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Trump admin eyes new model for TMF in 2026 based on ‘expired discretionary funds’

The federal Technology Modernization Fund has had a bumpy relationship with congressional appropriators since its creation in 2017, and now the Trump administration wants to sidestep the appropriations process entirely to replenish the fund on an annual basis with unused money transferred from agencies.

The White House on Friday quietly issued an in-depth appendix of its budget request for fiscal 2026, and executive agencies followed suit, publishing their annual budget justification documents. 

The General Services Administration, which houses the TMF program and disburses its funds, revealed in its 2026 justification that the Trump administration did not request any “new discretionary appropriated funding for the TMF” in 2026, instead proposing a new model for how it could pull money from other agencies, up to $100 million, to re-up the fund each fiscal year.

“President’s FY 2026 budget request includes a governmentwide general provision that will allow GSA, with approval of OMB, to collect unobligated balances of expired discretionary funds from other agencies and bring that funding into the TMF,” the justification explains. “To further strengthen the TMF’s ability to help agencies kickstart or accelerate their urgent modernization efforts, GSA and OMB are committed to exploring alternative funding mechanisms.”

Historically, the sitting administration has called on Congress to fund the TMF on an annual basis, with varying degrees of success. During the Biden administration, Congress approved a $1 billion injection into the fund in 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan that has largely carried TMF’s work since — though Congress recently rescinded $113 million of that.

By allowing agencies to “sweep” unused money to the TMF, the proposed model has “a dual benefit,” GSA says.

“[I]t would increase the amount of funding available in the TMF to make continued investments while simultaneously alleviating the burden on the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Subcommittee. By responsibly managing existing resources, the TMF is positioned to deliver lasting value to the American people and enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of government services,” the justification says.

GSA sees the program as a mechanism to support some of the Trump administration’s top priorities. “Sustained investment in the TMF represents a critical strategy for transforming Government IT management, ultimately saving time, budget, and reducing cybersecurity risks,” the justification explains.

The agency also cites significant demand for TMF funding, saying the program has “received and reviewed more than 290 proposals totaling about $4.5 billion in funding demand.”

“Without sustained funding, the TMF will continue shepherding investments with available resources, but will not be able to tackle large-scale investments needed to advance policy priorities nor meet the significant demand shown for the Fund,” GSA said, later adding that “[a]ny reduction of available funds impacts the TMF’s ability to help Federal agencies address … IT challenges.”

The updated funding model is based on a pair of provisions in the fiscal 2024 Further Consolidated Appropriations Act that allow for “both currently available funding and unobligated balances of expired discretionary funds from other agencies [to] be transferred into the TMF.”

“This would allow agencies to transfer resources to the TMF using funds that are otherwise no longer available to them for obligation,” the justification states. “This provision is essential to providing the TMF with the necessary funds to help the Federal Government address critical technology challenges by modernizing high-priority systems, improving AI adoption, and supporting cross-Government collaboration and scalable services.”

The justification includes a new provision, also included in the White House’s larger budget appendix, that breaks down exactly how the transfer of funds can occur, starting after its passage. It gives the program an indefinite time to spend the funds once transferred. Agencies, on the other hand, have five years from the expiration of unused obligations to send money over to the TMF.

GSA did not respond to a request for comment before publication.

MongoDB Atlas database for government, powered by AWS, offers agencies advanced agility to manage deluge of data

Federal agencies are grappling with an ever-expanding deluge of unstructured data—from text documents and emails to images, videos, surveillance footage, and sensor outputs—critical for everything from national security to public health.

That explosion of unstructured data presents a formidable challenge: how to effectively store, correlate, and analyze such diverse information in combination with structured data in order to make better-informed decisions. The traditional, rigidly structured databases that have long served as the backbone of government data systems are often ill-equipped for this task, highlighting an urgent need for more agile and flexible database platforms.

Download the full report.

This necessity is further amplified by the rapid advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI). As agencies look to leverage AI for real-time decision-making, predictive analytics, and enhanced citizen services, the ability to seamlessly integrate and process vast quantities of varied data becomes paramount. The next generation of database platforms, such as MongoDB Atlas for Government, provides agencies with a powerful set of flexible and cost-effective capabilities designed to handle data complexity and volume at scale.

These insights are central to a new report, “MongoDB Atlas for Government: Creating agility to capture the power of public sector data at scale,” published by Scoop News Group and underwritten by MongoDB and Amazon Web Services (AWS). The report examines the distinct capabilities of modern database solutions and how they can revolutionize federal agencies’ ability to manage and scale their data more effectively.

Gary Taylor, advisory solutions architect at MongoDB, explains in the report, “Traditional relational databases were created in the day when storage was very expensive… In today’s world, storage is not expensive at all. Yet agencies pay a growing cost as system performance degrades, data volumes expand, and data is increasingly distributed across multiple clouds.”

MongoDB’s “document” approach to database development is widely recognized as a preferred platform, “built by developers for developers,” says database industry analyst John Foley in the report. “It’s particularly well suited for agile prototyping and iteration and for getting the project moving forward quickly,” he says.

