Management

  • Over the past five years, the Army has been busily building renewable power facilities on its bases in order to reach an overall goal of 1 gigawatt of renewable energy by 2025. But now, the Army is putting more of an emphasis on using that energy to make its bases entirely self-sufficient from the public electric grid, so they can continue to function in the event of an outage. Michael McGhee, executive director of the Army Office of Energy Initiatives, talked with Federal News Radio’s Jared Serbu on Federal Drive with Tom Temin about the technologies the Army’s pursuing to make that a reality.

    July 13, 2017
  • The Trump administration wants to increase early retirement and separation incentives from a cap of $25,000 to $40,000 for all civilian federal employees. It also wants to create a governmentwide industry exchange program, which would let federal employees temporary work in a private corporation or association for no more than two years. The administration submitted both proposals to Congress to be included in the National Defense Authorization Act.

    July 12, 2017
  • General Services Administration acting Administrator Tim Horne told a congressional subcommittee the FBI headquarters project is cancelled, but not completely out of the running. Horne said the Trump Organization is in full compliance when it comes to the Old Post Office lease.

    July 12, 2017
  • While other federal agencies were consolidating and closing branch offices a few years back, the Patent and Trademark Office expanded. It's first-ever branch outside of Washington opened in 2012, a year after Congress authorized the move. Dr. Christal Sheppard, USPTO Midwest regional director, tells Federal Drive with Tom Temin the Detroit office is celebrating five years of operation.

    July 12, 2017
  • For lots of reasons, the federal government trails the private sector when it comes to customer service. Pressing forward on trying to fix this situation, the Partnership for Public Service and Accenture. Mallory Barg Bulman, director of research and evaluation at the Partnership, shares the details on Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

    July 12, 2017
  • The FBI joins a growing list of agencies that thought they were going to escape crumbling, obsolete buildings. A deal to trade its downtown headquarters to a developer and move to Maryland or Virginia is dead for now. Chris Lu knows what that feels like. As former deputy secretary of Labor, he was involved in a potential swap of the aging Perkins Building that also fell through. He shares his insight on Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

    July 12, 2017
  • After the collapse of the FBI headquarters project, will some sort of sanity or regulation ever come to federal construction?

    July 12, 2017
  • Senators have two very different proposals to redesign the Veterans Choice Program. Both pieces of legislation represent very different ideologies and sides of a debate that Congress, the Veterans Affairs Department, veterans service organizations and federal employee groups have been having for the past three years.

    July 11, 2017
  • The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently saw one of its longtime employees off into retirement. Steve Lavie, had a long career working on a nuclear submarine in the Navy then at nuclear power plants on the East Coast and finally at the NRC. But when he enlisted in the Navy, he was just a few credits shy of receiving his college degree. His NRC colleagues saw to it that Lavie still had a chance to experience a college commencement, before his retirement this summer. Lavie tells his story to Federal News Radio's Nicole Ogrysko on Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

    July 11, 2017
  • The Federal Communications Commission's program for providing subsidized broadband to low income families is at a high risk for fraud and abuse, according to a new Government Accountability Office report. The FCC has initiated an independent assessment, but that's still a couple of years off. Joining me with more, Seto Bagdoyan, director of forensic audits at the GAO, shares the details on Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

    July 11, 2017
  • The government abandoned its current plan to replace the FBI's Pennsylvania Avenue headquarters, leaving employees in the deteriorating J. Edgar Hoover Building for the foreseeable future.

    July 11, 2017
  • According to the Veterans Affairs Department's new reports detailing all major disciplinary actions for its workers, VA is on track to fire fewer people in 2017 than it has during the past six fiscal years. Federal employment experts say the new adverse action reports lack some significant details about VA's efforts to improve accountability and transparency.

    July 10, 2017
  • Walter Shaub's resignation leaves a hole in an already small office, and a question mark about what direction the ethic's agency will go under a new leader.

    July 10, 2017
  • All of the Washington ways of getting things in and out of a defense budget are coming into play. Larry Allen, president of Allen Federal Business Partners, tells Federal Drive with Tom Temin, how contractors can at least keep track of the game.

    July 10, 2017
  • Thanks to the work of Jitender Dubey, a microbiologist at the Agriculture Research Service, we now understand how toxoplasma gondii gets transmitted, avoiding countless illnesses and hospitalization. For his work, he's a finalist in this year's Service to America Medals program. He joins Federal Drive with Tom Temin to talk about his work and the honor.

    July 07, 2017