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. ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot approved for use with Senate data

    1D AGO

    ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot approved for use with Senate data

    Staff in the upper chamber of Congress now have the go-ahead to use Senate data with three popular generative AI chatbots thanks to approval from an office that oversees the legislative body’s administrative operations. A recent notice from the Senate Sergeant at Arms’ chief information officer announced the approvals for Microsoft’s Copilot, Google’s Gemini, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, expanding on previous policies. That memo was previously reported by the New York Times and independently obtained by FedScoop. According to the document, Copilot is integrated into the Senate’s Microsoft 365 environment already, and more information about licenses for Gemini Chat and ChatGPT Enterprise will be coming within the next 30 days. Each Senate employee will be able to get one license for either Gemini or ChatGPT at no cost. Approval of the tools comes as entities across the federal government — including Congress, executive agencies, and the federal judiciary — have been navigating their own use of the growing technology to reduce administrative toil and assist staff. The Senate, for its part, previously allowed ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Microsoft’s Bing AI chat in 2023 at “moderate” risk levels, but they were only for research and evaluation or use with non-sensitive data. The new approvals are less restrictive on the type of data that can be ingested, opening the door to more widespread use. The architect of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ artificial intelligence program and digital modernization strategy is leaving the agency after nearly nine years. Charles Worthington, the VA’s chief AI officer and CTO, said in a LinkedIn post Thursday that “the time is right” for him to step down from his posts. A Harvard grad, Worthington joined the federal government in 2013 as a Presidential Innovation Fellow. He parlayed that experience into a role as senior advisor to the federal CTO, where he co-created the U.S. Digital Service following the disastrous rollout of HealthCare.gov. After nearly three years with USDS, including as the White House tech office’s acting deputy administrator, Worthington moved on to the VA in 2017. In addition to leading the agency’s digital modernization work, he also supported its adoption of commercial cloud infrastructure, oversaw the creation of vets.gov, rebuilt va.gov and launched VA Notify, per a congressional bio and his LinkedIn profile. In addition to boosting digital services for veterans, Worthington worked in recent years to spur AI adoption across the agency. Under his watch, the VA emerged as one of the most prolific AI users in the federal government, with an inventory that’s now 367 use cases strong. Included in that tally is the agency’s VA GPT chatbot.Worthington, who also served on the Technology Modernization Fund board for four years, didn’t reveal in his LinkedIn post where he’s headed next. But he said his time with the VA “has been the most important work” of his career. 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.

    5 min
  2. Federal agencies still falling short on tech accessibility requirements

    2D AGO

    Federal agencies still falling short on tech accessibility requirements

    U.S. government agencies continued to have low compliance with a statute designed to ensure that federal websites, software, and other products are accessible for people with disabilities, according to a recent federal review. In a new report, the General Services Administration found that alignment with the accessibility statute known as Section 508 was a 1.96 on a 5-point scale, continuing a trend of lacking compliance. GSA reported that roughly half of agencies didn’t review accessibility for their most-used information and communication technology tools, and the majority of agencies don’t conduct usability testing with people who have disabilities before resources are deployed or published. The poor compliance showing follows similar findings from past GSA reviews and indicates that more work is needed to help agencies comply. As a result, GSA concluded its report with recommendations that Congress both update the statute to clarify requirements and strengthen enforcement and oversight of agency compliance. The annual report is required by statute and was prepared in consultation with the White House Office of Management and Budget and the U.S. Access Board, an independent agency that establishes Section 508 standards. The report includes responses from 212 agencies, parent agencies, and other components. Its publication follows changes to the review process aimed at reducing the reporting burden on agencies. The top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is demanding a full, independent investigation into new reports of DOGE representatives improperly accessing and transferring Social Security Administration data. In a press release sent Tuesday, Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., said “new disclosures revealed DOGE personnel may have broken federal law and exposed Americans’ most sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers.” The release came shortly after the Washington Post reported that an SSA whistleblower said a former DOGE engineer put sensitive information from two agency databases — Numident and the Master Death File — on a thumb drive and planned to share that data with his private-sector employer. Democracy Forward, which represents several labor groups in a lawsuit against SSA over DOGE’s “unprecedented data grab,” filed a notice of factual development Tuesday in response to the Post’s reporting. The new court filing said the revelations in the article “are consistent with the substantial issues … of disclosures beyond SSA and the federal government as a whole and the ongoing risk of further disclosures of such uncontrolled data.” Peters’ press release references the Post’s story, but also highlights a January court filing from the Department of Justice that disclosed the use of an unapproved third-party server and communication between DOGE and an advocacy group seeking “evidence of voter fraud.” 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.