MongoDB Atlas for Government, powered by AWS, has the added distinction of having achieved FedRAMP Moderate authorization, which streamlines the adoption process for federal agencies by certifying U.S. government security and compliance requirements. Rather than having to stand up, configure and maintain MongoDB instances in-house, agencies can securely deploy, run and scale most of Atlas’ key capabilities as a service in the government cloud.

The report highlights several key advantages agencies can gain by leveraging MongoDB Atlas database capabilities, including:

The report further details MongoDB’s multi-modal advantages, its cloud-native architecture on AWS, and features like Queryable Encryption for enhanced data security. It underscores that by adopting such modern platforms, federal agencies are better equipped to manage the current data deluge and unlock its immense potential, driving innovation and improving mission outcomes in an increasingly AI-driven world.

Download the full report.

This article was produced by Scoop News Group for FedScoop and sponsored by MongoDB and AWS.

A requiem for innovation: Bidding farewell to State’s Office of eDiplomacy

The U.S. Department of State recently made the quiet but consequential decision to close the Office of eDiplomacy — an office that, for over two decades, stood as one of the few institutional footholds for innovation inside American diplomacy. As someone who witnessed its impact firsthand, I believe this moment deserves more than a line in an internal memo. Sadly, it deserves a requiem. 

Following the recommendations of a Blue Ribbon Panel created in the aftermath of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa, the department recognized the urgent need to modernize its knowledge-sharing, communication, and information management practices. In 2002, under the leadership of Ambassador James Holmes, the eDiplomacy Task Force was launched to meet that challenge. Just one year later, in 2003, that task force was reorganized into a permanent unit: the Office of eDiplomacy. It punched above its weight. It was the department’s applied technology “think-do tank” and its advocate for modernization. It asked hard questions about how diplomacy should evolve — and quietly built the tools to answer them. 

The achievements of eDiplomacy were not hypothetical. SearchState brought modern web search capabilities to the department’s intranet, allowing diplomats to access sensitive information vital to advancing U.S. interests overseas. Diplopedia gave the department its first collaborative knowledge base, hosting thousands of articles with department knowledge found nowhere else. The Virtual Student Federal Service opened the door for thousands of college students to support American diplomacy remotely — long before remote work was normalized — and delivered voluntary work valued at tens of millions of dollars to the departments of State and Defense and a host of other federal agencies. eDiplomacy started and spun-off the transformational TechCamps initiative, linking civil society and technologists around the world to solve pressing local problems with global tools — a program halted in the first days of the Trump administration. And eDiplomacy’s pioneering work with data analytics and GIS helped other bureaus integrate these powerful technological tools. 

Where other offices suffered under broken workflows and siloed systems, eDiplomacy championed user experience and knowledge retention as essential to diplomatic success. It showed that good policy depends on accessible information and that institutional memory is power. eDiplomacy’s human-centered, agile approach made the department smarter, faster, and more resilient. Its platforms weren’t just functional — they were built for the people who used them, often with direct input from the field. Through the department’s Innovation Fund, eDiplomacy provided seed money and advocacy for user-led projects at overseas posts and domestic bureaus. One of the most impactful was U.S. Embassy Beijing’s air quality monitor, whose public readings compelled the Chinese government to tackle dangerously unhealthy air pollution afflicting embassy families and every resident of and visitor to the capital. The department expanded that program to many more countries for impactful results until also cancelling it this year.  

eDiplomacy was also instrumental during the COVID-19 pandemic, helping rapidly deploy secure digital collaboration platforms when the world went remote, enabling embassies and consulates to still deliver on their mission for the American people during the unprecedented crisis. 

The story of eDiplomacy is a story of a counterculture embedded within the State Department’s byzantine IT structure — a group of technologists and innovators who worked inside a bureaucracy not always ready for them. It nurtured a culture of experimentation and openness rarely found in government. Often, they were ignored or sidelined. Their tools won users but not always champions. Their insights illuminated blind spots, but their warnings sometimes went unheeded. 

Those who worked closely with eDiplomacy know the skepticism it sometimes faced from within the department’s technology structures. It didn’t have the headcount, budget, or organizational clout to match its ambitions — and in some circles, that bred cynicism. But eDiplomacy was scrappy. It was often the only part of the Diplomatic Technology Bureau advocating for the user — for clear communication, intuitive platforms, and inclusive design. Now that it’s gone, who will speak for the user? 

The decision to shutter this office came as part of the department’s April 2025 reorganization — a sweeping effort to streamline operations by eliminating more than 100 offices and reducing domestic staffing. While efficiency is a worthy goal, it should not come at the expense of sacrificing proven capacity for modernization. The closure of eDiplomacy is not just a bureaucratic adjustment — it’s a retreat from strategic foresight and the cancellation of a team already advancing government efficiency. 

