Mangala Kuppa, who took over as DOL’s chief AI officer this week after previously serving as its deputy CAIO, believes the agency has even more to be confident about when it comes to its work on the technology, possessing a “leg up” on scaling AI quickly.

In an interview with FedScoop, Kuppa pointed to DOL’s previous efforts to modernize internal operations and customer-facing services as part of the department’s journey to implement emerging technologies like AI. Having foundational building blocks and existing infrastructure, along with existing AI applications, has made it “easier” for the agency to scale up, she said. 

“It’s not a ‘big bang’ approach,” said Kuppa, who also serves as DOL’s chief technology officer. “Another aspect that we take very seriously in modernizing is [to] take this opportunity to not just update the technology, but also take this opportunity to re-engineer the business process to help the public.” 

Kuppa pointed to an internal shared services initiative that designated the agency’s Office of the Chief Information Officer to be a “shared services provider for all Departmental IT services.”  That process, Kuppa said, has allowed the department to keep an inventory of all systems and technologies and understand where the legacy systems or opportunities for improvement might exist.

“Using that methodology, we’ve been looking at all high-risk systems, because maybe the technology is very legacy and outdated,” Kuppa said. “We’ve been using that methodology to start those modernization initiatives.”

By considering the age of the technology, the operations burden, security vulnerabilities, regulation compliance and other parameters, DOL came up with a methodology that scores each mission system to determine if it is a candidate for modernization. The agency then looks at the scores on a consistent basis and revises based on new information that becomes available.

These systems can be major: the DOL’s Employment and Training Administration, for example, which provides labor certifications when a company files for hiring an immigrant workforce, was scored for modernization.

“Being an immigrant, I wasn’t aware DOL had a hand in my immigration journey there,” Kuppa said. 

The Technology Modernization Fund has played an “instrumental” role in the department “finding the resources to modernize,” Kuppa said.

She gave the example of using TMF funds to expedite temporary visa applications, which is expected to save 45 days of cycle time for processing labor certification applications.

According to a case study on the TMF site, that project contributed to $1.9 million in annual cost savings, and a key part of the innovation allowed the application forms to auto-populate with the previous year’s information.

“Usually all immigrants eventually start filing for permanent visa applications,” Kuppa said. “Again, you have to repeat the process of labor certification, and so we had two different systems not communicating with each other.”

For Kuppa, modernization is ultimately an exercise in reimagining where new technologies can ultimately be most helpful.

“We have great partnership, we work very closely with our programs and then we have these dialogues every day, in terms of the system’s development lifecycle,” she said. “And that’s how we approach modernization.”

The post Labor Department has ‘a leg up’ on artificial intelligence, new CAIO says appeared first on FedScoop.

Macgillivray, who led the White House’s push on the need for algorithmic transparency, joined the Biden administration in December 2021 after previously serving as deputy federal chief technology officer during the Obama administration.

Following his departure, Deirdre Mulligan takes the role of U.S. deputy chief technology officer, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Mulligan is a professor in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, and is on leave from the institution while serving in the White House. In February she was installed as U.S. deputy chief technology officer for policy, and has also worked as principal adviser to the National AI Initiative Office.

Macgillivray, who led the White House’s push on the need for algorithmic transparency, joined the Biden administration in December 2021 after previously serving as deputy federal chief technology during the Obama administration. 

Before working in government, he held private sector roles as deputy general counsel at Google and general counsel at Twitter. It’s unclear where Macgillivray will work after leaving the White House.

“I am thankful for the support of WHOSTP Director Arati Prabhakar and am excited to see all the great work to come from the phenomenal Tech Division,” Macgillivray wrote on Twitter on Thursday afternoon.

“It was a huge privilege to get to work here again as part of the Biden Administration. I am extremely grateful and more than a little sad that my time is up,” he added.

Macgillivray during a speech on tech policy at the State of the Net Conference in March of this year highlighted three key goals of the Biden administration, which included improving federal privacy protections for Americans’ personal information and closing digital infrastructure gaps.

