After the first operational ATM appeared in the United Kingdom in 1967,  the new technology reduced the number of teller positions needed but afforded banks the ability to sell more banking products, Wetklow said Thursday at the Association of Government Accountants’ National Leadership Training conference.

Wetklow, the deputy chief financial officer at the National Science Foundation, said the emergence of solutions like robotic process automation harken back to those times and will both test and reward federal leaders.

“I think we have pretty significant leadership challenge and opportunity in front of us,” he said. “I think the issue today is these technologies are coming at us more agile and quicker. It’s not like we are going to take 10 years to build a system. The robots are here and now.”

Speculation has been abound for much of the past year about how automation will impact the federal workforce. While the executive branch chugs toward modernizing its IT infrastructure, RPA has emerged as a gateway technology to streamline workloads with an eye towards higher quality work for federal employees.

How to measure RPA’s growth depends on which agency you talk to, as some are just starting to dip their toes in the water. NSF stood up three RPA bots last year and is now working with CIO Dorothy Aronson to scale up RPA implementations throughout the agency, Wetklow said.

He added that automation is seen as the opening adoption of the agency’s broader emerging tech goals.

“Now we are starting to move into thinking about more advanced things like [artificial intelligence],” he said.

RPA program manager Ed Burrows has helped the General Services Administration stand up 12 bots over the past year and has designs to double that number by the end of September. He said the agency wants to scale up more and perhaps eventually combine the benefits of RPA with AI. But that goal is still a long way off, he said.

“We’re not there yet,” Burrows said. “We have so much to do to continue to reap the benefits of RPA.”

Right now, Burrows said GSA is targeting the tasks that RPA could take over: rules-based processes that are repetitive and encompass hundreds of hours a month.

But there’s another element to consider as well. “The key characteristic is that you have large groups of people doing them all in the same way,” he said, noting that processes like data entry are excellent candidates for RPA.

What that could lead the federal government to is a model that’s recently been attractive to agency leaders looking to streamline IT modernization: shared services for RPA.

“I think there’s a potential there,” Burrows said. “The idea being that you could help agencies so they all don’t have to figure it out on their own, but I think there’s a step before that that we still need to take and we’re ready to take.”

That step, he said, is information sharing on the challenges and best practices that leaders have faced in implementing RPA to understand the full range of its possibilities.

“I think if we have people in a group, looking at that in detail, it will be beneficial for everyone,” Burrows said. “I think that’s the next step, the community of practice.”

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Chris Mihm, managing director for strategic issues for the Government Accountability Office, said that laws like the DATA Act and the recently passed Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act have made the U.S. a “global leader” in terms of data transparency, but added that those gains are lost if the citizenry is unable to utilize it.

“Fundamentally, the single most important thing for data quality is to keep in mind the end-user,” he said at the Association of Government Accountants’ National Leadership Training. “Keep in mind that the citizens have a citizen-centric perspective on how they would use the data and who’s going to be using that data.”

While the government has been pursuing standardized datasets to make federal spending more public through the 2014 DATA Act and to compel agencies to provide data-backed policy decisions through the recently passed Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act, Mihm said that the real data quality progress will be made by designing a system that will allow citizens to collate and crunch various datasets together for new innovations.

“The history of any of these websites that have ever been put up is that you can’t predict how people are going to use the data,” he said. “Look at data.gov. It’s just a couple-hundred data sites out there, and it’s just amazing what people are doing,” he said. “They are pulling [the data] down and they are doing their own apps on this in very creative and innovative ways, and we can’t [predict] how they are going to use it.”

The Trump administration has sought to capitalize on the potential innovations that federal data can hold, detailing data quality milestones in its President’s Management Agenda last year. Those milestones include targets to make government more accessible to the public and sharable between agencies.

That, combined with the new evidence-based law, has enabling agencies to better categorize and access their data, said Victoria Collin, chief of Management Controls and Assistance Branch at the Office of Management and Budget.

“I think OMB is really excited about this law, in part because it builds on what has already been laid out in the President’s Management Agenda,” she said. “I think this is going to really help move the ball forward in empowering, nudging, pushing, requiring agencies and all of us to do all of those really hard things that we haven’t been able to get across the finish line.”

But it’s also not without challenges. The deployment of the DATA Act allowed agencies three years to prepare and they still faced difficulties in meeting the law’s requirements.

