Drew Friedman has the Scoop on the Federal Workforce

This week on The GovNavigators Show, Robert and Adam are joined by Drew Friedman, reporter at Federal News Network and nominee for the ECHO Award for Best Government Management Journalist. Drew pulls back the curtain on what it's like to cover the federal workforce in one of the most turbulent periods in recent memory.

The conversation covers the shifting landscape of federal hiring, including OPM's push toward skills-based hiring in the IT space, the latest on Schedule F's successor, and the growing body of litigation challenging the administration's workforce actions, as well as budget issues, and the administration's push to shrink the federal real estate footprint. Drew also reflects on what it takes to keep up with stories this big, and why the Federal News Network team's collaborative approach has been essential to staying on top of it all.

Show Notes:

• New OMB Memo on commercial buying
• Vote for Drew at the ECHO Awards' website

What's on the GovNaviagtors' Radar:

• Apr 21: Grants QSMO’s Industry Day
• Apr 22: House Oversight Committee Markup on anti-fraud legislation (TBD)
• Apr 26-29: NASCIO Midyear Conference

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:08

Welcome everyone to the Gov Navigator Show, a government-focused program that won't make you seasick. We're the Gov Navigators. I'm Robert Check. And I'm Adam Hughes. We hope to enlighten and enliven your week with news and insightful entertaining guests, all on the topic of government management.

SPEAKER_02 0:23

Enjoy today's episode of Gov Navigators, brought to you by the creative geniuses behind the award-winning podcast Fedheads. Adam, how was your first week back from vacation? It was a slog. A slog? Well, you know, navigators.

SPEAKER_03 0:51

It's it's all it's all happiness and sunshine. No, that's true. It's just, you know, playing golf and sitting by the pool is better.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

Oh, that so you didn't get any golf in this week? I would like hard. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:05

I would like to audit the transcript. No, there's no transcript. Everybody knows that. Okay. All right. So what what's been going on this week?

SPEAKER_02 1:14

Well, OMB director Russ Voke testified in the House and Senate. Wow. And this is, of course, is on the budget. Yes, on the president's budget proposal. But also the first time folks got an opportunity to say, hey, when we tell you to spend money, we mean for you to spend that money. How did he take it? I'm guessing he didn't take that too well. Well, he tried to school the members and the senators that if they can accomplish the objectives of the programs at lower dollars, that why wouldn't he withhold that money? And they pushed back and said you're obligated to spend that money.

SPEAKER_03 1:53

So it's literally called it's called an obligation in budget parlance. So there was some give and take.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

I don't think I think Russ's vote emerged unscathed, and that those debates will be determined at higher pick rates.

SPEAKER_03 2:11

And uh and at a later date, most likely. Yeah. And it just reminds me of the early 90s Republican Revolution Dick Army famous press conference where he said, we're gonna be now that we're in control, we're gonna go through the budget line by line. And if you're a really successful program, you know, we're probably gonna cut your budget because I don't think you need all that money anymore because you're having such success. And if you're not successful, if you're not getting the job done, we're gonna cut your budget because you're wasting money.

SPEAKER_02 2:39

It's like so that logic is you're that that is unimpeachable logic from my perspective.

SPEAKER_03 2:45

No nowhere to go for federal programs. Okay. So who did he turn to for that analysis? Who knows? Nobody knows at the oversight. House oversight had a fraud hearing this week, too.

SPEAKER_02 2:56

With former, you know, Gov Navigator's guest, Pete Sessions. That's correct. Chairman's seat. And your old boss. Right. Yep. It was focused on state pro state administration of federal benefit programs, which is a worthy target. Our friend Bob Westbrooks testified. As did GAO, which released a report aligned to the topic of the hearing. Lot of action in this arena, and then there's a markup in the committee next week and a slew of anti-fraud bills.

SPEAKER_03 3:30

Yep. And and some I think bills that can really help to make a difference. You know, I think sometimes, particularly oversight markups, there's just bill after bill after bill sometimes, particularly our friends in the Senate. Shout out Senator Peters. But but some of these bills I think really can move the needle, particularly on fraud prevention and moving and detecting fraud before money leaves the government fence, which is really the only way to keep it from being wasted.

SPEAKER_02 3:57

Coincidentally, the vice president of the anti-fraud task force was meeting at roughly the same time to crack the whip, make sure there makes progress.

SPEAKER_03 4:05

Probably need all those folks to get in the same room at one point in the future. Maybe bless your heart. I saw too the Justice Department settled the lawsuit with IBM over their DEI practices. So a contractor got dinged for not following the administration's approach to DEI.