In a world where authoritarian regimes weaponize technology, where AI reshapes influence, and where public trust hangs on transparent, responsive governance, we need more tech and innovation in diplomacy, not less. 

eDiplomacy couldn’t tackle every problem. But it asked diplomats to think differently, and it gave them the means to try. Its closure risks not just the loss of effective and cost-saving programs, but the erosion of a mindset that dared to imagine a more agile, modern Foreign Service. 

We should mourn the passing of the Office of eDiplomacy — not just for what it was, but for what it could still have become. Its legacy is a challenge to all of us who care about diplomacy’s future: to keep pushing forward, even when the institutional tide flows backward.

Innovation doesn’t die with an office. Employees frustrated with an inadequate status quo will continue to create and demand better tools and processes. But without champions like eDiplomacy fighting for better ideas, bureaucracy’s antibodies protecting the inefficient and often wasteful status quo will prevail. 

Eric Nelson is a retired U.S. Ambassador, a former director of the Office of eDiplomacy and a recipient of FedScoop’s Federal Technology Leadership Award. 

DOGE took credit for his team’s work. Now, an OPM alum fights to get his job back

The Office of Personnel Management took a well-deserved victory lap last month in announcing the rollout of the federal government’s first wholly digital retirement application. That “landmark” development, OPM said, was due in large part to the efforts of Elon Musk’s pet project. 

“This sweeping modernization effort is a cornerstone of President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative, established earlier this year to streamline and digitize key federal functions,” the press release announcing the launch said. “Working in close collaboration with DOGE, OPM’s Retirement Services team developed and successfully piloted the new Online Retirement Application (ORA) system, reducing delays and improving the experience for retiring federal employees.”

The framing of that press release struck Syed Azeem — a supervisory IT specialist at OPM until April — as odd, mostly due to the fact that the digitization project for retirement applications had been in the works for years, long before anyone from DOGE waltzed into the government’s personnel agency. 

It was “really disappointing to see this administration taking credit for all that work,” Azeem said in an interview with FedScoop. “Let me backtrack — DOGE taking credit for this work when this work was already in flight.”

Azeem, a 13-year government employee across multiple agencies, absorbed that disconnect from the sidelines, as one of the tens of thousands of federal staffers let go via DOGE-instituted reductions in force. Azeem was informed Feb. 27 that his office was being dissolved, and as of April 28, he would no longer have “assignment rights to positions” at his current grade level within his “competitive area.”

In one fell swoop, Azeem and his entire team within the Chief Technology Officer division of OPM’s Office of the Chief Information Officer were eliminated. Some digital services projects were kept alive by DOGE, including the retirement application that the group formerly led by Musk nudged across the finish line. Other projects were killed outright.

The RIF that took out Azeem’s office and others at OPM is now the subject of a class-action appeal that seeks to restore the jobs of those dismissed individuals. Attorneys for Azeem and the other plaintiffs contend that the RIF was done without congressional authorization in violation of the law, and impacted employees — supporting HR functions via IT, procurement, communications and other areas — were not given the chance to compete for their reposted positions.

“The functions [Azeem] was working on and were a core part of his office are being transferred elsewhere into government, as it seems, to DOGE,” said Chloe Barrett, an associate at Gilbert Employment Law, the firm representing the ex-OPM plaintiffs. “The people who … carried out those functions are supposed to be given an opportunity to transfer with them, or at least to compete for them. … They should have been retained over someone who’s brand new to the federal service.”

For Azeem, the dismissal from OPM felt especially crushing given all that he and his team were on the precipice of accomplishing, including the Monday deadline for all agencies to use the electronic retirement application. Whether he gets a chance to resume that work is up to the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, but for now, his is another tale of a federal worker who says their service was indiscriminately cut short.

Climbing the federal IT ladder

Azeem had ascended to his management role at OPM following a steady progression of government tech jobs starting in 2008. A CliffsNotes version of his resume includes work on the Treasury Department’s Electronic Federal Tax Payment System, a Department of Defense initiative to modernize the application for business travel, and a handful of IT security projects for Department of Homeland Security components. 

He thrived during the first Trump administration, beginning what turned into a three-and-a-half-year stint at the General Services Administration as part of its Technology Transformation Services team. Through TTS’s Centers of Excellence, Azeem supported an Environmental Protection Agency project to modernize school bus fleets, contributed to work at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and was part of the group that built GSA’s Made in America portal.

After more than a dozen years in government, Azeem moved to the private sector in 2022 as a senior product manager at Capital One, where he said he had “great colleagues” and “learned a lot of great things,” but ultimately missed the “greater sense of mission” he had as a federal employee.

“It’s not the kind of impact you can have working for the federal government. … That kind of scale, you don’t get anywhere else,” Azeem said. “When the right opportunity came along, I knew I was going to come back to the federal government. It was just a matter of time.”

And so, in September of last year, Azeem jumped at the chance to rejoin the public sector. The job at OPM afforded him the chance to modernize legacy systems, build up internal government capacity, and ultimately provide “the most efficient” digital services to the American people.

Efficiency was at the core of all retirement portfolio work at OPM. The long-gestating digital retirement application was close to scaling, Azeem said, meaning retiring employees across all agencies would soon have access to the tool, rather than having to submit a paper application that involved payroll and HR office specialists via the mail.

