VA to complete EHR deployment at nine more facilities

The Department of Veterans Affairs is set to complete the deployment of its federal Electronic Health Record system at nine more medical facilities next year, the agency announced Friday. 

According to the press release, the VA will have implemented the EHR in 13 facilities by 2026 and could deploy the system at all facilities as early as 2031. The agency said it is pursuing a “market-based approach” to site selection in order to scale up the number of concurrent deployments. The VA said it is aiming to adopt a standard baseline for products, workflows and integrations that are aligned with the recommendations of subject matter experts. 

VA Secretary Doug Collins said in the press release that the agency “can and will move faster on this important priority, but we’re going to listen to our doctors, nurses and vendor partners along the way in order to ensure patient safety, quality and customer service.”

The VA’s deployment of its  EHR system has faced myriad challenges over the past several years, resulting in continuing scrutiny from Congress, the VA’s Office of Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office. 

Most recently, the House Veterans Affairs subcommittee on technology and modernization questioned the agency’s ability to deliver on plans to deploy the EHR to four Michigan facilities in February. 

Neil Evans, the acting program executive director for EHR, wrote in congressional testimony that the VA developed the federal EHR system baseline, a tool that provides information on over 2,300 technology and functional components that make up the system. Additionally, he said the agency is looking to use “learning labs” to let end users practice skills in a simulated environment before the completed deployment, or “go-live.”

Evans also shared that improved and new approaches include the offering of informal tip-sharing sessions, streamlined computer-based training and more. 

Carol Harris, the GAO’s director for IT and cybersecurity issues, said during the same hearing that there “are a lot of very important accomplishments, but at the same time, there’s still a very large amount of work that needs to be completed with regard to the continued changes to the system, the configuration changes as well as these user-driven projects.”

Harris said that those changes combined with what the VA is already doing to four sites ready to go live is going to take “a tremendous amount of resources.” The watchdog is concern, she added, in the absence of an integrated schedule and a cost estimate for the go-live. 

“It’s just a big unknown,” Harris said.

Former State Department data, AI leader Graviss joins Atlassian

Australian-based software company Atlassian has tapped Matthew Graviss to be its first public sector chief technology officer following his recent departure as the State Department’s top data and AI official.

Although the role starts a new private sector chapter in Graviss’s career, being the first person to establish a newly created position is familiar ground. During his time in the federal government, Graviss was the first-ever chief data officer at both the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. 

In an interview with FedScoop, Graviss said his role at Atlassian is an extension of that experience in that he’ll again be codifying the responsibilities of the job, showing value and solving customer problems. 

Regardless of whether his role is in or out of the government, Graviss said “the delivery of better goods and services to citizens is contingent upon … an ecosystem of government employees, service providers, and solution providers.”

“I’m still part of that ecosystem,” he added

Graviss joins Atlassian after nearly four-and-a-half years as the chief data officer and chief AI officer at the State Department and a combined 17 years in federal government. Prior to the State Department, Graviss held several roles in the Department of Homeland Security, including his USCIS position and roles at Transportation Security Administration and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

But Graviss said he was ready to try the next challenge and began exploring a new role in September. He landed on Atlassian because of its growing focus on the public sector. The company, known for coworking tools like Jira, Confluence, and Trello, has been “doubling down on investment in the public sector over the last couple of years,” he said. 

Atlassian’s recent work on its public sector arm has included making progress toward getting “moderate” authority to operate its products under FedRAMP, the government’s security assessment process for cloud tools, as well as committing to FedRAMP “high” and the Department of Defense’s Impact Level 5, he said. 

It’s also scaling its public sector team, he said, and the new CTO role for that work is “a signal that, in and of itself, that the company’s investing a lot more in the public sector.”

In a written statement provided to FedScoop, Scott Blacker, Atlassian’s head of global solutions, said that bringing Graviss into the leadership team at the company “is an important step as we continue to expand our impact in the public sector.”

“His deep expertise in AI, data, and public sector technology will be invaluable as we work to help government agencies modernize, collaborate, and drive mission success,” Blacker said. 

Reflecting on his time in government, Graviss counted his recent efforts to build the State Department’s data governance and its adoption of AI into the agency’s global mission among his proudest accomplishments. 

