Weekly Roundup - April 20-24, 2026

Submitted by on Fri, 04/24/2026 - 13:54
Friday, April 24, 2026
Michael J. Keegan
Curating Articles & Insights of Interest in Public Management, Leadership, & Government Technology for the week ending April 27, 2026.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & AGENTIC TECHNOLOGY

From Golden Dome to Drones: Breaking Down DOD's $1.5T Budget Request. With the Pentagon's release of its FY27 budget request on April 21, MeriTalk examined how the administration's record $1.5 trillion defense proposal distributes resources across artificial intelligence, cyber, drone, and space domains. The AI and autonomy allocation stands at a declared $58.5 billion — a figure that includes $13.4 billion for autonomy and AI systems under the base budget and an additional $45 billion embedded in a reconciliation funding request whose political passage remains uncertain. The Space Force receives a 77% budget increase to $71.2 billion, much of it concentrated in research, development, and evaluation accounts tied to space-based missile defense, next-generation surveillance systems, and Golden Dome support infrastructure. Cyber receives a dedicated and significant allocation, and drone procurement — both offensive and counter-drone — is a major new beneficiary. The proposal frames AI not as an emerging capability but as a foundational requirement for the multi-domain, all-threat environment the administration says the nation now faces.

USPS, DC CISOs: Identity, AI Drive New Era of Government Cybersecurity. At the Okta Government Identity Summit in Washington, the chief information security officers for the U.S. Postal Service and the District of Columbia described how identity management has evolved from a perimeter security function into a mission-enabling operational capability. USPS CISO Heather Dyer said identity is no longer limited to user authentication — it now encompasses applications, service accounts, non-human identities, and devices, all of which must be managed holistically. The CISO's posture, she said, has shifted from 'no' to 'yes, and here's how we do this securely.' DC CISO Suneel Cherukuri noted that municipal identity is particularly complex, as the District serves residents, businesses, and international entities including consulates — creating a breadth of identity and access requirements unlike most state or local governments. Both officials characterized AI as an accelerant of this identity evolution: the increase in agentic AI and non-human identity across federal and local government networks is making robust, real-time identity governance a national security imperative.

Ex-FBI Cyber Official Proposes Terrorism Designations for Hospital Ransomware Attacks. A former senior FBI cybersecurity official is calling on the federal government to consider formally designating ransomware attacks against hospitals and other critical healthcare infrastructure as acts of terrorism — a designation that would unlock a substantially different legal and law enforcement response framework. The proposal reflects growing frustration among cyber practitioners that existing criminal statutes and enforcement tools have been insufficient to deter ransomware actors who repeatedly target healthcare organizations, where service disruptions can directly endanger lives. The argument centers on the severity and intent of attacks on life-safety systems, and whether the deliberate disruption of hospital operations crosses the threshold of terroristic threat to civilian welfare. The proposal surfaces at a moment when AI-enabled attacks are expanding both the scale and sophistication of ransomware campaigns.

GSA Looks to Automate a Million Work Hours, After Losing Nearly 40% of Its Workforce. GSA Deputy Director Michael Lynch disclosed at an industry summit on Tuesday that the General Services Administration has launched a 'million hours challenge' — a target to use its internal AI tool USAi to automate one million hours of work currently performed by federal employees and contractors. Lynch said GSA is already nearly halfway to that goal, with approximately 400,000 hours of non-high-value-added work identified as automatable, enabling staff to redirect toward mission-critical activities. The disclosure frames AI automation not as workforce replacement but as workforce redeployment: GSA's strategy is to absorb the productivity impact of having lost 40 percent of its total workforce since October 2024 — including the elimination of its digital services arm 18F — by driving efficiency through AI tools. Lynch noted the model could scale beyond GSA to serve other agencies.

