Government Executive - Tech

Treasury is creating a database with pandemic aid recipients’ sensitive information

Natalie Alms — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0400

The Treasury Department is pooling information about people who received benefits from pandemic-era relief programs in a new, central database it says will be used to conduct program audits.

It’s the latest front in the Trump administration’s efforts to centralize government data, including information typically held by states about people who receive nutrition benefits and jobless aid. Many of the administration’s previous attempts have been subject to lawsuits.

Critics say the department’s required notice for the system is imprecise, overly broad and runs afoul of privacy laws governing the federal government. Treasury is amassing addresses, financial data, Social Security numbers and other data in the new system, which it says it may cross-match with other government data.

Typically, these types of notices are “routine matters that do not warrant comment,” Steve Sharpe, senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, said in a statement. “But the scope of this notice is an astonishing and dramatic departure from prior Treasury practice.”

The NCLC, a nonprofit focused on economic justice, called the new system a “baseless violation of privacy” in a comment on the February notice that it submitted with over 40 other organizations, including many state and local legal aid groups.

Treasury’s plan “could be construed to reach millions of individuals,” the comment reads.

The database will include information about the individuals and entities, like small businesses, receiving benefits from eight department programs, Treasury’s notice says. Congress created many of these during the pandemic to provide emergency relief.

Other programs feeding data into the new system, like one created to rebuild the Gulf Coast after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, have no relation to the pandemic. The new system could also include other programs administered by the Treasury in addition to those listed in the formal filing, the notice says.

Local governments administer some of these programs, and they’re already required to report subrecipient and vendor information, the National League of Cities, the United States Conference of Mayors and National Association of Counties say in a comment, which also emphasizes the cost that reporting new data would entail, especially after some of these programs have been shuttered following the end of the pandemic.

Treasury did not respond to a request for comment. But if it moves forward with the new system as described in the notice, it will be saving information about a long list of people — not only those who receive assistance, but also people “associated” with the nonprofits, small businesses and other entities that received or delivered aid. The system will also house application information, which could include sensitive financial information.

The nonprofit Association of Public Data Users wrote in its comment that the notice “seems designed particularly to obfuscate the purpose of the collection and potential uses of the data.”

Although the stated purpose of the system is for audits, “we suspect the unstated purpose of the system of records is not to audit at all, but to get access to the information held by states that Treasury cannot otherwise directly compel them to submit to the federal government,” continues APDU’s comment, which it submitted with nine other organizations.

The Trump administration has pressured a range of state and local entities to share data with the federal government since the beginning of last year, including voter files.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center argues in its comment, which got sign-on from other organizations like the Center for Democracy and Technology, that the new system runs afoul of the Privacy Act’s principles of minimizing data collection, calling the proposed program “illegal and reckless.”

The notice signals more of the same “data grab playbook” from the administration, John Davisson, litigation director for EPIC, told Nextgov/FCW.

“Time and again we've seen this administration exploit personal data to construct wildly exaggerated narratives of waste and fraud, to carry out brutal immigration enforcement tactics, and attempt to undermine the right to vote,” he said.

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CIA employees will get AI 'coworkers'—and eventually run teams of AI agents, deputy says

David DiMolfetta — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 16:59:00 -0400

The Central Intelligence Agency aims to integrate artificial intelligence-powered “coworkers” into analysts’ workflows in the coming years as part of an effort to rapidly adopt the emerging capabilities for use in intelligence-gathering and analysis, a top official said Thursday.

CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis said these AI coworkers would be housed in agency analytics platforms to help with basic tasks, though humans would still be looped into the process.

“It won’t do the thinking for our analysts, but it will help draft key judgments, edit for clarity and compare drafts against tradecraft standards,” he said in a speech at a Special Competitive Studies Project event focused on AI and the intelligence community. The AI tools would provide triage assistance and flag trends for human analysts to conduct further review.

Within a decade, the CIA will treat AI tools as an “autonomous mission partner” and officers will manage teams of AI agents in a hybrid model to increase the speed and scale of intelligence work, Ellis added.

Last year, the agency had more than 300 AI projects, and, for the first time in its history, AI was recently used to generate an intelligence report, he said.

The remarks provide a rare public glimpse into how one of the nation’s top spy agencies is integrating frontier AI systems into its day-to-day operations, and they signal that such platforms are expected to become a daily feature of officers’ workflows in the near future.

The CIA primarily executes and coordinates human intelligence gathering overseas, often done undercover. Officers recruit and manage foreign assets to clandestinely gather intelligence on areas like economics, terrorism and cyber threats.

Much of that work often involves the use of technology, though some have recently argued the advent of advanced AI tools may push the CIA more toward old-world tradecraft techniques.

But there have been benefits to technological investments. The agency recently elevated its Center for Cyber Intelligence into an entire mission center, a move that’s “paying dividends already by allowing us to deploy new tools to the field and gain more access to priority targets,” Ellis said.

“The battle of cybersecurity will be a battle of artificial intelligence,” and whoever capitalizes on the best AI models will wield “enormous power,” he added. “Having a new mission center centered around cyber intelligence will put us on the path to secure the upper hand.”

The agency also recently announced a new acquisition framework to overhaul how it integrates technology into its missions.

In an effort to track how foreign adversaries like China are using advanced AI and other technologies, the CIA doubled its technology-related foreign intelligence reporting, said Ellis. Those intelligence products focus on technology use abroad and can include findings on areas like semiconductors, cloud computing, infrastructure, cybersecurity or R&D.

Ellis did not mention Anthropic’s recent Project Glasswing announcement, a consortium announced earlier this week meant to help secure critical software against AI-driven attacks. The project was fueled by a powerful, non-public Anthropic frontier model the company says has already uncovered thousands of vulnerabilities but could be weaponized in the wrong hands.

The intelligence community and its industry partners are already examining and discussing how such a model may impact the future of cyber missions, Nextgov/FCW reported Wednesday.

Earlier this year, Anthropic declined to ease restrictions against its tools being used for domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons for Pentagon use, triggering a “supply chain risk” designation from the Defense Department and a White House order that all federal agencies phase out their uses of Anthropic tools. The company has legally challenged the move.

Ellis did not single out Anthropic specifically, though he cautioned that the CIA “cannot allow the whims of a single company” to constrain its use of AI and said the agency is looking to diversify across multiple vendors to preserve operational freedom.

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VA’s FY27 budget proposal seeks funding for additional AI adoption

Edward Graham — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 08:18:00 -0400

The White House wants to allocate more funds to the Department of Veterans Affairs to help expand the agency’s use of artificial intelligence tools in fiscal year 2027, according to several detailed budget proposals.

The Trump administration released its proposed FY27 budget on Friday, with the VA and other agencies subsequently releasing more detailed breakdowns of their suggested funding levels.

The agency’s funding proposal is unlikely to be enacted by Congress in its current form, as the legislative branch often reworks or fully overhauls White House proposals to meet lawmakers' policy goals, but the document nonetheless provides a window into VA’s priorities for FY27.

The administration is seeking $144.9 billion in discretionary funding for VA in the next fiscal year, with roughly $6.3 billion of that allocated for the agency’s IT systems.

A small — but noticeably growing — portion of these funds are earmarked for AI adoption and expansion.

The budget proposes allocating $130 million to the Veterans Benefits Administration “for automation and artificial intelligence investments modernizing veterans claims processing by reducing errors and delivering benefits to veterans faster.”

VA’s 2025 AI use case inventory listed 367 instances of the agency’s deployment of or experimentation with the emerging capabilities. Of this total, 28 of the uses were focused on improving government benefits processing for veterans and their beneficiaries.

In an FY27 budget document focused on the agency’s IT programs and electronic health record modernization project, VA also proposes earmarking $47.8 million for its “Decision Intelligence and Automation” activities. The budget breakdown says this funding would be for “shared automation and decision support capabilities, including the infrastructure and controls needed to develop, integrate, and govern artificial intelligence capabilities across the Department.”

VA says the boost in proposed funds for these activities — $4.7 million more than what was enacted in 2026, or an increase of around 10.9% — is needed to support additional uses of the emerging capabilities.

“The increase is driven primarily by the AI Infrastructure solution, enabling VA to pilot and scale AI tools that improve operational efficiency, enhance clinical decision-making, and support personalized care and benefits delivery, while sustaining governance frameworks for safe, effective, and ethical use,” the budget says. “The outcome is a secure, scalable AI ecosystem that strengthens decision-making and workflow execution across mission services.”

The agency also says further uses of AI and automated tools would reduce delays and allow VA staff and clinicians to better support veteran care.

According to the budget document, full-time equivalent employees have saved an average of 2-3 hours “through [the use of] generative AI tools at VA,” although it was not clear what timeframe was used to determine this amount. VA also says that 100% of its high-impact AI use cases are in compliance “with federal risk management practices.”

In a topline budget brief, VA says investments in AI would advance its research efforts “by providing a mechanism for directly translating new evidence into practice and pilot testing novel tools and solutions to revolutionize care."

The agency’s overall FY27 budget proposal also allocates $4.2 billion for the continued implementation of its new Oracle Health electronic health record, which is part of a broader federal effort to deploy one common, interoperable system across VA, the Defense Department, the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

VA paused most deployments of the new EHR software in April 2023 to address a host of usability and patient safety issues at the facilities where the system had been rolled out. The agency, however, is preparing to restart go-lives on April 11, with plans to deploy the EHR system at 13 sites in 2026 and then roughly double that amount in 2027.

While the agency is primarily focused right now on resuming the EHR modernization project, the budget proposal also says that efforts to migrate the system to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure will help it better adopt AI tools in the future.

“The ability of the Federal EHR to take advantage of artificial intelligence and other capabilities from industry hinges on successfully shifting the system to a cloud infrastructure,” the document reads.

VA’s 2025 AI inventory included five instances of the agency’s Office of Electronic Health Record Modernization — which is spearheading its deployment of the new system — seeking to adopt these capabilities.

This included one use case where the office was identified as being in the pre-deployment phase of rolling out a clinical AI agent into the new system, noting that “administrative tasks, manual documentation, and complex workflows within the Electronic Health Record (EHR) cause lower clinical efficiency and operational effectiveness.”

According to VA’s AI strategy, an updated version of which was released in October, early validation of the agency’s AI use cases will eventually allow them to be “incorporated into the EHR and many other information technology platforms through coordination between innovators and the teams managing those systems today.”

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Agencies could be required to move loan systems to 1 platform under bipartisan bill

Doug Criscitello — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0400

Bipartisan legislation introduced in March 2026 would consolidate federal lending systems onto a shared services platform, a move that would require agencies to migrate their loan programs or justify exemptions under the Federal Loan Systems Modernization Act (H.R. 7789 and S. 3980).

According to the bill's main sponsor Sen. Marsha Blackburn. R-Tenn., outdated systems have cost billions and allowed tens of billions in fraud, and modernizing federal lending through Lending.gov will help make government more user-friendly, combat fraud and save taxpayer dollars.

The policy goal is clear, but the success of the effort will depend heavily on execution, a factor that has challenged similar governmentwide IT initiatives in the past.

For federal managers overseeing lending programs, the bill raises operational questions: Who would run this platform? How would migration work? And what happens to existing contracts and staff? Those questions would be addressed in a report to Congress required within six months of the bill’s enactment.

How Would Credit Agencies Be Impacted?

While federal credit agencies would retain policy authority and program discretion, they would be required to begin speaking the same language and using common technology with a goal of establishing consistent standards for loan management and an improved user experience for borrowers.

That shift would mark a structural change in how federal lending is administered, moving from agency-specific systems to a more centralized, shared infrastructure model.

In practice, this means agencies currently running loan programs on legacy systems would face a choice: migrate to the platform or demonstrate clearly why their program requires standalone infrastructure. The six-month GSA implementation plan, which would necessarily follow substantial input and direction from the Office of Management and Budget, must detail which programs integrate first and set migration timelines.

The scope is substantial. The government’s $5 trillion loan portfolio spans 20 agencies who lend to students, small businesses, homeowners, rural communities, and American business interests in emerging markets. Many credit agencies have spent decades building custom underwriting systems and servicing platforms. They are badly in need of modernization. Unwinding them, though, will be no small feat.

The Ownership Question

The legislation doesn't specify which agency or entity would own and operate Lending.gov. The most likely candidates are GSA, the Department of the Treasury, or perhaps a current credit agency like the Small Business Administration. GSA has established shared services expertise through initiatives like Login.gov to achieve efficiencies across the government.

Treasury has deep experience with financial systems and already operates Pay.gov, which allows agencies to collect electronic payments through a single platform rather than having each agency maintain a payment processing capability. Treasury has also recently taken on new responsibilities involving student loan servicing. The department’s new role helping to service loans will generate critical data (e.g., migration costs, staffing requirements, systems integration challenges, borrower satisfaction metrics) that can inform efforts to implement Lending.gov.

The SBA offers another option. An overhaul of the platform used to extend credit to victims recovering from natural disasters has substantially improved the agency’s capabilities around loan making, fraud control, and servicing.

Migration Realities and Resistance Points

Not all loan programs are equally ready for migration. The implementation plan will need to address transition costs, contract buyouts, and how to avoid service disruptions during migration. Terminating and replacing major IT contracts before they expire typically incurs significant costs, and some agencies may face vendor litigation.

Staffing presents another challenge. Agencies currently employ specialists who manage legacy lending systems. If those systems migrate to a shared platform, what happens to that expertise? Some staff might transfer to the new platform operator; others might be retrained; some positions might be eliminated.

Centralizing lending infrastructure also introduces new risks. A single platform could create a larger target for cyber threats or a single point of operational failure. Programs with statutory or market-specific requirements may struggle to fit standardized workflows, increasing the likelihood of exceptions that could undercut the platform’s intended efficiencies.

The Coordination Challenge

The bill faces the fundamental challenge that has defeated previous consolidation efforts: agencies protect their autonomy, and congressional committees protect their turf.

