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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.

Login-dot-gov now widely accepts mobile driver’s licenses for identity verification, partially in an effort to combat artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes, according to a General Services Administration press release Tuesday. The agency previewed this capability in December 2025, though GSA aimed to make it available by this summer. However, Login is currently only supporting mobile driver’s licenses in Google Wallet or Samsung Wallet, and “is in the process of adding support for additional mDL sources.” “​​The new process grants users greater control over their privacy, as they can preview and share only the specific attributes required for verification rather than their entire document,” the release said. Mobile driver’s licenses use “cryptographic verification to confirm that a digital credential is valid and has not been altered,” but using them is not mandatory for Login users, it said. “This approach provides additional protection against fraud techniques such as AI-generated deepfakes and counterfeit identity documents,” the release said. As of March, 20 states and one territory offer mobile driver’s licenses, the release said, making them available to about 71.5 million people, with 8 million current users. Over 30,000 veterans’ health data was exposed in a June cybersecurity incident at the genetic testing laboratory Baylor Genetics, and the Department of Veterans Affairs said the company didn’t meet its notification expectations, according to an email sent by an agency official Monday and viewed by FedScoop. Names, dates of birth, medical testing information, lab test results, health insurance data and partial Social Security numbers were accessed by an “unauthorized third party” around June 15, according to the email from the VA notifying congressional staff. However, Baylor reported that it is “not aware of any identity theft, fraud, or misuse of personal information related to this incident at this time,” the email said. “Upon learning of the incident, VA took immediate actions to ensure that affected Veterans are protected, by evaluating Baylor’s notification process and compliance with its contractual and security responsibilities,” it said. VA met with Baylor and determined the company’s initial notification and information sharing “did not meet VA’s expectations for timely, complete, and appropriately coordinated notifications,” it said, and specifically briefed providers with its Pharmacogenomics and Medical Genetics programs. “VA worked with Baylor to improve the notification process and revised Baylor’s Interconnection Security Agreement to address delays in Baylor’s sharing of breach-related information with VA,” the email said. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The secret to the State Department’s AI success by The Daily Scoop Podcast

Sam Berry, the Department of Agriculture’s chief information officer, is stepping down from his role but staying with the agency, USDA confirmed Monday. Berry, a former associate of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, replaced longtime CIO Gary Washington last year. While it is unclear what Berry’s exact role will be, he will be focusing on implementing the “One Farmer, One File” modernization initiative, USDA said. The agency launched the initiative earlier this year to create a unique streamlined record for each farmer, a press release said. USDA tapped Palantir for IT modernization and other digital work as part of a $300 million Blanket Purchase Agreement in April, which includes the One Farmer, One File initiative. In a press release at the time, Berry said the agreement would provide the agency with “the visibility and speed needed to safeguard our food supply.” As calls for an AI slowdown and stronger safety measures around the emerging technology grow louder, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged lawmakers Tuesday to not give in to frontier labs on liability exemptions. Appearing before the House Financial Services Committee, Bessent was asked by Rep. Juan Vargas, D-Calif., what the Trump administration is doing for AI safety. Bessent said the department has been “working on safety nonstop since the release of Mythos,” the Anthropic model whose cybersecurity risks prompted an April meeting at Treasury headquarters between the secretary, then-Fed Chair Jerome Powell and bank CEOs. But going forward, he said it’s clear that what the government “shouldn’t do on safety is to give these labs a liability exemption, which is what they are asking for.” “The best way to guarantee safety is that the creators are liable for what they build and generate,” Bessent continued. The Treasury secretary’s comments came days after Anthropic’s Dario Amodei penned an essay calling on AI companies to tap the brakes on model development amid increasingly stark warnings about the technology’s potential dangers. Though President Donald Trump rejected calls to ease the pace of AI development, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and xAI’s Elon Musk backed Amodei’s slowdown plan. The Anthropic head’s plan included a note for the federal government to “issue a narrow waiver for certain kinds of safety conversations” while industry works toward voluntary standards. OpenAI, meanwhile, previously backed an Illinois bill to limit liability for AI-fueled harms. 