Weekly Roundup - March 9-13, 2026

This week's roundup reflects a notably consequential period in federal technology governance. The White House released its long-awaited national cybersecurity strategy, the first of the Trump administration, establishing a six-pillar framework and signaling a more offensive posture in cyberspace. On the AI front, legislative momentum and agency-level action converged — from GSA seeking greater government control over AI tools to CMS deploying AI to combat fraud and DOE unveiling a new supercomputer mission. The OPM's Tech Force initiative continued advancing, and Capitol Hill wrestled with both AI regulation and workforce transformation.

NATIONAL CYBERSECURITY STRATEGY

White House Releases National Cyber Strategy. The White House Office of the National Cyber Director released the Trump administration's long-awaited national cybersecurity strategy, organized around a six-pillar framework designed to strengthen U.S. defenses — including shaping adversary behavior, modernizing federal networks with zero-trust and post-quantum cryptography, and sustaining U.S. superiority in AI and quantum technologies.

Cairncross Highlights Next Steps for National Cyber Strategy. National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross outlined implementation priorities for the new strategy, including sector-focused pilot programs, workforce initiatives, and a whole-of-government effort. He emphasized moving new security technologies into federal deployment faster than has historically been possible.

White House Launching Tech Pilots, 'Cyber Academy' Under New Cyber Strategy. The Office of the National Cyber Director will launch a series of cross-agency technology pilots as well as a nonprofit 'Cyber Academy' linking existing federal workforce programs into a pipeline for a patriotic cyber force — paired with a private-capital-backed accelerator to speed technology from concept to deployment.

EOs Likely to Drive Cyber Strategy Actions. Cybersecurity experts and former officials say the Trump administration's new cyber strategy — brief by design — will gain operational specificity through a companion executive order on cybercrime. Analysts expect ONCD to take a more elevated role in overarching cyber policy than seen under prior administrations.

Industry Officials Praise Trump's Cyber Strategy, but Some Want More Details. Industry stakeholders broadly welcomed the White House's newly released national cyber strategy while also calling for greater specificity on implementation. The strategy's focus on streamlining regulation and modernizing federal networks drew particular praise from private-sector leaders.

GAO: Patchwork of Federal Cyber Rules Burdens Critical Infrastructure. A new GAO report found that federal cybersecurity requirements for critical infrastructure remain fragmented and costly despite years of government coordination efforts, placing significant compliance burdens on industry and highlighting the need for regulatory harmonization.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: POLICY, REGULATION & AGENCY APPLICATION

DOE, Dell Highlight Genesis Mission and Doudna Supercomputer to Speed AI-Driven Science.  Department of Energy and Dell Technologies leaders unveiled the agency's Genesis Mission and the forthcoming Doudna supercomputer as cornerstones of a national effort to accelerate scientific discovery through AI and high-performance computing, positioning federal infrastructure as a key driver of AI-enabled research.

Draft GSA Policy Seeks Broader Government Control Over AI Tools. The General Services Administration is proposing new contract guidelines that would require AI vendors selling services to the federal government to permit agencies to use their models for any lawful government purpose — a significant expansion of government rights in AI procurement.

CMS's Two-Pronged Approach to Crushing Fraud, Waste, and Abuse. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is combining AI-powered contract analysis tools with advanced improper payment detection to drive down fraud and reduce financial waste. CMS officials said an AI contracting tool already in limited use has potentially avoided hundreds of millions in excess costs by benchmarking new contracts against historical spending patterns.

After Deep Staffing Cuts, Agencies Seek Mix of Hiring and AI Tools to Rebuild Capacity  Following the loss of roughly 264,000 net federal positions under the Trump administration, agencies including GSA and EPA are turning to AI tools to optimize remaining workforces. GSA's CFO noted the agency is deploying AI to automate repetitive processes, free staff for higher-value work, and compensate for having 40 percent fewer employees than a year prior.

Bipartisan Senators Seek Data on Potential AI Job Losses. A bipartisan Senate group called on the federal government to significantly expand data collection on AI's impact on the U.S. workforce, arguing that policymakers need better empirical grounding to assess the likelihood of AI-driven labor market disruption before meaningful regulatory action can be taken.

Anthropic Sues Trump Admin Over Supply Chain Risk Designation. AI company Anthropic escalated its dispute with the federal government by filing suit against the Trump administration over its decision to designate the firm a supply chain risk — a classification that has effectively barred its technology from certain federal use. The company argues the designation and resulting ban are unlawful.

Fighting AI-Based Cyberattacks With Preemptive AI-Powered Cyber Deception. Cybersecurity experts discussed how AI-powered deception technology offers federal agencies a preemptive defense advantage against increasingly sophisticated AI-driven threats — producing high-fidelity alerts, reducing security operations center fatigue, and strengthening zero trust by improving visibility into attacker behavior.

State CIOs Have a New Top Priority in 2026. For the first time, artificial intelligence has risen to the top of state CIOs' annual priority list, displacing long-standing concerns about cybersecurity and modernization. NASCIO found that nearly 90 percent of states have created AI task forces, with leaders now focused on moving pilots into production and building enterprise governance frameworks.

QUANTUM COMPUTING

Lawmakers Reintroduce Bill to Expand Quantum Research Under NQI. A bipartisan pair of representatives reintroduced the Quantum in Practice Act, which would expand the National Quantum Initiative to include quantum molecular simulations and modeling. Sponsors said the legislation could unlock breakthroughs in agricultural science, energy storage, pharmaceuticals, and advanced materials manufacturing.

