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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In a document posted for public inspection on the Federal Register Wednesday, the research, development and evaluation arm of the department said it’s seeking feedback to “inform a report that addresses the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the criminal justice system.” Those comments are due 30 days after the document is published.

That report is among the actions intended to strengthen AI and civil rights that President Joe Biden included in his October 2023 executive order on the technology. According to the order, its aim is to “promote the equitable treatment of individuals and adhere to the Federal Government’s fundamental obligation to ensure fair and impartial justice for all.”

Ultimately, the report is required to address the use of the technology throughout the criminal justice system — from sentencing and parole to policing surveillance and crime forecasting — as well as identify areas where AI could benefit law enforcement, outline recommended best practices, and make recommendations to the White House on additional actions. 

The DOJ must also work with the Homeland Security secretary and the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy on that report, and it’s due 365 days after the order was issued.

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USAID and State’s public notice, posted Friday in the Federal Register, requests information on the barriers and opportunities presented by AI, focusing specifically on responsible usage, AI policy and protections and public engagement with AI governance and risks. A USAID official said in an interview with FedScoop that the agency is thinking about “equitable access” to tools that “may exacerbate gaps that we already see in the world.”

This request for information is one step toward the agency’s sole requirement in President Joe Biden’s AI executive order: USAID has one year to “promote safe, responsible and right’s-affirming development and deployment of AI abroad” through an AI in Global Development Playbook, according to the order’s text. 

The USAID official told FedScoop that the playbook is “really going to outline some principles, some guidelines and really best practices that are accounting for both the social, technical, economic, human rights and security conditions that are going to be impacted by artificial intelligence — specifically not just beyond the U.S. borders, but in countries that USAID works in, which I have to say aren’t always the countries that people are paying attention to.”

Much of the agency’s use of AI has been in continuing the advancement of global development, including a current partnership with Duke University that is focused on authoritarianism and the closing of civic space that allows support organizations, members of the media and others to respond to “growing restrictions on democratic freedoms of association, assembly and expression.”

“We’re equally focused on the potential of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and how they can both accelerate and erode development progress,” the USAID official said. “What that means for us is just this balance of mitigation of risk and understanding that harm. This is largely something that’s important for us to learn and understand. … In some countries, you’re finding folks going all in, because they’re seeing that learning AI tools and learning how to build AI tools and how to use AI tools, in some ways, that is the way that they’re going to leapfrog in this global economy and in this rapidly changing economy.”

The USAID official stated that the agency has been using AI “for years” and is trying to harness the technology with the agency’s mission in mind. Internally, USAID is looking to minimize time on tasks that do not directly correlate with “high-value tasks.” 

“We’re at an agency that is quite literally trying to solve the world’s most pressing challenges,” the official said. “There will never be enough people, enough hours or enough money to do that. So these types of tools like artificial intelligence can help us be more targeted in our approach. If some tasks can be a bit more automated, that’s great, and certainly making sure that we mitigate the risk by putting human eyes on the final products to make sure that it has integrity, that the datasets we’re working on have integrity.”

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The request for information was posted by the General Services Administration for public inspection on the Federal Register Thursday. The RFI asks the public for comments on how to define synthetic data generation, in addition to potential applications, challenges, and ethics of the technology.

After the document is officially published Friday, the CDO Council will accept comments for roughly a month. 

The National Institute of Standards and Technology defines synthetic data generation as a “process in which seed data are used to create artificial data that have some of the statistical characteristics of the seed data.” That data can be used for things like creating “larger and more diverse datasets,” improving model performance, and protecting privacy, the solicitation said.

The council has already determined that there are wide-ranging applications and challenges with the technology, and creating a more formal definition for synthetic data generation would benefit the federal government, according to the document.

President Joe Biden’s October executive order on artificial intelligence listed synthetic data generation as an example of a “privacy-enhancing technology.” The process is already used by agencies, such as the Department of Veterans Affairs, which employed synthetic data during the COVID-19 pandemic to protect veteran health information.

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The Department of Commerce agency released a request for information for public inspection on the Federal Register on Tuesday. Comments, it said, must be received before Feb. 2, 2024. 

“I want to invite the broader AI community to engage with our talented and dedicated team through this request for information to advance the measurement and practice of AI safety and trust,” Laurie E. Locascio, NIST’s director and the under secretary of standards and technology, said in a written statement Tuesday. “It is essential that we gather all perspectives as we work to establish a strong and unbiased scientific understanding of AI, which has the potential to impact so many areas of our lives.”