Without strong alignment among agencies, Congress and central authorities like OMB, similar efforts have historically stalled or resulted in partial adoption rather than full transformation.

Twenty agencies managing loan programs means twenty sets of stakeholders who currently control how lending operations work. A shared services platform centralizes decisions that those stakeholders currently make independently. Agencies will argue their programs have unique requirements that a shared platform can't accommodate. They'll point to recent investments and question why those should be abandoned.

Congressional committees span a wide range of interests from the House and Senate Agriculture committees (which oversee USDA lending), the Small Business committees, and the Banking committees. A shared platform run by an agency outside of their purview shifts some oversight authority. The legislation, however, preserves lending agency authority over credit policy, underwriting standards, and program rules—matters typically of greatest concern to the committees.

Technology Procurement in the Meantime

One factor adding urgency: agencies continue to procure new technology for lending operations, and without coordination, they risk locking in another generation of incompatibility.

Banks are projected to spend $85 billion on AI systems by 2030, according to Juniper Research. Federal agencies are expected to follow that trend, each independently procuring AI tools for underwriting, fraud detection, and servicing. If agencies spend the next several years independently buying and deploying AI tools before Lending.gov is operational, the integration challenge becomes significantly harder.

GAO's 2025 annual report on duplication found that addressing recommendations on duplicative IT investments could save the government over $100 billion. Uncoordinated technology procurement in the lending space directly contributes to that duplication.

Lessons from Other Consolidations

The adoption of shared services is nothing new. Payroll consolidation, in the mid-2000s, reduced payroll providers from 22 to four. That initiative worked because OMB strongly supported the move and the function was already relatively standardized across agencies.

The ongoing consolidation of agency data centers shows the challenge of mandates without resources. Agencies were required to close data centers and move to shared infrastructure, but many lacked funding for migration. The result: slower progress than planned, and agencies keeping old data centers running longer than intended.

For Lending.gov, the lessons suggest that there must be a clear value proposition for agencies, adequate funding for transition costs, flexibility in migration timing, and strong central authority (such as OMB) to enforce standards and resolve disputes.

What This Means for Federal Managers

For agency staff currently working on lending programs, the key question is: if the bill becomes law, what should we do or not do?

At a minimum, agencies should maintain current systems while preparing for the possibility of migration and avoiding long-term investments that could conflict with a centralized platform model.

Agencies planning significant system upgrades should engage with OMB and the bill's sponsors to understand likely platform directions before committing to long-term contracts.

The six-month implementation plan will be the first real test of whether the proposal can move from concept to execution, and how disruptive the transition is likely to be for agencies.

Doug Criscitello is the executive director of the Center for USA Lending, a nonpartisan organization which advances modern design and delivery of federal credit programs.

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The IRS wants to shrink its workforce by nearly 4,000 — and use technology to make up the difference

Natalie Alms — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 17:39:37 -0400

The IRS has pushed out more than 28,000 employees since Trump’s inauguration. Now, it wants to lose another net 4,000 staff, according to new IRS budget documents.

The tax agency is banking on technology improvements to help it sustain performance at its lower headcount, it says in its fiscal year 2027 budget justification.

“Without modernization, the IRS would be unable to sustain performance with a reduced headcount,” the budget document says. The agency’s modernization budget “represents a prudent and necessary investment to sustain performance, enable future workforce efficiencies, and deliver enduring value to taxpayers and the Nation.”

The IRS estimates that staffing reductions of 4,875 employees will yield “significant savings” of over $777 million. The IRS budget doesn’t specify where or how these cuts would take place, and the IRS and Treasury Department did not respond to requests for comment. Overall, the administration has proposed a $1.4 billion reduction in IRS funding.

Even as the IRS says that it’s relying on technology to make up for a smaller staff size, its technology shop hasn’t been immune to staffing losses. The IRS has shed about 40% of its IT staff, according to Federal News Network, and 80% of its executives. The agency also reassigned 1,500 employees from its IT shop to the office of the chief operating officer last year.

AI “will be part of speeding up everything we’re doing,” Frank Bisignano, the IRS CEO, told lawmakers last month. “We are building an IRS that leverages advanced technology, empowers its workforce with better tools and delivers secure and easily accessible services.”

But Congress’ watchdog warned recently that staffing losses at the IRS have left skill gaps in AI areas that increase the risk that the agency’s AI efforts “will not succeed.”

The agency’s research, applied analytics and statistics unit — one of two main AI hubs at the IRS, helmed by the agency’s AI lead — lost 63 employees who supported the agency’s AI efforts as of May last year.

IT staff at the IRS have also been among those moved to work as tax examiners and contact representatives after the IRS failed to fully staff its divisions tasked with tax processing and customer service in the lead-up to the filing season.

The IRS is also proposing some hires in the new budget request.

The tax agency wants to hire 1,132 employees to “maintain customer service” to help implement the administration’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” and staff its telephone line, according to the budget, which also previews a push for more online, self-service options for taxpayers so that they don’t have to rely on “assisted channels” in the first place.

This isn’t the first push to make up for staffing losses at the IRS since Trump took office. Last summer, the agency pivoted away from planned layoffs to hiring and reassignments to fill “mission critical skill sets.”

Danny Werfel, who served as IRS commissioner during the Biden administration, told Nextgov/FCW in a statement that “the most important next step is for the IRS to publish a detailed modernization plan that gives the public clear visibility into its technology priorities, timelines, and expected outcomes.”

“The plan should help make clear how, when, and at what budget, the IRS will make up for staffing reductions that may be impeding their stated objective to improve customer service, collections, and data security,” he continued.

That plan appears to be in flux as the IRS anticipates using up the last of its funding from the Inflation Reduction Act in fiscal 2028. Passed in 2022, the law originally gave the IRS almost $80 billion, although $54 billion of that has been rescinded by lawmakers. The IRS was using some of the funding for technology improvements, and now the IRS is re-evaluating its modernization plans as it anticipates the money running dry, the budget says.

Among the work that the IRS had been doing with IRA funding is trying to modernize some of its systems that date back to the 1960s. It appears that that effort is ongoing, as the IRS budget includes a push to modernize its mainframe tax processing systems that are built on over 15 million lines of COBOL, a legacy computer language that fewer programmers are now proficient in.

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Cuts hit CISA, NIST and IRS in Trump’s FY27 budget

Alexandra Kelley, Edward Graham, and David DiMolfetta — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 06:00:00 -0400

President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2027 budget is out, laying out the administration’s priorities but setting up a proposal that is likely to change significantly as it moves through Congress toward final approval.

Our sister publication Nextgov/FCW breaks down the major highlights below:

Cybersecurity

The proposed budget sheds around $707 million from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The move mirrors efforts last year to draw down resources from the nation’s main civilian cyberdefense bureau that is located in the Department of Homeland Security. CISA has drawn the ire of the president and many of his allies over past activities tied to election security.

A cut of this size would mark a sharp escalation from the prior year’s budget fight, when the White House sought roughly $490 million in reductions — about 16% of the agency’s initial $3 billion budget — but ultimately faced congressional resistance that brought proposed cuts closer to a range of $130 million to $300 million. If enacted, the FY27 proposal would deepen the reductions by more than $200 million compared to the administration’s earlier request, signaling a continued push to significantly scale back the agency’s footprint.

“CISA was more focused on censorship than on protecting the nation’s critical systems, and put them at risk due to poor management and inefficiency, as well as a focus on self-promotion” the FY27 document says.

It adds that the budget would remove “duplicative” programs focused on state and local cyber funding. Notably, it proposes eliminating programs “focused on so-called misinformation and propaganda as well as external engagement offices such as council management, stakeholder engagement, and international affairs.”

Those offices were targets of frequent workforce reductions in CISA over the last year. The proposal’s call to eliminate stakeholder engagement functions could have far-reaching effects, as those offices serve as a primary conduit between the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and state, local and private-sector partners that own or operate much of the nation’s critical infrastructure.

“Like the President’s cyber strategy, the President’s CISA budget reflects his utter lack of understanding of the urgency of the cyber threats we face and how to mobilize the government to help confront them. As of 2023, CISA was spending $2 million on countering information operations, an effort initially launched at the behest of Congressional Republicans during the first Trump Administration,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee.

“There is nothing that justifies a reckless $700 million cut to CISA, particularly at a time of heightened tensions with Iran and an increasingly aggressive China,” he added. “I am committed to working with my colleagues to push back against these cuts and ensure we can protect government and critical infrastructure networks.”

Despite the cuts to CISA, the budget adds funding to other cyber components of the government. The Treasury Department’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence would get a $15.2 million infusion for “key investments in critical cyber capabilities, sanctions targeting, and combating illicit financial activity,” it says. Treasury often sanctions nation-state hackers and cybercriminals when the U.S. government makes a determination that their activity poses a national security threat.

An allocation of $403 million under the Transportation Department would go to support a Trump 2.0 executive order concentrating on the nation's capital and contribute to enhancing the visibility of law enforcement within the D.C. Metro system. Funding is specifically earmarked for improvements such as upgrading camera and monitoring systems and implementing cybersecurity enhancements.

Emerging Tech

Major emerging technologies, specifically artificial intelligence and quantum information and computing sciences, were broadly spared from major cuts, with the administration writing “The Budget maintains funding for research in artificial intelligence and quantum information science at key agencies, to ensure the United States remains on the cutting edge of these critical technologies’ development and responsible use.”

AI received a $1.2 billion investment across the Department of Energy apparatus, with a focus on how it can improve energy systems. The new funding will also go towards supporting seven AI supercomputers at Argonne and Oak Ridge National Laboratories. At the defense level, the budget also prioritizes AI in defense systems and within the Armed Forces enterprise.

The National Nuclear Security Administration would receive $32.8 billion — an increase of 12% over the previous year — to foster new nuclear capabilities and deterrents in a bid to strengthen American energy dominance.

Several of the budget’s proposed cuts support the Trump administration’s effort to eliminate “wokeness” from government operations, government-funded programs and AI systems used in federal operations. The document highlighted a Baltimore, Maryland-based health AI tool funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to help 15- to 25-year-olds “optimize their sexual health decision making” as an example of such programs that would be slashed.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology also suffered cuts of $993 million under the proposed budget to reduce “wasteful spending at NIST that has long funded awards for the development of curricula that advance a radical climate agenda.”

Among the cut programs, the budget completely eliminates the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, saying it has failed to accelerate the U.S.-based manufacturer’s ability to compete globally. This follows the nominee for NIST director Arvind Raman’s March testimony before the Senate Commerce committee vocalizing his support for the MEP program.

VA modernization

The White House’s proposed budget would allocate $4.2 billion for the continued rollout of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ new electronic health record system. The modernization initiative, which was paused in April 2023 to address technical and safety issues at the VA medical facilities where the software had been deployed, is set to resume on April 11. The agency plans to deploy the Oracle Health EHR system at 13 sites in 2026, with the goal of roughly doubling the number of go-lives in 2027.

Friday’s budget document said the Trump administration has made accelerating deployments of the modernized system “a top priority effort.”

The agency’s FY26 budget directed $3.4 billion toward VA’s EHR modernization project, although Congress included a provision in the funding measure that made 30% of those funds contingent upon the agency providing “an updated life-cycle cost for the program, a facility-by-facility deployment schedule, certification on healthcare performance baseline metrics for facilities where the EHR has already been deployed, projected staffing levels necessary to support the schedule proposed, and the certification of four safe successful deployments without any adverse events.”

More broadly, the proposed FY27 budget for VA also looks to enhance the agency’s adoption and use of new capabilities and modernized software systems.

The request calls for $130 million to be allocated to the Veterans Benefits Administration “for automation and artificial intelligence investments modernizing veterans claims processing by reducing errors and delivering benefits to veterans faster.”

VA’s 2025 AI use case inventory, which was released in January, listed 367 instances of the agency’s exploration and adoption of the capabilities, and 28 of the uses were focused on government benefits processing.

The proposed budget said adoption of these benefits-focused uses — the majority of which were listed in the recent inventory as still being in pre-deployment — will “limit the costly practice of relying on surge staffing and extra labor costs while using taxpayer dollars more efficiently.”

Additionally, the Trump administration’s proposal would direct $6.3 billion toward VA’s IT systems, which it said would allow the agency “to accelerate cybersecurity efforts, continue implementation of a modern integrated financial and acquisition system, support EHRM rollout, and strengthen digital platforms for mental health, community care, and housing to ensure timely, reliable access to benefits.”

IRS customer experience

Citing concerns about alleged agency bloat and privacy violations, the administration’s proposal suggests cutting $1.4 billion from the tax agency’s previously allocated FY26 budget.

It says, however, that the White House “proposes to streamline IRS operations utilizing technology improvements to help focus the IRS on providing high-quality customer service while ensuring the tax laws are fairly administered.”

While the document is vague on how this new technology would be used, the administration does cite its previous effort to eliminate the agency’s Direct File program, which allowed taxpayers to file their returns online directly with the IRS, as an example of wasteful spending. It said the program “cost over $41 million but yielded fewer than 300,000 IRS-accepted returns for tax year 2024—a cost of nearly $140 per return, when existing programs allow many taxpayers to file for free.”

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Old-school spycraft could make a comeback as AI undermines trust

David DiMolfetta — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 07:03:00 -0400

Artificial intelligence is widely expected to revolutionize intelligence gathering, enabling faster, cheaper and more scalable collection of information. But a new analysis suggests the technology may also spur a return to some of espionage’s oldest methods.

The recent article published in Studies in Intelligence, the CIA-backed academic journal, argues that, as AI degrades the reliability of digital communications like text messages and video calls, traditional human intelligence tradecraft — like dead drops, brush passes and in-person meetings — could regain renewed importance.

The same technologies that enhance intelligence gathering may ironically make it harder to trust the data those tools produce or transmit, argues the author, Thomas Mulligan, a RAND Corporation researcher who served in the CIA from 2008 to 2014.