There was also substantial progress made to modernize Janus, OPM’s cloud-based retirement calculator, and Azeem’s team had started work on a generative AI-powered chatbot paired with a “new and improved” OPM website.

Those projects, Azeem said, “would have made OPM services more efficient, easier to use, and allow the agency to serve its customers in a more efficient and customer-friendly way.”

Then came DOGE.

Cut for the sake of cutting

Neither Azeem nor his manager at OPM had any direct contact with DOGE — in hindsight, a bad omen given the insurgent group’s interest in tech and the OPM digital service leaders’ expertise in those areas.

But Azeem and his boss did have an early meeting with Greg Hogan, who was installed by the Trump administration as chief information officer after Melvin Brown II, a longtime deputy CIO at the agency, was ousted after just a week on the job. 

Hogan, previously a vice president of infrastructure at comma.ai, a maker of Tesla-like autopilot technology for cars, was briefed by the OPM IT executives on every current and future project on the docket, as well as how they supported various regulatory or statutory requirements and aligned with the Trump administration’s efficiency priorities. 

According to Azeem, Hogan “nodded and smiled and said, ‘thank you.’ But a few weeks later, we were just abruptly cut without any discussion or any rationale.”

“And that seems to be the sort of modus operandi for DOGE,” he added. “Let’s cut for cutting sake and call it a victory. Let’s take credit for projects that were done by federal employees for years prior.”

OPM didn’t respond to a request for comment.

To Azeem, one of the more troubling aspects of the dissolution of his CTO team is the multifaceted nature of these tech programs. Figuring out how to modernize retirement applications for the entire federal government touches on issues of policy, procurement, privacy and cybersecurity — a “convoluted” problem that requires expertise that “is not developed overnight,” he said.

“You don’t become a master plumber or master electrician in one day, right? Just like that, you can’t just throw a developer and expect them to solve all these problems,” Azeem said. 

That loss of expertise, and the Trump administration’s move to fill what appear to be similar roles, are at the heart of the appeal to the MSPB. The court filing from Barrett and her co-counsels includes an April email from OPM HR advertising four contract specialist vacancies through GSA’s Interagency Career Transition Assistance Program — potentially part of a Trump administration goal to merge OPM, GSA and OMB into one agency. OPM staffers performing essentially the same contracting work were part of the February RIFs at the agency.

“Congress defines agencies’ duties and functions,” Barrett said. “It’s unconstitutional for the Executive Office of the President to redefine those duties and functions by moving them to other agencies. It needs congressional approval, which it doesn’t have.” 

Attorneys for the OPM plaintiffs are seeking status quo ante relief, meaning a return to their positions at the personnel agency. Azeem has since started an IT job in state government. 

But if the appeal is granted and he and his colleagues are called back to OPM, he won’t hesitate to resume his federal government work.

“Myself and my colleagues, we chose this path of public service because it was a higher calling, and we believe in making that 10x or 100x impact at scale,” Azeem said. “So my hope is that we reverse the tide and … empower OPM to not only serve the current public servants, but also make sure that it is prepared to attract the next generation of leaders and public servants.”

Customs and Border Protection taps ‘chatCBP’ to assist workforce

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is implementing an AI chatbot called “chatCBP” for its workforce, following in the footsteps of similar federal government creations like DHSChat and StateChat.

“CBP’s chatCBP is an AI-powered chatbot designed to improve efficiency and access to information for CBP personnel while meeting CBP’s security standards,” a CBP spokesperson told FedScoop in an emailed statement. 

The tool uses a large language model and gives workers responses and guidance in a conversational format “quickly and securely.”

According to the spokesperson: “chatCBP offers features like document summarization, compilation, information extraction, and multi-file analysis, reducing the time spent searching for and interpreting documents.”

News of the chatbot comes after other agencies within the federal government have launched their own internal chatbots in an attempt to more securely provide the type of generative AI assistance made popular by ChatGPT. That includes the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security, CBP’s parent agency. 

DHSChat, for its part, was announced last year, and is similarly aimed at aiding workers with routine tasks. But, per the spokesperson, chatCBP is different in that it’s designed to meet unique operational needs that the subagency has, such as requiring more control over LLM development, monitoring, data management and security. 

Going forward, CBP also has plans to integrate the tool with its enterprise mission and support applications, like SharePoint. And from a technical standpoint, chatCBP has the ability to implement retrieval-augmented generation, which allows AI tools to get information from external sources, the spokesperson said. In the case of chatCBP, those external sources include agency-specific integrations, data, and application programing interfaces, commonly known as APIs. 

CBP didn’t disclose what model the bot uses, citing security reasons — though other government agencies have shared theirs. The General Services Administration, for example, can access several LLMs, including Meta and Anthropic. StateChat, meanwhile, leverages Palantir and Azure OpenAI.

The tool was discussed publicly by CBP Chief Technology Officer Sunil Madhugiri on a panel earlier this month at AFCEA Bethesda’s LEAPS Summit. During the May 13 discussion, Madhugiri said chatCBP would be going into production the following week and noted the changes that new technologies bring.

