This is the Federal Drive show blog. Here you can listen to the interviews, find more information about the guests on the show each day and links to additional resources.

Audio will be added later today.

Denise Wu — partner, Clifton Larson Allen

A group of financial experts is working to make federal spending more understandable and transparent to the public. The Office of Federal Financial Management and the Chief Financial Officers Council has moved the idea of a Statement of Spending to the front burner.

Julian Pecquet — staff writer, The Hill

Julian Pecquet, a staff writer for The Hill newspaper, discusses a recent story he wrote about the bitter partisan battle raging on Capitol Hill over last month’s attack in Benghazi.

Sharon Virts-Mozer — president and CEO, FCI Federal

Despite the grim budget picture, plenty of federal contractors are doing just fine. They make up a third of the 50 fastest-growing local companies, according to the Washington Business Journal. We wanted to know how they’re managing to not only survive, but thrive, when the words “fiscal cliff” and “sequestration” have become part of the local jargon

MORE FROM FEDERAL NEWS RADIO

DoD Report

• A report from Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee details specific Defense programs that would be cut under the impending sequester. The administration so far has not publicly provided these details. The Air Force would likely trim a half billion dollars from its aerial tanker project, for which Boeing is the prime contractor. The F-35 fighter program would lose $1 billion. Lockheed is the prime on that one. The report says the Army would get fewer Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopters and Boeing Chinook helicopters. In all, DoD stands to undergo a budget cut of $53 billion in 2013 under sequestration.
• The Pentagon said all military services have met their annual recruiting goals. About 135,000 people enlisted in fiscal 2012. Five of the six reserve components met their goals too. The Army Reserve fell short by 567 enlistees. Officials said that was on purpose because it needed to rebalance its force. The poor economy may be helping recruitment. On the other hand, military leaders said more than a quarter of young people can’t even qualify for service because they were obese. The numbers were just for the first 11 months of the fiscal year. The Pentagon has not released September figures.

  This story is part of Federal News Radio’s daily DoD Report. For more defense news, click here.

Cybersecurity Update

• The Intelligence Community is just months away from going operational with its own computing cloud. James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, said that by March next year, the cloud will begin to improve data security and save money. Clapper said having everyone in the community working in a single, shared environment would eventually improve data sharing. He told a Florida conference it will take until 2018 to finish building the cloud. The project is called the Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise. The National Security Agency and CIA are responsible for the cloud architecture.

  This story is part of Federal News Radio’s daily Cybersecurity Update. For more cybersecurity news, click here.

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