AI is already being used to generate convincing deepfakes and fabricate messages. These tools, his paper argues, introduce a new source of “noise” into digital communications, which he says is making it harder to distinguish between authentic and synthetic signals.

That erosion has implications for how spies communicate with their sources.

“If my friend tells me, face-to-face, that he is in trouble and needs money, I can be confident that that’s true,” Mulligan writes. But when the same message is delivered through an electronic medium, it becomes “more likely a scam than a bona fide plea for help.”

That dynamic elevates the value of communication methods that are not mediated through electronic means.

A properly executed dead drop, for instance, allows an intelligence officer to securely receive information while also verifying that it came from a specific human source, rather than an AI-generated deception, he says. A dead drop involves a secret location used to exchange information or physical items between people without requiring them to meet face-to-face.

The same logic applies to brief, in-person exchanges like brush passes, in which spies and sources pass materials to one another during a quick, seemingly routine encounter in public.

The argument runs counter to assumptions that advances in AI will diminish the role of human intelligence, or HUMINT, in favor of more technical collection methods.

Long before the advent of spy satellites and tailored computer hacking kits, human intelligence dominated espionage as the world’s oldest form of spying. From royal couriers and informants in the Persian Empire carrying sensitive information across imperial networks to the Culper Spy Ring’s use of invisible ink and dead drops during the American Revolutionary War, intelligence once solely moved through people.

In recent months, the Trump administration has made it a point to highlight contributions that CIA operatives have made toward its national security achievements, including efforts targeting the government of ousted Venezuela leader Nicolás Maduro. The agency has also taken a more public-facing posture, releasing recruitment videos aimed at sourcing in China. And in the months leading up to the Iran war, agency spies had been reportedly tracking the movements of now deceased Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

At any given time, the CIA, the nation’s primary human intelligence agency, may be operating across dozens of countries worldwide to collect foreign intelligence or conduct covert action — activities intended to influence political, economic or security conditions abroad, while concealing the U.S. government’s role.

Mulligan’s paper also comes as the tech industry has pushed for AI adoption across government agencies, including offices focused on national security and intelligence. In February, the CIA announced a major overhaul of its technology procurement process, as part of an effort to more quickly adopt leading-edge capabilities for use in its missions.

In a phone interview, Mulligan said AI may play a more permanent role in helping human spies craft better-sounding communications, just as cyber experts have argued that AI tools greatly enhance and scale bad actors’ phishing campaigns.

“A core part of being a case officer and human intelligence operations is persuasion, talking to a prospective agent or a recruited agent and trying to convince him or her to do things that can be difficult, can be dangerous and can be stressful,” he said. “I think AI has a constructive role to play, from the point of view of a case officer, in enhancing his or her ability to persuade.”

But there’s a prevailing question about how much intelligence practitioners risk when they outsource tasks to AI. Gathering intelligence from other people “is a human business at the end of the day, and it does involve an agent and a case officer as a team engaging in a difficult and sometimes dangerous relationship,” Mulligan said.

“My view,” he added, “is that [HUMINT] will have to have a human element — a real, essential human element — for the foreseeable future.”

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Social Security delays launch of centralized claims system amid staff anxiety

Natalie Alms — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 15:00:00 -0400

The Social Security Administration is delaying its rollout of new systems to centralize claims processing and appointment scheduling and pivoting to a pilot approach, according to internal emails obtained by Nextgov/FCW.

SSA had intended to debut these new systems early this month. They were expected to be a major shift in how the agency operates, moving from processing claims locally to a national system.

The optics of such a change factored into SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano’s decision to delay the rollout of the new systems — “particularly where customers may expect access to their local office,” read an internal email sent Monday.

It also outlined the importance of the agency moving slowly to make sure the effects on customer experience are fully understood before the National Appointment Scheduling Calendar and National Workload Management system are implemented broadly. Bisignano had touted the plans as coming improvements to staff just last week in an internal email.

The new case management system was going to centralize claims processing by replacing local workload systems with a centralized system that automatically would distribute work from a nation-wide pool to the next available technician based on their availability and skillset, according to an internal document viewed by Nextgov/FCW.

The move from claims processing happening locally to nationally had caused anxiety among SSA staff about the future of field offices, especially given that SSA is aiming to drastically cut down the number of people it receives for appointments in its field offices, as Nextgov/FCW has previously reported.

The changes also presented logistical challenges, like how to deal with state-specific rules if claims were going to be distributed to employees centrally, instead of handled geographically.

SSA was still working out the kinks just weeks before the systems were to debut. An internal FAQ, dated March 24, stated that a process to handle how to transfer physical documentation for a claim in a field office other than the one handling the claim was still being worked out.

The scheduling system was intended to shift appointment scheduling to a national system, too, offering appointments to customers based on national availability, not the availability of local field offices.

It was meant to allow customers to schedule initial claim phone appointments online, as well as change how employees scheduled appointments on their end. Eventually, the goal is for the system to become the central scheduling tool for the agency, although the rollout was set to start with scheduling initial claim phone appointments only.

SSA said that these changes would better match up workloads with open capacity, improve appointment timeliness and allow the agency to see workloads centrally.

The decision to pilot the changes will allow the agency to test if the expected efficiencies are realized and “ensure we maintain customer confidence” before a wider launch, the email announcing the change said. Details on the pilot are forthcoming, it said, after the agency has spent months preparing for the national rollout.

An SSA spokesperson told Nextgov/FCW that the implementation of internal-facing technology would start this year.

“Customers will not notice any changes aside from expanded appointment availability. Field offices are, and will always remain, our front-line, serving the more than 330 million Americans with Social Security numbers,” they said.

“This is one of the digital-first changes we are implementing that will empower field office staff to focus on what they do best, resolving customers’ needs in-person with care, accuracy, and efficiency, while directing more complex cases and time-intensive tasks to specialized teams in a centralized environment,” they continued. “Leveraging our national scale, improved workflows, and modern technology, SSA continues to focus our strategy and goals to match our customers’ evolving service preferences.”

Although centralizing and standardizing work at SSA had potential advantages, it likely wouldn’t make up for the staffing shortages the agency is dealing with after losing over 7,000 employees last year, Kathleen Romig, director of social security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, previously told Nextgov/FCW.

The day after the agency announced the change, its chief of field operations, Andy Sriubas, was replaced by Tom Holland, who had been serving as the agency’s chief financial officer. Sriubas is now in a new role as the chief of strategy and marketing. Sean Brune, who has long worked at SSA in technology leadership roles, is now SSA’s chief financial officer.

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IRS’ move away from paper checks has delayed tax refunds for nearly 1.5 million Americans

Natalie Alms — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 07:00:00 -0400

More than one million taxpayers are facing weeks-long delays in receiving their tax refunds due to IRS efforts to wean the government off paper checks.

The tax agency announced earlier this year that, at the direction of a March executive order, it is phasing out paper checks and pushing taxpayers to use direct deposit to receive their refunds, with limited exceptions.

Paper checks have increasingly been vulnerable to fraud, and the federal government says that electronic payments are faster and cheaper.

Although most taxpayers already use direct deposit to get their refunds, millions of Americans still asked for a check from the IRS last tax year.

So far, the IRS has sent notices to nearly 1.5 million taxpayers asking them to add information for direct deposit or another form of electronic payment like a payment app, according to Reps. Danny Davis, D-Ill., and Terri Sewell, D-Ala., who have been pressing the IRS for information on the process. These taxpayers are facing potential refund delays of over two months.

Taxpayers who receive these notices from the IRS asking for direct deposit information have 30 days to provide bank account information, which requires taxpayers to pass identity checks powered by facial recognition to make an online account with the IRS. If the agency doesn’t hear back, it will issue a paper check six weeks later, meaning the delay can be over two months long. The IRS didn’t respond to a request for comment.

For low-income households, tax refunds can be a critical source of income. Most Americans have a bank account, but 5.6 million households were unbanked as of 2023. That rate is higher among low-income adults, as well as younger people, Black and Hispanic adults and people with disabilities. Rural and tribal communities lacking internet access and living far from bank branches, as well as elderly taxpayers, may also especially feel the government’s push to direct deposit.

People can also ask the IRS for exceptions from the electronic payment requirement, although the tax agency has not provided much information online about the exemption process, like who qualifies.

“There is no simple process for these taxpayers to request an immediate release of their refund by paper check without waiting at least 10 weeks,” Davis and Sewell wrote in a March 9 letter.

Last week, they followed up on their request for more materials from the IRS, saying that the tax agency had not given them the information they’d asked for, including a copy of the notice being sent to taxpayers who filed without bank information. The IRS sent an altered version, something the lawmakers called “an example of this administration trying to muddle information provided to Congress.”

The pair also wants the IRS to shorten its processing timeframes for those being sent the notice and to provide them with options other than the online IRS account to find a remedy. The phone number offered by the IRS on the notice doesn’t put callers in touch with a live agent, but instead connects callers with a recording telling them to set up an online account.

Other government agencies are also moving away from paper checks. Over the summer, the Social Security Administration warned claimants still receiving their benefits via paper checks that their payments could be disrupted.

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Pro-Iran hackers say they breached the FBI director’s email and posted contents online

David DiMolfetta — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 13:08:00 -0400

A pro-Iran hacker group claimed to have accessed FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal email and posted purported contents from the inbox online.

Handala, which claimed responsibility in recent weeks for hacks against Stryker and Lockheed Martin in response to the Iran war, circulated images and documents online that they claimed to be from Patel’s email account. Many images include pictures of Patel in a personal capacity before becoming FBI director.

The leaks appear to be authentic, according to a person familiar with the matter who requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly discuss details of the breach.

The incident was first reported by Reuters.

“The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information, and we have taken all necessary steps to mitigate potential risks associated with this activity. The information in question is historical in nature and involves no government information,” the bureau said in a statement after this story published.

Handala said it carried out the intrusion after the FBI last week said it seized domains used by the group.

“Today, once again, the world witnessed the collapse of America’s so-called security legends,” the group wrote on its website. “While the FBI proudly seized our domains and immediately announced a $10 million reward for the heads of Handala Hack members, we decided to respond to this ridiculous show in a way that will be remembered forever.”

The breach is likely legitimate, according to a former U.S. official who said that administration officials’ personal email accounts are a frequent target of Iranian hackers.

It would not be the first time that Iran-aligned hackers executed a “hack and leak” operation against U.S. targets. In 2024, the Trump campaign was accessed in an Iranian hack that exposed vetting documents for Vice President JD Vance.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include remarks from a former U.S. official and the FBI.

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Trump names CEOs, nuclear fusion founders and Nobel laureate to tech advisory council

Alexandra Kelley — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 17:54:01 -0400

Leadership from Big Tech is further cementing its presence in Washington as the White House unveiled the first 13 members that will compose the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Pursuant to an executive order President Donald Trump signed shortly after taking office, the PCAST is intended to advise the president and other administration officials on crafting the most accurate and comprehensive tech policy consistent with the administration’s goals. The inaugural members, unveiled on Wednesday, include several major tech company leaders, including NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Most of the new members work at the c-level of major tech companies: Sergey Brin, who cofounded Google alongside Larry Page in 1998 and now serves as a board member for Google parent company Alphabet; Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell; Oracle CEO Safra Catz; Oracle Co-Founder, former CEO and current Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison; and Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su.

Leaders in venture capital and investment are also prevalent, such as Andreessen Horowitz General Partner Marc Andreessen; Coinbase cryptocurrency Co-Founder Fred Ehrsam; and entrepreneur David Friedberg.

Jacob DeWitte and Bob Mumgaard represent the fusion energy industry as CEOs of Oklo, Inc. and Commonwealth Fusion Systems, respectively.

Academia also has a voice via John Martinis, a physics professor at the University of California and a 2025 Nobel Laureate in physics.

“Under President Trump, PCAST will focus on topics related to the opportunities and challenges that emerging technologies present to the American workforce, and ensuring all Americans thrive in the Golden Age of Innovation,” the press release reads. The executive order stipulates that PCAST can include up to 24 members, leaving the option of an additional 11 to be announced later, a move the White House says will come soon.

The press release also noted that the council will be co-chaired by AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios

Notably absent from the list is billionaire Elon Musk, who spent a significant amount of time on the 2024 campaign trail with Trump and briefly served as a special government employee setting up the Department of Government Efficiency.

The second Trump administration has consistently courted major tech companies for ambitious projects, striking new partnerships to continue to push U.S. technology to the global forefront.

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IRS faces AI skills gaps after pushing tech talent out, watchdog finds

Natalie Alms — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 17:44:00 -0400

The IRS wants to deploy artificial intelligence, but workforce reductions that hit tech teams mean the agency has capacity gaps that could impact its ability to do so, according to a new report from Congress’ watchdog, the Government Accountability Office.

As the Trump administration sought to downsize the federal government last year, it pushed out nearly 20,000 technology, data and telecommunications employees.

The IRS shed about 40% of its IT staff and lost about 80% of its executives last year, the agency's chief information officer said last month, potentially complicating its modernization goals.

After ousting dozens of staff charged with designing, implementing and overseeing AI, the tax agency has gaps in necessary AI skills that officials say could be hard to close. The IRS also doesn’t have a plan to fix the problem, GAO says.

Some staff retired or resigned. The agency placed others on administrative leave. Last March, the tax agency put its IT shop’s head of AI on administrative leave, along with about 50 other IT executives.

The IRS also fired generative AI experts that were still in their probationary period last spring. As in other agencies, these new hires were early targets for removals last year because they have weaker protections than tenured civil servants.

Some workers have since returned to the agency, but many of those have been reassigned to other work at the IRS because of attrition that created gaps elsewhere.

In August, Nextgov/FCW reported that the IRS was abandoning planned layoffs and looking to rehire staff to fill gaps in “mission critical expertise.”

Three-quarters of the staff on the AI governance team at the IRS have also left. The agency’s AI team, overseen by the chief technology officer, had lost half of its staff by May 2025, before the office itself was disbanded.