The OSTP, which Macgillivray is leaving, was established by Congress in 1976 and has a wide mandate to advise the president on the effects of science and technology on domestic and international affairs.

Details of Deirdre Mulligan’s new appointment were first reported by Axios Pro.

The post U.S. Principal Deputy CTO Alexander Macgillivray departs appeared first on FedScoop.

The chair of the full committee said NASA‘s infrastructure needs include one of the nation’s most powerful supercomputers, utility and access systems across nine centers and other research and test facilities, wind tunnels for developing subsonic and hypersonic aircraft, and clean rooms and vacuum chambers for building sensitive interplanetary spacecraft.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has previously said the agency’s full list of infrastructure needs is more than $5.4 billion, which includes $2.6 billion in deferred maintenance — roughly 7% of its $39 billion asset value.

“NASA’s infrastructure represents the single, greatest threat to mission success,” said Robert Gibbs, associate administrator for NASA’s Mission Support Directorate. “Practically 82% of our facilities are beyond their designed life.”

Annual maintenance requirements increase every year and exceed NASA’s resources, which will begin jeopardizing efforts to return to the moon, establish a permanent lunar base and reach Mars, understand the impacts of climate change, and make engineering breakthroughs in the “near future,” Gibbs added.

Many of NASA’s buildings and laboratories date back to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and Mercury, Gemini and Apollo projects, and Artemis Program investments are needed to maintain technical capabilities.

In addition to the hypersonic tunnel at Langley Research Center with high-speed air travel implications, NASA wants increased funding for its new robotics lab within the Jet Propulsion Laboratory benefitting Mars exploration and its recently opened Health and Human Performance Laboratory at Johnson Space Center studying the impacts of space travel.

JSC also runs NASA’s space sample return program, which hasn’t yet sited a new facility for processing samples returned from Mars. Missions like that are consistently prioritized over NASA’s deferred maintenance backlog across 5,000-plus buildings and structures.

“The reality is I’ve had to delay, defer, descope 47 [construction] projects over the last two budget cycles because I just didn’t have the resources,” Gibbs said.

The House Science Committee hadn’t examined NASA’s infrastructure since 2013, when the deferred maintenance backlog was $2.1 billion, and the agency received less funding than it’s requested 10 out of the last 12 budget cycles.

Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, said NASA’s infrastructure funding request needs to be formalized, rather than remaining an “off-budget wishlist.”

NASA’s fiscal 2022 request represents a $6.3% increase on last year with an additional $3 billion for safety, security and mission services that include maintenance and operations. But the agency’s request for construction, environmental compliance and remediation represents a 9% reduction.

“If NASA’s facilities and infrastructure are in need, they should be appropriately prioritized in the agency’s budget request,” Babin said.

Riggs said mission, safety and health remained higher priorities in the budgeting process, but there’s an opportunity to invest in state-of-the-art facilities and demolition of outdated ones to shrink NASA’s footprint.

Exactly how lawmakers plan to approach the problem remains up in the air.

“While the path forward in Congress might not yet be totally clear, my commitment to addressing our R&D infrastructure needs is steadfast,” Johnson said. “Science, research and innovation are our future.”

The post Aging infrastructure the ‘single, greatest threat’ to NASA missions and technology appeared first on FedScoop.

Walter Maikish, VP, Federal Civilian Business, Cisco and Zain Ahmed, Regional VP, Federal Business, Lumen

The pandemic and almost overnight massive shift to telework forced federal agencies and IT leaders to make their digital services more accessible to their employees and constituents. They rallied, met their mission and discovered that the need to modernize their IT infrastructure and get the most from cloud-based solutions had become more important than ever before.

Fortunately, the General Services Administration’s Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract gives agencies a once-in-a-generation opportunity to modernize as they see fit. EIS and the Alliant 2 Government Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) provide not only a path to migrate away from aging telecommunication systems to today’s technologies, but also paved the way for building a more modern, flexible and cost-effective IT and communications environment overall.

However, some agencies are still missing a critical opportunity to capitalize on EIS’s potential.