What organizations are currently going through with technology, particularly with generative AI, is changing the “way we do business moving forward,” Madhugiri said. “If you’re not doing that — agencies, companies, anybody across the board — we are super behind.”

As more personalized chatbots like DHSChat and chatCBP are becoming available, the department has shifted away from allowing use of commercial tools in its environments. 

In a memo sent earlier this month, DHS reversed its previous policy allowing some use of commercial tools, like ChatGPT, now that the in-house version exists. The department is also working on a new generative AI policy in line with President Donald Trump’s guidance on accelerating use of the technology in government.

According to the CBP spokesperson, chatCBP is designed to be used by workers and not to replace them. Those workers also receive training and guidance, and are reminded that their own judgment is essential when making decisions. 

At the same time, there is interest from the Elon Musk-affiliated DOGE in using AI technologies. According to a Reuters report, the efficiency group is expanding use of Musk’s Grok AI in government. That report cited unnamed sources who said officials at DHS were instructed to use it despite the tool not being approved.

Rebecca Heilweil contributed reporting.

Treasury seeks public input tied to Trump’s order on electronic payments

Four months ahead of a deadline to shift the federal government from paper-based payments to electronic methods, the Treasury Department is seeking feedback from the public on how best to approach that transition.

In a request for information published Friday in the Federal Register, Treasury said it welcomes comments from individuals and organizations on the implementation of President Donald Trump’s electronic payments executive order, which was issued in March.

The RFI also offers respondents the opportunity to “make recommendations to increase public awareness to help consumers, including unbanked and underbanked populations, transition to digital payments.”

Treasury is required to phase out paper check disbursements and receipts by Sept. 30, per Trump’s order, covering intragovernmental payments, benefits payments, vendor payments and tax refunds. Additionally, federal agencies will be expected to transition to electronic funds transfer (EFT) methods, including direct deposit, prepaid card accounts and other digital options. 

“The continued use of paper-based payments by the Federal Government, including checks and money orders, flowing into and out of the United States General Fund, which might be thought of as America’s bank account, imposes unnecessary costs; delays; and risks of fraud, lost payments, theft, and inefficiencies,” Trump’s order said.  

Treasury noted in a press release Friday that the agency is “committed to raising awareness of the growing fraud risks associated with paper checks and providing Americans with the knowledge and tools to fight financial fraud and make informed financial decisions.”

In addition to requesting information from the public on barriers individuals or organizations might face in adopting electronic funds transfer options, Treasury is also interested in alternatives to EFTs when they’re unavailable, and examples of private-sector campaigns that have successfully facilitated related transitions.

Under Trump’s order, the Treasury secretary has an active role in coordinating with other agencies and spearheading a public awareness campaign. The RFI seeks suggestions on potential partners, communications tools and general strategies to best get the word out.

A portion of the RFI also asks for submissions on preferred EFT methods, such as “direct deposit, debit and credit card payments, prepaid card accounts (such as Direct Express), digital wallets and real-time payment systems, and other digital payment options.”

Comments on the RFI are due back to the Treasury Department by the end of next month.

OPM outlines merit hiring plan, new SES process ahead of hiring freeze end

The Office of Personnel Management released two guidance documents Thursday outlining its plan for the hiring and recruitment of federal workers, roughly a month-and-a-half before the administration’s hiring freeze is set to lift.

In its Merit Hiring Plan, the administration detailed steps to reform the hiring process, including ending consideration of race and ethnicity in the hiring, recruitment, and retention cycle and “recruiting patriotic Americans.” And, in a separate document, OPM moved to change the recruitment process for the Senior Executive Service, which includes senior managers and leaders across the federal government.

The two memos come as the government prepares for the July 15 lift of President Donald Trump’s freeze on hiring in civilian government roles. While Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency team have moved quickly to reshape the government, that work has been focused on firing workers, restructuring agencies, eliminating functions, and canceling grants and contracts. 

By contrast, the new OPM memos provide a profile of the federal workers the Trump administration actually wants within its ranks and how it wants to hire them.

OPM’s merit-based hiring memo regurgitates anti-diversity, equity and inclusion language that has been a staple of nearly all communications and policies since Trump took office in January. Acting OPM Director Charles Ezell and Vince Haley, assistant to the president for domestic policy, write in the memo that an “overly complex Federal hiring system overemphasized discriminatory ‘equity’ quotas and too often resulted in the hiring of unfit, unskilled bureaucrats.”

Ezell, an OPM branch chief in Macon, Ga., before being plucked by Trump to lead the government’s personnel agency, and Haley, a longtime Republican operative, referred in their memo to previous Trump executive orders on merit hiring. This memo and those EOs bar “racial quotas and preferences in Federal hiring, recruitment and promotion” as well as DEI “programs in hiring, recruiting, interviewing, training, professional development, internships, fellowships, promotion, and retention,” programs that they say “must end immediately.”

