The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton

From bartender to elevator mechanic and meat cutter to wood worker, more than 100 federal job titles are about to be swept into broader workforce categories. The Office of Personnel Management is undertaking a new effort to trim down the 600-plus federal job series that exist across government. This first round of consolidation will impact about 5,000 federal employees. Here with more, Federal News Network’s Drew Friedman.
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Top Treasury officials are telling Congress that the IRS pulled off a remarkable feat, carrying out a busier-than-usual filing season with a much smaller workforce. But the Trump administration is still pursuing further workforce and budget cuts for the IRS next year. Officials overseeing the IRS say the agency’s long-anticipated investments in technology are paying off and its adoption of artificial intelligence and automation tools means the agency can do more with less. Federal News Network’s Jory Heckman joins us with more.
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Economic indicators are meant to bring clarity to decision‑making across government and the economy. But the systems that produce those numbers are operating under growing strain, from volatility to skepticism to capacity limits. A new cross‑institution effort aims to strengthen how federal data are produced and protected over time. We’ll discuss that work with John Sabelhaus, Senior Fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution.
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GAO has flagged fraud risks in federally funded, state‑administered programs for years, from weak data sharing to inconsistent controls. Many of those vulnerabilities persist, not because agencies lack awareness, but because of how responsibility, capacity, and oversight are structured. We’ll talk about what prevents known risks from turning into management change with Seto Bagdoyan, director of forensic audits and investigative service at the Government Accountability Office.
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An analysis from USAFacts finds that many of the government’s most important public datasets are no longer being updated or maintained as expected. The findings underscore how staffing, continuity and organizational attention shape whether federal data remains usable at all. Here to break down what’s changing and why is Richard Coffin, chief of research and advocacy at USAFacts.
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