Some of the tax agency’s AI deployments may have to stop because of these staffing constraints, GAO says — despite the Trump administration’s pro-AI stance and efforts to push the use of the technology across the government. The watchdog noted that the IRS also risks deploying AI systems without the resources to make sure that the technology is used responsibly.

One IRS official told GAO that the IRS may no longer use an AI model focused on prioritizing tax returns for audit, because the program may no longer have the staff to conduct the audits.

With fewer enforcement staff, and therefore fewer audits, the IRS will have less data on audit outcomes to train new AI models or retune their existing ones.

“Without quality AI models, IRS officials said the agency may have diminished capability to improve IRS’s ability to collect revenue and reduce the number of audits that do not result in a tax change,” GAO wrote.

The watchdog recommended that the IRS develop a plan to address skills gaps, which the agency agreed with, although GAO says the tax agency doesn’t yet have a plan in place to fix the problem.

The IRS is also currently under a hiring freeze, and officials told GAO that open jobs will be hard to fill because of the nature of the terminations, in-office work requirements and terminated individuals finding other jobs.

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White House releases regulatory vision for AI

Alexandra Kelley — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 15:48:27 -0400

The White House unveiled a new artificial intelligence policy framework on Friday that features seven guiding recommendations to support the administration’s policy recommendations for Congress.

The National Policy Framework for AI’s seven pillars are Protecting Children and Empowering Parents; Safeguarding and Strengthening American Communities; Respecting Intellectual Property Rights and Creators; Preventing Censorship and Protecting Free Speech; Enabling Innovation and Ensuring American AI Dominance; Educating Americans and Developing an AI-ready Workforce; and Establishing a Federal Policy Framework Preempting Cumbersome State Laws.

Policy details within each pillar aim to balance citizen protections — such as eliminating child user data collection, augmenting parental safety controls, ensuring ratepayers aren’t burdened with high utility costs and providing tax breaks for AI adoption in small businesses — with ensuring the U.S. isn’t hindered in advancing AI technologies. For example, while ratepayers — those who pay fees to utility providers — are protected, the framework dictates that permitting reform needs to be undertaken to scale more data centers.

The intense energy demands that AI-supporting data centers have can increase electricity prices for nearby residents unless offsets are made. President Donald Trump announced in his Feb. 25 State of the Union address that he had established an agreement with major tech companies to absorb the surges in energy costs themselves.

Copyright law and creator protections work to thread a similar needle. While the framework recommends that Congress set legislation that protects creators’ voices and likenesses, the administration also acknowledged that its core belief is that AI scraping the internet for copyrighted material is not a violation of U.S. copyright law. The framework further says the U.S. court system has the final say in if an AI developer violates fair use laws.

Regarding copyright law, the administration also suggests that Congress develop enabling licensing laws or a mechanism for collective rights holders to be able to negotiate compensation for their likeness or content being used in AI.

The framework also features a return of White House calls for state AI law preemption. The Trump administration asks Congress to protect the U.S. AI advantage by rejecting state laws that are deemed “undue burdens.”

Simultaneously, the framework notes that state law preemption will not apply to how states want to use AI technology or in areas where states are uniquely suited to govern certain subject matters.

“Preemption must ensure that State laws do not govern areas better suited to the Federal Government or act contrary to the United States’ national strategy to achieve global AI dominance,” the framework reads.

The final three pillars — workforce development, ensuring innovation and free speech protection — are mired in controversy. The framework says the broad U.S. workforce needs to learn a level of AI-fluency, and asks Congress to support non-regulatory methods to expand existing education programs that foster AI education.

Experimental and isolated sandboxes are also highlighted as a priority area in the framework, which recommends that Congress establish regulatory sandboxes for AI applications to help spur software testing and development.

It also supports Congress providing resources that allow industry and academic partners access to federal datasets for further AI model training. Notably, the framework says Congress should not create any new federal rulemaking body to regulate AI and instead maintain a “sector-specific” approach with existing regulatory bodies.

In keeping with protecting free speech against AI products deemed “biased,” the framework also recommends Congress prevent federal agencies from using “coercing technology providers” that operate their technology upon “ideological agendas.”

Such a recommendation follows Trump’s sweeping Feb. 27 demand that all federal agencies remove Anthropic products from their operations, after the AI company refused to allow the Pentagon to use Claude for missions involving mass surveillance of Americans or to guide autonomous weapons

The framework also asks Congress to provide recourse for Americans to report censorship activity on or within AI platforms.

The same morning the framework was released, Republican members of the House swiftly vocalized their support, with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Reps. Steve Scalise, R-La., Brian Babin, R-Texas, Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, issuing a statement pledging to follow the framework’s suggestions.

“House Republicans look forward to working across the aisle to enact a national framework that unleashes the full potential of AI, cements the U.S. as the global leader, and provides important protections for American families,” the press release reads.

Reactions to the framework outside the federal government were more mixed. The Business Software Alliance said it “welcomes” the framework, underscoring its emphasis on developing an AI-ready workforce, liberating select data for AI training and advancing AI adoption.

“The Framework helps catalyze a needed conversation in Washington, grounded in the reality that building trust in AI and enabling its broad adoption requires clear, workable national rules for the United States.”

Online business industry group NetChoice also said it supports the adoption of the framework.

“The Trump administration understands that it was a light-touch regulatory environment, not 50 different confusing and conflicting regulatory regimes, that enabled the internet revolution and that innovation and investment in winning the AI future for America will require a similar approach,” Patrick Hedger, NetChoice director of policy said.

Alternatively, AI watchdog organizations like Americans for Responsible Innovation argued the framework shields AI developers from liability.

“After witnessing the harmful impact of the tech industry’s move-fast-break-things mantra during the rise of social media platforms, the public wants safeguards now,” ARI President Brad Carson said. “What’s most disturbing is that the framework recommends both banning state laws on AI and urges Congress not to create new ‘open-ended’ liability for the AI industry when it comes to child harms. For the AI industry, that means open season on the American public.”

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Congress reauthorized the Technology Modernization Fund through the fiscal year. Why that matters and what’s next

Jessie Posilkin — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 15:25:49 -0400

Congress recently reauthorized the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) through Sept. 30, 2026, enabling the TMF board to continue selecting the strongest proposals and recommending funding where it will deliver the greatest impact.

National competitiveness, security, and effective service delivery depend on sustained federal technology modernization. This extension cannot be the final one. Reauthorization beyond this fiscal year allows the TMF to function as a true revolving fund, with agencies repaying their investments so those same dollars can fund additional modernization efforts without requiring new appropriations.

The fund has already proven it can tackle urgent problems agencies face every day:

The TMF modernized the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s specialty crops inspection system that ensures safe food reaches school lunches and military rations, eliminating paper-based processes and saving $1.72 million annually while inspectors now use tablets instead of clipboards to process over 60 billion pounds of produce.

The TMF enabled the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ benefits portals to provide clear confirmation when applications are submitted, reducing uncertainty and helping veterans receive benefits faster.

The TMF upgraded the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development systems supporting 100 grant, subsidy and loan programs, saving $8 million annually and enabling faster support for over 30,000 users.

These are real-world problems the TMF has solved for federal agencies and the people they serve every day.

Technology does not wait for budget cycles
Traditional annual appropriations are designed for predictable, stable programs and handle most federal IT investments effectively. However, certain technology challenges do not operate on that timeline, particularly when agencies face urgent security threats, system failures or opportunities that cannot wait for the next budget cycle.

Legacy systems fail on their own schedules, cybersecurity threats evolve daily, and public expectations for digital services are shaped by the private sector in real time. So why is the federal government still maintaining clunky systems that were built decades ago for missions that have fundamentally changed? Agencies face a double burden of keeping outdated technology running while trying to fund modern replacements through budget processes that move too slowly.

As House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer recently noted, the annual budget cycle has limitations when it comes to urgent technology needs. Modernization often requires flexible, cross-agency funding and oversight that move at the speed of risk.

That is where the TMF makes a measurable difference.

● 83 percent of TMF investments address urgent cybersecurity needs
● 81 percent modernize mission-critical systems
● 65 percent improve digital services for those who depend on them every day
● 54 percent build shared platforms that multiply the value of a single investment across multiple agencies

A governance model built for accountability
The TMF board evaluates competing proposals and selects only the strongest investments, requiring agencies to demonstrate viable technical approaches and commit to repayment that recapitalizes the fund for future projects. After selection, oversight operates in real time. The board, GSA and OMB review every scope change, milestone status, funding transfer and performance metric as they occur, not just quarterly. This allows immediate intervention when needed, whether that means deploying technical support, demanding course corrections or terminating underperforming investments.

That sustained oversight produces tangible results:

$12 billion in estimated cost savings and efficiency gains that protect taxpayer dollars and allow federal agencies to invest in better public services
378 million work hours saved, freeing federal employees to focus on serving the public rather than maintaining outdated systems
70 percent reduction in security risk, better protecting personal data for millions of Americans
69 percent fewer process steps, meaning less time navigating government websites to access benefits or services
79 percent increase in customer satisfaction as services become faster and easier to use
47 percent faster project completion, delivering improvements to the public sooner rather than years later

Why long-term certainty matters
The TMF board, chaired by Federal Chief Information Officer Greg Barbaccia, stands firmly behind the case for reauthorization beyond FY26. Short-term reauthorization keeps the lights on. Long-term certainty enables transformation.

Agencies planning multi-year modernization efforts need confidence that the TMF will remain available to fund them. Without sustained TMF authorization, leaders are forced into incremental fixes instead of comprehensive upgrades. That means pouring money into patching outdated systems rather than replacing them wholesale, like spending resources to repair a pager instead of upgrading to a smartphone. This approach costs more over time and leaves vulnerabilities exposed.

Globally, nations that can mobilize quickly around critical technologies set standards, shape markets and secure strategic advantages. When federal agencies face funding constraints that slow modernization while threats and expectations accelerate, the United States risks falling behind in the very technologies where American leadership matters most. The TMF exists to help maintain that competitive edge.

TMF is targeted intervention in the systems that keep the government running for taxpayers and the American people. It reflects a bipartisan recognition that technology modernization is foundational to secure services, protected taxpayer dollars and maintained public trust.

Whether you are a federal employee trying to serve the public more effectively, a contractor supporting government modernization or a taxpayer who depends on digital services working correctly the first time, the TMF is designed to help agencies leverage commercial solutions and shared services to operate smarter and faster. Congress has consistently supported this approach across multiple administrations because it works.

Congress’ reauthorization through September is an important step. The next step is treating modernization as an enduring national priority.

Jessie Posilkin is acting executive director of the Technology Modernization Fund.

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DOJ clears the way for government to hire technologists still connected to their private sector employers

Natalie Alms — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 17:27:43 -0400

The Justice Department issued an opinion last week authorizing the Trump administration’s plan to allow employees from tech companies to work for the federal government while remaining employed by their companies and keeping their not-yet-vested company stocks.

The administration will be onboarding managers from twenty-plus companies — including Anduril, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Palantir and xAI — as part of its U.S. Tech Force program, launched last year to recruit early-career engineers after the administration pushed over 20,000 technologists out of their government posts last year.

The setup is an unusual one. Federal employees are subject to ethics rules meant to ensure that they work for the public interest.

The Office of Personnel Management now has DOJ’s blessing to allow individuals joining the Tech Force to keep their restricted stock units that haven’t yet vested — company stocks issued with a vesting plan that dictates when employees get full ownership of them — while they work for the government on a leave of absence from their private sector employer.

Ethics experts and public sector lawyers told Nextgov/FCW that they are skeptical about the arrangement.

“Why are we replacing a workforce we already had with individuals who may still be beholden to an outside employer?” asked Cynthia Brown, the senior ethics counsel at the nonprofit watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. It “raises a lot of very serious concerns.”

It’s unclear exactly how many people will join the government on a leave of absence as part of the Tech Force. It's likely that the DOJ decision will be primarily used for the 100-plus managers being recruited from tech companies partnering with the government, rather than for the class of early-career employees, an OPM spokesperson told Nextgov/FCW.

“This opinion from the Department of Justice provides much-needed clarity on the treatment of deferred compensation and strengthens the federal government’s ability to recruit top talent from the private sector to complete stints of government service,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

The statute addressed by DOJ in its opinion generally bans federal employees from receiving outside compensation for their government service.

OPM had to decide how to address this, given the ubiquity of deferred compensation packages like vested stock in the private sector. Essentially, the question was if those wanting to work for the government have to give them up, or restructure them so as to not run afoul of the law, Kevin Hennecken, a senior advisor at OPM, wrote in a recent blog about the DOJ decision.

Typically, employees forfeit their unvested, restricted stock units when they leave their employer.

OPM’s director, Scott Kupor, has described the Tech Force program as a way to show that people don’t need to spend their entire careers in either the private or public sector and to allow flexibility for people to move between them.

This outside compensation ethics law was OPM’s “most recent strike” to clear the way for that movement between the two, wrote Hennecken, previewing that OPM will be leveraging the flexibility to create other programs to bring in additional private-sector talent for terms of service.

But the Tech Force raises other conflict of interest concerns beyond the compensation statute addressed in the recent memo.

“I think it’s a dangerous path for the government to take,” Michael Fallings, managing partner at Tully Rickney law firm, told Nextgov/FCW, noting that it's hard to opine on the setup without the employees in place, at which point “ethical issues could arise that aren’t even foreseen.”

“Who is that employee more loyal to” if they’re technically still employed by a tech company and the government at the same time, he asked.

In the recent opinion, DOJ only briefly touches on the federal financial conflicts of interest statute, which prohibits government employees from participating in official matters where they have a financial interest — such as matters that have an effect on their stocks or employer.

“That’s where the danger is,” Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, told Nextgov/FCW.

OPM asked the DOJ to “assume” that Tech Force employees will be recused from “any matter affecting their origin company,” DOJ wrote in the memo. The hypothetical from OPM assumed that the companies sending employees had diversified customer bases including but not dominated by government contracts.