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 made a new OneGov deal with the General Services Administration to supply artificial intelligence to all government employees, kicking in after the current $1 per-agency deal ends at the end of the month, the agency announced Thursday. ChatGPT models will be available to the federal government through discounted, consumption-based pricing, the release said, and will last until Dec. 31, 2028. GSA Administrator Ed Forst said the deal supports the government’s AI initiative in that it “enhances federal performance, reduces administrative burden, and ensures that agencies can devote more time to delivering results that directly benefit the American people.” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company is “honored to continue collaborating with GSA.” “Giving public servants secure access to the best AI tools can help government be more efficient, strengthen cybersecurity, and improve the services people rely on,” he said in the statement. Federal agencies will have access to half-off token-based usage across ChatGPT models, including those in FedRAMP-authorized environments, the release said. There will also be no platform-access fee and no spend commitment, so agencies only pay for what they use, it said. Access will be available through federal, state, local and tribal governments through OpenAI directly, through resellers, and supported cloud marketplaces, the announcement said. Agencies can no longer include the Trump administration’s “loyalty question” in job listings after a federal court granted a stay motion to block its use in civil service applications. In an order issued Friday, the District Court for the District of Massachusetts sided with the plaintiffs in American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO v. Kupor, ruling that workers applying to agency positions faced irreparable harm in having to answer the question. Within seven days, the Office of Personnel Management is required to provide notice of the stay to all heads or acting heads of departments and agencies that used the question in the hiring process. An OPM spokesperson said the agency does not comment on ongoing litigation. The case, filed in November 2025, challenged a key piece of the OPM’s so-called Merit Hiring Plan, which was issued in May of that year. The plan detailed steps aimed at reforming the federal hiring process, including the creation of an essay question in agency job listings that asked applicants how they would “help advance the President’s Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role.” Candidates were also asked to identify “one or two relevant Executive Orders or policy initiatives that are” significant to them. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The Army awarded Palantir and Anduril a combined $192 million in delivery orders for the service’s Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) program, officials announced Tuesday, pushing the targeting platform into a production phase. Having been in development for several years, officials have touted TITAN as a “game changing” mobile ground station capable of using artificial intelligence to ingest data from a variety of sensors and package it into target recommendations, specifically for long-range fires. The Army awarded Palantir a $178.4 million deal in 2024 to deliver 10 TITAN prototypes after the company beat-out RTX for the rights to build the TITAN. Under the latest delivery announcement, the Army expects to receive eight more over the next 18 months, officials said in a press release. “This effort is the result of soldier feedback we have received over the past four years of prototyping from units utilizing TITAN prototypes in multiple configurations across diverse operating environments,” Col. Jonathan Lipscomb, a project manager for the Army’s intelligence systems and analytics portfolio, said in the release. “It drastically reduces sensor-to-shooter timelines through automated target nominations while fusing the common intelligence picture.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement is expecting to allocate between $2 million and $5 million to a contractor that will help it handle and analyze voter data amid increasing fraud detection efforts centered on elections, per an acquisition forecast document published Monday. The firm-fixed-price contract is expected to be awarded in the coming weeks following an estimated solicitation release next week. The work, which is in support of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit, will run through the end of the month. The contract forecast planning document follows a request for information that ICE posted last week. The Department of Homeland Security unit began the market research process to gather information about “handling and secure delivery of publicly available voter registration files and voter history files” to support HSI “fraud detection and data segmentation activities.” The comment period lasted just three days, closing Aug. 28. In an attached statement of work draft, ICE said it planned to tap a contractor to acquire and document voter registration and history files from “government-identified U.S. jurisdictions,” which it described as up to all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and any American territory that it chooses. 