U.S. service members transitioning out of the military will now be able to access ChatGPT Plus for a year under a new offer from OpenAI that’s aimed at helping them with their job hunt. The new offer, announced Monday ahead of Veterans Day, is available to service members who are within 12 months of separation or retirement, and any veteran within their first year of leaving service. Katrina Mulligan, OpenAI for Government’s head of national security partnerships, said on a call with reporters ahead of the announcement. “We know that nearly 70% of veterans say finding employment is their biggest challenge, and we want to make that transition a little bit easier by providing support that’s available anytime.” Mulligan said the idea for the offer started with OpenAI’s own veteran employees who used the platform for their own career navigation. “They urged us to make these tools available to others going through the same experience, and we were really glad to support it,” she said.Through the new offer, eligible service members and veterans are able to access ChatGPT Plus — which is typically a $20 per month subscription, and boasts faster response time as well as priority access to new features — as well as some personalized content for veterans. That includes a “getting started” video targeted toward veterans, and over 100 example chats that Mulligan said were developed by veterans based on real tasks during a transition. The offer is not a direct partnership with the U.S. government via the Department of Veterans Affairs or Department of Defense — which the Trump administration calls the Department of War — but such collaboration isn’t out of the question.
The Department of Energy officially installed Dawn Zimmer as its chief information officer Friday, putting a pause — for now — on the revolving door at the agency’s IT leadership office. According to an internal email obtained by FedScoop, Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced that Zimmer had been named Energy’s permanent CIO. Her appointment comes after the installation — and subsequent departures — of two other permanent CIOs during the Trump administration. Zimmer joined Energy in 2024 as principal deputy CIO and has been serving as the acting IT chief between the appointments of permanent officials throughout this year. She was acting CIO before SpaceX engineer Ryan Riedel was named to the role and briefly took over in an acting capacity again when he left after one month. Days later, Google and Twitter alum Ross Graber was named CIO, but he left after less than two months in the role. That has left the agency without a permanent official since the end of April. Wright said in the email that “Dawn will continue her stellar oversight of the Department’s information technology and cybersecurity initiatives, ensuring that our systems are secure, efficient, and innovative.”
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U.S. service members transitioning out of the military will now be able to access ChatGPT Plus for a year under a new offer from OpenAI that’s aimed at helping them with their job hunt. The new offer, announced Monday ahead of Veterans Day, is available to service members who are within 12 months of separation or retirement, and any veteran within their first year of leaving service. Katrina Mulligan, OpenAI for Government’s head of national security partnerships, said on a call with reporters ahead of the announcement. “We know that nearly 70% of veterans say finding employment is their biggest challenge, and we want to make that transition a little bit easier by providing support that’s available anytime.” Mulligan said the idea for the offer started with OpenAI’s own veteran employees who used the platform for their own career navigation. “They urged us to make these tools available to others going through the same experience, and we were really glad to support it,” she said.Through the new offer, eligible service members and veterans are able to access ChatGPT Plus — which is typically a $20 per month subscription, and boasts faster response time as well as priority access to new features — as well as some personalized content for veterans. That includes a “getting started” video targeted toward veterans, and over 100 example chats that Mulligan said were developed by veterans based on real tasks during a transition. The offer is not a direct partnership with the U.S. government via the Department of Veterans Affairs or Department of Defense — which the Trump administration calls the Department of War — but such collaboration isn’t out of the question.
The Department of Energy officially installed Dawn Zimmer as its chief information officer Friday, putting a pause — for now — on the revolving door at the agency’s IT leadership office. According to an internal email obtained by FedScoop, Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced that Zimmer had been named Energy’s permanent CIO. Her appointment comes after the installation — and subsequent departures — of two other permanent CIOs during the Trump administration. Zimmer joined Energy in 2024 as principal deputy CIO and has been serving as the acting IT chief between the appointments of permanent officials throughout this year. She was acting CIO before SpaceX engineer Ryan Riedel was named to the role and briefly took over in an acting capacity again when he left after one month. Days later, Google and Twitter alum Ross Graber was named CIO, but he left after less than two months in the role. That has left the agency without a permanent official since the end of April. Wright said in the email that “Dawn will continue her stellar oversight of the Department’s information technology and cybersecurity initiatives, ensuring that our systems are secure, efficient, and innovative.”