It’s hard to know how easy recusal will be for employees without more specifics on what they will be doing at the Tech Force exactly, said Painter, adding that he’s still skeptical.

OPM has said that one target the new hires will work on is deploying artificial intelligence in the government.

“You're giving advice on technology and artificial intelligence, and you have artificial intelligence stock — in the Bush administration, this would have been a no-go,” said Painter on what he’d do if approached about such a program during his time in the White House. “I am not going to have an ethics lawyer have to babysit you.”

Brown noted that this comes after the federal government pushed out thousands of in-house government tech employees.

“If you were to replace your workforce because you think that you have better-suited people, then let them leave their job and come in and do the work of the American government,” she said. “But to be bringing in outside forces for temporary work that could influence the value of what they're doing outside, just raises a lot of very serious concerns.”

“Are these tech force employees deciding what's best for the American people in their capacity as government workers — or are they working to shift government decision making to benefit their private employer?” she asked.

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Much of the government’s technology isn’t accessible, internal report finds

Natalie Alms — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 15:17:00 -0400

Nearly 30 years after Congress put accessibility requirements for government technology into law, much of the federal government’s technology still isn’t fully meeting accessibility standards.

Less than 40% of the government’s most-viewed public webpages are fully accessible, according to a new report by the General Services Administration.

Overall, the federal government’s technology, including internal webpages, hardware, software, videos and electronic documents, scores only a 1.96 average across a 5-point scale, although accessibility varies widely across agencies.

The congressionally-mandated report is focused on how agencies are doing in their implementation of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, which requires government tech to be accessible for people with disabilities — over 70 million Americans.

Fewer than half of the government’s most-viewed technologies are fully accessible.

Inside the government, funding constraints, staffing shortages and workforce turnover are all decreasing the capacity to improve accessibility, the GSA report states. Over 386,800 federal employees left the federal government last year, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management.

The report is based on responses from 60 agencies, although not all submitted data for each section of the report. Forty-three agencies didn’t respond to GSA’s ask at all, and more than half of responding agencies cited resource limitations, according to GSA.

Approximately half of agencies reported that they do not routinely test their technology for accessibility. Usability testing with people who have disabilities is “rare,” the report says, as is mandatory digital accessibility training for relevant employees.

Despite overall low ratings, some agencies scored very well on their technology’s accessibility. The Social Security Administration, for example, reported that 100% of its top-viewed tech conforms with accessibility guidance.

GSA found that agencies with repeatable best practices integrated into their processes generally had better outcomes, and SSA, which houses government disability insurance programs, reported that accessibility was fully integrated across key business functions.

Government agencies need sustained investment, clearer governance and centralized support to make progress, the report stated.

Agencies should use acquisition as a lever for progress, GSA says, by testing vendors' claims and enforcing contract requirements. Many agencies include accessibility in their acquisition processes, but few enforce it: less than 30% of agencies routinely verify compliance with Section 508.

GSA also recommended that agencies increase their training and testing, while adding that lawmakers should strengthen their enforcement and oversight.

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Fed agencies told to track AI’s impact on the workforce

Alexandra Kelley — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 07:00:00 -0400

Nine senators are asking the Labor Department, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau to update their data collection and reporting to provide insight into the impacts of artificial intelligence on the workforce.

Citing a need for more reliable data to understand the AI-driven changes to the labor market, Sens. Todd Young, R-Ind.; Mark Warner, D-Va.; Josh Hawley, R-Mo.; Jim Banks, R-Ind.; Maggie Hassan, D-N.H.; John Hickenlooper, D-Colo.; Mark Kelly, D-Ariz.; Tim Kaine, D-Va.; and Mike Rounds, R-S.D. wrote to the agencies’ leadership to expand current data collection efforts focusing on AI’s economic disruptions.

“Over the last several years, the enhanced capabilities of artificial intelligence have resulted in its increased application and adoption across many and varied industries and occupations,” the senators wrote in a letter sent to Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Bill Wiatrowski and Census Bureau Chief George Cook. “However, reporting from across the private sector, academia, and media depict an uncertain picture of artificial intelligence’s current and potential impact on the workforce, with some use cases demonstrating a high probability of job disruption and others making the case for employment growth.”

Lawmakers offered multiple suggestions for current national surveys helmed by these agencies to incorporate questions on AI in the workforce. These include the Current Population Survey, the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey and the National Longitudinal Survey.

Each of these surveys captures different segments of the U.S. workforce population, with the National Longitudinal Survey focusing on American youth. The senators write that each survey has room to include questions about AI in the job market, workforce and work culture.

“At a time when the U.S. workforce is approaching an inflection point due to the acceleration of artificial intelligence, adaptable and responsive federal statistical agencies are necessary in guiding labor market participants, researchers, and policymakers on how to properly respond to this moment,” the letter concludes.

The advent of advanced, generative AI software has sparked fear over job security across industries. An October 2025 survey from the Pew Research Center found that roughly 1 in 5 workers are using AI in their jobs, and a February 2025 Pew survey also found roughly 52% of workers are worried about the impact AI has in the workplace, with most surveyed adults anticipating fewer work opportunities due to AI proliferation in the workforce.

Lawmakers have heard these fears and have been introducing new legislative measures to mitigate negative economic impacts on the workforce due to AI, such as through more workforce training and advanced analyses of AI’s potential.

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These former government tech leaders are prepping day-one plans for a future administration

Natalie Alms — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 14:38:00 -0500

A group of technologists, practitioners and public servants with extensive government experience is prepping day-one plans for the next administration meant to push the government into a new age instead of returning to a pre-Trump status quo.

The effort, called the Tech Viaduct, is in part a reaction to Trump’s controversial, government-slashing Department of Government Efficiency, which helped the administration push out civil servants, cut spending and tap into new sources of government data, sparking lawsuits in the process.

Watching how much the team was able to get done quickly was “astonishing,” said Mikey Dickerson, a senior advisor for the Tech Viaduct.

Dickerson was the first administrator of the U.S. Digital Service, a tech team established by former President Barack Obama in the aftermath of the failed Healthcare.gov launch. Trump transformed USDS into a unit to house DOGE on the first day of his administration and placed billionaire Elon Musk in charge, though he has since departed. Many of those who were originally USDS workers have been laid off or have left.

Those behind Tech Viaduct say that Elon Musk’s team caused harm that will take years to undo, but it also showed how much can get done in government when you have the force of political will behind you.

Last summer, Dickerson started talking to other government tech experts, asking “what if we were to move with the same kind of urgency to accomplish our goals, to make things stronger instead of shut them down?”

Now, he’s working with a group at the Searchlight Institute — a Democratic think tank — to make day-one plans for a future administration to get that done.

The team includes Jacky Chang, a senior engineer who previously worked as a senior advisor at the General Services Administration; Jonathan Mostowski, a procurement expert who formerly worked at the U.S. Digital Service and Defense Digital Service; Joshua Jacobs, former head of the Veterans Benefits Administration under Biden; and Marina Nitze, who was a senior tech advisor for Obama, as well as the chief technology officer of the VA.

Nitze co-authored a forthcoming book, Crisis Engineering, with Dickerson and Matthew Weaver, who helped set up the Defense Digital Service. The three work for crisis engineering firm Layer Aleph.

Denis McDonough, former White House chief of staff under the Obama administration and Secretary of Veterans Affairs during the Biden administration, is an advisor for the effort, as are Alexander Macgillivray, former principal deputy CTO for Biden and deputy CTO for Obama, and Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton’s former campaign manager.

The group wants to reform the procurement, civil service and oversight processes undergirding the government to create the right conditions for successful, tech-enabled government service delivery.

The goal is for the team to be able to provide a new president with tactical plans, structural reform objectives, day-one executive orders, memoranda and more.

The notion of crafting a playbook to help an incoming administration more effectively accomplish policy goals is not new. Trump himself made use of many recommendations outlined in the controversial Project 2025 playbook from the Heritage Foundation to dismantle sections of the civil service and even eliminate entire agencies, although Trump distanced himself from the project while on the campaign trail.

Tech Viaduct’s plans are for the next “friendly administration,” said Dickerson, that wants to build a “better, more responsive, functional government.” He says part of the work will be lobbying to get buy-in for the project, especially since government reform isn’t necessarily top of mind for voters. It can, however, help politicians implement their ideas, he said.

What Dickerson doesn’t want to happen is a return to the status quo.

“For decades, government services have fallen short of citizen expectations. Inaction and complacency, including by Congress, have allowed budget, procurement, and oversight rules to fossilize into a system that guarantees each program complies with ever-expanding checklists while its core purpose often goes unfulfilled,” the Tech Viaduct website reads.

Jacobs is drawing on his time at the VA to help inform those plans.

During the last two-plus years of the Biden administration, he led the Veterans Benefits Administration as it was implementing the PACT Act, which significantly expanded eligibility for healthcare benefits for veterans exposed to toxic substances.

It was a big lift. The law expanded healthcare and benefits eligibility to veterans who were exposed to burn pits and other toxins during their service. Hundreds of conditions were added to the list of what is presumed to be connected to military service.

Leadership at the VA decided to implement the law faster than the phased approach Congress had outlined, in part because doing the work incrementally would have required the VA to hold claims that weren’t yet presumptive, without the ability to deny or approve them, said Jacobs.

To get it done, the VA studied the operational conditions they’d need across processes, people and technology, launching a hiring spree and using mandatory overtime to fill what was deemed the “driving force” of the project: people. The department also benefited from strong, top-down leadership and a unit set up to drive cross-department collaboration, said Jacobs.

The lesson Jacobs is bringing to the Tech Viaduct now: “Even the best policies will accomplish nothing if you don’t have effective operations.”

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New White House design team aims for ‘delightful’ websites — changing design ethos in the process

Natalie Alms — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 15:04:00 -0500

Joe Gebbia wants to make the government’s websites better, more useful and more beautiful. They should be “delightful,” the billionaire Airbnb co-founder said recently on a podcast.

Gebbia is the government’s first-ever chief design officer, a position created by President Donald Trump within the White House last summer. Previously an associate of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, Gebbia’s oft-repeated goal is to make the government on par with an Apple store.

He’s aiming big: Gebbia’s team is working to reshape the government's main web design standards and use artificial intelligence to roll them out across the government.

“Everybody can agree — it doesn’t matter who you voted for — that they would love government websites to be better designed, have great usability and load faster,” Gebbia has said. “It’s the least controversial thing you could be working on.”

The creation

Gebbia joined the Trump administration early in 2025 to modernize the government's antiquated retirement system, which still relies on limestone mines in Pennsylvania to store paper records.

Since then, the Office of Personnel Management has deployed a new portal to digitize the front-end of the retirement process with an online application, an effort that had been years in the making.

Gebbia says he was only expecting to work for the government for six months, but got requests from heads of agencies to redesign their websites. Inspired by a Nixon-era initiative to improve government design, he pitched a Trump version of the effort to the president, and last summer, the National Design Studio was born via executive order.

“Our American [sic] by Design initiative will fully transform our most dated federal systems and services, providing Americans the richest, most beautiful and most user-friendly government experience in the entire world,” Trump said at the recent launch of the TrumpRx platform, which lists discounted cash prices for prescription drugs and was designed by the National Design Studio.

The executive order creating Gebbia’s role instructs agencies to work with his team to show results in improving their websites and physical spaces by July 4.

Like DOGE, the executive order setting up the team also set up a three-year temporary organization, which could take on unpaid volunteers, though it’s unclear if they have done so.

The White House did not clarify that or who bears the administrator title laid out in the executive order. Gebbia is the studio’s chief design officer, but the executive order also describes an administrator for the group that reports to the White House chief of staff and helms the temporary organization.

They also didn’t offer more information on a National Design Studio “advisory council” that Gebbia recently referenced on a podcast. Entrepreneur Scott Belsky, a partner at entertainment company A24 who previously worked at Adobe, is chairing that council, Gebbia said.

The work

Undoubtedly, some government websites could use an upgrade: nearly half of federal websites aren’t accessible, many aren’t mobile friendly and some just look like they’re from another era.

So far, Gebbia’s team has launched just over ten websites, most focused on Trump White House priorities, like the administration’s Genesis AI research initiative, or its Make America Healthy Again nutrition website, realfood.gov.

On Thursday, they launched Freedom.gov, reportedly meant to counter censorship by enabling people in Europe and elsewhere to see content banned by their governments, including alleged hate speech and terrorist propaganda.

So far, the websites from the White House team do look different from many other government websites.

On the TrumpRx website, a gilded America spins on a white globe halfway down the page. At the bottom of the page, a golden eagle clutches a golden scroll that reads ‘TrumpRx,’ flourishes that echo the gold accents the president has been adding to the Oval Office.

The gilded eagle at the bottom of the TrumpRx website.

Some onlookers have praised the look of the new websites created by Gebbia’s organization, and others have lauded the milestone of design getting a seat at the White House. Others on social media have criticized Gebbia’s suitability to lead design work for his reposting of takes like “mass migration kills culture” on X and other posts that promote conspiracy theories.

As for how the websites work, many of the National Design Studio launches have had accessibility issues, although it appears that the team has at times made fixes after launching websites.

The MAHA nutrition website acknowledges that explicitly with a note on the website that says that “this content is undergoing a Section 508 review,” referring to the law mandating government websites be accessible.

Earlier this month, Neesh Chaudhary, a senior experience designer at Tenstorrent, on X called out accessibility issues on TrumpRx. The same day, Edward Coristine — who proudly bears the moniker “Big Balls” and gained notoriety working for DOGE — responded, showing fixes to the website.

“This shouldn't have slipped through” and “won't again,” posted another team member, Caelin Sutch, who previously worked in the start-up space.

While a few of Gebbia’s websites still show errors when put through automated accessibility testing, others show hardly any.

When asked about the accessibility issues, an administration official told Nextgov/FCW that the team adheres to standard accessibility processes, and “when things aren’t working, they fix them very quickly.”