The memo demands that agencies stop “using statistics on race, sex, ethnicity or national origin” in personnel decisions, and no longer disseminate information about “the composition of the agency’s workforce based on race, sex, color, religion, or national origin.”

Trump has wasted no time in his second term in gutting the federal workforce, overseeing the job losses of tens of thousands of Americans. The federal firings directed by Trump and DOGE, the Elon Musk-created tech group, have spared no agency or type of worker, from veterans to PhDs. At the same time, Trump has stocked his administration with individuals best known for Fox News appearances. 

Other callouts in the OPM memo on hiring pay lip service to leveraging the agency’s HR team, with a focus on the recruitment of STEM talent and veterans — priorities that the previous administration also pursued. 

Ezell and Haley say they intend to reform the candidate ranking and selection process “to emphasize merit and competence,” and implement skills-based hiring while eliminating some degree requirements — initiatives the Biden White House also undertook.

Self-assessments would be eliminated under OPM’s new edict, while technical or alternative assessments would be explored. The agency aims to improve the job application process and reduce the hiring time to 80 days, according to the memo.

Applicants at GS-05 levels and above would be required to answer four essay questions: one about personal work ethic, one about how to make the government more efficient, one about commitment to the Constitution, and one about how applicants would “help advance the President’s Executive Orders and policy priorities.”

The memo contains seven references to the recruitment of “patriotic Americans.”

The White House has stated that once the hiring freeze ends, agencies will be allowed to hire only one worker for every four who have left government service, with some exceptions. It also said that once a merit hiring plan is adopted, hirings that were exempted from the freeze must be consistent with the new plan.

For the SES roles, the new guidance from Ezell seeks to streamline a traditionally cumbersome process by nixing requirements such as 10-page narrative essays. “Instead, they shall adopt a resume-only initial application method, with resumes capped at 2 pages,” Ezell wrote. The resume-only requirement is effective immediately and the 10-page essay will be replaced with structured interviews.

The document also altered the core qualifications for SES roles to reflect Trump administration policies and “eliminate DEI factors,” per the memo.

Those new core qualifications now include “driving efficiency” and “merit and competence” in the mix. A qualification titled “results driven” also appears to have been tweaked to “achieving results” and “leading people” was maintained. Previous qualifications on “leading change,” “business acumen” and “building coalitions” were eliminated.  

SES employees will also be subject to new training under the memo via “an 80-hour video-based program that provides training regarding President Trump’s Executive Orders and other matters necessary to ensure that SES officials uphold the Constitution and the rule of law and effectively serve the American people.”

That training will be developed by OPM, Ezell’s memo said.

Energy Department announces another supercomputer: Doudna

Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced Thursday that the government would build a new supercomputer powered by NVIDIA chips and based at a department user facility at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Officials said the supercomputer will be named Doudna after UC Berkeley scientist Jennifer Doudna, who co-invented CRISPR gene editing technology and won the Nobel Prize back in 2020. 

The Doudna supercomputer, which is geared toward high-performance computing and training artificial intelligence technology, will be based at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. It is only the latest Energy Department project designed for the AI age: El Capitan, a supercomputer based at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories and currently the world’s fastest, is also designed with machine learning in mind, as is Frontier, a DOE supercomputer housed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. 

A spokesperson would not comment further on how the Doudna supercomputer’s speeds might compare to other systems. 

Government supercomputing projects, including those focused on AI, are now supported by the same national laboratory system that incubated the Manhattan Project, which produced the world’s first atomic weapons. 

“The Doudna supercomputer represents DOE’s commitment to advancing American leadership in science, AI, and high-performance computing,” Wright said in a statement. “It will be a powerhouse for rapid innovation that will bring us abundant and affordable energy supplies, breakthroughs in quantum computing, and more.” 

The supercomputer boasts some impressive hardware. The system will be built with NVIDIA Vera Rubin GPUs and CPUs, a next-generation platform announced last year and designed with some of the world’s most advanced semiconductors. Doudna will also rely on technology from Dell to optimize the system’s artificial intelligence applications and to liquid cool its infrastructure.

Doudna will be used for high-performance computing that could help with modeling molecular, high-energy physics. The hope is that the system will reduce the amount of time needed to make critical scientific discoveries.

Tech Hub supporters highlight silver lining in ‘disappointing’ decision to re-award millions

A recent Department of Commerce announcement that it would hold a new competition for roughly $210 million in regional Tech Hub awards made in the final days of the Biden administration frustrated program supporters and lawmakers, particularly those with awarded hubs in their states.

But for some, the recompete announcement also provided a small silver lining: The program designed to make investments in regional manufacturing, commercialization, and deployment of critical technologies will continue — at least for now.

Taking another year to make the awards will be time consuming and “disruptive for the places that thought they had an award in the bank,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of its Metropolitan Policy Program. 

However, he also noted: “This is also a moment where the administration does seem to be embracing a program, where there’s been uncertainty.”

Muro, who co-authored a 2019 paper credited as a catalyst for what eventually became the Tech Hubs program, said there’s still some questions around its future, including issues with the budget for the Economic Development Administration, the Commerce component that oversees it. 

