The three agencies responsible for overseas contingency contracting say they’ve made major progress against cutting waste and improving management over the last several years. But they also say a lot of work remains. Federal News Radio’s Jared Serbu says, some recent inspector general reports show stark examples of misspent funds.

When federal employees retire, they often take their knowledge with them. Their replacements have to learn the lessons all over again. The Office of Personnel Management and the American Federation of Government Employees are teaming up to change that. Federal News Radio’s executive editor Jason Miller joined Tom and Emily with a preview of a governmentwide mentoring hub.

Send one open-records request to different agencies and get very different responses. That’s what Bloomberg reporter Danielle Ivory found out. She asked departments to release details of trips that their leaders took in fiscal 2011. Some were quick to respond, but she’s still waiting for others. Danielle Ivory joined Tom and Emily to talk about this test of Freedom of Information Act offices.

For several years, federal technology managers have been working under a policy called cloud-first. Instead of building new data centers or adding to existing ones, CIOs are supposed to buy online computer capacity from cloud providers. But cloud adoption has been a little slow to take off. The evidence? Federal spending on clouds. Shawn McCarthy has taken a careful look at this spending. He’s research director for IDC Government Insights, and joined Tom and Emily.