OPM Adds Cybersecurity Jobs to Tech Force Hiring Program.The Office of Personnel Management has expanded its Tech Force initiative — already recruiting software engineers, data scientists, and product managers — to include cybersecurity specialists, citing the need to rebuild a federal cyber workforce depleted by Trump administration workforce reductions. OPM Director Scott Kupor said the addition reflects a direct need: the government's 2210 IT management job series has lost more than 18,500 employees, and the overall federal workforce has shed more than 272,000 net positions since January 2025. The new cybersecurity roles will focus on protecting critical systems and strengthening federal cybersecurity defenses. OPM is coordinating with agencies to recruit from the CyberCorps Scholarship for Service program, many of whose participants have struggled to find federal employment opportunities since last year's hiring freezes and cutbacks. The Tech Force is structured as two-year temporary roles deployed to agencies in cohorts of 30 to 40.

GSA No. 2 Talks 'Million Hours Challenge,' Scaling Agency AI Efforts. GovExec's coverage of GSA Deputy Administrator Michael Lynch's remarks at the OpenText Government Summit provides additional context on the agency's AI automation drive. Lynch described GSA's internal playbook as 'EOA' — eliminate, optimize, and automate — a disciplined sequencing he said prevents agencies from automating broken processes before fixing them. Lynch was explicit that the goal is not to replace headcount but to restore the capacity of a workforce that has been substantially reduced, by freeing people from repetitive, transactional work to focus on higher-value activities. He also noted that the USAi platform could eventually be made available to other agencies facing similar workforce constraints — a model that, if adopted broadly, could reframe how the government approaches AI-enabled continuity of service during an extended period of workforce reduction.

DEFENSE MODERNIZATION, TECHNOLOGY & BUDGET

Navy Nears Completion of Portfolio Acquisition Executives Overhaul. The Navy confirmed that the service is on track to stand up its remaining five Portfolio Acquisition Executives in the coming months, completing a sweeping reform of its weapons acquisition process. The PAE structure is designed to consolidate authority over acquisition portfolios under fewer, more empowered executive leaders — reducing the fragmentation that has historically made large-scale naval programs slow to adapt to technology changes and cost overruns. The reform aligns with the broader Defense Department emphasis on speed, accountability, and consolidation in acquisition, and comes as the Navy prepares to absorb a massive FY27 budget increase including one of the largest shipbuilding requests since the early 1960s.

Space Force Scrambles to Repair Workforce as Massive Budget Increase Looms. The Trump administration's FY27 budget request proposes increasing the Space Force's budget from $31.6 billion to $71.1 billion — a 125 percent leap — even as the service is still contending with having lost 14 percent of its civilian workforce last year. The acting Pentagon comptroller acknowledged the paradox: a military service expected to manage more than twice as much money is simultaneously recruiting at record pace to fill the civilian gaps that DOGE-era cuts created. The Space Force budget increase is tied primarily to President Trump's 'space superiority' executive order and funding for the Golden Dome missile defense initiative's space-based components. Officials are seeking authority to hire hundreds of new civilians while the prior administration of talent reduction is still working its way through the agency.

AGENCY MODERNIZATION & INNOVATION

Transportation Touts Air Traffic Control Modernization, Presses Congress for More Funding. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy marked the one-year anniversary of the administration's air traffic control modernization initiative with progress claims and a new appeal to Congress for an additional $10 billion beyond the $12.5 billion already appropriated. At an event showcasing the effort's first-year milestones, Duffy said that nearly half of all copper wiring in the air traffic control telecommunication system — some of it dating to the 1960s — has been replaced, over 270 radio sites converted, and surface awareness systems installed at 54 airports. A few workstreams are 'a little behind,' but Duffy told attendees the overhaul is on track to be completed before the end of the Trump administration. The additional $10 billion request is focused on the software layer of the new system — what Duffy called the 'real magic' — which must manage airspace at the operational level once the physical infrastructure is in place. The effort, led by prime integrator Peraton, represents one of the largest aviation infrastructure undertakings in decades.