“The mandate was data-informed, AI-assisted diplomacy,” Graviss said of his former role. 

That work included becoming the first cabinet-level agency to set up a departmentwide AI chatbot, which it calls StateChat, along with the adoption of other AI tools that range from searching the Foreign Affairs Manual to summarizing news stories from around the world. It also included producing State’s first AI strategy and establishing the Center for Analytics as the agency’s hub for data and AI.

“We established data governance for the first time at the Department of State,” Graviss said. “We built out a tech team and a tech platform that undergirds … all of the data and analytics and AI work.”

Graviss said when he first got to State, there were little more than spreadsheets to use from a technology standpoint. Now, the department has a multi-cloud technology team and platform for the whole department, and through that team, the department was able to create those efficiencies. StateChat, for example, was built in roughly six months and launched to 80,000 people.

Another part of that work Graviss noted as an accomplishment was the creation of bureau chief data officers within the department to bring data leadership and strategy to the individual bureau level. In addition to having a CDO for the entire department, the agency also now has over 20 bureau CDOs, who “in their own accord, are building evidence, driving motions within their bureaus, and sitting at the decision making table.”

“That’s where we want data and AI leaders to be is alongside these decision-makers, driving evidence-based diplomatic decisions,” he said.

That data and AI work had directly impacted diplomacy, including having data professionals as an important part of State Department missions. 

A couple of years ago, he said, the department “put a data scientist on the plane to go rescue 222 Nicaraguan political prisoners.” Doing something like “that certainly never would have been thought of several years ago,” Graviss said, and it improved the mission’s efficiency.

Those are the stories that Graviss said he’ll be taking away from his time at the department.

“When I get back together with colleagues across the State Department, those are the things that are going to stand out because that’s ultimately what mission support is, is supporting actual mission impact and changes,” he said.

Ultimately, Graviss said the State Department seems technology forward-leaning for the first time in its history. “Data and AI are now fundamental to the way the State Department operates, and now we have the right people and processes in place to carry that forward,” he said.

Graviss’s departure comes at a time for change in how the government approaches the use of AI tools. The Trump administration rescinded Joe Biden’s executive order on the technology and is currently reviewing the AI actions under the previous administration to see specifically what it might want to get rid of or leave in place.

Despite those changes, Graviss said some AI practices will stick around because they’re good management practices irrespective of an executive order. That includes inventorying AI and developing sound data management practices for the technology — a crucial component of AI governance. In fact, he noted that State’s AI strategy was in the works before Biden’s order directed agencies to create such a plan.

“I think a lot of those things are going to continue because it’s good practice, not because … somebody told us that we had to,” Graviss said.

Trump White House registers ‘creators.gov’ domain  

The White House has registered a new government domain: creators.gov, according to publicly available federal records. 

The arrival of the new .gov comes as the Trump administration has created a series of new sites meant to spotlight its agenda — such as waste.gov and doge.gov — and as it shuts down others that highlighted the priorities of the Biden administration. 

Creators.gov’s registration was first spotted by a bot that tracks new government domains. Public data managed by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency also confirms that the site was registered Tuesday by the Executive Office of the President. 

That page currently produces a 403 access message, but a preserved version on the Wayback Machine shows that it might be using MailChimp, a mass messaging and marketing service.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a FedScoop request for comment on the envisioned use for the domain. 

While the purpose of the site isn’t yet clear, it’s possible it could be associated with the White House’s ongoing effort to engage with content creators. 

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has opened the briefing room to influencers and content creators and is also producing her own video content for the Trump administration. The White House is investing heavily in a social media strategy, according to comments that the administration’s digital strategy team made recently to the Washington Post. 

Some of the new Trump sites have been laden with errors. The DOGE website has included factual errors, as well as security flaws that made the page vulnerable and allowed anyone to push updates to the site, as reported by 404 Media. 

Similar to creators.gov, the White House’s recently registered waste.gov and dei.gov domains aren’t connected to fully built-out sites yet. As of the reporting of this story, dei.gov reroutes to waste.gov, which displays a page noting the content is password protected. Both of those domains were registered on Feb. 4, according to CISA data.