“The National Design Studio, under the leadership of Joe Gebbia, is doing outstanding work modernizing federal digital and physical services, improving both usability and design across platforms like the Trump Rx, Eat Real Food, and Trump Accounts websites,” they said in a statement. “President Trump has consistently prioritized innovation and efficiency, and he will continue to ensure federal services deliver results and meet the needs of the American people.”

Ethan Marcotte, who worked on the 18F team that was dismantled by the Trump administration, has also pointed out that the large size of the websites could make them difficult to download for people with limited data or without broadband.

The history

Gebbia and his team have a tab on their website that places themselves in a lineage of government design, but that timeline stops in the 1970s.

That leaves out the work bringing the government into the digital age, said Ashleigh Axios, who worked as a creative director and digital strategist in the Obama administration before helping to found Coforma, a government-focused digital consultancy, and more recently, a public innovation consultancy called Public Servants.

Like Gebbia, she’s an alumna of the Rhode Island School of Design. She overlapped with Gebbia during her time there and on an alumni board after.

She noted that the National Design Studio follows the recent dismantling of some government teams that worked on design and the pushing out of thousands of civil servants, including designers.

“When you torch a landscape, you can stand in the middle of it and stand alone,” said Axios. “It doesn’t mean that there was nothing that came before you.”

Matt Lira, who worked in the first Trump administration’s Office of American Innovation, called Gebbia the “dream candidate to lead this initiative," the type of Silicon Valley expert that administrations past have wanted to bring into government, at an industry event last year.

Asked about the fact that this follows the pushing out of many designers, Lira, who is now the executive director of nonprofit Invest America, noted that those decisions weren’t Gebbia’s call. He also praised Gebbia’s work modernizing retirement, saying that he studied what had been tried in the past.

“He very methodically met with senior career officials, external stakeholders [and] the vendors,” he said. “It was done with a tone of respect.”

Gebbia’s White House team should be judged on whether their services work and if people trust and believe in the government, said Lira.

To some former government designers like Axios, it’s clear that different values undergird Gebbia’s websites than government websites before him.

Government designers have traditionally focused on clarity, continuity and reassurance, said Rachael Dietkus, who worked in the U.S. Digital Service, now DOGE, as a design expert, and in the U.S. Digital Corps as a design supervisor. She’s also a licensed clinical social worker, which informs her design work.

People often come to the government in a moment of stress, after experiencing a disaster or losing a job, so the goal has historically been to build websites that are easy to understand and easily recognizable as government entities — it’s a focus on usability rather than aesthetics — said Dietkus.

She added that those at NDS seem to be asking how they can make websites more individualized, not recognizable as government websites.

“Are they even aware of the audience that their websites are intending to serve?” she questioned.

The National Design Studio website has three lines of scrolling photos and short videos of the team, the ceiling of a government building, water bottles and more. There’s a photo of Gebbia with Elon Musk.

“There’s an animated GIF of Joe Gebbia throwing a punch at the camera. What is that about, in [relation] to governance and serving the American people?” asked Axios. “I don’t know what that has to do with me as a taxpayer that’s funding this team.”

The goals

The NDS look may be coming to more websites soon.

Gebbia says that he wants to fix all of the government’s 27,000 websites, which include 7,000 to 8,000 dot-gov domains, pointing to the website of the Social Security Administration and Medicare as fruitful targets for upgrades — though the SSA website was updated last year.

“In the next three years, how do we touch every digital surface of the United States government?” Gebbia said of his goal on the recent podcast.

This could have a major impact on how Americans experience their government. The top nine websites get 160 million visits monthly, Gebbia said.

The U.S. Web Design System is a likely conduit for him to get this done. It was designed by two digital teams in the government — 18F and U.S. Digital Service — that have since been either completely shuttered or transformed into DOGE, respectively.

The executive order creating Gebbia’s team instructed it to work with the General Services Administration, which houses the guidelines, to update this design system.

It also instructed government agencies to make sure they’re in compliance with the standards, as directed by Congress in law. Getting agencies to use the standards has been a struggle: only 30% of government websites used them as of mid-2023.

If Gebbia’s team is successful, they could help implement these policies that’ve been in the works for years, like USWDS and the 21st Century IDEA Act, the law that requires agencies to use the design system, said Lira. The design studio adds a new type of capacity to the design and service delivery space that could help make progress with expertise, convening authority and political will.

“Hopefully it’s a net balance positive” against the loss of capacity that happened across the government last year, he said, noting that the space did need to be “revitalized” in order to scale across the ecosystem.

“We're building what will be the most used / implemented design system ever created that will be used by hundreds of millions of Americans,” NDS employee Sutch posted on Twitter late last year. His colleague — 2024 college graduate and software engineer Ahman Sandid — posted on X that they’re going to “create a framework and standard to succeed” USWDS.

“Head of engineering propaganda,” reads Sandid’s bio on X.

Gregory Barbaccia, the federal chief information officer, said on a recent panel that design studio is experimenting with using AI to do “complete website redesigns” using “NDS guidelines.”

Using AI to make changes at scale could work theoretically, although it would require careful monitoring of results for quality, said one former 18F employee, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution.

How AI will work in redoing websites more complex than the websites created by the design studio so far is an open question, though — as is the fact that making changes at scale in government often requires overcoming nontechnical hurdles, like who owns a website and who can tell them to do what with it.

“The thing about government web sites is that once you have seen one of them, you've seen one of them,” said Mikey Dickerson, who was the first administrator of the U.S. Digital Service, which is now DOGE.

“It's not only a different tech stack every time, it's a different staff employed by a different contractor and a different one person who has the password,” he said. “And no one has seen that one person for six months.”

Some of the design studio’s apparent AI work has run into issues already. The TrumpRx website previously showed a child with six toes running towards an American flag without any stars on it.

Still, there’s a chance the design group takes on even bigger priorities moving forward.

Barbaccia previously told Nextgov/FCW that he’s working with the design studio on a single, “digital front door” for the government, so that citizens don’t have to give the government the same information over and over at different agencies.

The questions

Some questions about how the design studio operates remain unanswered.

For one, the team appears to be using Google-based emails — not the existing White House email system.

Unlike other White House emails that go through the Defense Department, the design studio emails are getting delivered directly to Google, said David Nesting, who previously served as the deputy CIO at OPM and also did stints at the federal Office of the Chief Information Officer and U.S. Digital Service before it was DOGE.

The White House has traditionally been scrutinized for how it preserves presidential and federal records, and in response to past court cases, took great pains to ensure all emails and documents were automatically captured by a records management system, he said.

"It's not really possible for us to tell from the outside how or whether the team is preserving records — the design studio could've set up its own automatic records capture system, too — but the intent to operate independently does raise questions,” said Nesting.

The White House didn’t respond to a request for clarification.

The team also briefly had a store section on its website, where users could sign up to get notified when a $47 limited edition MAHA poster became available. A $400 “collector’s edition” with autographs from Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins was also advertised.

Gebbia himself promoted the store, which has since disappeared. When asked where the profits would be going, a White House spokesperson told Nextgov/FCW that the posters were never “actually for sale,” as there was never a “purchase button.”

The design studio has also been criticized for using Elon Musk’s chatbot, Grok, on its nutrition website, which previously called out Musk’s product by name. That name drop was removed after Nextgov/FCW asked the White House for comment.

As of last Wednesday, the National Design Studio website included photos of company logos and links to their websites on its main page in its carousel of pictures.

That included links to the websites of X, Cloudflare, Figma, Made Thought and Code & Theory, without explanation as to why those links and photos of those companies’ logos were there.

They disappeared after Nextgov/FCW emailed the White House for comment.

A screenshot of the NDS website on the afternoon of Feb. 18.

“The National Design Studio is rapidly removing corporate logos because it is illegal for any governmental official to use public office for personal enrichment, including the enrichment of any specific private business or corporation,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist at Public Citizen, a nonprofit advocacy group.

It “reeks of both corruption and incompetence,” said Emily Peterson-Cassin, a policy director at Demand Progress, an advocacy group.

Speaking of X, the team includes a few former team members of Musk’s DOGE beyond just Gebbia and Coristine. Kaitlyn Koller, who bears the title of “director of operations” for the White House team on her LinkedIn, also formerly worked at DOGE, as did Yat Choi, who helped Gebbia with OPM’s retirement modernization.

Gebbia’s team also includes Greg Hogan, the former CIO at OPM, as well as newcomers to government, including Nate Brown, Jaylee Adams, Tyler Kim, Braden Steffanik and Tai Groot, the White House confirmed. More may be coming, as the team is hiring.

The ethos

Gebbia called the administration’s MAHA website that houses new government nutrition guidelines, realfood.gov, a “modern, minimalist experience” at a recent administration event.

“Clean lines, playful illustrations, intuitive flow inspired by the best consumer brands. Because if we're asking families to choose real food every day, the guidance should feel welcoming, trustworthy and beautiful, not bureaucratic,” he said. “We're making healthy choices clearer, more accessible and even joyful.”

Designing in a government context is fundamentally different from designing for a business. The latter is more focused on differentiation, shareholder growth and customer loyalty, said Axios.

“In government, the responsibility is broader and more complex,” said Axios.

“Public institutions don’t need to feel like consumer brands to be effective,” she said. “They need to be clear, consistent, transparent, and grounded in evidence. They are meant to serve, not sell.”

A website on health, for example, should be measured by looking at if it's evidence-based, if it reduces confusion and helps the public make decisions, she said.

Gebbia has said that his work — “clear, crisp design” on par with consumer brands — can help build trust in the government.

To Axios, trust in government institutions doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

“The public doesn’t experience government in silos,” she said. “People don’t separate a nutrition website from immigration policy, law enforcement practices, healthcare access, or economic conditions.”

Editor's note: This article has been updated to include details about the X user that noted accessibility problems with TrumpRx.

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Targeted AI adoption can drive change, current and former officials say

Edward Graham — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 14:44:06 -0500

Federal agencies need to be strategic and forward-thinking when it comes to adopting artificial intelligence tools to enhance their missions, current and former officials said on Thursday during the Nextgov/FCW and ATARC public health IT summit.

John Boerstler, the general manager of Federal at Granicus who served as chief experience officer for the Department of Veterans Affairs from February 2021 through September 2024, said the agency has successfully scaled its uses of AI tools to better serve retired servicemembers. He cautioned, however, that “we need to really be careful about the implementation and in managing expectations, both internally and externally on how we use it.”

VA’s 2025 AI use case inventory, which was released last month, listed 367 examples of the department looking to onboard AI tools — a significant increase over the 227 it reported in its 2024 inventory. Many of these use cases are for medical devices or for other technologies meant to augment clinical care for veterans, as well as the delivery of critical services.

Boerstler said looking at how AI can enhance customer experience was key, noting that a focus on “design and qualitative research” has also helped VA better engage with veterans. He said that, while working at VA, the agency found it was sending transitioning servicemembers around 156 emails in the last three months of their military service, many sent in the middle of the night, telling them to enroll in healthcare or file for benefits.

To streamline these communications, Boerstler said VA “redesigned the entire journey,” including “using AI and automation to then set that new course and not spam your customers and help them enroll.”

“Now they're enrolling in healthcare at a much higher rate,” he added. “So there's so much that we can continue to do, and you don't need the fanciest AI model on the marketplace.”

Like VA, the National Institutes of Health has also been scaling its use of AI tools.

Nick Weber, acting director of NIH’s Office of Scientific Computing Services, said the agency has focused on discussing “challenges and responsible and ethical AI use” across the organization, including by creating a generative AI community of practice roughly two years ago that now includes around 2,000 people.

To support NIH’s administrative-focused operations, Weber said the agency has also been using AI to better analyze its grants and funding efforts. He noted that approximately 85% of the agency’s $50 billion annual budget goes toward funding research across the U.S., and that “using AI to analyze that portfolio — see where there are gaps, see where there's overlaps, where we can bring things together more efficiently — has been incredibly helpful.”

When it comes to NIH’s direct research efforts, Weber said the agency is trying to find ways to take the data it generates and collects and then build “domain-specific small language models, not the big frontier foundational models that exist.”

This entails looking at creating models “associated with our core data sets for Alzheimer's disease,” for instance, and then making them available to the broader research community so researchers “can ask questions and work with things more specific to a disease domain,” he explained.

In his second term in office, President Donald Trump has also placed an emphasis on enhancing government services through the adoption of new technologies like AI.

One such initiative is the General Services Administration’s OneGov initiative, which was launched in April 2025 to offer agencies discounts on select private-sector technology and software services — including AI tools — by treating the government as one customer. More than a dozen companies have reached deals with GSA so far.

“We've taken advantage of the OneGov deals at [the Department of Health and Human Services] and NIH for many of the $1 deals with the various products,” Weber said, adding that, while the initiative is “a great way to partner with industry,” he has some concerns about “the back end as to how we're going to sustain these things, when we become so reliant on them and it no longer costs $1.”

"They get you hooked, and then you'll pay anything to continue to use it,” Weber said. “And so we're worried about, what is it going to look like? How are we going to decide when we have people using all of these different products? Where do we invest? How do we invest to make sure people can continue to get the benefits of the products? And we've been kind of really thinking about, “how can we take advantage of additional OneGov deals?’”

Editor's Note: This article has been updated to better clarify Weber's views on OneGov.

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When every second counts: government tech helps first responders’ lifesaving missions

John Breeden II — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 19:13:00 -0500

When disaster strikes, first responders are expected to sprint into chaos while everyone else runs away. Whether it’s a collapsed building after an earthquake or a smoke-filled office during an active shooter event, the ability to see around corners and know what’s happening inside a dangerous environment can be the difference between life and death.

Emerging technology from government labs is beginning to give emergency crews advantages they didn’t have even a decade ago. Two recent efforts from the National Institute of Standards and Technology highlight how improved situational awareness and indoor location tracking are becoming part of the first responder’s toolkit.

