TMF investments to the Departments of Education, Commerce and State total just under $50 million. 

The State Department received two investments: $18.2 million to increase diplomacy through generative AI and $13.1 million to transition its identity and access management systems to a zero-trust architecture model.

The AI investment is intended to “empower its widely dispersed team members to work more efficiently and improve access to enhanced information resources,” including diplomatic cables, media summaries and reports. On the zero trust investment, State said it is planning to expedite the creation of a comprehensive consolidated identity trust system, as well as centralizing workflows for the onboarding and offboarding process.

Clare Martorana, the federal CIO and TMF board chair, said in a statement that she’s “thrilled to see our catalytic funding stream powering the use of AI and improving security at the State Department.” 

State recently announced a chatbot for internal uses and revised its public AI use case inventory to remove nine items from the agency website. Additionally, the agency has started to encourage its workforce to use generative AI tools like ChatGPT. 

The Department of Education, meanwhile, is using a $5.9 million allocation to assist the Federal Student Aid office on a new StudentAid.gov feature called “My Activity” to centralize documents and data to track activities and status updates. The FSA is anticipating “a reduction in wait times and the need for customer care inquiries,” per the GSA release. 

Education also recently announced an RFI for cloud computing capabilities for the FSA office, a follow-on contract for its Next Generation Cloud. 

Finally, the Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will put its $12 million TMF investment toward modernizing weather.gov through a redesign to “enhance information accessibility” and “establish a sustainable, mobile-first infrastructure.” NOAA reported plans to integrate translation capabilities for underserved communities’ benefit. 

The release noted that NOAA’s associated application programming interface “faces challenges, causing disruptions in accessing dependable weather information for the American public.”

Martorana said she was “equally excited about the TMF’s two other critical investments — with students getting more modern access to manage their education journeys and the public gaining access to life-saving weather information in an accessible manner for all.”

These investments come after a second appropriations package to fund the government for fiscal year 2024 threatened to claw back $100 million from the TMF. Both the GSA and the Office of Management and Budget have faced challenges in convincing lawmakers to meet funding levels proposed by the Biden administration.

Martorana recently called on Congress to fund the TMF, pointing to the funding vehicle as a way to improve service delivery for the public across the government.

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The agency said Friday in a request for information that it is conducting market research to identify a service provider to modernize and “continuously improve” the existing cloud environment provided by Amazon Web Services. 

The department said in the RFI that FSA “must evolve cloud capabilities” for general purpose business use, to meet federal requirements laid out in a 2021 executive order on improving national cybersecurity and to “keep pace with today’s dynamic and increasingly sophisticated cyber threat environment.”

The request states that within the first year of awarding a contract, all on-premise applications and infrastructure that remains will move to the cloud. In the second and third year of the contract, “the entire cloud environment must be optimized and modernized as a dedicated workstream” through cloud native design principles in order to take advantage of the commercial cloud’s full benefits. 

“The preponderance of FSA’s applications will migrate into FSA [Next Generation Cloud], managed by the FSA chief information officer,” the request states.

This effort is unrelated to the recent updates to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which was recently overhauled to leverage cloud technologies for the transmission and delivery of FAFSA data, an agency spokesperson said in an email to FedScoop.

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While many of these actions are still preliminary, growing focus on the technology signals that federal officials expect to not only govern but eventually use generative AI. 

A majority of the civilian federal agencies that fall under the Chief Financial Officers Act have either created guidance, implemented a policy, or temporarily blocked the technology, according to a FedScoop analysis based on public records requests and inquiries to officials. The approaches vary, highlighting that different sectors of the federal government face unique risks — and unique opportunities — when it comes to generative AI. 

As of now, several agencies, including the Social Security Administration, the Department of Energy, and Veterans Affairs, have taken steps to block the technology on their systems. Some, including NASA, have or are working on establishing secure testing environments to evaluate generative AI systems. The Agriculture Department has even set up a board to review potential generative AI use cases within the agency. 

Some agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development, have discouraged employees from inputting private information into generative AI systems. Meanwhile, several agencies, including Energy and the Department of Homeland Security, are working on generative AI projects. 

The Departments of Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and Treasury did not respond to requests for comment, so their approach to the technology remains unclear. Other agencies, including the Small Business Administration, referenced their work on AI but did not specifically address FedScoop’s questions about guidance, while the Office of Personnel Management said it was still working on guidance. The Department of Labor didn’t respond to FedScoop’s questions about generative AI. FedScoop obtained details about the policies of Agriculture, USAID, and Interior through public records requests. 