But it’s not “a wholesale erasure of this program,” he said.

Prior to the announcement, there had been some question as to what Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick would do with the investment program created under the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act. Despite that program’s bipartisan support, President Donald Trump has been somewhat critical of the 2022 law to boost domestic chip production and scientific innovation, the White House “skinny budget” zeroed out funding for EDA, and other federal grant programs have been subject to mass terminations. 

Ultimately, Lutnick announced in a May 16 statement that there would be another competition for roughly $220 million, calling the previous administration’s process “rushed, opaque, and unfair.” Although Lutnick said the move wasn’t an “indictment of the work that the previously selected Tech Hubs are doing,” he said the department plans to release a new notice for funding opportunities this summer and aims to announce selections by early next year.

For the hubs and communities that thought they had implementation funding only to have it pulled away, the decision may seem “fundamentally unfair” and “disappointing,” said Bill Ruch, a tech lobbyist and principal who chairs the Technology Based Economic Development Practice at Lewis-Burke Associates LLC. Partners on several Tech Hubs are clients of Lewis-Burke.

Yet Ruch, like Muro, was hopeful about the continuation of the program. 

The Tech Hubs weren’t intended to be a Biden administration program and were designed to grow no matter who won the election, Ruch said. “I think it is encouraging to see this administration picking that up and seeking to make their mark on it, so I am optimistic about that.”

In addition to the funds being re-awarded, Ruch said he’s looking forward to the millions in funding on the horizon for the program. With that, the Trump administration has “a fair shot at running this program” and putting their stamp on it, he said. “So whatever that looks like, we’ll see.”

Funding question

The funds in question came from the fiscal year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, which appropriated up to $500 million for the Tech Hubs program divided into two parts.

The first portion was $220 million available via a loan through the Department of Treasury and the second was up to $280 million depending on the proceeds from a spectrum auction run by the Federal Communications Commission — in other words, the government’s method of selling rights to use radio frequencies. 

Following the passage of the NDAA, the Biden administration moved quickly to award the first batch of loaned funds, opting to use existing applications for implementation funding. Those six awards to hubs in red and blue states were announced Jan. 14. 

According to a fact sheet provided by Commerce after Lutnick’s announcement, the awards received criticism from Tech Hubs that didn’t get funding and the lawmakers who represent them in Congress. Lutnick also claimed in his statement that the funds “were not yet available” at the time of the Biden administration’s awards, and that the loan was approved and executed in March.

However, Cristina Killingsworth, former acting assistant secretary of commerce and economic development, told FedScoop in a statement that the decision to make the awards quickly was due to the urgent need of those funds.

“Given the critical importance of commercializing technology here in the United States to advance our national security, as well as our deep understanding of the Tech Hubs designees and their needs, we made a decision that we would move quickly on those funds, and I think that that was the right decision,” Killingsworth said.

Killingsworth added that the resources were going toward technologies and industries that were already vetted through the designation process, and that they knew there was a critical need to spend money on those areas immediately. 

When asked about the decision, a spokesman for Sen. Todd Young — who championed the CHIPS and Science Act — pointed to the Indiana Republican’s advocacy for the additional Tech Hubs funding in the fiscal year 2025 NDAA. Young “is confident the Trump Administration will ensure those limited dollars are allocated to the best prospective applicants to fulfill the mission of the program,” he said.

Hill response

Lawmakers underscored the urgency and importance of the previously awarded hubs, in statements following the decision, albeit in different ways. While Democrats outright criticized the decision, Republicans who had hubs in their states offered statements of support for those projects that lost funding.

“This is causing us chaos and uncertainty in a race against world competitors to build high rate manufactured composites likely to determine which country wins the aerospace future,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Democrat representing Washington state, which jointly shares one of the awarded Tech Hubs with Idaho.

A $48 million award to the American Aerospace Materials Manufacturing Center in Washington and Idaho, which focuses on military and commercial aerospace innovations, was among those impacted by the decision. 

A spokesperson for Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, meanwhile, told FedScoop in an email that the lawmaker continues to support the aerospace-driven hub shared between the states “and is working with congressional colleagues to advocate for its continued funding in order to support Idaho.”

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., said in an emailed statement that he was disappointed and that “starting the selection process from scratch delays development of America’s semiconductor manufacturing industry at a critical moment.” 

Under the original awards, Oregon State University’s Corvallis Microfluidics Tech Hub, known as CorMic, was awarded $45 million for its work to advance microfluidics technologies “for use in semiconductor cooling, continuous flow processing, and biotechnology,” per its award page.  

“CorMic has an incredible team with the right chip R&D at the right moment. I am confident that they will be selected again. I’ll do all in my power to support their success,” Merkley said.

In Alabama, Republican Sen. Katie Britt said in an emailed statement that she remains “strongly supportive of establishing a Biotech Hub in Birmingham and believe the Magic City’s proposal is well positioned to earn a grant from the Trump Administration.”