At the same time, a series of Biden administration websites have been edited or taken down, including USAID.gov, reproductiverights.gov, and sites related to former diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

GSA to reduce tech services arm by 50%, eliminate non-statutory work

All non-critical and non-statutorily required work will cease at the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services as part of a 50% reduction of the office, according to Director Thomas Shedd.

In his prepared remarks for a Thursday afternoon town hall, which were obtained by FedScoop, Shedd said that to deliver technology at GSA in a “more focused and streamlined way,” moving forward TTS will support only work that is required by statute and policy, fits into the Trump administration’s definition of critical, and is prioritized by the leadership at GSA “in accordance with the priorities of the administration.” Everything else will be eliminated, per Shedd.

“What this means is that in short order TTS will be smaller in size – at least 50% smaller,” he said.

Additionally, any contracts that support the work that falls outside of the established bounds “will be terminated” and any job functions that are deemed non-essential will be cut.

“This process has started,” Shedd said in the prepared remarks. “You’ve already had to say goodbye to some of your GSA and TTS colleagues,” he said in reference to ongoing layoffs that have impacted the organization. 

He continued: “I will also note that to get towards our target reduction number, even if a product is noted as continuing it doesn’t mean that team won’t see a reduction.”

The prioritized and remaining TTS programs include Login.gov, FedRAMP, Cloud.gov, statutorily required websites, the Integrated Award Environment, the Office of Regulatory Oversight, the Centers of Excellence, the Presidential Innovation Fellowship Program, the U.S. Digital Corps, operations and other “special projects.” 

Shedd said that Login.gov will continue to receive support “in this moment” to accelerate the team’s roadmap and specifically focus on potential changes to “unblock the fraud detection work that the team wants to do and is ready to do.” 

TTS is also looking to revamp FedRAMP to “unlock more throughput,” with Shedd pointing to the need to onboard more software into the government. Additionally, he said that the barrier for cloud products into the ecosystem needs to be low. 

“We want to have economies of scale with our purchasing power and our infrastructure engineering investment across the federal government,” Shedd said. “Cloud is the way to do that. Specific to infrastructure services, GSA leadership is thinking through what GSA’s government-wide role in cloud technology will look like, and Cloud.gov will be a part of that.”

Following the reductions in force (RIFs) at the TTS-managed U.S. Digital Corps, Shedd said that the program, along with the Presidential Innovation Fellowship program, will both continue. 

Shedd also said that the remaining team at the whole of TTS, following the agency’s reduction of full-time employees, will be employed to support the list of prioritized programs and projects that he listed. 

“It will be hard, and it is hard to submit to this process – but it is what must happen,” he said. 

A GSA official told FedScoop that the TTS team should be a smaller team that is explicitly focused on building products and services that make sense to be built internally.

It is understood that GSA is looking to offset repetitive processes in everything that it does, whether or not it’s critical, following suit with President Donald Trump’s directives to focus the government on only critical core services. 

This past weekend, 18F — an internal team of engineers and tech consultants that worked to develop open-source tools to improve digital services government-wide — was shuttered as part of the ongoing RIF efforts.

In his remarks, Shedd pointed wholly to metric-based reasoning for shuttering the office, saying that 18F “was not and has not been fully cost coverable.” He stated that in fiscal 2024, the program was short approximately $18 million and in fiscal 2025, 18F lost $5 million due to a shortfall in recoverable dollars from partner agencies. 

“Despite the losses the team was incurring, 18F with their recent hourly prices were on the very high end of the technology consulting market,” Shedd said. 

He continued: “With a planned hourly price increase to get closer to break even, 18F would have been some of the most expensive technology consultants in the United States and cost partner agencies far more than they would spend by using external consultants.”

SSA bans news websites on agency devices

The Social Security Administration will no longer allow employees using agency devices to access “general news” websites.

The agency’s leadership sent an email to all SSA employees Wednesday stating that effective immediately, the agency “is implementing additional restrictions to the categories of websites prohibited from government-furnished equipment.” The message, obtained by FedScoop, lists general news as one of the banned categories, along with online shopping and sports.

It’s not totally clear what constitutes “general news,” but an SSA employee confirmed that many mainstream news websites like CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, the New York Times and the Washington Post have been blocked. Though others, like Politico and Axios, are allowed at the time of publication.

Employees who believe they have “legitimate business” can file for an exemption with their supervisor, per the email.