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 Office of Management and Budget has officially released a memo directing agencies to expand the use of Login-dot-gov for user identity verification in a push to make it the universal sign-on for public services. In a six-page document dated Monday, OMB Director Russell Vought told agencies the absence of a clear strategy has led to agencies deploying various sign-on solutions and taking different approaches to digital identity management. Per the memo, that means users often need multiple sign-ons and the government pays more. “This policy enforces Login.gov as the universal sign-on for accessing public services online, enabling more seamless and efficient service delivery while safeguarding user privacy and supporting resilience against fraud and security threats,” Vought said in the memo. Official release of the policy comes after OMB recently circulated a draft version of the document to leaders for feedback. FedScoop obtained a copy of that draft and first reported on its contents last week. At the time, current and former officials viewed the policy as an effort to continue a longstanding push to establish a single sign-on for government. Login, which is run by the General Services Administration, was first envisioned under President Barack Obama, launched in 2017 during President Donald Trump’s first term and continued under President Joe Biden. It was created after Congress required that agencies establish a single sign-on platform for government website logins. A newly released whistleblower complaint reveals details about the “rushed” effort by the Trump administration and U.S. Postal Service to install three new restrictive IT systems that would potentially deny thousands of mail-in ballots, if the federal government disagrees on their eligibility. According to the complaint, written by attorneys at the nonprofit Whistleblower Aid and released by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the individual is a federal employee with “direct knowledge of potentially catastrophic problems” related to USPS’ handling of mail-in ballots for the upcoming 2026 midterm elections. The person claims that USPS is deploying entirely “new and untested” IT systems, including a new Federal Ballot Mail Portal that would potentially give USPS more control over when and whether states receive federal mail ballots for their voters. The disclosure describes the portal and other systems as “new IT systems and corresponding protocols [that] will govern the delivery of ballots to voters as soon as the 2026 mid-term federal elections and beyond.” It calls the development process “secretive, rushed, chaotic and fundamentally flawed,” and part of a larger effort by agency leaders to rush implementation of the system ahead of the 2026 elections. 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 an effort to spark more artificial intelligence use in federal hiring, the Office of Personnel Management is advising agencies that several common HR use cases generally aren’t considered “high impact” for the purposes of a federal policy governing the technology. The Thursday memo to department heads from OPM Director Scott Kupor argues that failure to adopt AI in federal hiring may be compromising “efficiency and quality” of that process. It shares OPM’s own assessment of how federal AI governance policy applies to the human capital space to provide agencies with a roadmap for use. Specifically, OPM concludes AI used for creating job announcements, evaluating applicants, reviewing files before an offer, and evaluation of hiring metrics isn’t considered high-impact in most instances. That means those uses wouldn’t be required to follow corresponding minimum risk management practices, such as conducting pre-deployment testing, conducting an impact assessment, and monitoring the tool for potential adverse impacts. In an accompanying blog post, OPM Chief Information Officer Adam Starr explained the memo is an attempt to aid “overly cautious” agencies that felt AI applications in hiring are considered high impact. “Too often, agencies were defaulting to the view that any use of AI in hiring was subject to the high-impact standard. In reality, that is not the case,” Starr wrote. “Instead, the inclusion of AI as a complement to human judgement is not only acceptable but leads to better outcomes.” A U.S. district court judge mostly sided with Anthropic in its challenge against the Pentagon’s designation of the company as a supply chain risk and attempt by the Trump administration to ban use of its products across the government. In a 59-page order, Judge Rita Lin of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled in favor of the Claude maker on its claims that the administration’s actions violated the First Amendment, the due process clause, and federal administrative procedure statute. “Though the Department of War is undisputedly free to select the AI vendor of its choice, the evidence demonstrates that the broad measures imposed on Anthropic were illegal and baseless,” Lin said. Lin’s ruling comes after months of strife between Anthropic and the Trump administration. 