A $44 million award for “equitable AI-driven biotechnology” at the Birmingham Biotechnology Hub, which is led by the Southern Research Institute, was part of the six Biden administration awards. 

Britt said the “initiative is more than just an investment in the state of Alabama — it is a strategic investment in our national security,” and pointed to the hub’s potential to advance the Trump administration’s goals on biomedical leadership amid growing threats from China. 

Confirmation questions

While somewhat surprising, questions Lutnick received at his January confirmation hearing on Tech Hubs foreshadowed the decision and highlighted interest from some lawmakers to get a slice of the pie.

“What I think also may be playing into the current cross currents is that some states just wish they had gotten one,” Muro said of the hubs. Due to the program’s value and popularity, he added, “the Trump administration, I think, wants to put its brand on it.”

During Lutnick’s hearing before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, senators on both sides of the dais voiced interest in seeing the Tech Hubs continue, and asked the then-nominee to make varying commitments about how he would proceed. 

Democrats, on one hand, were concerned about the fulfillment of current awards. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, for example, pointed to a Tech Hub in her state of Illinois focused on biomanufacturing and precision fermentation that was awarded $51 million, and asked Lutnick if he would “commit to disbursing all obligated grant funding from the Department of Commerce on time and without delay.”

In response, Lutnick said, “if you add rigorously and making it as efficient as possible, I can say yes.”

Republicans, on the other hand, urged Lutnick to expand funding to new regions. Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi told Lutnick there’s interest among lawmakers to grow the hubs in rural areas, and specifically asked him to take a closer look at the southeast region, which he said “did not do so well in the first application.” 

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who chairs the committee, specifically called out the Biden administration awards, alleging that the program was a “piggy bank for low-performing blue states” and that the awards made in the final days were an attempt to shovel “as much money out the door as they could.”

“Once again, Texas received zero — nada — even though it has a designated semiconductor hub and a booming tech industry,” he said. Cruz further asked Lutnick to commit to reviewing the Tech Hubs program and ensuring the process is competitive and merit based. Lutnick said he would.

This story was updated May 29 to correct the name of the Economic Development Administration.

Former 18F employees file appeal of DOGE firings

Former employees of the General Services Administration’s 18F digital tech consultancy team filed an appeal Wednesday challenging their alleged wrongful termination and the “targeted” shuttering of the program by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency earlier this year.

The employees, represented by the law firm Mehri & Skalet, submitted a class-action appeal with the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board to request a hearing and have their removal reversed. 

Former 18F leaders Lindsay Young, Miatta Myers, Christian Crumlish, James Tranovich and Kate Fisher are named as appellants, representing that larger class of about 80 terminated permanent and term employees from the team who served for more than a year.

The group claims that GSA — along with the Office of Personnel Management, DOGE and the Office of Management and Budget — lacked a “valid reason … for the [reduction in force] targeting 18F” that took place Feb. 28, and claimed the action was a result of “retaliation.”

“The group was targeted to retaliate against them because of their (a) perceived political affiliations or beliefs, (b) First Amendment protected speech and actions supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and (c) actions to resist and blow the whistle on management’s improper handling and transition of control concerning sensitive data and systems,” the filed appeal says.

They go on to say that “GSA did not provide any reason for terminating all 18F staff. The RIF notices to all staff simply say their positions are being abolished,” and claim that “GSA lost money and continues to do so because on-going projects that involved 18F staff and those in the pipeline will not be maintained or completed.”

On top of that, they say DOGE, its unofficial figurehead Elon Musk, OPM and OMB acted beyond the scope of the law by directing or influencing the destruction of the group and termination of its members.

On Feb.1, the appeal explains, Musk reposted on his X social media platform a post from the Daily Wire that focused on 18F’s diversity, equity and inclusion stances, to which he simply replied, “Deleted.”

Soon after, the appellants say, DOGE-installed leaders at GSA, including Technology Transformation Services Director Thomas Shedd, began seeking root access to the group’s systems, which 18F members said was not normal. As members of the digital tech team pushed back on those requests, they said discussions about reductions in force ramped up before notices of termination were delivered Feb. 28.

In a statement posted on a website maintained by former 18F members, the group wrote: “we’re fighting back.” 

“The government has to follow the rules — just like the rest of us. We believe the elimination of 18F was unlawful, in violation of safeguards that exist to protect a nonpartisan civil service,” the post says. “Our appeal to the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board seeks to hold the administration accountable for its actions and defend the rule of law.”

The members say in the post that their firing not only impacts them but also the American public, because the projects 18F was undertaking “were exactly the type of technology modernization that DOGE claims to want,” adding that the Musk-linked efficiency group preventing the team from doing that work “underscores that DOGE’s actions are not in service of efficiency.”

“We swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, and our commitment to this oath didn’t end with our termination. That’s why we’re fighting back. Whatever the outcome of our appeal, we will never stop looking for ways to serve the American people. We are grateful to our friends, families, and community for their ongoing support,” the appellants wrote in their post, saying they stand in solidarity with other terminated federal employees to “advocate for the public interest and the rule of law.”