The SSA did not return a request for comment.

The change comes as the Trump administration has gone toe-to-toe with several mainstream media outlets. The White House recently changed the policy for the press pool covering the presidency, taking control of the pool from the White House Correspondents Association so that it can determine what outlets are allowed access. The administration also banned the Associated Press from participating in White House events after the publication refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” following President Donald Trump’s executive order on the matter.

Commerce Dept. revamping broadband program after ‘woke’ Biden-era mandates

OMB deputy director nominee defends Elon Musk, DOGE’s ‘outstanding effort’

The work of Elon Musk and his DOGE underlings to overhaul the federal government represents “an absolutely outstanding effort” to shake up “the status quo,” President Donald Trump’s nominee to fill the Office of Management and Budget’s No. 2 role said Wednesday.

Dan Bishop, a former Republican congressman from North Carolina nominated to serve as Russell Vought’s deputy director at OMB, told lawmakers on the Senate Budget Committee that the work by Musk and DOGE — which has so far consisted of mass firings and supposed spending cuts — is part of a process that is actually all about “empowering employees.”

“You hear a lot of ad hominem attacks on Elon Musk, but people rarely want to engage with the merit of what he’s actually saying,” Bishop said. “What Musk has done in his businesses … is he has shown that by being ready to make significant change, you actually bring out the most, the superlative employment or performance out of people, and they actually can improve things beyond that you might expect by just adding numbers.” 

Bishop was questioned repeatedly by Democratic lawmakers about “indiscriminate” job cuts across the federal government that have triggered scores of lawsuits and subsequent reversal of Office of Personnel Management policy on certain firings. The OMB nominee largely sidestepped those questions, saying he hasn’t been privy to the specifics in his pre-confirmation role as a senior adviser at OMB.

Bishop, who at one point during the hearing falsely referred to the 2020 presidential election as “rigged,” also stuck up for Vought when asked about his future boss’ comments to put federal workers “in trauma.”

“It’s been used in a misleading way,” Bishop said of Vought’s comments, which were unearthed by ProPublica. “Federal employees are making the comment that they see underperformers continuously among their colleagues … [but] that their processes will not allow [them] to be removed. Those are federal employees. I’ve seen the way Russ Vought works with the people at OMB, the career officials there. He has extraordinary respect for their skill, but he expects them to perform, and they do.”

Bishop’s defense of the Trump administration’s large-scale workforce reduction came a day after two top House Democrats introduced a resolution of inquiry into what they called the “Trump-Musk attacks on federal employees.”

The resolution from Reps. Gerry Connolly of Virginia and Kweisi Mfume of Maryland — the ranking members of the House Oversight Committee and Government Operations Subcommittee, respectively — requires the Trump administration to provide to Congress any documents, communications or other information on Musk or DOGE recommendations that led to agency workforce cuts. The resolution also seeks information on OPM’s handling of cuts to DEI offices and staff and details on the removal of agency inspectors general.

“I encourage Republicans to remember their duty as a co-equal branch of government and ensure the Administration answers for the chaos they’ve unleashed,” Connolly said in a statement, referring to Musk and Trump as “co-presidents” who have taken “a wrecking ball” to the government while upending “the lives of hundreds of thousands of federal workers.”

Federal board orders temporary reinstatement of thousands of USDA probationers

A federal appeals body within the executive branch issued an order Wednesday to temporarily reinstate thousands of fired probationary workers in the U.S. Department of Agriculture in what advocates hailed as an important win for fired employees.

The decision from the Merit Systems Protection Board, a quasi-judicial body within the government, grants a Friday request from the Office of Special Council, an independent government investigator, to stay the termination of an unnamed former employee and over 5,000 others who were similarly situated. 

The 45-day pause gives the OSC time to investigate the legality of the firings and, importantly, signals a potential path for classes of federal workers at other agencies to similarly be reinstated. In response to the decision, Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger thanked the MSPB and asked agencies governmentwide to voluntarily roll back probationary firings.

“Agencies are best positioned to determine the employees impacted by these mass terminations,” Dellinger said. “That’s why I am calling on all federal agencies to voluntarily and immediately rescind any unlawful terminations of probationary employees.”