It’s probably not surprising that the demands of the pandemic delayed the work of agencies moving their IT services to EIS. But we didn’t expect to see so many requests for proposals (RFP) focused on replacing “like-for-like” IT infrastructure instead of seeking a more holistic review of their infrastructure centered on improved efficiency and effectiveness. As a result, many of these RFPs left little room to consult with industry providers on all the technology options that are available in the market, what these technologies can now do today and how they can lower overall costs.

What these RFPs also tend to miss is an even bigger opportunity to envision IT infrastructure from an outcomes-based perspective focused on big picture modernization strategies. At the end of the day, the goal is to bring greater agility, efficiency, security and long-term cost savings to agencies’ ability to meet their mission.

Focusing on outcomes rather than technology

We are seeing some great examples of agencies seeking to really modernize their IT infrastructure at agencies such as Veterans Affairs and the U.S. Geological Survey, for example.

When a large, cabinet-level agency decided to update their IT infrastructure, for instance, they prioritized objectives in their RFP that outlined outcomes for their mission, rather than prescribing specific hardware or technologies to acquire.

That holistic approach created an opening for Cisco and Lumen to bring our combined expertise to the table and reimagine the large, cabinet-level agency’s network in a way that brings significantly more value to how they work than would have been possible with a like-for-like update of the older telecommunications systems acquired under the previous Networx contract.

Using the outcomes-based approach, we were able to propose an SD-WAN roadmap that provides more robust automation, network orchestration and secure capabilities than most existing networks. These modern solutions can help ensure that applications perform faster and make digital interactions more secure, especially with data being stored at the edge of the network for quicker access in places such as national parks. And even though this large, cabinet-level agency operates in many remote locations, our solution provided substantial network upgrades to those locations and to their users and visitors who previously didn’t have access to reliable internet access.

The Department of Veterans Affairs, similarly, took a more forward-looking approach to modernizing its infrastructure and broadband capacity, and as a result, was able to dramatically scale up its use of tele-health services for the benefit of veterans as well as its medical teams.

The promise of outcomes-driven RFPs

As agency leaders consider the rapid evolution of technology, it’s easier than ever before to see additional benefits arising from an outcome-driven approach.

For example, when an industry partner promises to deliver on mission outcomes, rather than simply deliver a requested technology platform, the agency benefits from being able to transfer a certain amount of risk to their partner. That in turn incentivizes that partner to recommend technologies that are in the agency’s best interest long term.

It’s from that perspective that we recommend agency leaders consider re-evaluating how they frame their RFPs, starting with:

• Consider how infrastructure serves the mission: IT infrastructure is no longer a back-end function of service delivery. Rather, it is the backbone and serves as the nervous system for how agencies meet their mission goals. Leaders need to frame RFPs to focus on outcomes from a mission perspective and then work backwards in defining their IT needs. And leaders would be better served if they didn’t focus so much on their old assets or history.
• Think about the roadmap to get there: Rather than be prescriptive — which is how many RFPs tend to be written — agencies should think about specific mission outcomes to achieve and define what success looks like in serving their agency’s end users and bureaus.
• Choose a partner who is in it for the long run: An industry partner shouldn’t just continue to build and add more things. Rather choose one which is committed to your agency’s mission outcomes and that can advise your management team about new IT capabilities coming into the market that can improve mission results.

And finally, it is important to remember that RFPs are just one milestone in an ongoing IT modernization journey. So don’t stop there. Keep your foot on the accelerator in modernizing your IT infrastructure and look for ways to support continual improvements that serve the agency, serve the citizen and serve stakeholders.

Learn more about what your agency needs to get up to speed on EIS, Alliant 2 and other contract vehicles that enable IT modernization and how Lumen and Cisco can help you get there.

The post Using outcomes-based RFPs to modernize IT infrastructure faster appeared first on FedScoop.

The request for sources is the first step in what appears to be a plan for the Coast Guard to contract with the private sector on IT infrastructure transformation. The idea is to shift IT services to an “Infrastructure Managed Services” model, one that would contract out infrastructure services to private companies to assist in cybersecurity and network optimization. The move spawned from the Coast Guard’s fiscal 2018-22 Strategic Plan, which calls for greater cyber strength and efficient IT infrastructure.

