House lawmakers target SBA IT modernization in bipartisan bill

Lagging IT modernization efforts at the Small Business Administration are getting a push from a bipartisan pair of House lawmakers in a bill released late last week.

The SBA IT Modernization Reporting Act of 2025 from Reps. Gil Cisneros, D-Calif., and Brian Jack, R-Ga., calls on the agency to implement recommendations delivered in a 2024 Government Accountability Office report and provide Congress with detailed plans and briefings on its plan of attack.

“The SBA has a duty to serve the small businesses of America, quickly and efficiently,” Cisneros said in a press release Friday. “Current SBA IT practices have fallen behind, hampering the agency’s ability to do so. I worked across the aisle with Rep. Jack to introduce this common-sense, bipartisan legislation that upgrades the Small Business Administration’s IT practices, ensuring the agency can keep pace with the needs of today’s small businesses.” 

The GAO report in question zeroed in on the SBA’s Unified Certification Platform, a project launched in 2023 to help small businesses more efficiently interact with the agency’s contract assistance programs. The SBA’s deployment of the UCP faced delays, leading the GAO to question the reliability of schedules and cost estimates.

According to the watchdog, the SBA didn’t have a cybersecurity risk management plan for the platform, leaving small businesses applying for and maintaining contracting certifications vulnerable to elevated risks of vulnerabilities.  

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, the then-ranking member and now chair of the chamber’s Small Business Committee, told FedScoop at the time that “small businesses should not be forced to suffer because of bureaucratic incompetence.”

“Not only did SBA fail to meet its own self-imposed deadline and blow through an already bloated budget, but the agency failed to create a portal that works,” Ernst continued. “SBA needs to take responsibility for its irresponsible decision to upgrade the portal during the busiest month for small businesses, that I warned about, and take immediate steps to resolve GAO’s recommendations.”

The GAO report noted that past SBA attempts to modernize its IT systems “did not deliver expected results.” With $178.6 billion in contracts awarded by the SBA to small businesses in fiscal 2023, getting UCP right was critical, the GAO concluded in making 14 recommendations to the agency.

The bill from Cisneros and Jack lays out an 11-point plan for how the lawmakers want the SBA to approach implementation of the GAO’s recommendations. Within 180 days of the enactment of the legislation, the SBA administrator would have to deliver the plan to Senate and House Small Business committees detailing the actions the agency “will undertake to establish and implement policies and procedures to govern information technology modernization projects of the Administration.”

Measures in that 11-point plan include clearly defined risk parameters, risk mitigation strategies, master schedules, cost estimates, traceability studies and more. Following these guidelines on IT modernization, Jack said in a statement, would help the agency “continue doing what it does best — supporting the entrepreneurs and job creators who are the backbone of our communities.” 

“By strengthening and streamlining SBA operations, this bill ensures more small businesses can access the tools, resources, and support they need to grow, hire, and continue to thrive,” he added.

State Department deputy Michael Rigas named GSA’s acting chief  

President Donald Trump has tapped State Department leader Michael Rigas to serve as the General Services Administration’s new acting chief, the agency announced Monday. 

It marks the third GSA appointment for Rigas, who has spent the past few months at the State Department as the deputy secretary for management and resources, according to a statement from Marianne Copenhaver, associate administrator for the GSA. 

“We’re thrilled to have his institutional knowledge, leadership, and decades of experience in the private and public sector. Under Mike’s leadership, GSA will continue to deliver effective and efficient government services in real estate, acquisition, and technology,” Copenhaver wrote in a statement to FedScoop. 

Stephen Ehikian, who has served since January as GSA’s acting administrator, will continue his role as deputy administrator, Copenhaver added. Ehikian is a former Salesforce vice president and self-proclaimed “serial entrepreneur.” 

A State Department official confirmed to FedScoop that Rigas will continue his role at the State Department while also serving at the GSA.

Rigas recently oversaw the latest round of layoffs at the State Department, Federal News Network reported, and previously directed the America First Policy Institute’s Presidential Transition Project. He’s also an alum of the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank behind Project 2025.

He also recently served as a senior adviser to the Trump-Vance 2025 transition, during which he oversaw the development of federal department and agency “action plans and appointee training programs,” GSA’s online biography for Rigas states. 

He held posts in Trump’s first administration, including at the Office of Personnel Management, GSA and the Office of Management and Budget, where he served as acting federal chief information officer and senior adviser. 

Earlier in his career, Rigas worked in the private sector at Mellon Financial Corporation and Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. He received a master’s in public administration from Harvard University and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Boston University. 

This story was updated July 22 with comment from the State Department.

OMB must make appropriations website public again, judge rules

The Office of Budget and Management must restore a website that lists funds appropriated by Congress, a judge ruled Monday.

The decision, issued by U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, is a win for the nonprofit organization Protect Democracy Project and watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which filed lawsuits against the OMB in April following the agency’s controversial takedown of the appropriations page. 

The two groups argued the OMB’s takedown of the page was a violation of a 2022 congressional mandate requiring spending decisions to be published online for the public. 

The statute, which was signed by former President Joe Biden in 2022, requires the executive branch to publish apportionment decisions on a public, online database within two days of the decision. 