The ruling, however, came just before a federal appeals court allowed President Donald Trump to remove Dellinger from his post while litigation over his attempted firing moves forward. Trump initially tried to fire Dellinger but a federal district court blocked that action. It’s not immediately clear how the appellate ruling might impact potential requests to MSPB.

USDA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the order. 

The decision follows a previous order from the board that provided relief to six workers from separate agencies who were similarly fired amid the federal government’s mass purge of workers in probationary status. Following that order, OSC said the special council was “considering ways to seek relief for a broader group without the need for individual filings with” the office. 

That previous decision was the result of a class-wide complaint that Democracy Forward and Alden Law Group, PLLC filed with OSC, which it had called “the first known of its kind.” The advocates later amended the complaint to ask OSC to broaden its stay request. 

In a statement Wednesday, Democracy Forward CEO and President Skye Perryman celebrated the USDA order and reiterated the organization’s intent to extend that relief to all fired probationary workers.

“We are gratified that this unlawful action has been stayed for USDA employees, and we remain committed to ensuring the tens of thousands of other civil servants receive this same reprieve,” Perryman said.

Employees impacted

Specifically, the Wednesday MSPB decision applies to the unnamed USDA employee “and all other probationary employees whom the agency has terminated since February 13, 2025, pursuant to letters stating: ‘The [a]gency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the [a]gency would be in the public interest.’”

That language has appeared in termination letters of federal employees throughout the government. 

The USDA employees will be reinstated for a period beginning March 5 and ending April 18, according to the order. During that period, USDA is barred from making changes to those employees’ responsibilities or imposing requirements that aren’t consistent with their salary or grade level, a government scale that signifies the level of difficulty and qualifications required for a role.

While estimates of the impacted workers are certainly in the thousands, the number of employees potentially impacted by the decision isn’t fully clear, according to the case documents. 

Per the order, the board asked OSC on Monday for additional information about fired employees other than the unnamed worker. In response, the special counsel submitted a list of 5,692 former probationary workers that USDA provided that same day, noting that it wasn’t definitive. 

According to the order, OSC said “the agency cautioned that this number was still in flux due to corrections, rehirings, and changes to mission-critical designations.” In its initial request, OSC said that the agency had provided documentation that, as of Feb. 18, it fired 5,950 probationers. 

The board ultimately found reasonable grounds to believe USDA terminated those thousands of workers in violation of what’s known as prohibited personnel practices, citing the “possibility that additional individuals, not specifically named in the agency’s response, may be affected by these probationary terminations.”

Past practice, next steps

While the request for such broad relief from the OSC isn’t typical, Mary E. Kuntz, an employment lawyer in Washington who represents federal workers before OSC and the board, told FedScoop it’s “perfectly consistent with their procedures.”

“They clearly presented, from this decision, evidence that this was widespread and throughout this agency, and so it’s not unreasonable for them to seek a stay,” said Kuntz, who works at the firm Kalijarvi, Chuzi, Newman & Fitch PC.

Kuntz also applauded the OSC’s move to request a stay quickly, noting it usually takes some time for the office to make a formal request to the board. As a result, OSC will generally ask an agency directly for an informal pause to the action while it’s investigating and agencies often comply, she said.

As far as what next steps could look like, Kuntz said stays from MSPB are typically renewed several times. The subsequent renewals are when the board will get to hear a “more balanced set of arguments,” she said, adding that OSC has usually received two or three extensions on behalf of her own clients in the past.

For OSC’s part, Kuntz said, it can either negotiate with USDA to stop the prohibited personnel practices and pay for any harm or go to the MSPB in a lawsuit against the agency on behalf of the employees. Kuntz said she’s only ever seen a case go to settlement.

The decision from MSPB also comes on the heels of another win for fired probationary workers in federal district court in San Francisco. U.S. District Judge William Alsup granted temporary, limited relief to pause and rescind those firings at several agencies, finding that OPM likely unlawfully directed the firing of those agency workers.

That order has similarly prompted reinstatements. Since the court decision, the National Science Foundation moved to reinstate its fired federal probationary workers, citing the federal courts and updated guidance from the Office of Personnel Management. 

OPM also responded Tuesday by updating its existing memo to agencies on probationary workers with language that states it’s not directing agencies to take personnel actions with respect to probationary employees.