“The security environment is also affected by the rising importance of the cyber domain – where adversarial nation states, non-state actors, and individuals are attacking our digital infrastructure and eroding the protections historically provided by our geographic borders,” the strategic plan states.

The challenge to secure and re-structure the Coast Guard’s networks and IT infrastructure span global operations, different security classifications and many data centers, according to the request. The networks support more than 54,000 users worldwide at 823 global sites. The current networks are based on a slew of Microsoft operating systems, some more than a decade old.

The Coast Guard has been watching the development of Department of Defense’s JEDI cloud contract, Adm. Karl Schultz said in August. Now, the Coast Guard hopes to migrate some of its data to the cloud while keeping some of it on the government servers it operates.

“USCG recognizes it must partner with Industry” the request states.

The post Coast Guard needs help with IT infrastructure, cloud consolidation appeared first on FedScoop.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration reviewed the agency’s criminal investigation data centers beginning in May 2017 as part of an ongoing review of its Active Directory Technical Advisory Board — the governing body tasked with overseeing the IRS’s IT architecture.

Since the IRS uses Microsoft Windows’ Active Directory (AD) domain service to manage several IT tasks like “authentication, authorization and directory technologies to create enterprise security boundaries,” any office seeking to make IT architecture changes is required to seek the ADTAB’s approval before applying them.

But TIGTA investigators found that ADTAB members were unaware of how many active AD implementations, or forests, exist within the IRS and could supply no agencywide documentation of them.

One of those active forests was the criminal investigations domain. TIGTA said that criminal investigation staff updated the forest software from Microsoft Windows Server 2008 to the 2012 version in April 2017 but could find no evidence that ADTAB was notified of the change. Another domain forest was upgraded twice over the course of three years with no input from ADTAB.

The report blasted ADTAB’s lack of oversight, saying that it runs the risk of IRS systems not being compliant with federal and agency IT policies.

“Based on the results of our review, the ADTAB did not meet the basic requirements of its charter. The ADTAB does not provide adequate governance or oversight of the IRS AD architecture,” the report said. “As a result, the IRS cannot ensure that sensitive taxpayer information and taxpayer dollars are preserved and protected. When IRS operations run securely and efficiency, it helps maintain taxpayer confidence, which is critical for the IRS to perform its mission.”

TIGTA officials also found the physical security controls around criminal investigation servers in eight IRS field offices lacking in multiple areas, including properly designating the server rooms as “Limited Areas” or assigning Personal Identity Verification cards with an “R” indicator required for personnel with server room access.

At six of the criminal investigation server sites, no approved access lists existed. At one of the sites that did have an approved list, TIGTA investigators said it was outdated. The server rooms also didn’t have the required two-factor authentication controls implemented in any of the eight field offices.

Finally, investigators found that the domain controller servers used to test the security authentications within the criminal investigation domain had failed in two separate tests run by TIGTA officials. IRS officials were aware of the failing authentication grades, but the report said that cybersecurity staff offered no guidance on how to remediate them.

TIGTA offered 10 recommendations addressing ADTAB’s role as well as the security surrounding the CI servers. IRS officials agreed with all recommendations and detailed its efforts to apply them.

The post IRS body lacks oversight over its IT architecture, IG says appeared first on FedScoop.

The agency issued two draft requests for proposals centered on its Enterprise Information Technology Shared Services contract, which seeks contractor personnel and services to work across its Office of Information Technology Shared Services.

The ITSS office maintains common IT infrastructures that operate enterprisewide across the department, with the exception of the Federal Aviation Administration. The EITSS contract seeks private sector support to help maintain those IT offerings with end-to-end lifecycle support for network devices, infrastructure engineering and operations and a host of other services.

The contract has a two-year base period and five one-year options that begin on Oct. 1 and run until the end of fiscal 2026.

One of the draft RFPs addresses the infrastructure needs of the EITSS contract, while the second outlines the program management needs.