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 preparing to welcome Kyle Schutt to its ranks as chief information officer. The news comes after FedScoop reported Wednesday that DHS CIO Antoine McCord was planning his exit. Similar to his predecessor, Schutt has little digital footprint of his own making. He even deleted his LinkedIn profile more than a year ago. Before moving to the federal government, Schutt was CTO at an online fundraising platform and led the development of another, which helped raise $1.8 billion for the Republican Party in the 2024 election cycle, according to ProPublica. On behalf of the now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency, Schutt worked at a number of agencies, including the General Services Administration, per NPR reporting. Wired has tied his work at DOGE to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, as well as the Department of Health and Human Services. At DHS, he was responsible, in part, for the closing of the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, ProPublica reported. Schutt also has been linked to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The Technology Modernization Fund may “experiment” with its own artificial intelligence model in the next fiscal year, acting Director Jessie Posilkin said Thursday. TMF’s “tiny team” of eight within the General Services Administration is already all-hands-on-deck in managing and supporting the investments and proposals they have, she said. While the team has been using USAi, “there’s a ton of playing around we can do,” she said at GovExec’s Infrastructure and Modernization Forum in Reston, Va. Posilkin said she “flirted with this idea of … building some sort of model based on all of the TMF proposals that we’ve ever gotten and what’s happened with them. I think, like any other agency team, I see a ton of opportunity for experimentation, and my goal for ‘27 is to get the capacity to start experimenting.” Posilkin also hinted at upcoming announcements: savings and value return numbers for fiscal 2025 and news of four new members of the TMF’s board will come in the next month or so, she said. However, she does not know who will replace the board’s chief, outgoing federal Chief Information Officer Greg Barbaccia. Also coming soon: the announcement of TMF’s new investments at the end of September, she said. Posilkin didn’t share details of those projects but said the TMF team has “been really excited both by the investments that the board is making decisions on right now, and what’s in our pipeline.” 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 Office of Management and Budget is circulating a new draft policy that would enforce the use of Login-dot-gov, the federal government’s single sign-on service, “for most public facing services,” including websites and digital platforms that require authentication. According to a draft version of a memo sent Monday to agencies for review, agencies would have 60 days to provide OMB with an inventory of existing public-facing websites with authentication, and six months to develop a broader digital identity risk management review as part of the mandatory shift to Login. In the draft memo viewed by FedScoop, OMB Director Russell Vought cited the lack of a governmentwide strategy for managing digital identity and President Donald Trump’s executive order on improving digital design in government as justifications for the new policy. It argues the current patchwork of digital-identity solutions used by federal agencies results in increased costs and is a hassle to Americans seeking to get government information. “As the use of Login.gov for identity verification increases, the government realizes cost efficiencies from economies of scale and a reduction in duplicative verification costs,” the draft memo said. “Increased use…also supports the government’s security posture, enabling deployment at scale of leading technologies and security practices to prevent and respond to emerging threats.” The Department of Homeland Security’s top technology leader is set to depart the agency, per two sources familiar with the matter. Antoine McCord joined DHS as chief information officer in March 2025. McCord also oversaw the Office of Biometrics and Identity Management and served as the acting CISO. The official kept a low profile while overseeing the law enforcement agency’s multibillion-dollar budget, forgoing media interviews and events. He was in the initial wave of CIO hires under the second Trump administration following the reclassification of the chief information officer position. The Office of Personnel Management moved the role from “career reserved” to “general,” easing restrictions on who could get tapped —though the DHS CIO role has historically been political. Prior to DHS, McCord held positions at defense technology company Anduril and within the U.S. Marine Corps and intelligence community. 