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DOD cuts mandatory cybersecurity training; Federal judiciary touts cyber work after major breach
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4 minutes 47 seconds
1 month ago
DOD cuts mandatory cybersecurity training; Federal judiciary touts cyber work after major breach
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a new edict last week to reduce the time personnel spend on cybersecurity training, among other reforms. The directive came in a Sept. 30 memo to senior Pentagon leadership and DOD agency and field activity directors, ordering the military departments, in coordination with the Pentagon’s chief information officer, to “Relax the mandatory frequency for Cybersecurity training.” Hegseth also called for narrowly tailoring records management training to service member roles and allowing flexibility in training delivery, as well as automating information management systems to eliminate training requirements. Additionally, Hegseth directed the military departments and other Pentagon leaders to “relax” the mandatory frequency for controlled unclassified information (CUI) training; remove Privacy Act Training from the Common Military Training (CMT) list; eliminate the mandatory frequency for “Combating Trafficking in Persons” refresher training after appropriate legislation is enacted; consolidate mandatory training topics, “as appropriate”; and develop an integrated CMT program plan. The changes are to be “implemented expeditiously,” per Hegseth’s directive.
Federal courts are upgrading their cybersecurity on a number of fronts, but multifactor authentication for the system that gives the public access to court data poses “unique challenges,” the Administrative Office of the United States Courts told Sen. Ron Wyden in a letter last week. Wyden, D-Ore., wrote a scathing August letter to the Supreme Court in response to the latest major breach of the federal judiciary’s electronic case filing system. The director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts responded on behalf of the Supreme Court. It is “simply not the case” that the courts have, in the words of Wyden, “ignored” advice from experts on securing the Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) system, wrote Robert Conrad Jr., director of the office. Conrad wrote in the Sept. 30 letter: “Substantial planning for the modernization effort began in 2022, and we are now approaching the development and implementation phase of the project. We expect implementation will begin in the next two years in a modular and iterative manner.” In recent years, the office has been testing technical components on its modernization effort, and is centralizing the operation of data standards to enable security, Conrad said.
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If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.
The Daily Scoop Podcast
U.S. service members transitioning out of the military will now be able to access ChatGPT Plus for a year under a new offer from OpenAI that’s aimed at helping them with their job hunt. The new offer, announced Monday ahead of Veterans Day, is available to service members who are within 12 months of separation or retirement, and any veteran within their first year of leaving service. Katrina Mulligan, OpenAI for Government’s head of national security partnerships, said on a call with reporters ahead of the announcement. “We know that nearly 70% of veterans say finding employment is their biggest challenge, and we want to make that transition a little bit easier by providing support that’s available anytime.” Mulligan said the idea for the offer started with OpenAI’s own veteran employees who used the platform for their own career navigation. “They urged us to make these tools available to others going through the same experience, and we were really glad to support it,” she said.Through the new offer, eligible service members and veterans are able to access ChatGPT Plus — which is typically a $20 per month subscription, and boasts faster response time as well as priority access to new features — as well as some personalized content for veterans. That includes a “getting started” video targeted toward veterans, and over 100 example chats that Mulligan said were developed by veterans based on real tasks during a transition. The offer is not a direct partnership with the U.S. government via the Department of Veterans Affairs or Department of Defense — which the Trump administration calls the Department of War — but such collaboration isn’t out of the question.
The Department of Energy officially installed Dawn Zimmer as its chief information officer Friday, putting a pause — for now — on the revolving door at the agency’s IT leadership office. According to an internal email obtained by FedScoop, Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced that Zimmer had been named Energy’s permanent CIO. Her appointment comes after the installation — and subsequent departures — of two other permanent CIOs during the Trump administration. Zimmer joined Energy in 2024 as principal deputy CIO and has been serving as the acting IT chief between the appointments of permanent officials throughout this year. She was acting CIO before SpaceX engineer Ryan Riedel was named to the role and briefly took over in an acting capacity again when he left after one month. Days later, Google and Twitter alum Ross Graber was named CIO, but he left after less than two months in the role. That has left the agency without a permanent official since the end of April. Wright said in the email that “Dawn will continue her stellar oversight of the Department’s information technology and cybersecurity initiatives, ensuring that our systems are secure, efficient, and innovative.”
The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon.
If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.