Drones have started to earn their place in public safety by supporting missions such as search and rescue and surveillance. In the military, they are even becoming decisive frontline weapons, demonstrating their versatility. However, most of those kinds of activities take place outside where a drone can really spread its wings or its propellers, and also receive strong guidance signals to help it navigate. But once the danger moves indoors, drones and the technologies that help drive them, like GPS, can’t easily follow.

One major challenge responders face is simply understanding any indoor environment they’re entering. In many disaster scenarios, sending a human into a building full of fallen debris, compromised structural supports and unpredictable hazards is a high-risk proposition. A better option is to send in a drone first, but only if the drone can reliably navigate complicated interiors and relay useful information back to the team in real time.

That’s the premise behind a prize challenge NIST sponsored to push drone makers to improve 3D indoor mapping. In many of these situations, drones equipped with cameras or sensors could capture video, identify hazards and map the inside of the building for incident commanders. But flying a drone indoors is harder than flying one outside: GPS doesn’t work well in many large buildings, drones have to navigate narrow hallways and stairs and even their own propeller turbulence can disrupt stability. The competition asked participants to build systems that could create high-quality 3D images and maps while flying a complex course and then deliver that data in ways that first responders could use during a real operation.

“This mapping technology can allow first responders to know where there might be potential victims,” said Stephanie Layman of NIST’s Public Safety Communications Research Division. “These maps can help direct responders more quickly to exactly where to send their people, as well as map a path to help get them back out safely. It’s about saving lives — including first responders’ lives.”

Work like this is about more than building better hardware. It’s about usable intelligence in life-or-death situations. Detailed 3D maps can show where obstacles or victims are located before a human team even enters the structure, and they give commanders a chance to make informed decisions based on real spatial data rather than guesswork.

The second challenge for first responders is not what’s inside the building, but who is inside and where exactly those people are. GPS has solved outdoor navigation for decades, but it collapses almost entirely indoors, where walls and ceilings block satellite signals. That becomes a serious problem when an incident commander loses contact with a firefighter who hasn’t checked in on a radio or when teams need to coordinate movements inside a multi-story building.

To address this, NIST and partners have been working on what they call the First Responder Smart Tracking (FRST) Challenge. The goal is to create wearable devices and localization systems that can track first responders through complex interior spaces using an indoor “localization test bed” to verify accuracy. The notion is simple: first responders need an affordable, rugged way to know exactly where their teammates are, not just outside, but through corridors, stairwells and maze-like interiors where time and precision matter.

GPS doesn’t solve this problem indoors because its satellite signals are too weak once they penetrate roofs and walls. Building materials like concrete, steel and glass, especially in high-rise structures, can disrupt or totally block the signals, leaving responders effectively blind. The challenge encourages innovation in solutions that are easy for first responders to carry and track as they move through a building. The devices need to constantly communicate their location back to base.

It’s easy to take location and mapping for granted when you’re walking down a familiar hallway with your phone guiding you. But in a crisis environment, first responders can end up in spaces where every turn, every obstacle and every second counts. The ability to pinpoint locations indoors, in near real time, can reduce confusion, speed rescue efforts and ultimately save lives.

Another development that promises to accelerate improvements in first responder tech is the recently opened Public Safety Immersive Test Center in Colorado. Built by NIST’s Communications Technology Laboratory, the facility is a dedicated space where emergency technology can be evaluated in realistic rescue and response scenarios.

The immersive test center allows engineers, first responders and researchers to simulate complex disaster environments, including collapsing structures, smoke-filled interiors and multi-agency response situations in a controlled, repeatable setting. By combining physical props with advanced sensor systems and instrumentation, the center makes it possible to observe how technologies such as drone mapping, indoor localization devices and communication systems perform under stress.

For example, testing might involve flying a drone through a mock collapsed building while simultaneously tracking rescue personnel wearing indoor position trackers. Researchers can then analyze how well mapping, location and communications systems work together, where they fail and what improvements are needed. That type of holistic evaluation is hard to achieve with field tests alone because real emergencies are unpredictable and difficult to reproduce.

According to NIST officials, the immersive test center gives first responder agencies and technology developers a shared environment where they can study new designs, validate performance and better understand how various tools behave in lifelike conditions. As indoor tracking and drone mapping technologies mature, being able to assess them side by side in realistic conditions will help ensure they’re not only capable in isolation, but interoperable and reliable when multiple systems must work in concert during actual emergencies.

Built in a modular fashion that allows rapid configuration to mirror almost any environment, the new facility is both massive and impressive. There is even a virtual tour available for anyone who wants to explore the various labs and test environments.

All of these efforts reflect a broader trend in technology that government and industry have embraced: using data and connectivity to augment human capability, rather than replacing it. Drones don’t carry responders into harm’s way; they prepare the way. Wearable indoor tracking systems don’t make decisions for crews; they give commanders a clearer picture of where their teams are and what risks they face.

These innovations have practical implications beyond niche research projects. Urban search-and-rescue teams, fire departments responding to multi-story apartment fires, law enforcement clearing complex interiors and disaster response teams entering unstable structures all stand to benefit from technologies that help them understand their environment and locate potential hazards. In an era where every second matters and situational awareness can be clipped by uncertainty, these tools may eventually become as essential as radios and protective gear.

Government investment in challenge-driven innovation like this often flies under the radar compared with headline-grabbing advances in AI or space exploration. But for first responders facing the real world’s most unpredictable moments, tech that helps them navigate dangerous environments safely is not just useful. It’s lifesaving.

John Breeden II is an award-winning journalist and reviewer with over 20 years of experience covering technology. He is the CEO of the Tech Writers Bureau, a group that creates technological thought leadership content for organizations of all sizes. Twitter: @LabGuys

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Trump’s nutrition website directs users to Elon Musk’s Grok

Natalie Alms — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 14:57:00 -0500

The Trump administration’s website for its new dietary guidelines directs users to Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok to ask questions about nutrition.

Grok’s placement on the government website realfood.gov follows uproar over the chatbot’s creation of millions of sexualized deepfakes of women and children in late December and its spouting of racist and antisemitic content last summer.

Other government agencies are also using the chatbot made by xAI, Musk’s AI company, but the prominent placement of Grok on realfood.gov over the weekend appears to be one of the first instances of the federal government pointing online visitors to Musk’s chatbot.

The setup raises questions about how Musk could be benefiting from the government’s use of Grok. It’s also not clear how the chatbot was trained for a government context, if at all, or if users should take its outputs as government recommendations or endorsements.

After Nextgov/FCW on Monday sent the administration questions about the placement of Grok on the site, it was changed so that it no longer called Grok out by name. Previously, it said, “Use Grok to get real answers about real food.”

A screenshot of the realfood.gov website taken at 11:41 am on Feb. 9, which has since been changed to remove direct mention of Grok.

Now, it directs users to use “AI,” but the portal still takes users to grok.com.

Visitors to the government website that go to Grok can only ask the chatbot a few questions before they’re directed to sign up to Grok to continue.

At times, Grok was unavailable at all due to “high demand” when Nextgov/FCW prompted it, at which point it said to try again soon or sign up to get “higher priority access.” Grok has a free option as well as paid plans running up to $300 a month.

The ways people interact with Grok are used to train its models, unless users move to a private mode or turn off the use of data for training in Grok’s settings, both of which one can only do with an account.

A White House official told Nextgov/FCW that “AI can be used to help people apply the dietary guidelines to their lives.”

“People are welcome to use any AI model that they choose. This instance of AI is the publicly available version of Grok, which is also an approved government tool,” they said, adding that a variety of tools are available on USAi.gov, a government platform meant to help agencies test and adopt AI tools. It is not public-facing.

The White House, Department of Health and Human Services and Agriculture Department didn’t answer specific questions about the site, including whether the placement of Grok was via a government contract, why Grok was chosen and what guardrails are in place to ensure the chatbot gives accurate answers. xAI didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The National Design Studio, led by Airbnb co-founder and former Department of Government Efficiency associate Joe Gebbia, built the website. Edward Coristine, known as “Big Balls” and also formerly of DOGE, posted on X about giving the site a “mini-makeover” on Sunday.

The placement of Grok on the nutrition website is not the first deployment of the chatbot in the government, although most previous ones have been for internal use cases, not public-facing ones.

In January, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the chatbot would be operating inside the Pentagon’s network after the Defense Department awarded contracts of up to $200 million to xAI, Anthropic, Google and OpenAI. xAI was a late-stage addition to that AI initiative, a former Pentagon employee has said.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is also piloting the use of Grok as a general chatbot for basic tasks like answering questions. The Department of Health and Human Services is using the chatbot to schedule and manage social media posts and general communication materials and briefings, according to the recently released AI use case inventories of the Energy Department and HHS.

Civil rights and consumer protection groups have already been asking the administration to stop using Grok, especially after recent backlash against the chatbot for generating public, sexualized deepfakes of women and minors when requested.

“It is reckless for the Trump administration to keep steering the public to Grok after the system generated sexualized, nonconsensual images of women and apparent depictions of minors,” J.B. Branch, the big tech accountability advocate at Public Citizen, told Nextgov/FCW in a statement.

“If this administration is serious about online safety, it should immediately investigate how Elon Musk’s Grok was able to generate nonconsensual deepfake pornography and pause all federal use of the model until it can be independently determined to be safe,” said Branch.

Following reports of Grok’s problematic image generations, Indonesia and Malaysia have blocked the chatbot altogether. The United Kingdom's media regulator has also launched a probe into Grok, as has the state of California.

In mid-January, xAI announced new safety measures, although journalists have reported on loopholes in the updates.

Grok also came under scrutiny last summer for calling itself “MechaHitler” and spouting racist and antisemitic content. xAI later removed instructions telling the chatbot to be “politically incorrect.”

In July, xAI announced that it was on the General Services Administration’s centralized contracting vehicle, the Multiple Award Schedule, at the same time that the Department of Defense awarded it a contract. That announcement came after an early July update to Grok that caused the chatbot to spew antisemitic content.

At that point, a planned government partnership with GSA fell apart, according to internal emails obtained by WIRED, and GSA reportedly removed xAI from the central contracting vehicle. The chatbot wasn’t included in a GSA announcement of new AI offerings on the schedule in August.

Later that month, the Trump administration’s head of the Federal Acquisition Service at GSA, Josh Gruenbaum, reportedly emailed staff to add it back onto the schedule. In the fall, GSA signed an agreement with xAI to make Grok available to federal agencies for $0.42 an agency through March 2027.

xAI is currently on the GSA schedule via Carahsoft.

Meanwhile, civil rights and consumer protection advocacy groups have asked the Trump administration to stop using Grok in federal operations.

“It’s incredibly dangerous for an official government website to prominently advertise an AI chatbot that is currently under fire for generating nude images of minors and previously declared itself to be mecha-Hitler,” Emily Peterson-Cassin, a policy director at Demand Progress, which has called on the government to stop using the chatbot, told Nextgov/FCW in a statement.

“A family that has more questions about the new food pyramid than the free version of Grok allows should not have to subscribe to Elon Musk to get answers,” she also noted.

“The fact that this is not a legitimate service people can use without signing on for Musk’s services confirms that this is very much the federal government pushing members of the public to use Grok,” Donald Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan, told Nextgov/FCW. “It trades on public trust in the government to expand the user base of the richest man in the world.”

On Tuesday, Nextgov/FCW asked Grok itself why it was on the government nutrition website.

“Grok is built by xAI (Elon Musk's company), which positions itself as maximally truth-seeking, anti-woke, and willing to challenge mainstream narratives—mirroring RFK Jr.'s own criticisms of Big Food, prior dietary guidelines (seen as industry-captured), and conventional health advice. This ideological fit likely played a big role,” the chatbot replied.

Last summer, Trump signed an executive order to ban “woke” AI models from the government, a move experts have worried could chill free speech.

Grok itself also pointed to Musk’s ties to the administration.

“Recommending Grok on a flagship .gov site … subtly boosts an administration-friendly company,” it said.

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Agencies lost around 20,000 tech workers last year — and now the Trump admin is hiring

Natalie Alms — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 14:59:00 -0500

Over 19,500 technology, data and telecommunications employees left their jobs with the federal government last year after President Donald Trump took office and began a crusade to shrink the government’s workforce, according to newly released government data.

Now, it appears that the administration is trying to make up for the losses.

All six departments and agencies with the biggest losses of IT management employees — the departments of Defense, Treasury, Agriculture, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security, as well as the General Services Administration — currently have IT jobs listed on the government’s hiring website, USAJobs.

The Trump administration is also looking to hire 1,000 new early career technologists through its new U.S. Tech Force, which it launched late last year.

“Anything even tangentially related to tech — there’s a spot for you,” the administration’s chief information officer, Greg Barbaccia, recently told potential applicants.

In total, 352,285 federal employees left their posts between Jan. 20 and Dec. 31, 2025, according to data released by the Office of Personnel Management on Wednesday.

Among the government’s IT management, computer science, computer engineering, data science and telecommunications jobs, 19,519 employees left the government between Jan. 20 and Dec. 31, 2025, representing about 5.5% of all those that departed last year. With limited hiring, the net loss of tech employees was 17,228.

Asked by Nextgov/FCW during a January interview if it was a mistake for so many tech employees to leave the government, Barbaccia said, “there was quite a bit of disruption, obviously.”

“Disruption is not intrinsically a bad thing,” he said. “It remains to be seen. We haven't seen major system disruptions across the board.”

The loss of technology employees has stalled the overhaul of a key public health system that tracks diseases like tuberculosis, slowed the modernization of key tax systems at the IRS and put a government health benefits program for the U.S. Postal Service at risk of operational failure. Experts have also raised concerns about the government’s cyber defense in light of workforce losses.

The vast majority of the technology employees that left the government last year were not laid off, which forced only about 450 workers out of their jobs.

Many others retired, resigned or opted to take the administration’s deferred resignation offer, which the Department of Government Efficiency and Office of Personnel Management first extended via an email last January that warned, “we cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position.”