SPEAKER_02 4:23

$17 million. Yeah, that's right. I think IBM will make it through. And they were applauded by the Justice Department for cooperating with the investigation to construct the.

SPEAKER_03 4:36

Yeah. I think you know, when you get your hand caught in the cookie jar, you can't say you weren't trying to eat the cookies. I think that just usually doesn't work out.

SPEAKER_02 4:43

Yeah, is that what happened?

SPEAKER_03 4:45

Okay. No, it's not. It's not. Also, kudos to folks over at HHS. They have upgraded one of their payroll systems and they've retired a COBOL database and and and platform. So, and for those of you that are that don't know, COBOL is a 60-year-old programming language. And there's I think seven people in the world that it still know how it works. So but um Claude do all that? I so I mean that's a fair question. As long as there's enough underlying data on the internet, then Claude probably should be able to do it. Yeah. Speaking of speaking of Claude, so this is actually pretty interesting. I believe as of this recording, as we were recording right now, Anthropic CEO is at the White House meeting with Suzy Wiles, White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles. So even though that they're on you can get him on. I think he he declined, unfortunately. But you know, DOW and Anthropic have been sparring for quite some time in the press, with in meetings with each other, now in the courts. Second separate from that, Anthropic has announced that their new updated version of Claude, Mythos, is so powerful and terrifying that they don't want to release it publicly. In particular, it's incredibly good at detecting cyber vulnerabilities and exploiting them.

SPEAKER_02 6:03

So hold on, let me check. Oh, yeah. Not not available. I got Opus Haiku and Sonnet. So go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 6:13

No, it's probably decided to release it. I think they are beta testing it with 40 companies that they reached out to individually. And about a week after they did that, the White House said, Oh, hey, maybe we should get a crack at this too, which is, I think, a smart move because the government controls some of the most important and powerful data sets in the world. And making sure that those are protected by the best technology we have, I think is a is a lofty and wonderful goal. So one part of the government's maybe trying to debar them as a federal contractor, and the other is bringing them to the White House to meet to talk about the importance of their technology. I think obviously those happened weeks and weeks apart, but I think they they kind of kind of get their everyone playing from the same sheet of music here pretty soon.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

If the news wasn't evolving so quickly, nobody would tune in. Speaking of news. Yes, let's get to it. Adam, we're in a town where the fewer words in your title actually indicate how important you are. That I totally agree with that. Right? Like, I'm the president, I'm the speaker. And today we are proud to be joined by Drew Friedman, reporter at Federal News Network. Drew, you're like among the most important people in town.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

I guess that's what that means.

SPEAKER_02 7:37

It does, it does now. It is so ordained. Yeah. You're so great to join us. Tell us a little bit about what it's like. I hate to start with such a vague question, but what it's like, what's it like reporting in this environment?

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Well, first of all, thank you guys so much for having me. It's nice to be able to talk to you both. Yeah, I would say it's it's been a challenge, in a word. There's been so much going on. And even before we started recording today, we were just talking about, you know, how there's just so many directions to go in terms of what's been happening to the federal workforce and to government employees, to government jobs. So it's just a lot to keep track of and just kind of be on top of such a wide array of you know issues that are happening and being able to understand everything in depth and going, you know, one day from a decision, a presidential decision at the Merit Systems Protection Board the next day to union contracts being canceled, the next day to it being in the weeds of changes to the federal hiring process. I mean, it's just across the board been it's been a lot to keep track of and things are moving quite quickly. So it's it's been an interesting time for sure.

SPEAKER_03 8:54

How just to stick on that for one second, how do you decide what to focus on? You the Federal News Network is great, has a great team, but it's small. And the how do you say this is the most important thing or this is what I really need to focus on today and write an article about it? What's your do you have a process for that? And is it just whatever Jason says? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

It's not whatever Jason says. Thank God. I'm so glad to hear that. No, so so the way that I approach it is thinking about impact as the number one priority for me. So sometimes that can be an impact of numbers. So how many employees is something going to affect if there's news in a specific area? You know, if it's 10,000 employees versus a couple hundred, I'll focus on the larger story there. Or the impact can also be just the depth of the impact. If it's something that's going to affect employees' day-to-day livelihood, day-to-day ability to do their jobs versus something that's maybe, you know, a change that's happening on the horizon, but not something that's having such an immediate effect to people, then of course I would focus on the thing that's going to be the most immediately impactful. So it varies day to day. And it's sometimes it's a decision of, you know, realizing I can only, I'm only one person, I can only focus on so much. And, you know, if there's two important things, focus on one next day, come back to the other thing. But it's yeah, that's been a challenge too, just figuring out how to prioritize coverage and obviously also collaborating with my colleagues at Federal News Network to make sure we are covering everything as as quickly and you know in depth as we possibly can.