    4 min
  3. The Trump administration touts a $50B Anthropic investment amid ban of the AI company

    3D AGO

    The Trump administration touts a $50B Anthropic investment amid ban of the AI company

    Anthropic’s $50 billion commitment for data-center construction projects in New York and Texas still made it on a list of investments the Trump White House said it helped secure, despite an ongoing feud between the company and the U.S. government. That tally, which was posted in a release online Sunday and emailed Monday, listed Anthropic’s commitment among dozens of other private-sector investments related to American manufacturing, energy, and AI infrastructure projects that companies have announced during President Donald Trump’s second term. Other investments on that list include those from Apple, Meta, Nvidia and Amazon. Anthropic’s inclusion comes after a disagreement between the AI company and the Pentagon over guardrails for using its technology culminated in a governmentwide ban against the company and the DOD’s determination that it’s a “supply-chain risk.” Ironically, the White House release introduces the list with a statement that companies are moving to “strengthen domestic supply chains,” among other things. FedScoop contacted spokespeople at the White House and Anthropic, but neither provided comment before publication of this story. Anthropic’s partner on the project, Fluidstack, didn’t respond to a FedScoop request for comment. The Senate on Tuesday voted to confirm Army Lt. Gen. Joshua Rudd as commander of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the NSA, ending nearly a year of leadership uncertainty at the agencies and putting a new chief at the helm amid an ongoing war with Iran. Rudd, who previously served as deputy commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and worked in the special operations community, was nominated in December by President Donald Trump for the dual-hat role of Cybercom and NSA boss, despite having a limited cyber background. In April 2025, the Trump administration fired Air Force Gen. Timothy Haugh as head of those organizations without providing a public explanation. Since then, Cybercom and NSA have been led by Army Lt. Gen. William Hartman, who stepped in as acting director. Hartman was ultimately passed over to hold the roles on a Senate-confirmed basis. Rudd, who will pin on his fourth star following his confirmation, is entering the job as Cybercom supports U.S. military action against Iran during Operation Epic Fury. The command also played a support role in Operation Midnight Hammer against Iran last year and Operation Absolute Resolve in Venezuela in January, which included the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in Caracas. In addition to assisting other combatant commands and the joint force, the organization is tasked with conducting so-called “hunt forward” operations on overseas networks, defending the Department of Defense Information Network (DODIN), and bolstering America’s ability to resist and respond to cyberattacks. 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.

    5 min
  4. Anthropic sues the Trump administration

    4D AGO

    Anthropic sues the Trump administration

    Anthropic’s relationships with other federal contractors face irreparable harm following the Trump administration’s governmentwide ban on the company and determination that it’s a “supply-chain risk,” the Claude maker said in a lawsuit filed in a federal district court Monday. The legal challenge against the Pentagon, as well as multiple federal agencies and officials, seeks immediate and injunctive relief from President Donald Trump’s directive banning the company from government use and the Department of Defense’s designation of the company as a supply-chain risk. Among its arguments, Anthropic alleges the actions violate federal administrative procedure law, the company’s right to free speech, and are beyond existing legal authority. The lawsuit also provides new details about the ramifications for Anthropic’s work with other companies contracting with the federal government. At least one federal contractor that Anthropic has worked with to build custom applications has already “indicated that it may suspend that work or even remove Claude from existing deployments,” and others the company has worked with “are raising concerns, pausing collaborations, and considering terminating contracts,” according to the lawsuit. “Anthropic has no way to obtain redress from the government for those economic harms,” the company said. It estimated the actions by the Trump administration could jeopardize “hundreds of millions of dollars in the near term.” This one’s also related to the government’s ban of Anthropic, and the Secret Service can be added to the list of federal agencies or offices that said they won’t use the company’s Claude tool. The Department of Homeland Security component had used Anthropic’s Claude models for code generation, a focus area for many organizations, according to Secret Service CIO and Chief AI Officer Chris Kraft. “That application does have the ability to leverage Claude models … but they’re easy to change out,” Kraft said. “There’s a whole list of a bunch of different models that you can choose from, and we will follow the guidance and leverage other models.” The Secret Service joins a growing group of agencies that are phasing out Anthropic’s technology following the company’s clash with the Department of Defense in late February. Software developers at the Treasury Department had been using Claude Code, though Secretary Scott Bessent said last week that the agency is terminating use. The Office of Personnel Management, NASA, the Commerce Department, the General Services Administration and Department of Health and Human Services are untangling Anthropic from AI use cases, if they haven’t stopped using Claude already. 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.