The Biden administration’s recent executive order on artificial intelligence discourages agencies from outright banning the technology. Instead, agencies are encouraged to limit access to the tools as necessary and create guidelines for various use cases. Federal agencies are also supposed to focus on developing “appropriate terms of service with vendors,” protecting data, and “deploying other measures to prevent misuse of Federal Government information in generative AI.”

Agency policies on generative AI differ

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Singh will work closely with Beth Niblock, the department’s chief information officer, and senior official for policy development Solomon Greene “to advance responsible AI innovation, increase transparency, protect HUD employees and the public they serve, and manage risks from sensitive government uses of AI,” a spokesperson told FedScoop in an emailed statement. 

Under President Joe Biden’s recent AI executive order (EO 14110), certain government agencies will be required to name a chief AI officer within 60 days of the Office of Management and Budget’s corresponding guidance, which is currently in draft form and being finalized. According to the order, the new CAIOs are responsible for coordinating an agency’s uses of AI, promoting AI innovation and managing risks, among other things.

While some agencies already had chief AI officers before the Biden order, such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security, others are getting started publicly naming their officials. 

In response to FedScoop inquiries, for example, the National Science Foundation and the General Services Administration both disclosed that their chief data officers will serve as each agency’s chief AI officer. The Department of Education also said it tapped its chief technology officer for the role.

Among the responsibilities for the chief AI officers outlined in OMB’s draft guidance will be vice chairing their agency’s AI governance board. Those boards, which will coordinate AI adoption and manage risk, are required within 60 days of OMB’s guidance and will be chaired by each agency’s deputy secretary. 

Prior to the Biden administration order and draft guidance, agencies were already required to have a responsible AI official under a Trump administration order (EO 13960). But according to OMB’s draft guidance, the new chief AI officers will also carry out those responsibilities. For HUD, a decision about the existing role is forthcoming. 

“​​The AI Governance Board will determine the appropriate role and integration of the Responsible AI Official into the important work ahead,” the HUD spokesperson said.

Outside of naming a CAIO, other agencies told FedScoop they’re making progress on AI-related work in response to inquiries.

A NASA spokesperson, for example, said the agency “is developing recommendations on leveraging emerging Artificial Intelligence technology to best serve our goals and missions, from sifting through Earth science imagery to identifying areas of interest, to searching for exoplanet data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, scheduling communications from the Perseverance Mars rover through the Deep Space Network, and more.”

Similarly, a Department of Transportation spokesperson said the agency is working on a “strategy to align with the EO.”

Rebecca Heilweil contributed to this story.

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As part of that process, the HHS’s Office of Chief Information Officer is looking for potential contractors that could identify capabilities and gaps related to zero trust in each operating division, develop and maintain a zero trust scorecard, and establish a zero-trust roadmap, among other things, according to the request for information posted to federal contracting website SAM.gov.

The information security office within the OCIO is currently conducting market research on the establishment and maintenance of a program management office support for zero trust, according to the solicitation, and is looking to get information from interested parties by Dec. 6.

“While a few [operating divisions] within HHS have Zero Trust Maturity (ZTM) plans in place, HHS is just beginning to align resources to a department wide Zero Trust Strategy,” according to the solicitation.

HHS didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The solicitation comes as agencies work to achieve the Biden administration’s standards to improve cybersecurity through governmentwide zero-trust security architecture by the end of fiscal year 2024. 

While the Biden administration issued a strategy for achieving those goals, efforts can vary by agency. For example, the Department of Commerce’s CIO Andre Mendes told FedScoop in July that the agency elected to have a department-wide rather than letting bureaus chart their own course. 

Although the department already has many of the skills and technologies required by Biden’s zero-trust architecture strategy, the solicitation said that “putting all the components together requires HHS to significantly upgrade governance and Information Technology (IT) management, and more deeply integrate teams and technologies.”

At least one agency is already establishing a zero-trust program management office. The Department of Education is getting funding under the General Services Administration’s Technology Modernization Fund to establish an “enterprise-wide program management office dedicated to zero trust,” according to the TMF website. 

The Department of Education awarded a contract to ShorePoint Inc. to provide program management office support.

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Sharma has served as the department’s chief technology officer for over eight years, according to his LinkedIn page. The position of responsible AI official was previously established by executive order 13960, which was signed by President Donald Trump in 2020. Employees with that role were charged with implementing AI principles outlined by that order within their agencies. 