That’s why, Collin said, for true transparency and innovation to take hold, agencies shouldn’t just make the data available, but also aim for making interoperable and sharable across the federal enterprise to ensure the government, and the public, can make the most informed decisions.

“While all of this data exists, lifting the curtain isn’t really enough by itself,” she said. “We have to look across the silos of that data and find where you have one dataset that means one thing in one context and one place. That may be fine, but when you look at it alongside another dataset, it starts to raise really interesting questions about to what extent we need to standardize this data.”

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Crystal Philcox, assistant commissioner of enterprise strategy management for the Federal Acquisition Service, said at an ACT-IAC session that GSA continues to implement its “Federal Marketplace” strategy, a broad agencywide plan to make acquisition more efficient and user-friendly for stakeholders.

“This strategy is really focused on experience,” she said. “I am pulling in as many things as I can find at GSA that have to do with improving the experience of interacting with the agency, for both buyers and suppliers.”

The strategy includes ongoing projects like GSA’s schedules consolidation and its e-commerce portals, but will also delve into other arenas like overhauling its contract-writing systems and crafting product offerings catalogs for customers.

Philcox said teams are currently crafting business process maps right now to help diagram the acquisition lifecycle a new contract-writing system would cover and expect to define the system’s scope by late spring or early summer.

The catalog, however, will require extensive data analytics to provide a robust customer experience, and she said GSA is exploring what data sets are needed to meet those goals.

“That team will be coming out to our suppliers to figure out with you what’s the easiest and best way to do that,” she said. “How do we get your information into our systems so we can then flip it back around to buyers so it’s clear and easy for them to understand what we have out there for purchase.”

Philcox described the catalog project as “nascent” in terms of its early development and said it will be happening alongside an ongoing refresh of the agency’s online shopping and ordering platform, GSA Advantage.

Undergirding GSA’s approach to these projects is a new group that acts as a clearinghouse for the agency’s potential technology investments. The FAS Systems Governance Committee determines which projects GSA will move forward with in a holistic fashion and from an enterprise perspective, said Judith Zawatsky, FAS assistant commissioner of the Office of Systems Management.

“So rather than business-lines jockeying for dollars for their own things, we’re really more looking at how we can make the best use of our colleagues from GSA IT, the capacity and capability that they have to support our industry partners and make tools available to our customers,” she said.

Zawatsky said the committee is funded and makes recommendations on projects to FAS commissioner Alan Thomas on a weekly basis as a way to ensure the best tools to serve GSA receive needed support, instead of a federated struggle for funding.

“Rather than it being that sort of knife-fight of different business lines saying, ‘me first, me first,’ it’s what can we design together to best allow the customers to get to the mission-critical services that they need,” she said. “It really has brought to light opportunities that we haven’t seen before for us to be able to work together and think together about how we look at it.”

Zawaskty didn’t say how large the committee is but noted that it includes stakeholders from GSA’s various lines of business to incorporate a wide range of views on the tools they will invest in.

As for GSA’s e-commerce portal project, Philcox said GSA officials expect to release a report to Congress at the end of March on the next steps of implementation.

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Perspecta — a technology company formed from the merger of Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s public sector business with Vencore Holding Corp. and KeyPoint Government Solutions in March 2018 — filed a protest through its subsidiary Enterprise Services LLC on Feb. 19 over the agency’s award of its new NASA End-user Services & Technologies (NEST) to Leidos this month.

The NEST deal is set to take the place of NASA’s previous IT services contract, the Agency Consolidated End-user Services (ACES), which HPE, now a part of Perspecta, won in 2011.

The agency said in its performance work statement that the NEST contract — which is set to run through 2029 — will provide it with more flexibility to deliver end-user services, including mobile-friendly functionality, cloud-based resources and built-in security.

But the protest halts the contract until GAO rules on whether to sustain it. The office has until May 30 to render a decision, barring any potential settlement being reached.

The contract has not been without controversy. NASA officials moved in October to extend the ACES award until 2021, but that never panned out.

NASA CIO Renee Wynn also denied the contract an authority to operate in 2016, saying she had not received enough reporting data to inform the agency’s cyber risk-determination, namely centered on endpoint device numbers and software patch updates. Wynn testified in November 2016 that HPE had “stepped up” to quickly provide her with the requested data and that she signed the ATO in a matter of days.

