MeriTalk

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had not located 594 IT assets assigned to former employees as of April 2026, creating risks of data loss and financial loss to the agency, according to an Aug. 24 report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). TIGTA examined the IRS’s management of more than 32,000 IT assets assigned to approximately 22,000 employees who departed the agency from April 2025 through July 2025.

The Marine Corps on Aug. 26 released its fiscal year 2026 Ground Combat Element (GCE) 2040 framework, which lays out priorities for artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, human-machine teaming, and tactical-edge computing as the service modernizes ground combat formations through 2040.

A federal judge on Aug. 27 permanently blocked the Defense Department’s (DOD) “supply-chain risk” designation of Anthropic, delivering a legal victory to the artificial intelligence (AI) company amid an ongoing dispute over military access to its frontier AI models. U.S. District Judge Rita F.

President Donald Trump is drawing a sharp line in federal compensation for 2027, freezing base and locality pay for most civilian employees while directing a 3.8% increase for federal law enforcement personnel. In an Aug. 26 communication to House Speaker Mike Johnson, Trump said federal agency budgets could not sustain the pay increases that otherwise would take effect in January 2027.

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is advising federal agencies to expand the use of artificial intelligence (AI) throughout the hiring process while applying risk controls based on how the technology is used in employment decisions. In an Aug. 27 memorandum, OPM said agencies should use AI to help advance governmentwide goals for better position descriptions and assessments, greater hiring efficiency, and reducing average time-to-hire to 80 days.

Bill “Cassandra” Gates has a warning about AI. And, yes, we should consider it as more than an effort to distract from the Epstein files. The tech prophet bleats AI will transform work, eliminate jobs, and disrupt everything from health care to education. So, what’s the biggee? Think Nepalese flood – America ain’t moving fast enough to prepare for what comes next. That should make Federal IT leaders sit up. The Beltway loves an AI strategy. We have frameworks. Roadmaps. Task forces. Working groups.

Federal missions depend on far more than laptops, servers, and software. Agencies also manage facilities systems, operational technology, Internet of Things devices, laboratory equipment, cameras, radios, sensors, vehicles, supplies, cloud resources, and more. Yet information about agency assets often remains divided across network tools, procurement systems, spreadsheets, warehouse applications, and facilities platforms.

As agentic artificial intelligence (AI) gains traction across the public and private sectors, one line of questioning emerged repeatedly at MeriTalk’s Mission Room today: “Can it? Should it? May it?” For federal agencies experimenting with systems capable of taking action, officials say the focus should be less on the novelty of the technology and more on how – and when – it should be governed.

The Army reassigned its enterprise cloud organization from the Headquarters, Department of the Army Chief Information Officer to U.S. Army Cyber Command (ARCYBER), bringing enterprise cloud management under the command responsible for cyber defense. Army General Order 2026-25, signed Aug. 24 by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, assigns the Enterprise Cloud Management Agency to ARCYBER and renames it the Enterprise Cloud Management Activity (ECMA), according to an Aug. 25 Army announcement.

The Justice Department (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said on Aug. 26 that they seized domains used by two China-linked hacking platforms that targeted multiple federal agencies, the U.S. Senate, and critical infrastructure networks. DOJ said in an Aug. 26 press release that the court-authorized seizures rendered the hacking platforms, known as QScan and QTRouter, inoperable.