The mandate prompted the creation of the “Public Apportionments Database,” which the OMB regularly updated until late March 2025, when it suddenly took the database offline. 

“Congress mandated transparency for apportionments to prevent abuses and strengthen oversight of the spending process by both Congress and the public,” the Protect Democracy Project wrote in its complaint. “Without this transparency, the president and OMB Director may abuse their authority over the apportionment of federal funds without public or congressional scrutiny or accountability.”

Sullivan agreed with parts of the project’s argument, writing in a 60-page summary judgment that “the law is clear.” 

“Congress has sweeping authority to require public disclosure of how the Executive Branch is apportioning the funds appropriated by Congress,” Sullivan wrote, adding later that “there is nothing unconstitutional about Congress requiring the Executive Branch to inform the public of how it is apportioning the public’s money.” 

OMB Director Russell Vought defended the move in a March letter to Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., writing the agency could no longer operate and maintain the system as it discloses “sensitive, predictive, and deliberative information.” 

Vought said that as information changes, “such disclosures have a chilling effect on deliberations within the executive branch.” 

OMB in court filings further argued their apportionment decisions cannot be disclosed “because they are not final decisions about how to administer the spending of public funds,” Sullivan wrote. 

Sullivan said OMB’s argument is “relying on an extravagant and unsupported theory of presidential power.” 

OMB did not immediately respond to FedScoop’s request for comments. 

It comes nearly two months after the Government Accountability Office informed the White House that the takedown was a violation of statutory requirements. 

The GAO pushed back against Vought’s argument, writing in a letter to the White House that apportionments are legally binding decisions and “such information, by definition, cannot be predecisional or deliberative.” 

As Trump and Elon feud, government demand for Starlink grows

Along Alaska’s rugged coastline — where the distance between ports can span dozens of miles and vast uninhabited wilderness — residents and crew aboard the state’s ferry system can connect quickly to the internet for crucial information via Starlink terminals installed on the ships. 

In Antarctica, National Science Foundation research centers use the service to stay connected, as does Customs and Border Protection, which also deploys the SpaceX-owned satellite internet constellation in several remote locations to receive real-time data. 

A “Starlink Guest” WiFi pop-up has even been spotted at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., the Washington Post reported earlier this year, possibly connected to a terminal for the internet installed on an executive complex roof. 

These are just some of the ways the U.S. government, at all levels, is now using Starlink — despite the ongoing feud between SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump. 

Starlink can be easier to implement than fiber and fixed wireless, which in some cases require extensive and expensive construction. The service can be beneficial, particularly in remote places or during emergencies, when ground-based telecoms are damaged. Some 911 operators are turning to Starlink as a backup communications network, and SpaceX said in a tweet earlier this month that it was providing minikits to search-and-rescue teams operating in dead zones following devastating flooding in Texas. It’s not the first time the company has provided free service during an emergency. 

Still, SpaceX’s critics warn that increasing government use of Starlink comes with challenges, including potential speed throttles, customer service issues, and inconsistent connection. Some details about the Starlink network, and the operation of SpaceX — a private company that appears heavily influenced by Musk’s personal interests — remain unclear. The world’s richest man has indicated repeatedly that Starlink is how he hopes to fund his plans to colonize Mars, meaning a service used for government work, some warn, risks being tied up with the company’s still far-out aspirations for space.

“If you snapped your fingers and SpaceX was gone, I feel like it would be really bad — on net — for wildfires and fighting wildfires and dealing with disasters and internet access on boats in the ocean and things like that,” said Christopher Mitchell, the director of community broadband networks at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. “Here we are dealing with this loony guy who happens to be in control of the first constellation that can deliver this service [and] does it quite well.”

Sascha Meinrath, a Penn State telecommunications professor studying the SpaceX network, said lawmakers and procurement officers often “don’t understand what they’re purchasing because we don’t have disclosure of the actual capabilities of Starlink. …The danger is when people unknowingly purchase these services, place them into mission-critical functions, and then the detrimental aspects of these networks not living up to the hype.” 

Prior to his public tiff with Trump at the beginning of June, Musk at the end of May completed his term of about 130 days as a “special government employee,” heading up the controversial Department of Government Efficiency and serving as an adviser to Trump and his administration. During that time, some questioned if Musk was using that position to boost his company’s work with government entities.

A FedScoop review of multiple federal agencies and outreach to all 50 states reveals an increasing nationwide reliance on Starlink, raising questions about the U.S. government’s dependence on SpaceX and its mercurial founder. 

How Starlink gets to government 

There isn’t a single path for agencies to access Starlink. On its website, SpaceX recommends that government purchasers buy one of two business service plans: a local priority service meant for use in a single area, or global priority, for maritime and international use. The company also offers regular consumer residential and roaming plans. Starlink sells hardware for seafaring and aviation contexts, too. 

Government agencies can buy the service in at least three ways, including through the Starlink store, via the General Services Administration’s Multiple Award Schedule contract, or by going through a handful of authorized resellers.