The protest comes as other large government IT contracts have been delayed amid industry protests, namely the Department of Defense’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract.

The potential $10 billion deal has been the subject of a protest by Oracle in the Court of Federal Claims, but the case was recently stayed due to a conflict of interest investigation being conducted by the DOD.

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Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics IT, SAIC, Leidos and Vienna, Va.-based Next Tier Concepts, Inc. each secured awards on the 10-year, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract to provide agencywide IT support services for combatting weapons of mass destruction and other threats.

DTRA officials detailed the award in a Friday post, saying that the five companies will compete for individual task orders on the contract, which has a five-year base period and a five-year option.

Leidos and Booz Allen secured the first two task orders on the contract Friday as well. Booz Allen will provide knowledge management solutions and support on a $22.1 million order, while Leidos secured an $18 million contract for IT solution engineering and systems test support. Both task orders have a one-year base period, followed by four one-year options.

DTRA officials opened the IT support contract last July, calling for solutions that can “evolve” its IT infrastructure by providing engineering, design, integration, security, project management and technical architecture services.

“Although the support requirements are common in nature, the DTRA mission needs are vastly different,” the contract’s draft performance of work statement said. “Various short and long-term efforts must be undertaken to continually modernize, integrate and secure these systems.”

Because DTRA’s mission includes investigating potential chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high-yield explosive threats, the contract brings in support services that allow awardees to analyze and recommend new technology solutions, assess impacts to its overall architecture, provide rapid prototyping, support the software development life-cycle and other services.

The contract makes the second large IT award from the agency in the past year. In August, DTRA officials selected Synaptek for a $435 million contract to provide core IT services, including IT modernization and cloud management capabilities.

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In a request for information posted Thursday, the agency detailed its plans to provide field revenue officers with a new slate of smart device-based apps to accept electronic tax payments.

Field revenue officers are tasked with collecting back taxes from businesses and individuals the IRS identifies as owing the government additional payments, usually in excess of $100,000.

The request calls for information about mobile applications, low-frequency beacons, electronic payment devices and other potential solutions those officers could use to securely obtain electronic payments while in the field.

The agency calls for details about potential iOS- and Android-compatible technology on the market that could document and report transactions, scan credit card payments, encrypt personally identifiable information, provide instant receipts and meet a number of other technical and operational requirements. The apps would also need to be able to operate in low-cellular signal environments,  and offer payment verification capabilities, and potentially navigation and weather reporting options.

Interested stakeholders have until March 21 to submit responses.

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The deal, under GSA’s IT Schedule 70 FITARA Enhancement Program, provides federal agencies with a range of the data storage company’s VxRail products, which GSA officials said will help facilitate ongoing data center consolidation plans.

“The offering is a significant step forward in supporting GSA’s goals under category management and it will help federal agencies protect high-value assets, while also supporting data center optimization and modernization,” Bill Zielinski, acting assistant commissioner of GSA’s Office of Information Technology Category, said in a statement. “Streamlined Best-in-Class offerings like this from GSA will make it easier and more cost-effective for government agencies to get the solutions they need to meet their missions.”

Virtualization allows agencies to free up data storage by using software applications that emulate the hardware that information resides on. By using those software applications, agencies can pool their data center resources rather than strictly relying on the hardware for storage, freeing up more space. It also supports many of the goals set forth in the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative.

The IT Schedule 70 FITARA Enhancement Program allows federal agencies — as well as state, local and tribal government agencies — to purchase the solutions through a single contract, which provides those services at a tiered, discounted rate because of its high-volume buying structure.

As part of the program, GSA is required to secure a minimum of two annual governmentwide software agreements with the aim of providing new technology solutions on its IT schedule with cost savings.

“The IT Schedule 70 FITARA Enhancement Program will provide government agencies with greater flexibility in accessing the innovative data center modernization solutions they need at a better value to taxpayers,” said GSA Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Alan Thomas. “Providing these solutions through a governmentwide, enterprise-level agreement is a great way to reduce duplication in our procurement process.”

The Dell EMC agreement marks the first use of the FITARA Enhancement Program in 2019. GSA officials previously utilized the program to secure deals with the Carahsoft Technology Corporation, Veritas Technologies and IBM in 2018.