The request specifically relates to NIST’s requirements under the order to establish best practices for industry on AI development, create guidance for evaluating AI capabilities, produce a report on reducing synthetic content from AI, and make a plan for developing global consensus standards. 

Other requirements for the agency under the order — such as those on cybersecurity, privacy, and synthetic nucleic acid sequencing — “are being addressed separately from this RFI,” NIST said in a release.

The request follows other ongoing AI work by the agency. Last month, NIST sent out a request seeking participants for a new AI consortium, which it said would be essential to its work under the executive order. 

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The agency is considering awarding a five-year blanket purchase agreement against the General Services Administration’s multiple award schedule for application development and operations and maintenance support. In order to be awarded the project, offerors would have to participate in a source selection procedure comprising two phases.

The request states: “The mission of the Office of Information and Technology (OIT) within U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), is to deliver high-quality information technologies and services to CBP, other government agencies, the traveling public and the international trade community in support of the agency’s day-to-day activities to secure the border and facilitate trade and travel.”

OIT manages the larger agency’s IT operations and technology infrastructure to support employees’ ability to be responsive to new threats, including officers and agents who perform field operations. 

Within the request, the agency provided a sample of operations and maintenance metrics to demonstrate the issues that the Cargo Systems Program Directorate team handled from January 2023 to August 2023. 

“From May to August 2023, CSPD received between 45 to 120 new incidents per week with an average of 81 new incidents created per week,” the notice states. “CSPD teams resolved between 45 to 100 incidents a week with an average of 81 incidents resolved per week.”

CBP’s acquisition strategy, listed on the RFI, contains two phases for “offerors” to participate in, earning ratings from the agency to determine their progression through the award determination process. The award would be based on a “best-value trade-off basis,” gathered from the procedures. 

Phase one will require information offerors to address “project scenarios applicable to the subject requirement” in order to demonstrate their capabilities to support complex challenges through written technical responses. The agency would then evaluate and rate every response, letting only the highest-rated offerors be considered for the second phase. 

For the second phase, the notice states that information offerors would have to provide “technical and management approaches,” along with evaluations based on past experience and performance.

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DOE released a  request for information earlier this month detailing its search for “sources to provide IT Professional Services” under the recompete of the department’s multibillion-dollar CIO Business Operation Support Services (CBOSS) blanket purchase agreement. The department is looking for partners to provide capabilities in cybersecurity, general IT support, technology strategy, innovation, and more.

The contract holders on the original CBOSS BPA, which expires next year, are Accenture, General Dynamics Information Technology, Science Applications Internal Corp. and Red River.

“CBOSS offers an extensive array of core IT services designed to support the DOE’s diverse mission portfolio ranging from nuclear security, open science research, power administration to environmental management,” the request states. 

While the entire DOE enterprise consists of 79 separate entities across the nation, including 19 national laboratories, the request states that the work under the agreement will mostly be in support of the non-national laboratory facets. 

However, partners will be asked to support national lab missions through technology migration planning and cybersecurity support, the RFI says. 

The requested cybersecurity support is expected to strengthen ties across all DOE entities including the national laboratories, according to a released draft of the scope of work.

CBOSS’s cybersecurity requirements also include maintaining an “agency-wide cyber and information program.” Said program would involve things regarding information assurance, risk management, cyber strategy and more. 

“Support provided will be sensitive to the unique construct of the department, the distributed risk approach to cybersecurity, and the necessity for a holistic, ‘One DOE’ persona in external engagement,” the draft states. 

Interested parties have until Sept. 22 to respond to the RFI.

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NTIA, which is a part of the Commerce Department, said in a request for information (RFI) that one of its key missions is managing the use of radio frequency spectrum by federal agencies, but that’s proving challenging because its current IT systems are outdated and its need to modernize them is acute.

“The current systems are inadequate to execute NTIA’s spectrum functions in a timely manner and limit NTIA’s ability to accommodate the demands of advanced technologies, such as deploying 5G, advancing space commerce, and securing government missions dependent on spectrum,” the NTIA said in its RFI on Tuesday. 

“We can meet these and future spectrum demands by upgrading our systems to the latest technical platforms; improving the security and scalability of NTIA spectrum systems; improving accessibility of spectrum data; and developing advanced analytical tools and engineering models; and automating workflows,” the NTIA RFI added. 

With the RFI, NITA seeks industry solutions, approaches and other information that could inform a potential request for proposals for a proposed Federal Spectrum Data System composed of user-capability areas designed to reduce manual manipulations and streamline and automate decision making. 