    6 min
  5. OPM drops Claude, adds Grok and Codex to AI use disclosure

    MAR 6

    OPM drops Claude, adds Grok and Codex to AI use disclosure

    The Office of Personnel Management removed Claude and added Grok and Codex in an update to its public disclosure of AI use cases dated Wednesday. Removal of Claude comes after a disagreement between its maker, Anthropic, and the Department of Defense over the technology’s guardrails culminated in President Donald Trump issuing a governmentwide ban on the company late last week. In the following days, numerous federal agencies have made moves to stop using Anthropic’s services, including OPM. While the changes to the disclosure were made at the same time, Grok and Codex were not added as the result of Claude’s removal, OPM spokeswoman McLaurine Pinover said in an emailed response to FedScoop. The human capital agency is “constantly working to provide the best tools to the OPM workforce. These initiatives were already underway,” Pinover said. According to the new inventory, the “first production use” for both tools is listed as the first quarter of 2026. Pinover confirmed that date references the calendar year rather than fiscal year. Grok, a product of Elon Musk’s xAI, is listed as in production, and Codex, a coding specific AI tool from OpenAI, is being deployed in a sandbox phase — which generally describes a kind of controlled environment. OPM also added several other systems that deploy AI to its public disclosure, including Wiz, Zendesk, Waze, Google Maps, and the Apple iPhone. James “Aaron” Bishop has been tapped to serve as the Pentagon’s chief information security officer and deputy CIO for cybersecurity, the department announced on social media Thursday. He assumed the role of CISO in an acting capacity on Feb. 27, according to a LinkedIn post from the Office of the Chief Information Officer. In his new position, he’ll work under DOD CIO Kirsten Davies and be responsible for providing policy, technical, program and oversight support to the CIO on all cybersecurity matters. Bishop previously served as CISO for the Department of the Air Force, which includes the Air and Space Forces. According to his Air Force bio, his prior jobs in the private sector included CEO and founder of the Quantum Security Alliance, CEO and founder of Eigenspace, vice president and CISO for Science Applications International Corporation, and general manager of Microsoft’s National Security Group, among other roles. David McKeown, who previously served as the department’s CISO, deputy CIO for cybersecurity and special assistant for cybersecurity innovation, plans to leave government service for the private sector, according to the announcement. 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.

    5 min
  6. Amid the Anthropic ban, a look at how agencies have deployed Claude

    MAR 5

    Amid the Anthropic ban, a look at how agencies have deployed Claude

    A range of AI use cases — from coding assistance to workflow automation — face alteration or retirement as federal agencies work to comply with a Trump administration directive to remove Anthropic tools from their systems within the next six months. The recent clash between the Claude maker and President Donald Trump comes after federal officials have spent years building up AI capabilities in government, including tools from Anthropic. Now, a growing list of agencies are immediately dropping use of those services, and in some cases, replacing it with other providers. In recent days, the Department of Treasury, the Office of Personnel Management, NASA, and the International Trade Administration all indicated to FedScoop they have stopped or plan to stop using Anthropic technologies in the wake of the ban announced via Truth Social. That adds to previous statements and internal communications at the Department of Health and Human Services, the State Department, and the General Services Administration. Trump’s directive is the result of an escalated disagreement between Anthropic and the Department of Defense over how the technology should be used. While Trump accused Anthropic in his social media statement of attempting to “strong-arm” the DOD with its terms of service, CEO Dario Amodei said the company simply wanted to maintain safeguards to ensure that its technology would not be used in mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. The Secret Service is gearing up to launch what CIO and Chief AI Officer Chris Kraft is calling a new AI Program, which will act as a working group that comes in and helps IT teams. Kraft told FedScoop at Secret Service headquarters Wednesday in Washington, D.C., that the group will consist of 10 members initially and will also be tasked with identifying areas of opportunity to implement AI and other emerging technologies. Kraft said that “having that internal expertise, I believe, will be really transformational for us.” The Secret Service already uses AI technologies for license plate identification, facial recognition and other threat analysis. The AI group will focus on iterating existing use cases, as well as others like expanding counterfeit currency identification. 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.