The Department of Transportation has been pursuing its modernization strategy under CIO Vicki Hildebrand with funds culled from internal savings and some operations consolidations.

Hildebrand said in May that DOT would seek to deploy modernization strategies similar to the Centers of Excellence that the General Services Administration is leading to update IT operations at the Department of Agriculture.

Following questions from industry, DOT officials provided more insights into the agency’s expectations for pricing, performance and other elements of the proposed contract on Monday. Industry stakeholders have until noon EST on July 9 to respond to the draft RFPs.

The post DOT engages industry on draft shared services IT requests appeared first on FedScoop.

Federal CIOs face growing pressures to modernize their IT operations. Yet, rapid changes in technology and cloud-based services make it especially challenging for agencies to develop a viable IT modernization roadmap.

Federal CIOs aren’t alone, says Kyle Leciejewiski, who leads data storage solutions throughout the America’s for Dell EMC.

Dell Technologies recently interviewed about 1,000 CIO’s globally and 48 percent responded that they were unsure of what their industry might look like in three years. Although 95 percent of companies surveyed were somewhere on the road to digital transformation, the 5 percent that had actually transformed through IT modernization had significantly out-performed the rest, Leciejewski says in a FedScoop podcast.

Leciejewski advises CIOs to take a fresh, comprehensive assessment of their IT capabilities, as well as their organization’s driving needs, to develop an effective roadmap for IT modernization. Depending on an agency’s mission, culture and budget, a CIO can better gauge what kind of IT transformation they are ready for — either slower-paced “evolutionary modernization,” or faster-paced “revolutionary modernization.”

Organizations usually look to transform their IT as a way to lower costs, attract new customers or gain competitive advantage. And there are a number of core areas CIOs should look at, including new capabilities in all-flash and solid-state storage, and technologies that can easily scale-out and back as needed. Agencies also need to plan for software-defined and API-enabled infrastructure solutions that make it possible to automate and deliver IT services more smoothly and connect to a multi-cloud world. These capabilities can largely be described as “modern architecture” pillars.

Leciejewski describes how organizations can “take these modern architectures, and package them in to modern infrastructures which then creates the foundation of the modern data center”.

Modern infrastructures are manifesting themselves as converged or hyper-converged platforms.

But laying the right foundation for transformational IT depends on working with partners that have the ability to integrate servers, networks and storage to help organizations move quickly and securely, he says. “Having a portfolio [of solutions with market leading capabilities allows us to] do the strategy before execution and is a big differentiator that Dell Technologies brings to the transformation table,” explains Leciejewski.

 Find out more on how agencies can realize big dividends in data management, IT security and workforce productivity, or learn more from other federal Digital Transformation Heroes.

This article and podcast were produced by FedScoop and underwritten by Dell EMC.

The post Digital transformation depends on ‘future-proof’ IT modernization plans appeared first on FedScoop.

The chairman of the Senate Republican High-Tech Task Force laid out goals that include commitments to ensuring the federal IT infrastructure is secure against cyberattacks; support for innovative transportation technologies; and plans for working on issues such as copyright modernization, patent reform and encryption.

In a speech on Capitol Hill Thursday, the Utah senator also urged the tech community to let him serve as its contact to President Donald Trump.

“As one of the earliest senators to endorse President Trump, I can serve as a bridge between the president and the tech community,” he said in remarks as prepared for delivery. “I spent nearly an hour in the Oval Office with him last month. Help me help you work with the president to accomplish our shared goals.”

In his “Innovation Agenda for the 115th Congress” Hatch includes a commitment to “ensure that the federal government’s IT infrastructure is up to-date and adequately equipped to guard against cyber and other attacks.”

The veteran senator has the ear of his colleagues not only the task force, but as chairman of the powerful Finance Committee and as a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over privacy issues, cybercrime and other tech topics.

Hatch’s speech on Thursday only touched on some of the issues in his agenda, and didn’t include much about securing federal IT infrastructure. His tech agenda for the previous Congress, announced in 2014, had more to say about improving cybersecurity by facilitating information sharing between industry and government, and by building a skilled cyber workforce.