SPEAKER_02 10:35

So, what's the latest? What's the big story you're covering today?

SPEAKER_00 10:39

Well, today, today's still a little bit of an open book, but you know, something I would say I've been focusing on recently in general. I just have taken an interest in this, what seems to be kind of the ship turning around somewhat on hiring opportunities across the federal workforce. I mean, that's been something where we've seen pockets happening where the General Services Administration or CISA or CDC, they're all announcing different hiring opportunities, whereas for the past 12 plus months, there's been at least a partial hiring freeze, a lot of employees leaving. So it's interesting to see things kind of shift in this way. And so that's not something necessarily that's a today story, but something I've been tracking for several weeks or even several months at this point.

SPEAKER_03 11:34

So speaking of which, has that hiring freeze been lifted, or are agencies just like we've got to hire people and we're not paying any attention to it? What I didn't see anything that's like, okay, everyone, now you can go higher.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

It's a little bit unclear. So the hiring freeze is not technically in place anymore, and it has not been since October 2025. But even though there's no technical freeze on agencies, it's not just, you know, go hire like you were previously, go hire a lot of people. There's still a lot of limitations, a lot of seeming, seemingly hoops to jump through for agencies. They have to give the Trump administration their stopping plans. They have to make sure everything's approved and vetted before they actually start hiring. So even though there's not a technical, you know, stop or hold on a lot of hiring, it still seems to be tampered or tamps down to some extent.

SPEAKER_03 12:31

People are still watching closely.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Yes, for sure.

unknown 12:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 12:34

But there has been a lot of buzz about the focus on hiring in the tech space. And they're leveraging the administration OPM is leveraging new authorities to hire based on experience rather than certifications or degrees. Talk about how that's going.

SPEAKER_00 12:53

We saw an announcement on that from the Office of Personnel Management Director, Scott Cooper, just recently, where it I think it was specifically for the IT management series in government. I can't remember the number of the job series off the top of my head, but yeah, that is one area where they're looking to move away from focusing on whether or not you have that specific type of college degree and instead just asking or assessing candidates based on whether they have the skills and the experience to be able to fulfill that job. So I think they're starting in the tech space, but it's something where there's definitely been interest in expanding it to other positions as well. Just the, you know, to expand this idea of skills-based hiring across government. And I guess it's also important to point out with that, is this isn't a new idea. This isn't something novel that the Trump administration is doing. It was something that was discussed and focused on in the Biden administration as well, also in the first Trump administration. So there's certainly bipartisan support of this idea to put less focus on whether someone has the educational backgrounds and more just a question of can they do the day-to-day work?

SPEAKER_03 14:15

That's I think that's the 2210 job series, just for you. That's right. Everyone keeping track at home. Yeah, no troubles. I only know like he's placing grooms or I only know three or four. So I don't really know them all. I'm not just show up the guest. The guest, I know it's a cardinal sin on a hero and go narrow your show. Okay. So I we were talking a little.

SPEAKER_02 14:36

I did not look it up.

SPEAKER_03 14:38

I know that one, I know 1102. That's the acquisition one. That's the only ones I know. So we were talking a little bit before we started recording in what you just kind of got into at the beginning, too, about there's kind of it's continues to be so much that's coming at people who are following government management issues. The thing that we were really worried about before the Trump administration came to power again in the second term was Schedule F. And this, what has now emerged more recently as this policy career EO that the administration put out. Tell us just a little bit about that, what it is, and what's the latest that's going on?

SPEAKER_00 15:11

So, this is something where we were expecting this to come back. As you said, it was something that was being tracked very closely since it was originally issued as Schedule F back in 2020. So its resurgence wasn't a surprise under the second Trump administration, but we're seeing a lot more depth to this now, and especially coming at the beginning of the administration, where there's more time to implement this. So, what it's going to do is take career federal employees who are in generally what the administration is calling policy influencing roles and remove their civil service protections, that would not necessarily mean that they would outright be fired, but it is something where they don't have the same protections as many other career federal employees and they can be fired at will rather than having certain processes to go through before they can be removed. So the way that the Trump administration has framed this is they say it's as would be a step towards accountability, and they don't like the idea of potentially career employees undermining the president's priorities or policies. But of course, on the other end, you have a lot of concerns about the politicization of the career federal workforce, the erosion of civil service protections that have been in place for decades. So, you know, there's a lot of question marks in it. Not everything is finalized at this point, but it's certainly been something to track since really day one of the administration.