When users connect through a Starlink terminal, they’re linked to a satellite constellation — a network of thousands of satellites in low-Earth orbit that service traffic from Starlink customers all over the world. A Starlink federal government price list states that Starlink user terminals can be installed and deployed with “absolutely no professional experience or formal training required” and that “no onsite installation, configuration, or activation support is necessary from SpaceX.”

SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment and a series of questions on its approach to public sector sales, but government sales positions listed on its jobs board indicate that, along with direct sales to government and GSA’s schedule contract, it’s interested in working with several categories of federal contractors, including value-added resellers and system integrators.  

(The company separates its defense satellite communications into a separate service, called Starshield, and its terms of service forbid the use of Starlink for military end users.)

Sometimes, the payment details between a government, or governments, and SpaceX for Starlink services can be murky, as was the case with the U.S. Agency for International Development’s work in Ukraine. Musk also appears to have donated Starlink service to the White House, though not without security warnings. 

Most agencies are not buying the technology directly through SpaceX, but through resellers, which act as intermediaries in federal government tech procurement and provide support for those services.

The National Science Foundation reached out to both Starlink and its authorized resellers to request information about time-sensitive installation in Antarctica. Lisa Vonder Haar, chief of staff at NSF’s inspector general office, told FedScoop that after a typical procurement process, the agency went with MetTel to deliver the technology. Natural disaster researchers working with the agency’s Natural Hazards Reconnaissance facility have also used Starlink on deployments to remote locations. 

Resellers appear because major technology manufacturers typically don’t have their own contracts with the federal government, one official at the Transportation Department told FedScoop. Along with being better informed about procurement rules and how to package certain technologies, resellers can also help agencies meet requirements on the diversity of government suppliers, the person said, and bypass requirements for competitive bidding. There can also be contracts for implementation and maintenance, the person noted.

Resellers emphasize their customer service, including the installation of hardware in some cases. But another key benefit is the ability to directly communicate with SpaceX in a way regular customers can’t. Resellers appear to allow SpaceX to offload inquiries about Starlink support to another company for troubleshooting. MetTel, for instance, has a 24/7 live help desk for customers to troubleshoot, and Don Parente, the company’s vice president of public sector sales and solution architecture, said they have “reach into Starlink [and] other additional resources” that the average person doesn’t.

Another benefit is access to backup hardware. Chris Cropley, director of the Tidal Network, an Alaska-based broadband service program authorized to sell Starlink to federal agencies, points out that his organization has access to a Starlink angel account, which allows an entity to buy around 50 terminals a year with the same service, at the same price, and on a single dashboard. 

Tidal also has a separate agreement with SpaceX that allows the network to use it for backhaul. “We have a great relationship with SpaceX. I could call them right now and get them on the phone if we needed to,” Cropley told FedScoop. “The value that we provide them is that we aren’t asking them. You tell us something, once — we understand something once — and we can reiterate that out to the larger community.”

How federal agencies are using Starlink

With the help of these resellers, Starlink is now being used by many major federal agencies, including on high-stakes missions. Specifically, several components in the Department of Homeland Security are now using Musk’s service, according to federal spending records. 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has bought Starlink services — but also fell into the crosshairs of Musk. In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in 2024, Musk said FEMA was blocking deliveries of the terminals, a claim the agency called false. FEMA did not respond to repeated requests for comment on its use of Starlink.

Customs and Border Protection, meanwhile, is using Starlink to support video and “positional location information,” a spokesperson said, part of a proof-of-concept deployment that the Border Patrol plans to replace with a permanent mesh network solution. 

When Starlink first became available, CBP used “existing contracts” to access the service and then incorporated these into the GSA Enterprise Information Solutions contract, a spokesperson for the DHS component said. If and when CBP encounters issues, the agency goes through the vendor it purchases Starlink from, which then works with the satellite provider directly. The agency sees Starlink as part of its “overall network portfolio.” 

”Obtaining and utilizing the most advanced technology will put CBP in a better position to address threats at the border and beyond, while better facilitating legitimate travelers and cargo,” a CBP spokesperson told FedScoop. Starlink, they said, is among the technologies in use that “allow CBP officers and agents to communicate and receive real-time data in the most remote locations of the country while keeping them safe.”

Federal spending records show that the State Department appears to have bought services related to Starlink from a range of third-party companies for its work abroad — including in countries such as Fiji, Burundi, Haiti, South Africa, South Sudan, and Turkmenistan — though the agency has also bought the service directly from the company. 

The State Department has actively pushed for policies that would encourage the approval and adoption of the service abroad, ProPublica recently reported. Also, at the U.S. Embassy in Dhaka, Bangladesh, federal officials are soliciting grant applications for programs that showcase American innovations, naming Starlink as an example. 

A spokesperson for the State Department did not comment on its procurement strategy, but provided this statement: “Starlink is an America-made product that has been a game changer in helping remote areas around the world gain internet connectivity” and “any patriotic American should want to see an American company’s success on the global stage, especially over compromised Chinese competitors.” 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — which falls under the Commerce Department and uses satellites for earth monitoring — has engaged SpaceX and reseller MetTel about using Starlink on ships, federal records show. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Agency have also purchased Starlink technology in the past and recently posted new requests for information for the technology. At the Transportation Department, components appear to have purchased Starlink from resellers and directly from the company.  