MANAGEMENT, GOVERNANCE & WORKFORCE

Josh Gruenbaum Stepping Down as GSA FAS Commissioner. Josh Gruenbaum, who has served as commissioner of GSA's Federal Acquisition Service since January 2025, announced his departure this week. GSA named FAS Deputy Commissioner Laura Stanton as acting commissioner pending a permanent appointment. During his tenure, Gruenbaum led a series of procurement reform initiatives, including the OneGov enterprise AI and cloud acquisition framework, scrutiny of IT value-added resellers and consulting firm markups, and the centralization of common goods procurement. His departure coincides with a moment of significant transition in federal acquisition, as AI-driven procurement tools are being integrated into governmentwide contracting vehicles and acquisition policy faces potential congressional reform through the NDAA.

Plankey Withdraws as CISA Nominee. Sean Plankey, President Trump's nominee to lead the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, withdrew his nomination on April 23 after 13 months of Senate inaction, citing the toll of prolonged uncertainty on his family. The withdrawal leaves CISA without a Senate-confirmed director for the entirety of the Trump second term — a period during which the agency has lost roughly one-third of its workforce, operated through sustained DHS funding lapses, and faces a proposed $707 million budget cut for FY27. Acting Director Nick Andersen has been managing the agency through the ongoing DHS shutdown and has recently secured approval for 329 mission-critical new hires. Plankey's withdrawal underscores the governance gap at one of the federal government's most operationally consequential cybersecurity institutions, and will require the White House to identify, nominate, and shepherd a new candidate through Senate confirmation at a moment of elevated cyber threat activity.

RFK: Cuts at HHS Haven't Led to Problems, but We're Hiring 12,000 New Employees. HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. testified before both the House Energy and Commerce Committee and a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on April 21, defending the department's elimination of 20,000 employees in 2025 while simultaneously announcing plans to hire back 12,000. Kennedy framed the original cuts as a necessary response to White House direction to tighten the department's operations — saying he was told 'we need to tighten our belt' — but acknowledged the final decision on programs and spending rests with Congress. Democrats pointed to mounting evidence that agency capacity has declined, including a HHS budget proposal that itself requests a 12 percent cut for FY27. Kennedy's testimony crystallizes a recurring tension in the current management environment: departments that shed capacity through workforce reductions then face a 'rightsizing' phase of re-hiring, but federal statute prohibits agencies from refilling positions previously eliminated through reductions in force.

'Less People and Better Results:' IRS CEO Says Filing Season Goals Met After 27% Staffing Cut. IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank Bisignano told the Senate Finance Committee on April 22 that the 2026 filing season was 'the most successful in IRS history,' pointing to high rates of electronic filing and processing despite the agency having lost 27 percent of its workforce under the Trump administration. Democrats disputed the characterization sharply: an independent analysis by former National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson found that IRS wait times on its main toll-free line increased by more than 70 percent between February 2025 and February 2026. Bisignano also told senators he is managing both the IRS and the Social Security Administration simultaneously, sometimes working 14-hour days across the two agencies. The hearing illustrates the central management challenge of the current federal environment — the gap between top-line performance metrics that agencies control and the service experience of the constituents they are meant to serve.

OMB: ERM Going from Compliance Exercise to Management Tool. OMB Deputy Director for Management Eric Ueland publicly defended the administration's decision to remove enterprise risk management as a standalone section of Circular A-123 — a change that drew sharp criticism from the federal ERM community — at the Association for Federal Enterprise Risk Management Summit this week. Ueland argued that embedding ERM requirements in a management directive had turned the practice into a compliance paperwork exercise rather than a genuine operational discipline, and that the updated A-123 aims to make risk management a practical tool rather than a reporting obligation. Critics disagree: the 2024 AFERM survey found that 85 percent of federal organizations now have formal ERM programs, and practitioners argue the framework is most valuable precisely when institutionalized across agency leadership. The debate surfaces a foundational question about how performance management doctrine should be codified in government: whether formal structural requirements produce genuine practice or merely generate compliance theater.

