The Daily Scoop Podcast

The Daily Scoop Podcast
  • 4.8 (16)
  • News
  • Updated Daily

A podcast covering the latest news & trends facing top government leaders on topics such as technology, management & workforce. Hosted by Billy Mitchell on FedScoop and released Monday-Friday.

  1. 6d ago

    The Army moves its TITAN platform into production awards to Palantir, Anduril

    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 Army moves its TITAN platform into production awards to Palantir, Anduril

  2. Sep 1

    OMB publishes anticipated memo enforcing Login-dot-gov use

    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.

    OMB publishes anticipated memo enforcing Login-dot-gov use

  3. Aug 31

    OPM wants more AI use in federal hiring

    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.

    OPM wants more AI use in federal hiring

  4. Aug 28

    DHS’s new CIO has deep ties to DOGE

    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.

    DHS’s new CIO has deep ties to DOGE

  5. Aug 27

    Trump administration mandates agency use of Login-dot-gov on government websites

    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.

    Trump administration mandates agency use of Login-dot-gov on government websites

  6. Aug 26

    GSA’s Login.gov looks to device fingerprinting to fight fraud, AI agents and bots

    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.

    GSA’s Login.gov looks to device fingerprinting to fight fraud, AI agents and bots

  7. Aug 25

    Paul Lawrence on the progress of VA’s EHRM rollout

    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.

    Paul Lawrence on the progress of VA’s EHRM rollout

  8. Aug 21

    Federal agencies warn of AI-fueled attacks that pose an ‘active threat’ to water and other sectors

    Hackers are targeting water, food, energy, chemical, manufacturing and commercial facilities by taking aim at Siemens S7 Series programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and making use of artificial intelligence in the attacks, U.S. government agencies warned Wednesday. It’s the latest government warning about attacks on critical infrastructure as the United States wages war against Iran, which the government blamed for a recent campaign against water and wastewater systems— but doesn’t mention in Wednesday’s alert. The National Security Agency didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about who was behind the attacks on the PLCs, which are used to control manufacturing processes. The agencies said the attacks were an “active threat,” rather than a theoretical one. The attacks could disrupt critical industrial processes, cause safety incidents or lead to the compromise of sensitive data. Wednesday’s alert from the NSA, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, FBI, Energy Department and Environmental Protection Agency makes special note of the hackers using AI-generated exploitation scripts in the attacks. “Using AI to generate exploitation scripts represents an evolution in threat actor capabilities, dramatically reducing the technical expertise and time required to develop working ICS exploitation scripts and malicious tools,” the alert states. “In addition, AI enables adversaries to rapidly leverage additional attack vectors and adapt to defensive measures. Threat actors can easily collect public information about vulnerabilities and weaknesses, find exposed and exploitable PLCs, and use AI-generated scripts to act on that information.” The Defense Innovation Unit has a new, specialized team that’s hustling to clear major constraints associated with transitioning proven commercial technologies directly into the military services. “Within one year, we will open co-use classified facilities nationwide, slash cyber authorization timelines by half, and enable agile, end-to-end testing capabilities for young companies desperate to demonstrate,” DIU’s Director Owen West wrote in a memorandum unveiling the Bridge Program this week. According to that instruction and a Pentagon press release, DIU’s new business unit is charged with “eliminating critical bottlenecks” — explicitly related to security clearances, classified workspace access, and technology testing and accreditations — that have notoriously kept industry-made prototypes from reaching military end users on the frontlines in a timely manner and at scale. DIU’s current chief of strategic initiatives, Sarah Pearson, will lead the Bridge Program. Pearson, who formerly served as a Navy officer and technology executive, conceptualized this effort for the unit over the last year. Some of the activities will include establishing a quicker and more reliable tech accreditation portfolio that’s enabled by cybersecurity and AI capabilities, and modernizing the military’s test and evaluation pipelines. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

    Federal agencies warn of AI-fueled attacks that pose an ‘active threat’ to water and other sectors
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About

A podcast covering the latest news & trends facing top government leaders on topics such as technology, management & workforce. Hosted by Billy Mitchell on FedScoop and released Monday-Friday.

Information

  • Creator
    The Daily Scoop Podcast
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    500
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © All rights reserved
  • Show Website
    The Daily Scoop Podcast

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