One of the most newsworthy use cases of late, at the Federal Aviation Administration, isn’t happening directly through the company. A public records officer told FedScoop earlier this year that the agency has no active agreements with SpaceX. An April letter to Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., signed by then-acting FAA Administrator Christopher Rochelau and obtained by FedScoop, said the same. 

Instead, the agency told FedScoop that it’s researching Starlink at some non-safety critical sites in Alaska to provide support for pilot weather information and flight services, as well as evaluating it along with other technologies at FAA facilities in Oklahoma and New Jersey through a separate contract with L3Harris, a defense and government contractor.  

The Bureau of Land Management is now working with a communications vendor that uses Starlink capabilities to support communications during wildland fires, said Marshall Thompson, a deputy division chief focused on external affairs at the National Interagency Fire Center. These kits were funded by former President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure legislation, but future support will need to take place through an agency contract, Thompson said. Some local fire stations participating in SafeNet — a communications platform for wildland fire operations —sometimes have both satellite and hardwired internet service, since both can be unreliable.

NASA, which has myriad contracts with SpaceX, is using Starlink “for a small number of unique scenarios, with additional secure authentication required to access NASA systems and data,” a spokesperson for the agency told FedScoop. The person added that requests for network service like this are evaluated on a “case-by-case basis for security and logistics.”

Additionally, SpaceX is one of several companies that NASA has hired to help build a commercial satellite network for space operations around Earth.  

States are using Starlink, too

Of the 23 state IT offices that responded to FedScoop, almost all said they had in some capacity engaged with a provider of Starlink’s services — either through their states’ broadband offices, or directly to scope out the technology for specific, government use cases. 

That number could soon grow: many states are interested in using the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program to purchase satellite internet services like Starlink. Recent changes to BEAD program guidance mean billions in federal funding could soon be available to Starlink. Several states have already pre-approved their BEAD funding to be spent on satellite internet service. 

There are questions about this approach: Since individuals can purchase Starlink independently, it’s odd that government dollars could subsidize something that is already commercially available, said Mitchell, from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Right now, he added, it’s unclear if the BEAD monies will go toward purchasing or providing subsidies for individual terminals for residences, or directly to SpaceX for usage of the satellite constellation. 

Adding to the confusion, Mitchell said, is that individuals in some locations may receive Starlink’s service, while their neighbors a mile away might be getting service through a fiber network. 

Beyond BEAD, some states are already spending heavily on Starlink services. One of the largest efforts is in Maine, which last year spent $5.4 million on the installation of 9,000 free Starlink terminals in locations where fiber connections would have been costly. Under the program, residents were responsible for managing and paying for their service plan. Virginia also made Starlink part of its service catalog for local government agencies and community centers last year.

Many states are turning to Starlink for emergency communications and network resiliency specifically. Michigan’s IT shop, for instance, told FedScoop it explored using the technology following an ice storm in late March that knocked out some terrestrial internet connections, while Tennessee and North Carolina’s offices told FedScoop that they turned to Starlink in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which caused extreme flooding after it made landfall last September. 

For emergency situations, state procurement of Starlink can be straightforward. Cristalle Dickerson, interim director of strategic communications at the North Carolina Department of Information Technology, said that her office signed a three-year contract with Starlink in March following Hurricane Helene. The idea was to help state and local agencies procure low-Earth orbit services and maintain network connectivity during disruptions.

In June, before their explosive fallout, Trump said Musk “saved a lot of lives, probably hundreds of lives in North Carolina,” following Starlink’s deployment in Helene’s aftermath.

But some states’ experiences with procuring — or attempting to procure — Starlink reveal the challenges of working with SpaceX. In 2022, Louisiana’s technology office and the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness also explored Starlink for emergency resilience, but discovered that contacting the company could be quite difficult, according to emails obtained by FedScoop through a public records request.

One Louisiana state network director, in a set of emails from June of that year, described SpaceX as “unlike any other company we’ve worked with.” There was no way to submit a purchase order to its business service, she noted, and the only way to communicate with the company was through setting up an account and filing a service ticket. 

“If not for the fact that they’re the only company who can provide low latency, high bandwidth satellite internet service, I wouldn’t bother doing business with them. But since we desperately need a solution like this in the more rural parts of our state, I’m trying to figure out how to make it work,” she said. 

In an email dated Dec. 5, 2022, a now-former SpaceX employee said in an email to Veneeth Iyengar, Louisiana’s broadband director, that “government orders are manually intense for our sales team to process.” The note was in response to questions regarding a bulk purchase order of Starlink terminals for disaster recovery.

Other states that have shifted to relying on resellers to access Starlink include California. The state’s tech office told FedScoop that while it does not work directly with SpaceX or negotiate with them, state agencies can access Starlink services through third-party resellers that are approved under CALNET, the state’s official telecom procurement program. 

In South Dakota, the Bureau of Information and Technology also went through a third-party reseller to provide Starlink to one site in the western part of the state. And in Texas, the state’s Department of Information Resources currently has a vendor on contract that provides bundled and packaged Starlink services as part of a service package. 

