Fortunately, advances in process automation and AI are giving government agencies new capabilities to identify system bottlenecks and streamline business and operations processes in ways that can improve business and mission outcomes in a fraction of the time and cost of traditional IT modernization projects.

Today’s business process mining and automation tools allow “executives to shift their dependence on outsourced knowledge to in-house control for continuous problem-solving,” according to Todd Schroeder, formerly a U.S. Department of Agriculture IT systems chief who is now vice president for public sector at UiPath. “That translates into a radically different time-to-value modernization quotient — and a radically lower cost structure,” he says in the report produced by Scoop News Group and underwritten by UiPath.

The report “How Automation and AI are Changing the Traditional Approach to Government IT Modernization” highlights how robotic process automation has evolved from a tool to streamline redundant tasks such as financial accounting work to what has increasingly become an enterprise-wide effort to improve mission outcomes.

One example cited in the report is the work underway at the USDA’s Intelligent Automation Center of Excellence office. The office is automating routine processes across the department and fostering a rising generation of “citizen developers” to automate work processes in individuals’ respective jobs.

The report also highlights how automation work that began in the Navy’s Financial Management and Comptroller’s Office is now expanding to improve operations in other Naval support offices and between different departments in government.

Schroeder says agency leaders are on the verge of realizing even greater capabilities with UiPath’s push into AI. UiPath’s AI Trust Layer platform, he says, provides customers with a new level of “auditability, traceability, observability, and replicability” when applying AI to business processes.

“This is the moment,” says Schroeder, “when agency leaders not only have the means to rethink how they modernize but reimagine how federal workers can accomplish their work in new and more effective ways. And that’s critical if the government is to catch up and meet the needs of society’s requirements.”

Download and read the full report.  

This article was produced by Scoop News Group for FedScoop and sponsored by UiPath.

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In October, seven months after that risk determination was made, department leaders distributed interim guidance that extended that prohibition more broadly to employee and contractor use of third-party generative AI tools in their official capacities and on government equipment. The agency also established a board that’s creating a process to review proposed uses of the technology going forward, according to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and the department’s response to FedScoop.

Information about USDA’s approach comes as agencies across the federal government are grappling with creating policies for generative AI tools within their agencies and coming to different conclusions about how to handle the nascent and rapidly growing technology. 

The Department of Homeland Security, for example, recently made public its conditional approval of generative AI tools for use in the department, including ChatGPT, Bing Chat, Claude 2 and DALL-E2. Meanwhile, NASA leaders told employees in May that the tools weren’t cleared for widespread use with “sensitive NASA data,” though they permitted use on personal accounts “following acceptable use policies.”

An Agriculture Department spokesperson told FedScoop in an emailed statement that the agency’s interim guidance, along with the White House’s AI executive order, “will help ensure that USDA, like other agencies across the federal government, is using this emerging, important technology safely, securely, and responsibly, while also delivering better results for the people who rely on its programs and services.”

According to the March 16 risk determination obtained by FedScoop, the department found that “ChatGPT displays multiple concerning indicators and vulnerabilities that will pose a risk if used in the USDA enterprise network infrastructure” and ultimately labeled that risk as “high.”

Specifically, the risk determination referenced a vulnerability documented in the National Vulnerability Database involving a WordPress plugin that appears to use ChatGPT. The determination said the vulnerability “describes a missing authorization check that allows users the ability to access data or perform actions that should be prohibited.” It also pointed to “insufficient safeguards.”

“While OpenAI alleges having safeguards in place to mitigate these risks, use cases demonstrate that malicious users can get around those safeguards by posing questions or requests differently to obtain the same results,” the risk determination said. “Use of ChatGPT poses a risk of security breaches or incidents associated with data entered [into] the tool by users, to include controlled unclassified information (CUI), proprietary government data, regulated Food and Agriculture (FA) sector data, and personal confidential data.”

In response to a FedScoop inquiry about the USDA’s determination, a spokesperson for OpenAI said the company was not affiliated with the WordPress plugin it cited. The spokesperson also pointed to DHS’s recent assessment that conditionally approved generative tools and noted the launch of ChatGPT Enterprise, which has additional security and privacy controls.

“We appreciate the U.S. government’s dedication to using AI safely and effectively to improve services for the public. We would be happy to discuss the safe use of our products to support the USDA’s work,” the spokesperson said. 

Under USDA’s interim guidance, which was distributed internally Oct. 16, the Generative AI Review Board includes representation from USDA’s chief data officer and the chief technology officer, in addition to representatives for cybersecurity, the general counsel’s office, and two mission areas. 

Since President Joe Biden’s executive order, the department’s CDO and responsible AI official, Chris Alvares, has been elevated to serve as its chief AI officer, and he also serves on the board in that capacity, the spokesperson said. That comes as agencies are starting to name CAIOs in light of a new position created under Biden’s order and subsequent White House guidance.

The board will meet monthly, the document said, and implement a process for reviewing proposed generative AI projects within 90 days, which would be roughly mid-January. It also stipulated that “any use cases currently in development or in use at the time of this memo should be paused until reviewed by the” Generative AI Review Board, and noted specifically that using AI language translation services is prohibited.

Submitting personal identifiable or non-public information to public generative AI tools is “a prohibited release of protected information” that employees must report, the document said. The spokesperson said there haven’t been any known instances where USDA personal identifiable information has been submitted to a generative AI tool, and “USDA has not received any reports of inappropriate GenAI output.”

Rebecca Heilweil contributed to this article.

This story was updated to correct the spelling of Chris Alvares’s name.

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Responding to a question at the 2022 Zero Trust Summit on Wednesday, presented by CyberScoop, USDA CISO Ja’Nelle Devore underscored how federal IT shops are using myriad tools to keep up with fast-evolving threats.  

“We have enough people, the issue is training. When you have several tools that will be part of your zero trust utilization, you have to re-integrate how they work,” Devore said.

She added that zero trust implementation for USDA has been relatively painless because the cybersecurity approach relies on tenets such as regular hardware inventories and maintaining patches, which the agency has undertaken since at least 2017.

“In a way that makes it easier for the folks that have to implement zero trust to look at what we have and understand how [that fits into zero trust],” Devore said.

According to the final version of a zero-trust architecture strategy issued by the White House in January, federal agencies have until 2024 to implement security measures such as multi-factor authentication and encryption of network traffic.

The memo required that agencies within 60 days of the memo being issued submit an implementation plan to OMB and CISA for review and also stipulated within 120 days agency chief data officers work with staff to develop a set of initial categorizations for sensitive electronic documents.

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