- The top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is ringing alarm bells over waste, fraud and abuse at the Department of Homeland Security. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) wants DHS to provide answers to seven questions regarding how it has spent the $260 billion it received under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the Secure America Act. Peters said recent reporting and the agency's lack of cooperation with its inspector general cast doubt on DHS's management of the funding. Among other things, Peters wants to know how DHS is ensuring accountability and transparency in its spending. -- Jason Miller
- The National Archives and Records Administration has a new chief records officer. Laura Besong took over the role Sunday. Besong will lead NARA’s work with agencies on records management, especially electronic records. She previously worked as assistant director of records and information management at the Justice Department in the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys. In her time at the Justice Department, she also served as a principal advisor to the chief information officer. She has also held information and records management roles at the Education and Labor departments and the Merit Systems Protection Board. -- Stephanie Wright
- The National Institutes of Health is creating a new division to focus on women's health research under the latest executive order from President Donald Trump. NIH has 90 days to determine the appropriate institute or center to house the Women's Health Division. The new division will work with NIH's Office of Research on Women's Health to ensure interagency collaboration and translate research discoveries into clinical practice. The order also establishes the White House Women’s Health Task Force to advise agency heads on pilot programs. The task force includes the Labor and Education departments, the FDA, the CDC, NIH, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The order creates no new funding stream for the division and revokes the Biden administration's guidance on women's health. -- Silvia Oakland
- NASA is looking for a new leader to oversee artificial intelligence. It's seeking a new chief artificial intelligence and data officer. In a job posting issued last week, the space agency said the person will lead the strategy, governance and policy for AI and data. The person also will establish and maintain NASA's data and AI governance frameworks, policies and standards. NASA has been without a permanent CAIO and CDO since October 2025. Kevin Murphy is currently the acting chief AI and data officer. The job application closes on Oct. 29. -- Jason Miller
- New voluntary best practices from the National Institute of Standards and Technology are focused on preventing, preparing for and responding to incidents during artificial intelligence agent training and evaluation. The 10 new best practices are based on cybersecurity incident management and cybersecurity frameworks. NIST divides the best practices across the five stages of incident management: prepare, detect, respond, recover and report. The guidance also includes what future research is needed to manage agentic AI incidents as the technology evolves. -- Silvia Oakland
- The Defense Department said all 30 universities it audited have “fully mitigated” relationships with foreign entities that are considered to be a national security risk. Earlier this year, DoD ordered some private and state universities to audit all foreign collaborations, assess the exposure of sensitive or export-controlled research and implement strict mitigation plans if they want to maintain eligibility for future federal funding. DoD said the audits “resulted in more than 80 termination-related actions across the 30 universities.” The department also signaled it will continue its scrutiny of other universities’ research and financial ties to foreign entities. -- Anastasia Obis
- The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's Office of the Chief Operating Officer is seeking information to modernize the agency's enterprise solutions. In a new request for information, the FDIC is interested in improving interoperability and decision support, streamlining operations and using artificial intelligence. The RFI is focused on collecting information on how the FDIC can redesign human resources functions, facilities management and acquisition life cycle operations. Responses are due Oct. 26. -- Silvia Oakland
- Army Cyber Command is expanding its use of artificial intelligence in cyber operations by building out its agentic workforce to support cyber protection teams while pursuing new capabilities that can autonomously detect and respond to cyber threats. Earlier this year, the command launched Task Force Lexington, which began developing AI agents capable of performing various cyber functions. The task force first created four cyber work roles for AI agents. ARCYBER has since expanded the number of those roles. Lt. Gen. Christopher Eubank, who leads the command, said the task force has built an entire agentic cyber protection team. Some of those roles include analytic support officers, data engineers, network analysts and host analysts. Eubank said strict guardrails limit what agents can do. -- Anastasia Obis
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