With the retirement of Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has a new chairman. Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) has a heavy agenda for the committee during the 113th Congress. Carper discusses homeland security, reauthorizing the department and the need for Postal Service reform. He reiterated the need for dealing with the ongoing, 10-year-plus terror threat, but he also emphasized something new. In addition, he offers some encouraging words for federal employees.

Personnel practices at the IRS have been under close watch for more than a decade. But a new examination by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration finds that over the last few years, the agency has made real progress in recruitment and hiring.

President Barack Obama signed his long-awaited Executive Order on cybersecurity yesterday. But even he said it’ll still take an act of Congress to fully protect the nation’s infrastructure. Jennifer Martinez, staff writer at The Hill Newspaper, joins us with details on what the EO does and doesn’t do.

With last night’s State of the Union speech, President Obama followed a decades-old tradition of playing big time to the television audience. Everyone listens with one main question on their minds: what’s in it for me. Don Kettl, dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, was listening for what the speech said to federal agencies and their employees.