Getting the jitters

Eric Bathras, the chief technology officer for infrastructure at the Maryland Department of Information Technology, said that after purchasing Starlink terminals — mostly for state parks — directly from SpaceX, his team encountered “jitters” that have made the service unreliable and far more expensive. He’s also struggled to get in touch with anyone who directly worked for the company. 

That service, which provides internet connectivity and helps support emergency services, was impacted by a major change in SpaceX’s data plan model this past April. This plan allowed the company to “deprioritize” users during congested periods if they had already maxed out on their data cap. The change affected Maryland’s tiered plan, and the Starlink locations they used were eventually “throttled down.” 

Jitters occur when Starlink tries to determine its best path connection to the satellite constellation, creating momentary variations in latency. The locations that had Starlink in Maryland were on the 50 gigabyte-per-month plan. Bathras said the jitters can take up about two gigabytes of data per day, effectively eating the entire month’s data plan just to operate.

“I want to talk with someone at Starlink, because I want to trust and verify, like, is this actually where it is coming from? Is this a one-off? I just need a conversation,” Bathras told FedScoop in June. “But there’s no one to talk to.”

Bathras told FedScoop in July that he had finally found a direct contact for Starlink through T-Mobile and had a meeting set up with a representative for the week of July 21. 

In at least one case, SpaceX has communicated directly with government officials during an emergency, but shied away from building a more permanent relationship. 

Alaska’s top tech official, Bill Smith, said that back in 2023, several areas in the remote, northwest part of the state experienced weeks-long internet and cellular outages after sea ice severed an undersea fiber-optic cable. SpaceX reached out to the state government and offered to provide Starlink, which helped restore internet connection to about 50 state offices. Repairs to the undersea fiber would have taken months, Smith said. 

“It was really helpful to us. But when we got those [terminals] out there, we started engaging them to say, ‘Hey, we want to get into an enterprise agreement with Starlink to cover the entire state government,’” Smith said. “They talked with us for about a month, and then they called back and said, ‘Hey, we don’t want to get in business with state governments. Just go online and buy the dishes, that’s how we want you to do it.’” 

Smith says the state has since turned to a reseller called Microcom, a local satellite internet provider. Through the reseller, Smith said, Alaska offered remote offices and agencies the ability to maintain their Starlink services, either in lieu of their previous terrestrial fiber connections or as an added layer of redundancy for emergencies. 

These locations included a number of state sites and offices, including the Alaska Marine Highway system, the Department of Transportation’s ferry service. Smith said Starlink provides significantly better connectivity than the ferries had previously. Periodic towers along the waterways or geosynchronous satellite services had “bad latency” and weren’t nearly as user friendly as low-Earth orbit satellites, he said.

Some Alaska agencies declined, unable to absorb the costs associated with maintaining both, Smith said — but the true hurdle was Starlink’s lack of enterprise-grade support. 

“We are procuring Starlink now through a reseller because the reseller can manage the relationship with Starlink. And then we just have that one throat to choke as the reseller and that’s helping us on our installation,” he continued. “But in terms of, ‘Hey, is there an issue with the satellite or with the equipment?’ It’s still a little bit of a tenuous support model.” 

No matter which entities are ultimately involved in bringing Starlink to the government, though, there are still major questions about what, exactly, government agencies are buying, experts like  Meinrath of Penn State and Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance warn.

“SpaceX, and more specifically, Starlink, is a black box in which there are claims that are made about how the system performs, and it’s not clear that we can test them,” Mitchell said.

There’s a lot we still don’t know about Starlink’s support, its business model, and the ultimate viability of SpaceX, the two experts added. Another concern is that it’s unclear how the government should interpret Musk’s boasts about the reliability — and security — of Starlink, Mitchell said, especially given his penchant for making erratic claims.

Regardless of what isn’t known about Starlink, it’s clear the government’s reliance on the technology is growing. 

House bill eyes digitization to fix arcane federal permitting process

The notoriously slow federal permitting process would get a technological jumpstart under a bill introduced Thursday by a bipartisan pair of House lawmakers.

The ePermit Act from Reps. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., and Scott Peters, D-Calif., calls for the digitization of federal permitting, pushing the government to improve environmental reviews and authorizations through the embrace of interactive, digital and cloud-based platforms. 

Aimed at reducing processing times for federally mandated National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews, the ePermit Act aligns with an April executive order from President Donald Trump to modernize permitting technology and the subsequent launch of a permitting technology action plan.

“The government, industries, and citizens all agree that it takes too long to build in America,” Johnson said in a press release. “Completing the permitting process by paper is an archaic waste of time. Digitizing the system will speed up the process, save federal dollars, and cut down delays. Making this commonsense change will unleash investment in American communities and workers.”

The federal government has attempted to reform permitting practices over the past decade-plus, instituting a handful of policy actions to streamline the process and expedite approvals, according to a 2024 Brookings Institution report. 

But a Financial Times analysis found that permitting delays were at least partially responsible for many unfinished manufacturing and climate projects in the Chips and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, former President Joe Biden’s signature policy achievements.

“Our permitting system is old, complicated, and slow — if we want to build the roads, bridges, broadband, and clean energy of the future, we need to modernize and streamline the permit process,” Peters said in a press release. “Our bipartisan ePermit Act builds on the efforts of the last two Administrations and brings our permitting process into the 21st century.”