The Trump administration has emphasized that the majority of the government’s workforce losses in 2025 weren’t due to layoffs. But many of the former feds that left disagree with the characterization that their departures were voluntary, saying that they quit their posts because of toxic work environments or because they were threatened with layoffs if they didn’t accept the offer. Some of the administration’s layoff plans were also stalled by courts.

It remains to be seen how successful the government will be in recruiting new talent to take the place of feds who left the government.

Nextgov/FCW previously asked the head of the Office of Personnel Management Scott Kupor if the headlines about government layoffs and turmoil in 2025 had hurt the government’s recruitment pitch.

“The answer is unequivocally no,” he said.

“That’s not a surprising outcome, unfortunately, for those who have been through these things,” said Kupor when asked if layoffs ever went too far. “You do the best you can with the information you have at the time.”

He told Nextgov/FCW in an emailed statement this week that “the federal government has faced persistent gaps in critical tech skills for years, long before this administration.”

“Tech Force is one of several efforts to address those long-standing challenges by modernizing how government recruits and deploys technical talent, with a strong focus on bringing in early-career technologists,” he said. “It’s focused on filling hard-to-staff roles, accelerating hiring, and ensuring technologists are placed on high-impact missions where they can deliver real results.”

The Tech Force has received 6,000 applications so far, Barbaccia told reporters last week.

The young workers the Tech Force is targeting were among the most affected by Trump’s squeeze on the workforce.

“You saw a disproportionate number of young, tech-savvy federal employees being shown the door [last year],” Max Stier, president and CEO of the good government nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, told reporters last month.

The number of federal employees under the age of 30 went from 8.9% to 7.9%, he said, and some of the administration’s new programs to bring in talent are duplicating teams it shuttered.

“We expect, and unfortunately fear, that the larder will be restocked not with those that are expert, nonpartisan civil servants,” said Stier. “There is a structure being put in place to hire loyalists in their place.”

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Former State official targeted in suspected Chinese spying effort tied to Venezuela research

David DiMolfetta — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 14:06:07 -0500

A suspected Chinese intelligence outfit contacted a former senior State Department officer late last year requesting they draft an assessment of U.S. policy priorities in Venezuela in exchange for payment, Nextgov/FCW has learned.

The former official, who worked in a national security role while employed by the government and requested anonymity to speak candidly about their experience, said they wanted to speak out about the incident to warn other former federal employees, especially those in highly sensitive positions.

A person claiming to be Keven Lee from a firm called Foresight and Strategy contacted the former official. Both Lee and the firm’s name surfaced in research produced by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies that was first reported by Nextgov/FCW in September last year. That research assessed that the firm is part of a nexus of fake companies and websites likely tied to China.

The network has sought to recruit U.S. individuals with policy research experience, especially those who have worked in the government or at think tanks. The former official did not independently assess the group as Chinese-affiliated.

The attempts to gain insights from the former official help highlight the extent to which foreign adversaries are willing to go to extract intelligence from former government employees to aid in painting a picture of rivals’ geopolitical views. It’s also the first known public case in which the Foresight and Strategy network is confirmed to have sought out a former U.S. government employee for sensitive information.

The outreach came amid a U.S. campaign of airstrikes against supposed drug boats off the coast of Venezuela, which legal experts have questioned the justification for. And it occurred just weeks before a major U.S. operation at the turn of the new year ousted Venezuela’s leader Nicolás Maduro from Caracas and brought him to trial in New York.

After a virtual job interview, a purported Foresight and Strategy executive asked the former officer over email to draft a 1,000-word brief on U.S. policy approaches toward Venezuela that should draw from conversations they had with other State Department colleagues. The red flags began to go up.

“They knew their target well here,” the former official said in an interview, adding that jobless federal employees may be more desperate for paid work and could fall for these schemes.

Former government employees have become a prime target of foreign adversaries’ recruitment scams in the last year amid widespread layoffs, hiring freezes and growing uncertainty in the federal workforce. A State Department employee can be attractive to Chinese spies because of their potential access to diplomatic networks and insight into how U.S. foreign policy decisions are shaped.

Nextgov/FCW has asked the State Department for comment. The FBI declined to comment.

A spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington, D.C., previously stated they were not familiar with the network of websites and said the nation opposes “any smear and attack on China with so-called ‘spy risks’ without factual basis.”

The timing of a Chinese-linked outreach scam aligns at a moment when Beijing would most want an insider view into U.S. plans for Maduro’s government, said Henry Ziemer, an associate fellow with the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“In November and December of last year … you’re getting all these mixed signals about the boat strikes, the oil tanker seizures and military assets in the region. You’re really wondering — is the U.S. actually going to try to topple the Maduro regime, or is this going to be a case where [President Donald] Trump declares victory and goes home?” Ziemer said in an interview.

China, one of Venezuela’s closest Western Hemisphere allies and trading partners, “wants to know about U.S. policy towards Venezuela and what it could signal about U.S. policy towards Latin America as a whole,” he added.

The research that documented Foresight and Strategy as a potential front for intelligence gathering cited China-based domain registrations and shared technical infrastructure with other fake sites as reasons to surmise the firm is likely part of a Chinese operation.

“It’s very plausible that this infrastructure will continue to be used on multiple targets, and … it appears to continue to be used even after it’s been publicly exposed,” said Max Lesser, an emerging threats senior analyst at FDD who co-authored the original findings. “The U.S. government would probably want to consider sharing this information with as many people as possible.”

The outreach is “entirely consistent” with what’s been observed during periods of heightened geopolitical tension, said David Cattler, the former director of the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency.

“When direct access to institutions becomes harder, adversaries look for indirect ways to understand U.S. priorities, internal debates and decision-making culture. Former senior officials are valuable because context, judgment, and credibility don’t disappear when the [agency] badge does,” Cattler said in an email.

While the targeting techniques are not new, they now seamlessly align with features of a typical post-government career, he added. The danger emerges when these requests subtly push individuals to leverage non-public deliberations or internal conversations, even without an explicit request for classified material.

“A few simple rules help: be cautious of unsolicited opportunities asking for detailed analysis on sensitive, current issues; do basic due diligence on companies and recruiters; treat requests that rely on non-public conversations or privileged access as a warning sign; if something feels rushed, opaque or oddly focused on ‘how things work inside’ — pause,” he said. “Awareness and professional discipline are the best defenses.”

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Government by AI? Trump administration plans to write regulations using artificial intelligence

Jesse Coburn, ProPublica — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 14:59:00 -0500

The Trump administration is planning to use artificial intelligence to write federal transportation regulations, according to U.S. Department of Transportation records and interviews with six agency staffers.

The plan was presented to DOT staff last month at a demonstration of AI’s “potential to revolutionize the way we draft rulemakings,” agency attorney Daniel Cohen wrote to colleagues. The demonstration, Cohen wrote, would showcase “exciting new AI tools available to DOT rule writers to help us do our job better and faster.”

Discussion of the plan continued among agency leadership last week, according to meeting notes reviewed by ProPublica. Gregory Zerzan, the agency’s general counsel, said at that meeting that President Donald Trump is “very excited about this initiative.” Zerzan seemed to suggest that the DOT was at the vanguard of a broader federal effort, calling the department the “point of the spear” and “the first agency that is fully enabled to use AI to draft rules.”

Zerzan appeared interested mainly in the quantity of regulations that AI could produce, not their quality. “We don’t need the perfect rule on XYZ. We don’t even need a very good rule on XYZ,” he said, according to the meeting notes. “We want good enough.” Zerzan added, “We’re flooding the zone.”

These developments have alarmed some at DOT. The agency’s rules touch virtually every facet of transportation safety, including regulations that keep airplanes in the sky, prevent gas pipelines from exploding and stop freight trains carrying toxic chemicals from skidding off the rails. Why, some staffers wondered, would the federal government outsource the writing of such critical standards to a nascent technology notorious for making mistakes?

The answer from the plan’s boosters is simple: speed. Writing and revising complex federal regulations can take months, sometimes years. But, with DOT’s version of Google Gemini, employees could generate a proposed rule in a matter of minutes or even seconds, two DOT staffers who attended the December demonstration remembered the presenter saying. In any case, most of what goes into the preambles of DOT regulatory documents is just “word salad,” one staffer recalled the presenter saying. Google Gemini can do word salad.

Zerzan reiterated the ambition to accelerate rulemaking with AI at the meeting last week. The goal is to dramatically compress the timeline in which transportation regulations are produced, such that they could go from idea to complete draft ready for review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in just 30 days, he said. That should be possible, he said, because “it shouldn’t take you more than 20 minutes to get a draft rule out of Gemini.”

The DOT plan, which has not previously been reported, represents a new front in the Trump administration’s campaign to incorporate artificial intelligence into the work of the federal government. This administration is not the first to use AI; federal agencies have been gradually stitching the technology into their work for years, including to translate documents, analyze data and categorize public comments, among other uses. But the current administration has been particularly enthusiastic about the technology. Trump released multiple executive orders in support of AI last year. In April, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought circulated a memo calling for the acceleration of its use by the federal government. Three months later, the administration released an “AI Action Plan” that contained a similar directive. None of those documents, however, called explicitly for using AI to write regulations, as DOT is now planning to do.

Those plans are already in motion. The department has used AI to draft a still-unpublished Federal Aviation Administration rule, according to a DOT staffer briefed on the matter.

Skeptics say that so-called large language models such as Gemini and ChatGPT shouldn’t be trusted with the complicated and consequential responsibilities of governance, given that those models are prone to error and incapable of human reasoning. But proponents see AI as a way to automate mindless tasks and wring efficiencies out of a slow-moving federal bureaucracy.

Such optimism was on display in a windowless conference room in Northern Virginia earlier this month, where federal technology officials, convened at an AI summit, discussed adopting an “AI culture” in government and “upskilling” the federal workforce to use the technology. Those federal representatives included Justin Ubert, division chief for cybersecurity and operations at DOT’s Federal Transit Administration, who spoke on a panel about the Transportation Department’s plans for “fast adoption” of artificial intelligence. Many people see humans as a “choke point” that slows down AI, he noted. But eventually, Ubert predicted, humans will fall back into merely an oversight role, monitoring “AI-to-AI interactions.” Ubert declined to speak to ProPublica on the record.

A similarly sanguine attitude about the potential of AI permeated the presentation at DOT in December, which was attended by more than 100 DOT employees, including division heads, high-ranking attorneys and civil servants from rulemaking offices. Brimming with enthusiasm, the presenter told them that Gemini can handle 80% to 90% of the work of writing regulations, while DOT staffers could do the rest, one attendee recalled the presenter saying.

To illustrate this, the presenter asked for a suggestion from the audience of a topic on which DOT may have to write a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, a public filing that lays out an agency’s plans to introduce a new regulation or change an existing one. He then plugged the topic keywords into Gemini, which produced a document resembling a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. It appeared, however, to be missing the actual text that goes into the Code of Federal Regulations, one staffer recalled.

The presenter expressed little concern that the regulatory documents produced by AI could contain so-called hallucinations — erroneous text that is frequently generated by large language models such as Gemini — according to three people present. In any case, that’s where DOT’s staff would come in, he said. “It seemed like his vision of the future of rulemaking at DOT is that our jobs would be to proofread this machine product,” one employee said. “He was very excited.” (Attendees could not clearly recall the name of the lead presenter, but three said they believed it was Brian Brotsos, the agency’s acting chief AI officer. Brotsos declined to comment, referring questions to the DOT press office.)

A spokesperson for the DOT did not respond to a request for comment; Cohen and Zerzan also did not respond to messages seeking comment. A Google spokesperson did not provide a comment.

The December presentation left some DOT staffers deeply skeptical. Rulemaking is intricate work, they said, requiring expertise in the subject at hand as well as in existing statutes, regulations and case law. Mistakes or oversights in DOT regulations could lead to lawsuits or even injuries and deaths in the transportation system. Some rule writers have decades of experience. But all that seemed to go ignored by the presenter, attendees said. “It seems wildly irresponsible,” said one, who, like the others, requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

Mike Horton, DOT’s former acting chief artificial intelligence officer, criticized the plan to use Gemini to write regulations, comparing it to “having a high school intern that’s doing your rulemaking.” (He said the plan was not in the works when he left the agency in August.) Noting the life-or-death stakes of transportation safety regulations, Horton said the agency’s leaders “want to go fast and break things, but going fast and breaking things means people are going to get hurt.”

Academics and researchers who track the use of AI in government expressed mixed opinions about the DOT plan. If agency rule writers use the technology as a sort of research assistant with plenty of supervision and transparency, it could be useful and save time. But if they cede too much responsibility to AI, that could lead to deficiencies in critical regulations and run afoul of a requirement that federal rules be built on reasoned decision-making.

“Just because these tools can produce a lot of words doesn’t mean that those words add up to a high-quality government decision,” said Bridget Dooling, a professor at Ohio State University who studies administrative law. “It’s so tempting to try to figure out how to use these tools, and I think it would make sense to try. But I think it should be done with a lot of skepticism.”

Ben Winters, the AI and privacy director at the Consumer Federation of America, said the plan was especially problematic given the exodus of subject-matter experts from government as a result of the administration’s cuts to the federal workforce last year. DOT has had a net loss of nearly 4,000 of its 57,000 employees since Trump returned to the White House, including more than 100 attorneys, federal data shows.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency was a major proponent of AI adoption in government. In July, The Washington Post reported on a leaked DOGE presentation that called for using AI to eliminate half of all federal regulations, and to do so in part by having AI draft regulatory documents. “Writing is automated,” the presentation read. DOGE’s AI program “automatically drafts all submission documents for attorneys to edit.” DOGE and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.

The White House did not answer a question about whether the administration is planning to use AI in rulemaking at other agencies as well. Four top technology officials in the administration said they were not aware of any such plan. As for DOT’s “point of the spear” claim, two of those officials expressed skepticism. “There’s a lot of posturing of, ‘We want to seem like a leader in federal AI adoption,’” one said. “I think it’s very much a marketing thing.”

Alex Mierjeski contributed research.

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