SPEAKER_02 16:55

A lot of these issues that are being debated right now are gonna be considered in the courts. And it's like every week there's a ruling that impacts some subset of the workforce. How are you keeping track of all those and what are the most important cases you're following? I don't mean to put you on the spot, but it does seem to be the judicial system has a new role in federal workforce policy.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Definitely. I've had to learn a lot about court proceedings in this administration. I think that I didn't necessarily know before. Yeah, so I guess one that I've been tracking very closely is this lawsuit against scheduled policy slash career, where they're saying that it's there's a lawsuit from a coalition of unions and public service organizations essentially saying that this violates the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act and due process and other protections that should be afforded to career federal employees. So that's one to definitely keep on top of. I haven't, again, seen a lot of updates there, but I'm sure it will proceed in the same way that we're likely soon gonna see the actual conversions of those employees into schedule policy slash career. There have been a ton of other cases too. There's ones involving collective bargaining rights for federal employees. So that's another area where we've seen a lot of erosion there across certain agencies. Again, that comes back to certain laws that were passed many decades ago and whether the president has the power or the authority to kind of strip those away from employees. So I would say the trend with a lot of the litigation here is there seems to be areas where the president is going beyond what we've seen typically in past administrations of you know, exercising certain authorities to remove officials, to take away certain protections that have been in place for a long time. And, you know, obviously it's up to the courts to decide whether those are legal, but it's certainly bringing up a lot of questions in that area.

SPEAKER_03 19:07

So and it's you're reminding me too that you know, with particularly with the policy career switch that's underway, we got to pull back some of Robert's press that he got towards the end of the towards the election on create how it would create an army of suck-ups or something like that, too. So I feel like federal employees are getting pressed from lots of different directions in this administration, and it feels as though it hasn't slowed up. One question, Adam? Getting to that, getting to that. Yeah, reclaiming my time. Thank you. So uh I want to talk a little bit about the shutdown, shutdowns, and the continued shenanigans that are going on at DHS and the FY27 budget that that you know, or whatever you want to call it, it's mostly a full budget release. It's two months late, but no nobody releases a budget on time anymore. It's not in vogue in Washington. But the the pay raise issue in the 27 budget, the shutdown, the people not getting, you know, getting not paid while and having to go to work, it the issue of compensation for federal employees this year plus has been pretty rough. So talk a little bit about the coverage that you've done of that and and what you see about prospects going forward for it.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

Well, if we go based off of what we've seen from the fiscal 2027 budget proposal, it makes it unlikely that civilian federal employees will be seeing a pay raise. It's not fully off the table because for the 2027 pay raise, because there's still the possibility for President Trump to issue some sort of alternative pay plan other than a zero percent raise for civilian employees.

SPEAKER_02 20:43

So he could do like he could finally catch up to FEPCA, like I mean, what'd be like a 17% cross-the-board raise? He could do that.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

It he if he's if there is no alternative pay plan, it would default to FEPCA, which has not ever happened, I believe, or at least not since yeah, 1994. If that was to happen, if there wasn't an alternative pay plan, then yeah, it's something like a 15 to 20 percent pay raise for federal employees. I can't imagine as when I say, you know, whether things are possible or not, I don't think that's very possible.

SPEAKER_03 21:18

That's not in the that's not an in realm of possibility. No, I think you're staying to you're staying in safe areas of prediction. That's really smart.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

But more what I need for those prospects uh a pay raise is I think maybe it's helpful to look at what happened last year, right? So with the fiscal 2026 budget request, when that came out in early 2025, there was similarly no mention of a civilian federal pay raise. But then in August, when we came up against that FEPCUD deadline, that's when we saw the alternative pay plan issued from President Trump with a 1% raise included and a larger pay raise for law enforcement personnel. So if we take that and apply it to this year, again, there's no just simply no mention of the civilian federal pay raise in the budget requests. But if when we see that alternative pay plan from Trump in August, it's possible it could have a different number. It's possible it could just be a zero. Either way, we are going to see that alternative pay plan. And then of course there's also the possibility for Congress to intervene on this and say, you know, you maybe he's proposing zero percent. Congress says no, we want some other amount. Uh so that's all a possibility, but most of this gets worked out by December each year.

SPEAKER_03 22:39

That would also rely on Congress, you know, taking proactive actions and passing laws, which it's not really an it's a wheelhouse right now. Anyway.