The bill calls on the chair of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to consult with the Chief Information Officers Council, the Office of Management and Budget, the Permitting Improvement Steering Council and other relevant stakeholders and agencies on new data standards to inform environmental reviews and authorizations.

That group would also be charged with settling on fresh concepts, formats and protocols to be included in those reviews, and establishing a “shared vocabulary and software systems that will support data interoperability and automatic data exchange between federal agencies,” per the bill text.

The front-end data and standardized taxonomy work would play a foundational role in the bill’s aims, providing agencies with an easier way to track projects via categories including environmental documents, public comments, geospatial information and milestones. A unified interagency data system would be created to “serve as a centralized platform for tracking and displaying real-time data on environmental reviews and authorizations,” the bill reads.

An authorization portal would be made available to the public under the bill, designed with interoperability in mind. The database would follow Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program guidelines and “stringent” Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency requirements.

Additionally, prototype tools would be built to accelerate complex reviews, enable data-sharing between agencies and facilitate automated applications, reviews and authorizations. The CIO Council would have a major role to play in that piece of the legislation, along with the head of the General Services Administration, the CEQ chair, OMB and other stakeholders. 

Permitting reform was one of Trump’s day-one executive orders, earning immediate plaudits from business groups and energy companies. A 2023 report from the Council to Modernize Government noted that environmental impact statements from agencies, as required by NEPA, exceed 600 pages in length and take on average 4.5 years to produce.

Trump White House launches ‘Schedule G’ for political policy officials

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday to establish a new classification of federal workers in policy-related roles who aren’t career civil servants called “Schedule G.”

The schedule appears to create another avenue for political officials in the U.S. government and follows myriad efforts by the Trump administration to reshape the federal workforce, including reductions-in-force, terminations, and programs to incentivize worker departures.

In a fact sheet accompanying the order, the White House described Schedule G as an effort to increase “the horsepower for agency implementation of Administration policy” and fill a gap in federal hiring classifications. 

Per the fact sheet, existing schedules don’t “provide for non-career appointments to policy-making or policy-advocating roles.” The White House specifically pointed to Schedule C, which are non-career confidential or policy-determining roles, and Schedule Policy/Career would be for career confidential or policy-related roles should a proposed rule establishing it be finalized. 

“Creating Schedule G fills this gap and facilitates appointments of non-career federal employees who will serve temporarily and implement the policy agenda prescribed by the American people through our elections,” the White House fact sheet said. It gave the Department of Veterans Affairs as an example of an agency that would be able to streamline appointments under the new classification. 

Under the order, the Office of Personnel Management is directed to adopt any regulations it determines are necessary to implement the policy.

Duplication, more politicals

Reacting to the announcement, researchers and academics questioned the utility of the schedule in the context of the existing Schedule C and told FedScoop it appears to duplicate existing hiring abilities under that classification.

“One point of confusion is why this is necessary,” Donald Moynihan, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy and co-director of its Better Government Lab, said in an email. 

“The President can already make lots of appointments via the Schedule C route,” Moynihan said. “This may be a way of pushing more appointments to the most senior levels of government, with a higher pay category beyond what Schedule Cs are typically paid.”

Nick Bednar, associate professor at the University of Minnesota Law School focused on administrative law and executive branch politics, similarly said he believed the Schedule G proposal was “redundant with the existing Schedule C.”

Bednar said in an email that Schedule C was initially created with the intention of establishing classification for lower-level, non-career political appointees in “confidential or policy-determining” roles, and to preserve Schedule C, Congress exempted “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating character” roles from the competitive service in the Civil Service Reform Act. 

The new Schedule G appears to create a schedule within the excepted service — which is for roles that don’t go through the competitive hiring process — for the remaining categories, he said.

“In my opinion, most of the noncareer positions that could be permissibly classified as ‘policy-advocating’ or ‘policy-making’ would fall within Schedule C anyway,” Bednar said. “Therefore, Schedule G feels redundant with the existing excepted service schedules except for the specific words being used.”

Ultimately, the experts said the action appears to be an attempt to increase the number of non-career appointments in government.

William Resh, a professor at Georgia State University and chair of its Department of Public Management and Policy, said in an email that the schedule “diminishes democratic responsiveness of public agencies by avoiding any accountability to the legislature through its relative influence over personnel selection.”

“This certainly enhances a unitary presidency, but it risks an executive branch that works only for the president and his parochial interests, rather than coequal constitutional branches and the constituencies they represent,” Resh said.

The GAO flagged 10 ‘critical’ legacy IT systems. Years later, most haven’t been modernized

Six years after identifying the 10 most critical federal legacy systems in need of modernization, the Government Accountability Office said Thursday that just three of those projects have made it across the finish line.

In an audit conducted from January 2024 to this month, the GAO found that IT modernization projects at the Small Business Administration, Office of Personnel Management and Department of Defense were completed since the watchdog issued its 2019 report, which analyzed 65 federal legacy systems before selecting the 10 most critical.