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 is seeking to combat identity fraud by adding more device fingerprinting to Login-dot-gov, the government’s unified account manager, according to contracting documents posted Tuesday. The “sophistication and volume” of fraud attempts have grown as the service’s user base and agency adoption have expanded, the request for information said. While Login-dot-gov already uses fingerprinting within its identity verification flow, “there is an opportunity to enhance the platform’s comprehensive fraud prevention strategy,” documents said. “This capability is essential for detecting sophisticated fraud attacks including account takeover, synthetic identity fraud, automated bot activity, residential proxy abuse, and emerging agentic [artificial intelligence] threats,” they said. Device fingerprinting identifies visitors through browser, device and network signals rather than just traditional identifiers like IP addresses or cookies, the request said. The solution GSA is exploring would integrate fingerprinting into account creation and sign-in, provide real-time risk signals for fraud detection and identify returning devices, “even when users attempt to evade detection through VPNs, residential proxies, incognito browsing, cookie clearing, or browser tampering,” the documents said. Homeland Security Investigations is failing to provide its agents with the tech toolbelt needed to address fentanyl entering the U.S., according to an inspector general report published last week. The watchdog found that HSI, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement division, spent millions to develop data analysis and information-sharing tools that underperformed and went unused. The primary technology in question is the HSI-built Repository for Analytics in a Virtualized Environment platform, referred to as RAVEn. The platform was created to host a suite of data-analysis tools that were designed to support criminal investigations. DHS poured more than $150 million into the endeavor and deployed the technology in November 2022. Just three years later, HSI began decommissioning it. “One officer described RAVEn as ‘atrocious,’ and another stated the platform hindered drug investigations instead of helping them,” the inspector general office said in the report. 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.

Throughout 2026, you cast your nominations for the FedScoop 50, and the results are in. Hundreds of top executives from across the government tech landscape are now up for vote to see who will be honored among this year’s FedScoop 50. Voting is open now and runs through September 25. Make your voice heard to help us select who will be recognized on this year’s list. One of those nominees in the prestigious Golden Gov category for this year is VA Deputy Secretary and currently acting CIO Paul Lawrence. Lawrence joined the Daily Scoop Podcast to discuss his top priorities in both roles, namely the continued rollout of the department’s modernized electronic health record with Oracle. Sam Corcos, the Treasury Department’s chief information officer who entered the federal government as a member of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, has taken on three roles within the General Services Administration. Corcos now serves as acting director of Technology Transformation Services, acting deputy commissioner for the Federal Acquisition Service, and acting assistant commissioner of Login-dot-gov, according to the GSA. “As a current federal agency CIO, Sam Corcos has led complex technology operations and worked across government to advance the President’s technology priorities,” a GSA spokesperson told FedScoop. Before Corcos was made Treasury CIO in May 2025, he was co-founder of Levels, a health tech company. Since joining Treasury as a special adviser in March 2025, Corcos has sought access to government data and, according to Wired, made efforts to unify the API at the IRS. “The Trump Administration is focused on making government more effective, efficient, and responsive, and TTS will continue to be an important part of that effort. We are confident that Sam will help advance that mission,” the spokesperson said. Outgoing federal CIO Greg Barbaccia has led TTS since February and Greg Hogan has overseen Login-dot-gov since April. Lawmakers are pushing back on Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to equip in-the-field agents with gloves that deliver electric shocks. Members of the House Committee on Homeland Security sent a letter last week to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, urging him to intervene and halt the procurement. The signatories included Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the committee’s top Democrat, as well as Reps. Luis Correa of California and Shri Thanedar of Michigan, ranking members of the Border Security and Enforcement, and Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability subcommittees, respectively. The representatives warned of the technology being “incorrectly used or abused by officers resulting in injury or death,” per the letter. In acquisition planning documents published earlier this month, DHS said it intends to invest up to $20 million into Compliant Technologies’ Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter devices for Homeland Security Investigations officers and Enforcement Removal Operations agents. The contract is expected to be awarded later this year. “ICE is constantly assessing the needs of our officers in the field to ensure they have the tools and equipment necessary to safely arrest and remove criminal illegal aliens from our country,” a DHS spokesperson said in an email. “Every decision is made with careful consideration and appropriately reviewed to ensure that any technology ICE utilizes is consistent with all applicable law enforcement policies and standards.” 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.