In his new agenda unveiled Thursday, Hatch also mentions supporting the development of Internet of Things technology, and coordinating the responsible deployment of autonomous vehicles and unmanned systems such as drones.

“I mention these topics in tandem because they present a similar challenge: How do we create a sound regulatory framework that adequately protects safety and privacy without stifling the tremendous advances we’re seeing?” Hatch said Thursday, noting “there’s no simple path forward on these issues.”

Hatch also asked for feedback on issues around innovative transportation.

In concluding his speech, Hatch reiterated his pitch to help the tech industry.

“I think the President trusts me,” he said in his prepared remarks. “And I can help impress upon him the importance of the issues I’ve been discussing with you.”

The post Nods to IT infrastructure, innovative transportation are on GOP senator’s tech agenda appeared first on FedScoop.

In an effort to prepare the agency for an inevitable post-war drawdown of resources, Stephen Warren, VA’s chief information officer, is overseeing a concerted effort to modernize infrastructure and streamline contracting and acquisition processes to squeeze new efficiencies out of every dollar spent on technology. It is an endeavor that will touch almost every aspect of VA’s $243 million annual investment in voice, data and wireless technology, and could fundamentally alter the way VA interacts with industry and the veterans it serves.

“We are building for the future,” Warren said. “It’s an obsession on detail, it’s an obsession on meeting architecture standards.”

VA has made significant strides in leveraging technology for telehealth, improving the lives of veterans by enabling them to see doctors virtually from their homes and reducing the rate of readmission to hospitals. But this summer, VA plans to also process 100 percent of veterans benefits electronically. Such a massive move to digital services will require more powerful and flexible infrastructure, and a shorter time between identifying user requirements and acquiring technologies from industry, Warren said.

By the end of March, VA’s four gateways will be capable of handling up to 10 gigabytes of throughput based on demand. In addition, the agency has reached out to the Federal Communications Commission for help expanding Internet access to veterans who live in rural areas.

Most of VA’s voice, data and mobile spending will be transitioning to centralized or regional contracts, Warren said. “We’re in many places that other folks aren’t … a lot of rural areas and a lot of areas where [telecommunications] providers are not.”

VA also recently launched a cloud-based enterprise voice pilot project. “We’re moving away from fixed plant at every single medical center and every single site,” Warren said. The agency is studying how to adjust and move that capability based on demand, with three pilot locations this year, and additional locations expected to be added over the next couple of years.

For commodity purchases, such as desktops, laptops, servers, switches, routers, storage services and tablets, VA will be moving away from the General Services Administration schedule and relying more on its Commodity Enterprise Contract, a $5.3 billion deal awarded last March, Warren said.

But some aging pieces of VA’s IT enterprise, such as its electronic health record, known as the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture, or VistA, have taken longer to evolve and have fallen behind the technology curve. And open source software will likely play an important role in the system’s future, Warren said.

“It’s time to make some investments in that platform,” Warren said. “We haven’t made those investments in at least 10 years. In the coming year, you will see us doing code in-flight. As we’re developing, we’ll be dropping the code out there so the community can engage.”

VA will be posting the code through GitHub under the VA category.

The potential for success is there. For four years in a row, 80 percent of VA’s IT projects have met their scheduled delivery dates. And only 2 percent of VA IT projects do not deliver. The majority of them deliver within 30 days.

VA currently averages 4.1 months from the time it decides to commit resources to an IT project to the time it can deliver a capability to the end-user. But for the Veterans Benefit Management System, the agency’s $491 million paperless claims processing system, Warren managed to whittle that average time down to 90 days.

“You only do that through a very disciplined, focused approach,” he said. “I would like to go from [specification] on the street and award in seven days.”

VA’s annual voice, data, wireless spending 

Total: $243 million (not including commodity purchases)

$87 million is voice services

$118 million data services

$38 million is wireless

The post VA charts a course for open source, more capable infrastructure appeared first on FedScoop.