Agriculture Department
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The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 required the Agriculture Department to set different standards for school lunches. The food may be healthier, but now USDA faces a new problem: many students can't stomach the food.
October 21, 2015 -
The FBI, NARA and the Navy see turnover at the executive levels. The Navy gets a new director of information dominance who is allowed to look at classified data.
September 21, 2015 -
It's been one year since the Agriculture Department jumped into the shared services business. Now a financial management shared services provider, USDA is working with other agencies to sign them on. The General Services Administration -- including about 30 other small agencies and commissions -- is one big customer. John Brewer is the deputy chief financial officer at the Agriculture Department. He's an AFCEA Bethesda 20-14 Governmentwide Initiative Excellence Award Winner for leading the charge. He tells Federal News Radio Executive Editor Jason Miller what prompted the agency's initial involvement with shared services.
July 17, 2015 -
The commercial poultry industry is getting safer thanks to the work of Hyun Lillehoj. She's senior research molecular biologist at the Agricultural Research Service and has been with USDA for more than 30 years. Her research has helped prevent and treat diseases in commercial poultry without the use of traditional antibiotic drugs. She's a finalist for a Service to America Medal in the career achievement category for making the world's poultry supply safer for all of us and making U.S. producers more competitive around the world. She tells In Depth guest host Jared Serbu about her work which has been described as a "game-changer" for the poultry industry.
July 09, 2015 -
Homeland Security and the Agriculture Department recently broke ground on a new National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility. The Kansas-based facility is slated to open in 2022 and help USDA study animal-to-human diseases. Jamie Johnson, the director of the National Bio and Agro Defense Program at DHS, joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive with more on the facility.
July 06, 2015 -
Breaking news on Monday: NASA is getting a new deputy chief information officer. Sources say Renee Wynn is moving to the space agency after spending the last four years as the Environmental Protection Agency’s deputy…
June 30, 2015 The Agriculture Department is trying lots of ways to develop its next generation workforce. One bureau has set up partnerships with schools in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia to let high school students intern as crop inspectors. Lorenzo A. Tribbett is the director of the Specialty Crop Inspection Division at USDA. He joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to explain more about the program and its impact so far.
June 24, 2015-
The Agriculture Department said it saved more than $1 billion over the last three years by acting more like one organization, instead of a collection of many bureau fiefdoms. Equal in importance to the savings, the Blueprint for Stronger Service initiative sparked a culture change among USDA employees. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack tells Executive Editor Jason Miller how the savings kept USDA going, despite budget and mission stresses.
June 04, 2015 -
Secretary Tom Vilsack said employees saw opportunities to buy smarter, telework more and rethink long-held practices under the Blueprint for Stronger Service initiative. He said after saving money across the board on back-office functions, the Agriculture Department\'s goal is to save another $100 million from strategic sourcing.
June 04, 2015 -
Acting Agriculture CIO Joyce Hunter is taking aim at consolidating 15 assorted networks the agency uses. At Transportation, CIO Richard McKinney is creating shared services for commodity IT to get the bureau CIOs out of the IT services business.
April 03, 2015 -
Tony Scott, the new federal chief information officer, said in his first public speech his priorities are to ensure existing administration technology efforts are successful. But Scott offered some insights into tweaks and focus areas.
March 25, 2015 -
At last, spring is almost here. And to celebrate, the Interior Department, together with the Agriculture Department, wants to help people locate their nearest national park — or maybe some other federally-managed property they might not know about. They're hosting a hackathon in April, and hope Web developers will create apps for travelers. Tim Fullerton, the director of digital strategy at Interior, joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin with more on the hackathon.
March 12, 2015 -
Sonny Hashmi, GSA's CIO since January 2014, is leaving government for the private sector. Cheryl Cook spent almost three years at USDA's CIO before leaving government earlier this month.
March 11, 2015 -
The controller in the Office of Management and Budget says the next two years are critical for financial management shared services. Mader said along with Treasury, OMB will be determining how best to get agencies to move to one of four federal providers.
March 05, 2015 -
Training money is usually one of the first casualties of tight budget times. But some agencies are finding ways around current budget pressures to get their employees what they need. One of them is the Department of Agriculture. Billy Milton is chief human capital officer at USDA. On In Depth with Francis Rose, he explained how USDA is getting its training done with the resources it has.
February 17, 2015