Balancing innovation and risk across the Department of Energy

Throughout 2026, you cast your nominations for the FedScoop 50, and the results are in. Hundreds of top executives from across the government tech landscape are now up for vote to see who will be honored among this year’s FedScoop 50. Voting is open now and runs through September 25. Make your voice heard to help us select who will be recognized on this year’s list. One of those nominees in the prestigious Golden Gov category for this year is Department of Energy CIO Dawn Zimmer. Zimmer joined the Daily Scoop Podcast to discuss how the agency is balancing innovation and security in the age of AI, what the Genesis Mission means for her office, how AI adoption is going across the department and much more.

A senior General Services Administration technology official has been placed on administrative leave after criticizing the government’s veterans’ hiring preference on his personal LinkedIn page, the agency confirmed Monday. Pete Waterman, director of FedRAMP and a career GSA official, said in the July post that his office needs experienced tech professionals, but federal hiring is “terribly broken.” “Veterans preference is brutally unfair when taken to the extreme of blocking any consideration of non-veterans, but we’re seeing that everywhere these days,” he wrote. “The future for FedRAMP is pretty dark if we can’t hire experts from private sector who have actually worked on cloud services.” GSA Administrator Edward Forst said in a statement that “we categorically and completely disagree with a senior employee’s recent remarks denigrating veterans preferences in hiring,” noting that veterans represent about 30% of GSA’s workforce. “GSA has zero tolerance for comments that disparage or disrespect America’s veterans,” Forst said. “The men and women who have worn and continue to wear our nation’s uniforms deserve our respect and unwavering support.” Veterans’ preference requires federal agencies to prioritize hiring qualified veterans before civilians.

OpenAI’s self-reported breach in which an agent escaped testing and autonomously hacked the open-source AI tool company Hugging Face is generating interest in a congressional investigation. In a Friday open letter, dozens of public interest groups, progressive organizations, and academics urged lawmakers to open an investigation into the incident to determine whether stronger safeguards and independent oversight of AI model development and testing is needed. They called the incident “a historic inflection point” for AI. The letter comes after OpenAI’s July 21 disclosure of the breach added fuel to the fire of preexisting concerns about the capabilities of the ever-learning technology. According to the ChatGPT maker’s statement, an agent driven by several of its models found a way to break free of a testing sandbox, gain internet access, and discover ways to breach Hugging Face — all in an effort to cheat on a benchmarking test. OpenAI has been working with Hugging Face and third-party organizations to investigate and analyze the incident. The organizations that wrote the letter argued the incident arose from OpenAI’s own choices on system capabilities and testing design, including decisions it made on objectives for the agent and safeguards to prevent any issues.

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