The remaining seven systems range from 23 to 59 years old, costing hundreds of millions of dollars in annual operational costs. Some of the hardware used in these IT systems — the backbones of essential government services, including health care support and tax processing — are more than two decades old.

“Until agencies fully document modernization plans for critical legacy IT systems, their modernization initiatives will have an increased likelihood of cost overruns, schedule delays, and overall project failure,” the GAO wrote. “Project failure would be particularly detrimental not only because of wasted resources, but also because it would prolong the lifespan of increasingly vulnerable and obsolete systems.”

The GAO’s report, which didn’t name the specific systems “due to sensitivity concerns,” found that most of the legacy IT examined in its audit “used outdated languages, had unsupported hardware and software, and operated with known cybersecurity vulnerabilities.” 

Eight systems used legacy programming languages. Selected Treasury Department systems, for example, use Common Business Oriented Language, or COBOL, and Assembly Language Code — “programming languages that have a dwindling number of people available with the skills needed to support them,” the GAO noted.

Other systems reported “ known cybersecurity vulnerabilities that cannot be remediated without modernization,” underscoring the urgency with which these agencies need to move. “This can lead to increased risks of loss of data and compromised systems,” the watchdog noted.

Most of the agencies with outstanding modernization projects told the GAO that they’d be finished with their work within the next few years, with the departments of Education (September 2025) and Transportation (2026) up first. The Department of Health and Human Services, meanwhile, set a completion date for a decade from now, while the Department of Homeland Security hasn’t yet established a timeline.

And though most of the agencies provided GAO with an estimated completion date, many of them have only partially documented their plans to do so, with some missing key milestones and others lacking details on necessary work and how they aim to approach disposition of the legacy system in question.

Until those plans are fully fleshed out, agencies’ legacy systems are increasingly exposed “to security threats and potentially significant performance issues,” the watchdog wrote. 

The GAO partially lays the blame for poor modernization planning at the feet of the Office of Management and Budget, which the watchdog said has ignored its 2016 recommendation to direct agencies in these efforts. 

At this point, GAO concluded, “it is appropriate to ask Congress to take such action. Doing so can reduce agencies’ growing reliance on outdated, insufficient, and vulnerable legacy systems to carry out their missions.”

GSA acting head says nearly half of agency workforce is using GSAi daily

Federal workers at the General Services Administration are increasingly using the agency’s internal AI chatbot GSAi on an everyday basis, the agency’s acting head said Thursday. 

Stephen Ehikian, GSA’s acting administrator and deputy administrator, offered a glimpse into how the agency is utilizing AI for its day-to-day activities during an appearance at GovExec’s Government Efficiency Summit. 

“Fifty percent, on average, of GSA employees are using this tool every single day,” Ehikian said of GSAi. It is not clear how this percentage was determined. 

The agency revealed the tool in March, touting it as a way to boost efficiency and help automate repetitive tasks within the federal government. Like other AI chatbots available to the public, the GSAi tool was designed to respond to user prompts and assist in basic tasks. 

Nearly four months later, workers are now turning to GSAi for a range of activities, Ehikian said, “from writing descriptions of properties before we send them to markets, to contracting officers using it to review contracts or thinking of outcome-based pricing initiatives, to people learning how to code.” 

“We do a lot of Google scripts inside, internally [at] the GSA. They’re using it to literally learn new program languages, build internal tools for an application,” Ehikian added. “It’s literally endless.”

Ehikian said GSA receives requests for new use cases every day and hinted that more examples of government AI use will be released in the coming weeks. 

When asked whether the GSA is tracking the types of efficiencies achieved through AI, Ehikian used the agency’s robotic process automation (RPA) program as an example. 

“We serve a practice around RPA to automate a lot of back-office operations, built that, solidified it, monetized it and then exported across the government,” he said. “Now fast forward today, it’s RPA, it’s agentic workflows.” 

The outcome of these automation systems is measured internally at the GSA, which found over 300,000 hours of work were saved from these systems in the first six months of this year, according to Ehikian. 

“We do measure this; it is not about eliminating workers,” Ehikian said. “It’s about eliminating the drudgery of data and work.” 

Ehikian confirmed the GSA is exploring other AI tools from external firms but emphasized the agency is “Switzerland” and does “not want to pick and choose winners.” This means swapping out and engaging with models as they come out, he added.

Other companies with AI tools “all want to work with governments. They are offering phenomenal opportunities and deals,” he said. “Everything from chatbots to image generators to coding agents to various specific use cases around contracting, we are looking at all these technologies today.”

The GSAi platform already allows federal workers to access technology from other firms like Anthropic and Meta. 

Last week, FedScoop reported that government coders at GSA were discussing on GitHub how to incorporate xAI’s Grok chatbot into GSAi and the yet-to-launch tool AI.gov. 

A spokesperson for the agency told FedScoop it “is evaluating the use of several top-tier AI solutions to empower agencies and our public servants to best achieve their goals. We welcome all American companies and models who abide by our terms and conditions.”

Four days later, xAI announced a new contract with the Department of Defense and that Grok was available to purchase through GSA. 

The increased use of automation in the federal government comes against the backdrop of President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, which has resulted in workforce and spending cuts across agencies. 