AGENCY INNOVATION & DIGITAL MODERNIZATION

Pentagon Names Former DOGE Official New CDO. The Department appointed Gavin Kliger, a former Department of Government Efficiency staff member, as the Pentagon's new Chief Data Officer — placing him at the center of the department's expanding AI initiatives and its broader effort to harness data as a strategic asset across the enterprise.

VA Deploys External Provider Scheduling System Across All Facilities. The Department of Veterans Affairs announced full nationwide deployment of its External Provider Scheduling system across all VA medical facilities, a milestone the agency said will speed up the scheduling process for veterans receiving community care and reduce administrative burden for both patients and providers.

DHA Rolls Out Data Strategy to Boost Medical Readiness, Interoperability. Defense Health Agency launched a new enterprise data strategy designed to improve decision-making speed and medical readiness across military health operations. The strategy focuses on turning agency data into an actionable asset, with interoperability across military medical systems as a central goal.

Military Advances Multi-Cloud Strategies. Military officials highlighted new advances in cloud management and plans to expand multi-cloud environments, emphasizing collaboration with commercial technology providers to support military operations. The developments reflect the armed services' continued pivot toward flexible, resilient cloud architectures.

DOT Launches Pilot Program for 'Flying Cars' Across 26 States. The Department of Transportation announced eight pilot projects to test advanced air mobility aircraft — colloquially known as flying cars — across 26 states, signaling a significant expansion of federal engagement with next-generation transportation infrastructure and its regulatory framework.

Pentagon, FAA Tested Advanced Counter-Drone Laser. The Pentagon's joint counter-drone task force and the FAA jointly conducted a high-energy laser test aimed at advancing safe counter-UAS capabilities within U.S. airspace — part of a broader effort to develop scalable, legally compliant tools to address the growing threat from unmanned aerial systems.

WORKFORCE & TALENT MANAGEMENT

OPM Releases First Round of Tech Force Candidates for Agencies to Consider Hiring. The Office of Personnel Management released its first shared certificate pool of Tech Force candidates — tech professionals with backgrounds in AI, software engineering, and data science — making them available to federal agencies for early-career hiring. The program targets 1,000 hires by end of March, with the VA already among the more active recruiters.

DOJ Opinion Clears Path for Tech Talent in Federal Service. A new Department of Justice legal opinion determined that private-sector technology professionals who retain financial stakes in their companies — including restricted stock units — may still serve in federal government roles under the Tech Force initiative, clearing a significant obstacle to recruiting top talent from the private sector.

LEADERSHIP  

Has AI Ended Thought Leadership? A thought leader tells you that AI will transform your workforce. A thought doer builds a pilot with your team in 10 days, figures out what breaks, and iterates. A thought leader publishes a framework for open-talent adoption. A thought doer restructures a business unit around a platform-based model and reports back on what happened—the ugly parts included. If that sounds like consulting, here’s the difference: A consultant delivers recommendations and then exits. A thought doer stays through the build, shares accountability for the outcome, and has skin in the game when things go sideways—which they always do.

How to Turn Individual Talent into Organizational Excellence.  Sustained organizational performance comes from systems that amplify the right things, not individual brilliance. Yes, hiring and rewards matter for performance, but leaders who want sustained elite performance should ask different questions about talent: 1) What is our system teaching people every day? 2) Where standards are enforced socially? and 3) Which routines actually shape learning, behavior, and performance? Leaders who treat excellence as a design problem focus less on motivation and more on the conditions that shape behavior every day. They create leverage by shaping how talent, teams, and routines work together.

Developing Employees Who Thrive Through Continuous Change.  Leaders must build systems that turn continuous transformation into something employees help shape, not simply endure. by Rachel DuRose. Research from Gartner suggests that the average employee experienced 10 organization-wide strategy shifts in 2022 (a sharp increase from the reported two changes in 2016). Yet, employee willingness to support these changes plummeted from 74% in 2016 to just 43%.

What Authentic Leadership Looks Like Under Pressure. Mission-driven leaders face overlapping economic, political, technological, and social pressures that turn routine decisions into public tests of values and integrity. Research surfaced four patterns shaping how they navigate instability, trade-offs, trust, and emotional strain. Their responses offer lessons for any leader seeking authenticity under pressure: communicate clearly about what is known and unknown, make explicit trade-offs anchored in core values, and reduce burnout by sharing responsibility, modeling boundaries, and building team-wide resilience.

THIS WEEK @ THE CENTER 

RECENT BLOGS

Deploying Talent at Speed and Scale: Reforming Federal Hiring and Improving the Workforce’s Capacity to Drive Outcomes by Dan Chenok.  Blog Co-Author: Sara Sayyar. As agencies navigate shifting priorities amidst rapid technological change, their ability to attract and retain high-quality talent is essential to their mission of delivering for the American people. In a recent panel with the Niskanen Center and the Partnership for Public Service, the IBM Center for The Business of Government examined human capital hiring and management activities that advance mission-critical work in federal agencies. The discussion focused primarily on practical improvements that could be implemented without new legislation. Current and former leaders from government, academia, non-profit leaders, and corporate executives convened on this issue to create an actionable path forward.

Building Resilient Federal Supply Chains: Advancing Visibility, Efficiency, and Modernization by Dan Chenok. Blog Co-Author: Camille Johnson, The IBM Center convened the Building Resilient Federal Supply Chains: Advancing Visibility, Efficiency and Modernization roundtable on February 5, 2026, bringing together leaders from government, industry, and the global community to examine how federal supply chains can be modernized to withstand continuous and unpredictable shocks.

ICYMI – This week Michael J. Keegan outlines critical insights on leadership, disruption, and transformation. He brings together two remarkable thought leaders who offer strategies on how to navigate uncertainty, embrace change, and drive transformation in an era where disruption is accelerating.