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In a request for information released Tuesday, DHS detailed plans to move several of its component agencies to the cloud ahead of the expiration of a data center contract in June 2020.

The agency proposes shifting the data center’s operations to a cloud infrastructure while continuing to optimize another of its existing data centers. The move will include transitioning the operating environments of 10 component agencies, like Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Transportation Security Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and others, to the cloud as well. The approach calls for a mix of public, hybrid and private cloud environments.

DHS has an urgency to make this shift by the 2020 deadline to close the one data center, meanwhile avoiding any interruption of services.

“Due to the critical nature of some of these applications and services, DHS requires full operational capability of all applications and services during the migration process thus ensuring a seamless end user migration experience on all devices operating anytime, anywhere,” the RFI said.

But most of the teams managing the systems that need to make the move “have indicated challenges and high risk with current, early plans.”

DHS wants stakeholders to outline how they would tackle the migration and optimization efforts over a proposed 10-year period of performance, as well as the cost models, continuity of operations plans and other considerations.

DHS wants to use its EAGLE Next Generation procurement program as a possible contracting vehicle for the migration-optimization effort. EAGLE NextGen — which uses a several General Services Administration and National Institutes of Health governmentwide acquisition contracts — is set to replace the EAGLE II procurement program when it expires in September 2020.

Respondents have until March 20 to respond.

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Agency officials said last week that Henry “Jamie” Holcombe will assume the CIO position at USPTO, taking over from acting CIO David Chiles, who has served in the role since Owens’ October 2017 departure.

Holcombe comes to USPTO from IT contractor TJ Westlake, where he served as chief operating officer. He also previously served as CEO of cybersecurity contractor Visium Technologies and as vice president and general manager of Harris Corporation.

“We are honored and excited to have Jamie and his decades of demonstrated expertise and leadership skills come to serve at the USPTO,” agency Director and Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property Andrei Iancu said in a statement.

Holcombe will oversee IT operations at the nation’s principal intellectual property agency, including ongoing modernization projects to wind down the agency’s legacy patent systems by 2020, and efforts to reduce a patent processing backlog.

“Our legacy IT systems are old and it is well beyond time to undertake a fundamental stabilization and modernization effort,” Iancu said. “As our new CIO, Jamie will have a unique opportunity to help the USPTO improve these systems and transition our agency to state-of-the-art technology.”

Those projects began under Owens, who tried to move USPTO to a more agile-based approach to technology. He later joined CGI Federal in November 2017 as the vice president of its solution development group for emerging technologies practice.

Chiles will continue to serve with the agency as its chief technology officers, USPTO officials confirmed to FedScoop.

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DOT opened the fiscal 2019 solicitation for its Small Business Innovation Research program Tuesday, calling on small businesses to provide solutions focused in 12 topic areas:

• Automated Detection of Broken Spike Fasteners in Wood Tie Railroad Track
• Automated Driving Systems Test Data Interface
• Automated, Drone-Based Grade Crossing Inspection
• Cost Allocation Technology for Non-Emergency Medical Transportation
• Improved Condition Monitoring of Traction Motors
• Inline-Inspection Tool for Detecting Coating Defects/Disbondment of Coating
• Innovative, Low-Cost Methods for Concrete Bridge Deck Assessment
• In-Vehicle Highway Rail Grade Crossing Alert System
• Portable Stiffness/Elastic Modulus Measurement System
• Secure Motor Carrier Safety Data Information Exchange Using Blockchain
• Vehicle Communication via Induction Paint
• Wireless Pore Water Pressure Sensor

The SBIR program is administered by the Small Business Administration and includes 11 federal agencies that award R&D contracts to fund and mature new potential technology applications.

The contracts are broken out over three phases, each representing a stage in the technology’s development until it reaches the commercial market. Those contracts run from $150,000 to $2 million if the technology meets certain criteria for advancement.

Eligible businesses have until April 22 to solicit their potential applications for SBIR funding. Those businesses must have no more than 500 employees, be based in the U.S., be at least 51 percent owned by either one or more individuals who are citizens of, or permanent residents in, the U.S.

DOT officials will also host a pre-offer webinar Fed. 27 to provide stakeholders with more information about the solicitation.

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