The Biden administration’s recent executive order on the technology subsequently assigned those responsibilities to chief artificial intelligence officers, who are also charged with “coordinating their agency’s use of AI, promoting AI innovation in their agency, [and] managing risks from their agency’s use of AI.” 

Agencies are supposed to name these officials within sixty days of the Office of Management and Budget finalizing its draft guidance on federal use of AI, though some agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security, already have people serving in these roles.

A spokesperson for Education confirmed that Sharma is the agency’s current responsible AI officer and will now oversee the responsibilities outlined by OMB and the executive order. 

The Education Department has disclosed a single public AI use case, according to its official agency inventory. 

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Lopez has worked at the department since 2017 and will start as CIO on Dec. 18.

Previously, Lopez was director of enterprise technology services, in which post he worked as principal advisor to the CIO for IT engineering and operational issues and helped to oversee the department’s $1 billion technology portfolio.

Lopez takes over the CIO role from Gary Stevens, who has been carrying it out on an acting basis since the departure of Jason Gray in August. Gray’s departure was first revealed by FedScoop, and he has since joined USAID as CIO.

Before joining the Department of Education, Lopez held various leadership roles at the Defense Health Agency, including that of chief engineer and chief of operations at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Commenting on his appointment, Deputy Secretary of Education Cindy Marten said: “I am very pleased to congratulate Luis R. Lopez on his appointment as Chief Information Officer at the U.S. Department of Education.”

“He brings deep experience and proven skill in delivering information technology services in large and complex government organizations – and leading IT transformations that ensure those organizations continue to adapt effectively for the people they serve,” she added.

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But as they speed up their adoption of zero-trust security, they still face challenges with legacy applications and architectural gaps; compliance requirements; or financial and operational concerns. It’s not necessarily about adopting new technologies or products but rather an overall strategy that should be programmatically mapped according to each agency’s unique use-case requirements and capabilities.

That is evident according to federal leaders from nearly a dozen agencies who joined FedScoop to talk about their success thus far and the challenges as they implement zero trust. The interview series, Federal Zero Trust: Moving from Aspiration to Transformation, underwritten by Forcepoint, provided a platform for leaders to share their experiences.

“Taking the federal government in this significant shift towards the zero-trust paradigm is not a singular project; it’s not one thing; it’s a fundamental change to how we’re approaching federal agencies, their data and their security evolve. Our goal is to raise the baseline over the next few years, and everybody is starting in a different place with different parts of that journey,” says Mitch Herckis, director of federal cybersecurity in the Office of the CIO at OMB.

He explains that one of the biggest challenges is the “decades of technical debt that have been ignored” and how that manifests itself when agencies are unable to implement security measures. “It’s so important for us to think of this as a cohesive strategy in line with their broader IT development strategy, and how they’re thinking about not just their cybersecurity [budget] as a whole, and how they strategically invest that, but also how they’re investing in their overall IT modernization.”

The Department of Defense, meanwhile, recognizes that its security efforts set an example for the entire federal government. David McKeown, senior information security officer and deputy CIO at DOD, says, “we have an aggressive schedule. We want to be in alignment with the federal mandates called out in EO 14028 and the corresponding NSM-8, which is also going to cover zero trust for national security systems. We want to implement zero trust throughout the whole [department] by the end of FY27. We will stay in alignment in the near term with the three-year goal for the capabilities that are being called out there, but our zero-trust plan that we have right now is very well defined; we’re hoping to share that with the rest of the federal government.”

Although the DOD has a robust plan for traditional admin-type and command and control networks, they still have work to do on the weapon system and critical infrastructure front.

At the U.S. Navy, CISO Tony Plater details how they’re planning to implement zero trust principles across multiple networks, domains and functional silos. He also talks about working directly with the DOD Portfolio Management Office, so they don’t duplicate efforts and ensure greater synergy.

Plater shares his insights on the Navy’s move to Flank Speed, a single enterprise cloud environment for daily work. “Flank Speed is our core platform for extending our zero-trust architecture across the Navy enterprise….and we see it as meeting or fully integrating into the eventual zero-trust ecosystem requirements. Today, Navy users can access Flank Speed sources without using a VPN to connect to government networks. So that’s a big step forward for us,” he says.

