The Army is officially tightening rules around its education program

• The Army is officially tightening rules around its popular education programs. The service is eliminating Credentialing Assistance for commissioned officers, limiting that benefit primarily to enlisted troops. Army officials previously said that officers already have access to various education opportunities, while enlisted soldiers face more challenges transitioning to civilian careers. Under the new policy, all credentialing assistance requests will require command approval. Soldiers failing to complete their courses will be suspended from requesting credentialing assistance for a year. Similar restrictions apply to the service’s widely used Tuition Assistance Program. Army leaders have said the changes will help rein in the rising costs of the two programs.
  (Army tightens rules around popular education programs, ends credentialing assistance for officers - U.S. Army Human Resources Command on LinkedIn)
• Vendors have more time to comment on proposed changes to their General Services Administration schedule contracts. The GSA is giving contractors until April 3, or two more weeks, to offer feedback on draft terms and conditions for artificial intelligence systems. Earlier this month, GSA proposed significant changes to the way vendors could offer AI tools through their schedule contracts. The draft rules caused widespread concerns in the vendor community. GSA said it will include the new AI clause in a future refresh of the schedule terms and conditions.
  (GSA extends comment period on new AI clause for schedule contracts - General Services Administration)
• More details are emerging on how agencies should implement some minor legislative changes to federal pay and leave policies. A new memo from the Office of Personnel Management outlines how waivers work for premium pay of civilian employees working overseas. There’s also been an extension of income replacement payments for certain reserve military members. The recent changes stem from the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.
  (Recent pay and leave-related legislative changes - Office of Personnel Management)
• The Defense Department lead for its CMMC program is leaving. Stacy Bostjanick, the chief of defense industrial base cybersecurity in the DoD’s Chief Information Officer’s office, is leaving federal service after 37 years. Federal News Network has learned her last day is April 30. Sources say Buddy Dees, the director of the CMMC program management office, is expected to take over as the new director of the DIB cybersecurity program on an interim basis. Bostjanick started her federal career as a secretary at the GS-5 level in 1989 and rose through the ranks to earn her SES. She is expected to join the private sector.
  (DoD’s lead for CMMC retiring - Federal News Network)

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• Federal employees are reporting high levels of dissatisfaction. Nearly 60% of federal employees say engagement with their work has decreased since 2024. That result comes from a survey by the Partnership for Public Service of more than 11,000 federal employees. The new survey results show that during 2025, employee engagement scored at just 32 out of 100. About 7.5% of survey respondents agreed that political leaders at their agencies are motivating the workforce.
  (Under Trump 2.0, federal employees disengaged, dissatisfied, survey shows - Federal News Network)
• Fellowship programs to join the Foreign Service are on hold at the State Department. More than 20 Democratic senators say about 50 fellows from the Charles Rangel and Thomas Pickering fellowships have yet to complete their onboarding steps and have not heard back from the State Department on how to proceed. The fellowships are highly selective and have brought diplomats from underrepresented groups into the Foreign Service. The senators say the fellowships are key to bringing in the next generation of the Foreign Service workforce.
  (Van Hollen, colleagues press Rubio on delay in onboarding of diplomats into Foreign Service - Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.))
• The Education Department is handing off its trillion-dollar portfolio of federal student aid programs to the Treasury Department. The Treasury Department will take over the collection of defaulted federal student loan debt, and will support the Education Department’s efforts to bring borrowers back into repayment. The student loan portfolio stands at nearly $1.7 trillion. Fewer than 40% of borrowers are in repayment and almost a quarter of them are in default. Treasury will eventually provide support on federal student loan debt that is not in default and administer the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). This is the latest of several interagency agreements the Education Department has signed, moving its core programs to other parts of the federal government.
  (Education Dept hands federal student loan portfolio to Treasury, in latest step to dismantle agency - Federal News Network)
• Emil Michael, the Pentagon’s chief technology officer, said he is “pretty confident” the Pentagon can quickly phase out use of Anthropic’s products without major disruptions within the six-month deadline. When asked about internal pushback from military users who have already embedded Claude into their workflows, Michael said competing AI models have similar workflows, making it easy to introduce alternatives. “We’ve already deployed OpenAI in the last few weeks, and we’re going to deploy the others. We have deployed Gemini. And what we’re seeing so far is the workflows are very similar. So the disruption is, we think, minimal," he said. But industry experts say while interfaces and workflows are becoming more standardized, fully replacing a model like Claude within defense systems at all classification levels will be a complex effort.
  (DoD ‘confident’ it can replace Anthropic’s Claude within six months, but some warn transition won’t be easy - Federal News Network)

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