SPEAKER_02 22:50

Well, another thing impacting the federal workforce is the footprint. The administration's actually sold some buildings, it's moved headquarters around, and it's promised to do more. At the same time, it looks like we're still not back up to significant usage, full-time usage of buildings. I read what's a 60% average occup occupancy of federal buildings. What's your take on all of that?

SPEAKER_00 23:22

I think it's true we are gonna see a lot more happening in that realm. I mean, one to look at is the poorest service of the USDA. They're looking to relocate their headquarters to Utah and eliminate their regional offices. And I think there are some concerns there about how that's gonna impact retention of employees who are being told to relocate across the country. And you know, that's just one example. But in the broader context, yeah, that this is something that's been a concern for many years. And there have been efforts for a long time to try to reduce the footprint of you know federal leases and property holdings, but mostly mostly only marginally successful previous efforts.

SPEAKER_03 24:08

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

Exactly. Yes, it's not something that's had as much success as they like to try to work towards.

SPEAKER_03 24:18

So we're about out of time, but I would be remiss. We would be remiss if we didn't mention that you are up for an Echo Award, which is uh awards for government journalists, folks covering news in the public sector. And you're you it's maybe it's awkward, maybe I shouldn't be mentioning this because you're going up against some of your colleagues. So you're you were nominated in the best government management journalist category, and we have friends from government executive in there too, and next gu, but Jory Heckman and Jason Miller both also nominated. So, do you guys have like an office pool about who's gonna win it? Like, are you trying to motivate family and friends to keep voting? What's how's it going now in the Federal News Network offices?

SPEAKER_00 25:00

I think we're all just excited to be nominated.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

Uh as I kind of said earlier on, but we are we have a sophisticated group of listeners. You're not gonna buy that for a second.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

No, I think uh no, it it really is. I I I'm trying to be modest about this, but I am I am very happy to be one of the nominees there. And uh yeah, I think it just speaks to the level of work that we've all put in over the last year. It's been a whirlwind, there's been so much to do, such a learning curve for a lot of our team too, to just pivot and figure out how to continue covering this and bringing that information to federal employees when they need it the most. But yeah, I think it it just speaks to you know, my coverage, but also to Jory's and Jason's too, that there's you know, it's really a I mean, I hate to say it, but it really is a group effort and it's a collaborative effort to make sure that we're on top of all of this.

SPEAKER_02 26:03

That's very nice of you, Drew. But in the meantime, if you could all go to the echoawards.com slash voting and vote for Drew Friedman, we would appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 26:14

Indeed. Very well-deserved nomination, and we're pulling for you, Drew.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

Well, thank you. I really appreciate that. I wouldn't say no to a vote.

SPEAKER_03 26:22

Excellent. Thanks for coming on, Drew. Yeah, thanks for spending time with us.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_03 26:33

So lovely to talk to Drew. She's fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 26:35

Fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 26:36

You think Jason will be up so we had her on instead of him? He might, actually, but he's a big boy. He'll be fine. What's up this week? Okay, so the Grants Cusmo is holding an industry day on April 21st. It's a virtual event, should be great. Andre Sampanas, our friend, friend of Gov Navigators, Andre Sampanas, spearheading this effort, I'm sure. So make sure you check that out.

SPEAKER_02 26:59

I I think our boy Gus Sherello also. Oh, lovely. Assistant secretary for financial resources is speaking.

SPEAKER_03 27:06

Yeah. What else? Well, there's a there's a markup. There's supposed to be a markup, although it's it's not been not been posted yet.

SPEAKER_02 27:15

Yeah, the House Oversight Committee was gonna mark up a bunch of anti-fraud bills.

SPEAKER_03 27:18

Good, good anti-fraud bills, things that are that we're excited about.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

Yeah, supposed to ban it in deep bronca. That's right. That's right. I hope they move ahead either this week or soon.

SPEAKER_03 27:28

Sometimes there's delays and sometimes they wait to post it, but it's supposed to be, I think, on the 22nd this week. So we'll see if that comes out. And then the gov navigators are going on the road. On the road to Philly, to the city of brotherly love for NASIO's mid-year conference, the National Association of State CIOs. I'll spend time with my brother John, who just turned 57 today. So we're gonna celebrate with John. Tracy Di Martini might be up there. We don't know. It's gonna be great. Have a great week. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Gov Navigator Show, brought to you by GovNavigators. We sure hope you enjoyed it and learned something in the process. And didn't get C sick. Right, of course. If you want to know more about us and what we're up to, please follow us on social media or visit govnavigators.com. Ahoy!