The Wrap: More Fed Civ Pain Incoming; Pentagon Budget Reshuffle; DoT Names Pidugu CIO
Welcome to The Wrap for Thursday, February 20!
From the newsroom at MeriTalk, it’s the quickest read in Federal tech news. Here’s what you need to know today:
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More Fed Civ Pain Incoming
If the Federal workforce resignation campaign and ongoing probationary firings weren’t enough, President Trump’s latest ?executive order?(EO) issued on Feb. 19 is likely to send a fresh wave of angst and uncertainty through the government civilian workforce. The order gives agency leaders 60 days to work with their Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) teams and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to scour the government for ways to cut “non-statutory” activities – or those not specifically described in laws approved by Congress – along with a host of other functions that the administration considers to be detrimental to the country. The White House’s stated goal is to “focus the executive branch’s limited enforcement resources on regulations squarely authorized by constitutional Federal statutes, and to commence the deconstruction of the overbearing and burdensome administrative state.” In addition to covering non-statutory government functions, the order’s lens for what else the government shouldn’t be doing anymore seems wide enough to drive a truck through. The criteria range from regulations that “raise serious constitutional difficulties,” regs that “implicate matters of social, political, or economic significance,” and rules that “harm the national interest by significantly and unjustifiably impeding technological innovation, infrastructure development, disaster response, inflation reduction, research and development, economic development, energy production, land use, and foreign policy objectives.” Who doesn’t have to worry too hard at this point? The new EO – much like the White House’s?Feb. 11 order?paving the way for layoffs across the government – carves out broad exemptions for government activities “related to a military, national security, homeland security, foreign affairs, or immigration-related functions of the United States,” along with “any matter pertaining to the executive branch’s management of its employees.” Please do click through for the whole story.
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Pentagon Budget Reshuffle
The United States Department of Defense (DoD) is gearing up to reallocate $50 billion over the next five years from its current budget lines in order to shift funding to “higher priority defense projects” that would better align with President Trump’s “achieve peace through strength” mandate. That was the bottom-line from a Pentagon announcement?saying that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has directed a departmentwide review to identify offsets in the agency’s budget that could be “realigned from low-impact and low-priority Biden-legacy programs to align with President Trump’s America First priorities for national defense.” While the news has been reported in some quarters as a likely reduction in DoD spending, the fine print looks more like re-budgeting toward Trump-favored projects like Iron Dome, and away from Biden administration priorities. The department’s announcement indicates that the potential cuts could include programs related to “climate change” and other social initiatives, as well as efforts to streamline bureaucracy. The spending shifts do not yet appear to be set in stone, as DoD’s immediate task is to develop a list of areas and “potential offsets” with a goal of reducing at least eight percent of its projected spending over the next five years, amounting to $50 billion. At the same time, defense committees on both sides of Capitol Hill are offering up $100 billion-plus budget increases for DoD as a whole.
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DoT Names Pidugu CIO
Congrats to Pavan Pidugu, who started on Feb. 18 in his new gig as chief information officer at the U.S. Department of Transportation . He replaces Cordell Schachter, who served as DoT’s CIO during the Biden administration. Jack Albright briefly served as the agency’s?acting CIO?under the Trump administration before DoT tapped Pidugu for the job. Previously, Pidugu served as the chief technology officer at DoT’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) component. Before joining the Federal government in 2020, he worked on tech innovations in the retail industry for companies including Target, NCR, and Walmart.
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So Long, Ron Ross
Ron Ross, a long-time computer scientist and fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) who became one of the most familiar faces on the Fed-tech conference circuit over the past many years, is retiring from government service. Ross served as a fellow at NIST since 1997, focusing on some of the thornier tech standards issues related to cybersecurity, systems security engineering, and risk management – and leading agency’s Federal Information Security Modernization Act Implementation Project. He came to the agency after a 20-year U.S. Army hitch, and as a researcher at the Institute for Defense Analyses. “It has been an extraordinary honor and privilege to serve the American people in cybersecurity positions in the United States military, the Intelligence Community, and Civilian Government,” Ross wrote in a?sign-off post?on LinkedIn. “My goal has always been to help protect the nation, secure our freedom, and leave this place a little better than the way I found it,” he said.
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Once again, let’s “call IT a day,” but we'll bring you more tomorrow. Until then please check the MeriTalk breaking news website throughout the day for the latest on government IT people, process, and policy. And finally, please hit the news tip jar [with leads, breaking news, or simply your two cents] at [email protected].