Ehikian described DOGE’s actions this year as bringing the government “back down to the core foundation” and compared it to the restructuring of nongovernmental businesses. 

“What’s most important? What’s most critical? It’s slimming down,” Ehikian said. 

“Phase two will be the build-back phase. The build-back isn’t just bringing it back to what it was before. It is rethinking GSA,” Ehikian continued. “Phase two will be taking a more slimmed down version of GSA and thinking of how do you streamline workflows, business processes, bring new technologies in, rearrange, restructure the workforce itself?”

It remains to be seen when and how “phase two” will unfold.

USAID is dead, but some departing staffers’ government phones still work

The United States Agency for International Development is effectively shut down, but sources say some government cellphones are still operational and that not all devices were remotely wiped by the agency, leaving employees to do it themselves. 

“We kept service active to ensure seamless communications for select individuals still at the agency who were assisting with USAID drawdown,” a senior State Department spokesperson told FedScoop when asked about some still-active eSIM cards. “This was an intentional decision to maintain our commitment of prioritizing personnel safety.”

They added: “We will also note that the accounts and access to government information was limited for departing personnel and we are working to deactivate any SIM cards and other technology as part of an orderly winddown of the organization.”

Back in April — after USAID’s IT staff was whittled down to just a handful of people — the agency told employees that their devices would be cleansed around employees’ reduction-in-force dates. Once that happened, employees were allowed to “dispose of the assets,” a memo to employees stated. 

Now, multiple sources told FedScoop that the eSIMs are still active on some USAID phones. One person who is no longer doing work for the agency — but set to be officially offboarded in September — also said their phone still makes calls. 

Some of the sources said they had to take it upon themselves to wipe the phones, which had not yet been remotely wiped by the agency. USAID had in the past sent specific instructions to employees notifying them of when their phones, iPads, Windows laptops and Macbooks would be remotely wiped — and how to return the device to factory settings, according to a second memo viewed by FedScoop. 

That memo also noted that should the remote wipe fail, people would have to manually wipe the device themselves.

GSA tech services arm violated hiring rules, misused recruitment incentives, watchdog says

The General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services violated federal hiring requirements and mismanaged recruitment incentives, according to the agency’s inspector general. 

In a report published Monday, the GSA’s Office of Inspector General determined that the hiring process for TTS, a component of the GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service (FAS), violated the merit-based hiring rules for federal workers and raised “serious concerns about fairness and accountability.” 

“Merit-based hiring is the cornerstone of a fair and effective federal workforce,” the report stated. “It ensures that all candidates have an equal opportunity to compete and are selected based on their qualifications. TTS deviated from merit system principles in its hiring and workforce management practices, resulting in noncompliance.” 

TTS, the GSA’s tech services arm, is primarily made up of IT professionals. The report followed an audit of the division’s hiring actions during a three-year period that ended in March 2025. 

According to the report, TTS improperly used Direct-Hire Authority (DHA), which is a less competitive hiring process used for hiring in “emergencies or extraordinary circumstances.” 

When DHA is used, federal agencies can speed up the hiring process by eliminating competing rating and ranking practices, which include veterans’ preference claims. 

The Office of Personnel Management must approve agencies’ use of DHA, which the OIG points out is only used to “hire any candidate who is qualified for the position,” regardless of qualifications.

“TTS incorrectly used DHA by routinely using competitive ranking processes to seek out highly qualified candidates,” the report stated, adding that the approach “raises concerns about whether TTS had a hiring emergency and TTS attempted to circumvent veterans’ preference.” 

In doing so, TTS hired fewer veterans compared with the rest of GSA, the OIG determined. 

The watchdog further found TTS hiring managers “preselected and backfilled candidates for merit promotions,” bypassing the competitive hiring process that assesses an applicant’s qualifications and performance. 

Through an analysis of emails and hiring documentation, the OIG determined TTS put qualified candidates at a disadvantage as a result. This was furthered by the application limits TTS put on their postings, which sometimes resulted in job announcements only being active for one day, the watchdog said. 

The OIG recommended the FAS commissioner evaluate TTS’s use of DHA, ensure its hiring procedures comply with governmentwide and GSA-specific hiring requirements and strengthen controls to guarantee an “open and fair competition” among applicants. 

The report shared additional concerns about TTS’s use of recruitment incentives, which are typically used to entice candidates to take hard-to-fill roles. 

Despite “consistently successful recruitment,” TTS continued to offer recruitment incentives that went beyond GSA-recommended amounts, according to the report. The tech services arm further failed to conduct the mandatory annual evaluation of whether these incentives were still needed the following year. 

This included the distribution of superior qualifications appointments (SQA), a recruitment tool offering prospective employees higher pay rates based on their “superior qualifications or a special agency need.”

In some cases, the OIG said hiring documentation lacked details justifying the SQAs and no examples arose of other, often less costly, recruitment incentives being considered instead. 

The FAS commissioner disagreed with the audit’s methodology and the OIG’s recommendations, the watchdog said. 

“The FAS Commissioner’s disagreement suggests that FAS is not planning to take any action to address these recommendations, leaving FAS at risk of violating hiring requirements in the future,” the report wrote.