user comments from public discussions, we believe the answer, currently, is no.” To remedy the situation, the signers asked GSA to take seven actions, including restoring access to USWDS GitHub for community maintainers, bringing back former leaders and staff, communicating openly, and maintaining “rigorous manual accessibility testing and documented quality assurance.” The takeover of USWDS described in the letter unfolded rapidly over the past several weeks. It more or less began with a move to place USWDS lead Anne Petersen, the final remaining member of the legacy team, on administrative leave at the beginning this month, and a flurry of activity in the GitHub page. Those tensions boiled over last week when a newcomer to the project, Ryan Parker, stated plans to “automate as much accessibility testing as possible across current and future USWDS versions.” The Federal Aviation Administration is asking Congress for an additional $30 billion to reach its modernization goals tied to the overhaul of air traffic control systems and aviation infrastructure. Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., introduced the Modern Skies Act on Monday, which lays out the plan including efforts to implement a common automation platform and cloud computing infrastructure. The bill is backed by nearly 60 organizations, including Airlines for America, the Association of Value Airlines, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association and the General Aviation Manufacturers Association. Schmitt appeared Monday alongside representatives from the trade groups, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy at a news conference announcing the plan at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. 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.