    5 min
  7. Alleged ICE, DHS location data purchases come under scrutiny of Democrats

    MAR 4

    Alleged ICE, DHS location data purchases come under scrutiny of Democrats

    More than 70 Democrats in the House and Senate are pushing the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general to open a new investigation into the agency’s “warrantless purchases of Americans’ location data.” In a letter sent Tuesday, the lawmakers tasked IG Joseph Cuffari with investigating whether Immigration and Customs Enforcement is purchasing illegally obtained location data about Americans, how that data has been used, whether audits of employee access to uncover abuse are occurring and the policies governing data usage. “Location data is extremely sensitive, and can reveal someone’s religion, their political views, medical conditions, addictions, and with whom they spend time,” the Democrats said. “It is for that reason that ordinarily, the government must obtain a warrant from a judge in order to demand such data from phone or technology companies.” The letter comes nearly three years after an initial IG report found that Customs and Border Protection, the Secret Service and ICE violated federal law through warrantless purchase and use of location data. As part of that 2023 report, the watchdog office said the DHS components did not adhere to established privacy policies, nor did they develop sufficient guardrails before procurement and use. The chief information officer at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency announced his departure Tuesday, ending his nearly five-year run at CISA. Robert Costello, an 18-year veteran of the Department of Homeland Security, posted about the move on LinkedIn.nCostello’s tenure had recently grown turbulent, with conflicting accounts of whether the since-departed acting director of CISA, Madhu Gottumukkala, had tried to force him out. Costello last week received transfer orders for possible reassignment to another agency. “Serving as CIO at CISA has been one of the greatest privileges of my career,” he said. “Together, we strengthened our cybersecurity posture, modernized critical systems, and built capabilities that will endure. I am incredibly proud of what we accomplished as a team. 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.

    5 min
  8. Anthropic faces fallout across federal agencies from DOD clash

    MAR 3

    Anthropic faces fallout across federal agencies from DOD clash

    The high-stakes dispute between Anthropic and the U.S. military led to a sweeping decision Friday by President Donald Trump to remove the AI startup’s technology from all federal agencies. Already, several agencies are taking action. The General Services Administration, Department of State, and Department of Health and Human Services immediately indicated in public statements, comments, or internal emails that they were moving to boot Anthropic. The fallout is sure to continue as agencies untangle the Claude maker from their workflows. The clash centered on the Defense Department wanting Anthropic to remove stipulations that limited the military’s use of the startup’s technology in real-world operations, DefenseScoop previously reported. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in a statement Thursday that the company could not accede to the request “in good conscience. Madhu Gottumukkala is out as acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, with current agency executive director for cybersecurity Nick Andersen replacing him as the interim leader. News of Gottumukkala’s departure breaks one day after CyberScoop reported on widespread dismay with the agency’s performance during the first year of the Trump administration, with significant criticism aimed at Gottumukkala’s leadership on both sides of the aisle after a number of unflattering stories about his stewardship. “Madhu Gottumukkala has done a remarkable job in a thankless task of helping reform CISA back to its core statutory mission,” a Department of Homeland Security official told CyberScoop Thursday. “He tackled the woke, weaponized, and bloated bureaucracy that existed at CISA, wrangling contracts to save American taxpayer dollars.” Gottumukkala, served as chief information officer under then-South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, now secretary of DHS, before he was picked as deputy director of the agency. Sean Plankey’s nomination to serve as full-time director of CISA has stalled, leaving Gottumukkala as the acting director in his place. Gottumukkala will take on a new role at DHS, as director of strategic implementation. 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.

    5 min
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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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