Another agency that leveraged the cloud was the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. CISO Shane Barney explains the agility of being 95% cloud-based and highlights how “[USCIS] started its zero trust journey many years ago, primarily because we were in the cloud; we recognized the value of cloud. And we recognize what we could do with the cloud, which would later become more known as zero trust; we just called it good cyber hygiene.”

He also discusses the importance of investing in security automation early. “Don’t make that one of the last things you do,” he says. “Make it the first thing you do because it’s much easier to add in the pieces of the puzzles as you go into that automation platform than it is to retrofit it in.”

Leaders understand the capabilities necessary to move forward in their journey, and each agency has different priorities to unify approaches across the pillars of zero trust to transform.

As Department of Labor CISO Paul Blahusch put it, “Zero trust is revolutionary, not evolutionary. It will take resources, technology, people and professional services.”

Other participants who shared their experiences in the video series include:

• Steven Hernandez, CISO, Department of Education
• Chezian Sivagnanam, Chief Enterprise Architect, National Science Foundation
• Stephen Haselhorst, Zero Trust Program Manager, FDIC
• Amy Hamilton, Senior Cybersecurity Advisor for Policy and Programs, Department of Energy

This video series was produced by Scoop News Group for FedScoop and sponsored by Forcepoint.

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All StudentAid.gov asks for to begin processing a borrower’s application is their name, Social Security Number, date of birth and contact information — no form uploads or special logins necessary.

The launch comes less than eight weeks after President Biden announced his administration’s plan to forgive up to $10,000 in federal student loan debt, or $20,000 for Pell grant recipients, if the borrower earns less than $125,000 annually. The Department of Education tested a beta version of the site over the weekend, which handled more than 8 million applications without a glitch that it will process now that StudentAid.gov is live.

“This is a gamechanger for millions of Americans, who can get moving,” Biden said, during a press conference Monday. “And it took an incredible amount of effort to get this website done in such a short time.”

Data scientists and engineers across government helped build, test and launch the site on desktop and mobile devices in both English and Spanish. The application itself takes less than five minutes, and the Education Department will follow up with individual borrowers if there are any questions about their information.

Biden said the administration is committed to keeping the system working “as smoothly as possible” and delivering “life-changing” financial relief “as quickly and efficiently as possible,” as he follows through on a campaign promise to borrowers.

StudentAid.gov targets middle class borrowers, as 90% of the people who qualify to apply make less than $75,000 annually. “Not a dime” of relief will go to the top 5% of the income bracket, Biden said.

The government can afford loan forgiveness because it reduced the U.S. deficit by about $350 billion in Biden’s first year as president and expects another, $1 trillion reduction in fiscal 2023 — as well as a $300 billion reduction over the next decade with Medicaid now able to negotiate drug prices, Biden said.

When loan payments — paused during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — resume in January, the billions of dollars flowing into the U.S. treasury will allow the government to also resume its student loan program. The Education Department is still “working on pathways” to support borrowers with privately held loans, said Secretary Miguel Cardona.

Conservative-led efforts to stop federal student loan forgiveness are still working their way through the courts and have yet to railroad StudentAid.gov. The White House’s legal judgment is that relief won’t be halted, Biden said.

The president warned the launch of StudentAid.gov would most certainly be followed by fraudsters, pretending to work for the government, calling people regarding their loans. His advice: “Hang up.”

Suspected fraud can be reported at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

“My message to fraudsters looking to cheat the American people is don’t do it,” Biden said. “We’re going to hold you accountable.”

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He starts work in the new role at the agency on Aug. 15, and will become the first permanent CIO at USAID following the departure of Jay Mahanand in January, who left to take over as CIO at the United Nations World Food Programme in Rome.

Details of the federal IT leader’s new role come after FedScoop yesterday revealed that Gray is leaving the chief information officer role at the Department for Education, a position he has held since 2016.   

Following his departure from that agency, deputy CIO Gary Stevens will serve as interim chief information officer.

According to LinkedIn, Gray previously held a variety of federal government technology leadership positions, including as chief information officer of the Defense Manpower Data Center. Other senior posts include a spell as chief information officer of the Miami VA Healthcare System and as chief technology officer of the National Naval Medical Center.

In its fiscal year 2023 budget request, USAID has sought $1.7 billion to invest in a U.S. direct hire workforce. This fresh investment is intended to support human capital initiatives and information technology programs to “significantly expand” the agency’s workforce.

USAID’s IT spending in 2022 has so far totaled $274.5 million, according to ITdashboard.gov.

Details of Gray’s next destination were first reported by Federal News Network.

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