The House has been working on a bipartisan plan to reform how the government buys information technology. That bill was attached to the 2014 Defense Authorization Act, which passed last month. Through it all, the White House has been strangely silent. Now, officials have broken that silence on whether they support the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act, or FITARA. Federal News Radio’s Executive Editor Jason Miller talked to Tom and Emily about the administration’s first public opinion statements on FITARA since it passed the House.

The House passed the 2014 Defense Appropriations bill, leaving Defense Department civilians to wonder what’s in the bill — good and bad — that will affect them. What we know so far is there is no civilian pay raise but also language barring furloughs. President of the American Federation of Government Employees, J. David Cox, joined Tom and Emily with his take on the bill’s impact on DoD civilians.

Fridays this summer we’re taking a look at the federal employees nominated for the annual Service to America medal. It’s a prestigious career achievement award. In today’s Sammies segment, a man armed with a vision and a mission to help save the lives of others leads to breakthroughs in anti-cancer drugs research. Dr. Michael M. Gottesman is a deputy director for intramural research at the National Institute of Health and is nominated for a Service to America Medal in the Career Achievement category.

Related Story: NIH’s Gottesman at forefront of anti-cancer research

Sequestration hasn’t put the squeeze on all of the Pentagon’s quality-of-life programs. A new healthy base initiative is just getting started. At 13 bases, officials are inspecting cafeteria menus, gyms, weight-loss programs and other offerings for both service members and their families. Fort Sill is one of the participating bases. Maj. Gen. Mark McDonald is the commander.

Four years into the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative, the number of federal data centers has grown. Yet some agencies have managed to close and consolidate these expensive facilities. A case in point is the Labor Department. Working with Lockheed Martin, it just crossed a major milestone in a seven year effort at data center consolidation. Lynn Singleton is the director of Environmental Services at Lockheed.

The ubiquitousness of cyber crime and cyber spying is sometimes hard to grasp, but it happens every day across the globe. And according to a recently released McAfee report, living with these cyber criminals and spies costs individuals and governments an enormous amount, possibly more than $1 trillion. The report is called the Economic Impact of Cyber Crime and Cyber Espionage. Vice President of Government Relations for McAfee Tom Gann joined Tom and Emily.