Special Reports

  • While technology is embraced nearly everywhere, Congress is still a paper-based institution. Modernizing Congress and improving its relationship with technology will be a difficult task that will require not only technological expertise, but also the willingness to challenge an entrenched, change-resistant institution.

  • Federal News Radio’s special report, Telling a Better Story with Spending Data, highlights the DATA Act and how it will help the government find efficiencies and inform the public on a variety of agency spending.

  • Officers with advanced civilian degrees are getting pushed out of the Army. But they are the very people Defense Secretary Ash Carter wants in the military. Federal News Radio’s special report, The Army is Shortchanging its Future Force, shows that Army’s aging personnel evaluation system may be to blame.

  • The upcoming presidential transition, once complete, will bring nearly 4,000 new political appointees into the federal workforce, but the new presidential administration will need the existing career civil service to get policy off the ground.

  • The Office of Personnel Management experienced some of the biggest changes in the year since hackers stole the data of 22 million current and former federal employees. In our special report, The OPM Breach: What’s different now, Federal News Radio looks at how the cyber attack helped put in motion some of the biggest cybersecurity improvements in the last decade.

  • Burdened by student debt, the youngest federal employees are entering the workforce later than their predecessors. As part of a Federal News Radio special report, What Millennials Really Want from Federal Service, most young employees said they’d prefer to stay in government, as long as they have opportunities to develop their skills, careers and benefits.

  • Thirty percent of the federal workforce is eligible to retire by 2017, but many of those employees don't seem to be in a hurry to leave. Federal News Radio's "In Depth with Francis Rose" radio show examines the federal government's maturity challenges in an exclusive special report, "The Reverse Retirement Wave: Planning for a Workforce That's Aging in Place." What factors impact employee decisions to leave or stay in government? How are agencies preparing to transfer knowledge from today's leaders to those of tomorrow?

  • In June 2015, the Office of Personnel Management announced that the personally identifiable information of at least 4 million current and former federal employees may have been compromised by a data breach at the agency. Federal News Radio covers the breach, what it means for those impacted and what the government is doing to fix the issue.

  • Agencies are not just being asked to freeze the size of their offices, they're now being asked to downsize. In our special report, A New Vision for Federal Buildings, Federal News Radio examines the creative ways agencies across the federal government are saving space and, in some cases, making money off of federal property.

  • The rise of chief data officers across government comes from both an opportunity and a hole in the federal technology construct. Chief information officers focus on infrastructure issues, while chief technology officers focus on IT innovation. The space in-between those two roles is now being occupied by chief data officers. In our two-part special report, Deconstructing the CDO, Federal News Radio talks with agency CIOs, CTOs and DJ Patil, the first-ever White House chief data scientist, about whether there is room for all three.

  • Federal News Radio's four-part special report, Fixing the SES, digs deep within the Senior Executive Service to examine the real problems facing the group from those who know it best - the people who live it every day. View the results of our exclusive survey, which forms the core of our report, and hear the candid responses from SES members about the challenges they face and whether there are any real solutions to those issues.

  • Congress is chewing on recommendations from industry on how the DoD acquisition system could be made better, stronger and faster. It is the latest attempt to tweak the complicated acquisition rubric. The tweaking started 20 years ago with the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act (FASA). Over the next two decades, a host of other laws have tried to streamline, simplify and better manage how agencies buy goods and services. This special report looks back on those laws to gauge their impact, and looks ahead to short- and long-term changes that need to happen to make a difference in 2016.

  • Federal News Radio has been tracking the turnover of CIOs and other senior level IT officials between November 2013 and October 2014. All combined, the 23 total CIOs or senior IT leaders that either left government or changed jobs within government had 96 years of experience and their average tenure was 4.2 years.

  • In our special radio report, Top 3 for 2015, federal experts tell In Depth host Francis Rose what top three concepts, trends or priorities they believe will be important in 2015.