This story was updated March 5 with news of the appellate decision on Dellinger’s firing, a comment from Perryman, additional detail about the requests to OSC and MSPB orders, comments from Kuntz, and information about the other litigation involving probationary workers.

FAA has an agreement for OpenAI technology

The Federal Aviation Administration appears to have purchased OpenAI technology, according to a delivery order listed on a public repository of U.S. government spending records.

The work, which started last March, is scheduled to end this August, but other details aren’t clear. The agreement simply states “AZURE OPENAI CDO,” likely referencing the OpenAI technology available through Microsoft’s Azure cloud program, which is how the AI company has typically provided its technology to federal customers. The current award amount is just over $80,000, according to the USASpending site. 

According to a Microsoft website, Azure OpenAI provides access to several of the AI companies’ models, including GPT 3.5-Turbo, GPT 4.0, as well as tools like Whisper and Dall-E. 

OpenAI’s partnership with Microsoft has been critical in helping the company bring its large language models to government users: Through Azure cloud, GPT-4o is now cleared for top-secret use, which means the intelligence community can access the technology. Last August, Azure OpenAI received FedRAMP High authorization. 

The FAA hasn’t responded to FedScoop after nearly a month of inquiries about the business.

OpenAI and Microsoft did not provide a comment, nor did General Dynamics Information Technology, which is named on the USASpending listing. It’s not clear why GDIT is involved, but external companies often help the government with integrating technology packages. NASA, the National Gallery of Art, and USAID, have all accessed OpenAI technology through other firms. 

The FAA has expressed cautious interest in generative AI. An October 2024 research plan released by the agency describes beginning work to “research the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) (such as ChatGPT) in the development and verification of safety-critical software.” 

That commitment seems to show a new attitude toward the technology. In July 2023, the FAA said that it did not use ChatGPT in any of its systems after previously disclosing in its AI use case inventory that its air traffic organization was interested in using the technology for “code writing assistance.” After FedScoop asked why the technology was listed in the agency’s AI disclosure, the FAA removed it and said the entry was made in error. 

The aviation agency has also said that it has used an LLM to answer questions about aviation incident safety reports. MITRE, the federally funded public interest research nonprofit, had also briefly looked at ChatGPT technology while conducting research on transcription tools for the FAA, FedScoop reported last year. 

It’s possible that the FAA could incorporate more generative AI as it pursues IT modernization efforts and amid ongoing concerns about the state of air traffic technology.

OpenAI remains interested in selling to the federal government. The agency recently released ChatGPT Gov, which allows federal agencies to self-host the technology. OpenAI is also pursuing FedRAMP authorization of its own, which would allow the company to work with government customers with the help of Microsoft. 

This story was supported by the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism.

Consumer product regulators would get AI assist from House bill

The Consumer Product Safety Commission would get an artificial intelligence-fueled boost to its work under a new House bill that advanced out of committee Tuesday.

The Consumer Safety Technology Act cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee after Rep. Darren Soto, D-Fla., reintroduced the legislation this week. The bill passed the lower chamber last year but stalled out in the Senate. 

Soto said the bill, which directs the CPSC to create a pilot program to study the use of AI and how it can support the agency’s mission, is “all about … the future of consumer safety technology.”

“The whole point is, look, the crooks already have artificial intelligence, so the cops on the beat need to have AI, too,” he said. 

In an internet overrun with vendors hawking their wares, the bill seeks to put AI tools in regulators’ hands to help guide them as they look “to prevent dangerous products from getting on the market or staying on the market,” Soto said.

The pilot program would require the commission to use AI to track trends on consumer product injuries, identify consumer product hazards, monitor the retail marketplace for the selling of recalled products, and/or flag products barred by customs laws. 

The legislation says the CPSC should consult technologists, data scientists, experts in AI and cybersecurity, retailers, manufacturers and consumer product safety organizations as part of the pilot, delivering a report to Congress on their findings within a year of its establishment. 

The second part of Soto’s bill directs the Commerce secretary and the Federal Trade Commission to study and report to Congress on the use of blockchain technology and tokens.

The legislation would enable the FTC “to advance innovation and protect consumers,” Soto said, “and it’s a great way to make sure to have integrity of information going forward.”