The Daily Scoop Podcast

The Daily Scoop Podcast
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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. 13h ago

    A new push to relaunch Congress’ expert tech office

    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.

    A new push to relaunch Congress’ expert tech office

  2. 1d ago

    Did Trump use AI to inform military operations?

    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.

    Did Trump use AI to inform military operations?

  3. 6d ago

    Inside DOGE’s involvement in National Science Foundation grant terminations last year

    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.

    Inside DOGE’s involvement in National Science Foundation grant terminations last year

  4. Oct 27

    The Pentagon wants AI procurements to support Trump’s ‘truth-seeking’ and ‘ideological neutrality’ directives

    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.

    The Pentagon wants AI procurements to support Trump’s ‘truth-seeking’ and ‘ideological neutrality’ directives

  5. Oct 23

    A federal judge rules OPM illegally shared millions of employee records with DOGE

    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.

    A federal judge rules OPM illegally shared millions of employee records with DOGE

  6. Oct 20

    DeepSeek set to be banned from federal civilian agencies

    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.

    DeepSeek set to be banned from federal civilian agencies

  7. Oct 15

    U.S. military debuts new Task Force Easy to enable drone tech ‘adaptation dominance’

    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.

    U.S. military debuts new Task Force Easy to enable drone tech ‘adaptation dominance’

  8. Oct 14

    How CISA’s partnership with Elastic is driving enhanced visibility across the federal cyber landscape

    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.

    How CISA’s partnership with Elastic is driving enhanced visibility across the federal cyber landscape
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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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