The proposed solution from government vendors “must be secure and promote efficiency and effectiveness of spectrum use through updated optimization and assessment applications.” Furthermore, presently siloed spectrum data must be integrated across multiple sources by accessing shared services exposed through a spectrum repository.

Last month, the FCC and NTIA announced a plan to overhaul radio spectrum coordination within the government. The first update in nearly 20 years, the new plan is aimed at increasing coordination between federal spectrum management agencies to promote more efficient use of spectrum that is central to modern telecommunications.

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“The U.S. government is focused on increasing the depth, rigor, and creativity of its approach to application security testing, so that it sees and analyzes its applications as its adversaries do,” the agency said in a SAM.gov notice.

It added: “GSA is seeking information about the availability of Application Security Testing (AST) capabilities that support this effort, including manual expert analysis as well as automated tools, to discover security flaws in Federal applications and provide actionable results.”

The RFI comes as agencies across the federal government work to enhance application security through measures including the adoption of multi-factor authentication and moving networks to the cloud, in line with the Biden administration’s cybersecurity executive order.

Earlier this month, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Chief Information Officer Zach Goldstein told FedScoop his agency was continuing to perform comparative analyses of MFA solutions for applications and devices.

Respondents have until Sept. 30 to answer questions posed by GSA through the RFI.

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According to a two-page request for information (RFI) published this week, the DOD’s Office of the Inspector General is interested in commercial cloud solutions that could secure its particularly sensitive information and workloads, in an environment that’s isolated from the department’s various other cloud tenants.

Acting Principal Deputy Inspector General Steven Stebbins briefed FedScoop on the defense watchdog’s possible journey to the cloud and how the RFI should be viewed against the backdrop of the DOD’s ongoing Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) pursuit.

“Right now we haven’t made any major decision to move to the cloud. Our environment is currently housed in [Defense Information Systems Agency] data centers, but obviously, this is a fast-moving area. It’s evolving, and we want to have all the information that we need, so if we do decide to make a decision down the road — and potentially move to the cloud — we’re fully informed,” Stebbins explained. 

The Army veteran, who also currently serves as the OIG’s chief of staff, noted that the office “is in a good place now” when it comes to its computing infrastructure, but needs to prepare for whatever the future might bring. 

“So that’s really all that this [RFI] is about,” Stebbins said. 

In order to host the Pentagon’s data, cloud service offerings must be compliant with a number of government regulations and categorized into one of several impact levels, which are based on the sensitivity of that data.

In the RFI, OIG officials note their intent to learn more about cloud solutions that are approved to house information at DOD impact level 5 (IL5) — or the most sensitive level of unclassified information — and connect to the Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNet). They confirm in the document that “the OIG is anticipating to operate in a hybrid environment with a phased move of key applications to the cloud over time.”

Specifically, the office wants to hear from other federal entities that have transitioned to the cloud about cost savings and benefits they’ve realized in doing so. Other responders beyond the government are also invited to weigh in on how the technology could impact the IG.

“I think our requirements are kind of unique because of our position within the department, so it will just be interesting to see what others with similar requirements are doing,” Stebbins said.

Responses to this RFI are due by July 19.

As it’s only “just beginning to gather information,” Stebbins said the OIG does not currently have a timetable for next steps. Once insights are collected through the RFI, they’ll be shared with the Chief Information Office and other key technology players. And as with any RFI, there’s no obligation to move forward with a procurement.

“We don’t want to be reactive and find ourselves in a position where the department goes one direction and we have limited time to make a change to our current arrangements,” Stebbins said. “We want to anticipate that and then be prepared to make timely decisions.”

Notably, the OIG is pursuing this research as the broader DOD is preparing to award its highly anticipated multi-vendor cloud contract vehicle, JWCC. Google, Oracle, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services are currently competing for awards on that vehicle, which is worth billions and replaced the JEDI contract after the DOD’s original and years-long enterprise cloud competition was ultimately canceled. 

“While we certainly are aware of what the department is doing, our requirements are our requirements — and I don’t know that what we’re doing here really is part of that conversation, at least at this point,” Stebbins said.

If the OIG does move forward with implementing its own cloud before JWCC comes to full fruition, it’s unclear right now whether it will consider other cloud vendors beyond those four competing for the bigger DOD contract mechanism.

“I really can’t say at this point. We’re gathering information. We’ll see what happens in the future,” Stebbins said. “So, we’re open to whatever options might be.”

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