Experts Say Trump Inflated His Deregulation Numbers, but His Process Changes Are Here to Stay. A GovExec analysis finds that while the Trump administration has overstated the headline numbers behind its deregulation record — counting guidance documents, internal policy changes, and other non-regulatory actions alongside formal rulemaking withdrawals — the changes it has made to the regulatory process itself are more durable than the numbers suggest. The administration has added layers of White House scrutiny to agency rulemaking, exempted certain rule categories from traditional notice-and-comment procedures, and restructured who has authority to approve significant rules — changes that have meaningfully slowed the regulatory pipeline and shifted oversight authority toward political appointees. Management and public administration scholars quoted in the piece note that the procedural architecture the administration has built will outlast individual rule counts and will shape how future administrations navigate the regulatory process.

Fed Employee Appeals System Independence at Stake in New Supreme Court Brief. A new legal brief before the Supreme Court puts the independence of the Merit Systems Protection Board — the quasi-judicial body that hears federal employee appeals of adverse employment actions — directly at issue. The filing arrives as the high court is already considering a related case concerning the president's authority to remove members of independent agencies, and the MSPB case turns on whether the same logic extends to what has long been a firewall protecting civil servants from politically motivated dismissal. A ruling that the president can remove MSPB members at will would significantly alter the constitutional architecture of the merit-based civil service and could affect the due process rights of hundreds of thousands of federal employees currently navigating reductions, reassignments, and other adverse actions.

THIS WEEK @ THE CENTER 

RECENT BLOGS

ICYMI – This week Michael J. Keegan welcomed Dr. Paul Lawrence, Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to explore what it takes to lead one of the largest and most complex service organizations in the federal government, VA’s most urgent priorities, reducing its claims backlog, and how to get electronic health record modernization right.  

Week in Review

The week's biggest headline was a budget number hard to ignore: the Trump administration's FY27 request for $1.5 trillion in defense spending — a historic figure that includes $58.5 billion earmarked for AI and a striking $71.1 billion for the Space Force, more than double what it currently receives. But the operational story may ultimately say more than any budget line. The Pentagon disclosed that department personnel used the Google Gemini-powered GenAI.mil platform to spin up more than 100,000 AI agents in under five weeks. That’s not just rapid adoption. It’s deployment at a scale rarely seen, in government or industry.

Taken together, these signals point to a defense enterprise accelerating toward AI-enabled operations, perhaps faster than its governance structures and workforce systems may be ready to handle.

On the civilian side, the pace is no less striking. At the General Services Administration, leadership reported identifying 400,000 hours of work that could be automated using its internal tool, USAi—nearly halfway to its “million hours” goal. This progress comes even as the agency’s workforce has shrunk by roughly 40 percent, sharpening the stakes around productivity and capacity.

On The civilian side, the pace is no less striking. GSA's deputy administrator revealed the agency has already pinpointed 400,000 hours of automatable work through its internal AI tool USAi, nearly halfway to a self-declared "million hours challenge", and it's done so while shedding 40 percent of its total workforce. Meanwhile, OPM expanded its Tech Force initiative to bring in cybersecurity specialists, a move that signals the administration views technology hiring as essential to its broader modernization push, not peripheral to it.

Infrastructure tells a familiar story: ambition meets the reality of long timelines and sustained investment. Sean Duffy marked the one-year anniversary of the nation’s air traffic control overhaul with progress updates and a fresh $10 billion funding request to Congress—another reminder that transformation at this scale rarely fits within a single budget cycle.

The week ended with a cluster of governance signals worth watching. The Supreme Court hinted it may weigh in on the independence of the Merit Systems Protection Board. Deregulation analysts drew attention to the gap between the administration's claims and its actual regulatory record. And the Space Force found itself in a peculiar bind — budget nearly doubled, civilian workforce cut, now scrambling to hire at record pace. A paradox that may define the agency's near-term challenge as much as any dollar figure.

Step back, and a pattern emerges. Government isn’t easing into the AI era—it’s surging forward. The open question is whether the institutions meant to guide, govern, and sustain that surge can evolve just as quickly.