Category: Congress

Bill designed to standardize federal-election mail-in ballots heads to the House floor

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Best listening experience is on Chrome, Firefox or Safari. Subscribe to Federal Drive’s daily audio interviews on Apple Podcasts or PodcastOne. A bill meant to standardize mail-in ballots for federal elections is heading to the House floor. The Vote-by-Mail Tracking Act would help the Postal Service manage a rise in mail-in voting by requiring all mail-in ballots to include a scannable barcode. The bill made it out of the House Oversight and Reform Committee with a bipartisan majority vote. An earlier version of the bill has a provision to reimburse state and local…

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You’re not the only one squinting to understand what’s happening on Capitol Hill

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Best listening experience is on Chrome, Firefox or Safari. Subscribe to Federal Drive’s daily audio interviews on Apple Podcasts or PodcastOne. The duck is officially lame with apologies to our real life feathered friends, the 117th Congress. At least the House will be back in session this week and casting votes. For a look at what remains before the arrival of the 118th Congress, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin  turned to Bloomberg Government Deputy News Director Loren Duggan. Interview transcript: Tom Temin: And this really is one of those kind of special…

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Can a 10-year federal infrastructure plan really sustain itself for 10 years

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Best listening experience is on Chrome, Firefox or Safari. Subscribe to Federal Drive’s daily audio interviews on Apple Podcasts or PodcastOne. The action plan from the Biden administration for the Infrastructure Bill seeks to ensure projects across the nation get done on time and on budget. They’ve already hired 2,500 people to help state, local and tribal governments. But the plan has a 10-year horizon. And that could spell trouble. The Federal Drive with Tom Temin   gets analysis from Professor Bob Tobias of American University. Interview transcript: Tom Temin: And Bob, this…

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50,000 companies on hold because of GSA’s UEI validation problems

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Best listening experience is on Chrome, Firefox or Safari. Subscribe to Federal Drive’s daily audio interviews on Apple Podcasts or PodcastOne. Editor’s Note: Updated on Nov. 2 with comments from GSA about the UEI validation service backlog. It’s now November, and the General Services Administration still hasn’t fixed the Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) transition to the new validation service that began in April. And as many as 50,000 companies and grantees still are waiting to fix validation issues that is causing delays in awards and in getting paid. The almost six-month old problem…

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Pelosi home break in Congress 

Conspiracy theory on Pelosi home break-in proven to be baseless

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Conspiracy theories and disinformation spread extensively by prominent conservatives based on innuendo and falsehoods have been shown to be baseless by mounds of evidence, including statements by the attacker. Posted 11/2/2021 and last updated 11/3/2022. The break-in conspiracy theory centers around images showing some broken glass on the outside of the rear door of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home. The suspect assaulted her husband Paul Pelosi with a hammer. It resulted in injuries requiring surgery to repair a skull fracture and serious injuries to Mr. Pelosi’s right arm…

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Survey: Half of federal chief data officers are unclear about responsibilities

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Chief data officers in federal agencies have been in the government for a long time, but that doesn’t mean they are clear on their responsibilities. That’s according to a recent survey of CDOs conducted by the Data Foundation. The chief data officer role in federal agencies was established in 2018 by an act of Congress. In the four years since, the Data Foundation has conducted surveys of the people who fill these roles responsible for data governance. This year, the survey sponsored by Guidehouse found that while CDOs tend to…

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