A frenetic energy consumed the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino, with so much of that excitement focused on the untapped potential of generative artificial intelligence in every industry. During his keynote to open the conference, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian acknowledged the many massive global corporations like Goldman Sachs, Mercedes Benz and Uber that are using the company’s AI technology to innovate.

And in such an excitable, flashy environment, it’s easy for Google’s budding work with public sector entities to get overshadowed. But despite that, top leaders from Google see huge opportunities for the many new products and announcements out of Next to impact their partners across federal, state and local governments and academia, forecasting continued growth for the nearly two-year-old public sector arm of the Silicon Valley cloud giant.

Karen Dahut, CEO, Google Public Sector

With a sizable portion of Next announcements dedicated to AI, Karen Dahut pointed to “all of the work around building a fully integrated enterprise-grade AI stack” as “so important to our public-sector customers.”

That focus on “enterprise-grade” is the key, she told FedScoop. “It’s not a consumer product being used in enterprise; it is an enterprise product built for large, complex bureaucratic organizations.”

Security also matters a great deal with AI, as it does for any part of the public sector enterprise IT stack, and Dahut pointed to that as a differentiator for Google’s cloud and AI offerings, particularly with a new security operations tool built on Google’s Gemini generative AI platform.

“Security operations are top of mind for all of our federal, state and local governments,” she said. “And knowing that Google Cloud is the most secure cloud — and we continue to build on that — is super important to them.”

Dahut suggested that nearly two years in since the creation of Google Public Sector in June 2022, the organization is still early on in its journey to scale as a major service provider in the public sector technology ecosystem.

The thing that “gives me such confidence in what we are doing is the passion that our customers bring to us,” Dahut explained. “They want to work with us,” she said, referring to partnerships with major customers like the Department of Defense “to purpose-build technology.”

“This isn’t a case where we’re building technology in the back room, and then we come and try to get it accredited,” Dahut said. “We are working very closely with them to build what they need and accredit it along the way.”

She continued: “And that partnership, and that passion for what we’re doing, transcends just Google — our customers feel it, too. So it’s very gratifying.”

Leigh Palmer, VP of Delivery and Operations, Google Public Sector

As Dahut said, Google has worked to position itself as the leader in cloud security to differentiate itself from other cloud services competitors like Amazon and Microsoft.

In that same vein, for Leigh Palmer, Google Public Sector’s new accreditation for Google Distributed Cloud Hosted to handle secret and top secret data for the Department of Defense and intelligence community was the biggest announcement to come out of the conference.

“I like to tell people that sometimes there’s a benefit to being third to market, right? So we could see what went before us and make adjustments for very specific mission sets,” Palmer said in an interview with FedScoop, referring to Google’s biggest competition.

With the authorizations, agencies across the Department of Defense and the intelligence community can use Google Distributed Cloud Hosted — an air-gapped private cloud service tailored to workloads that demand maximized security requirements — to support some of their most sensitive data and applications. It also comes with “core AI services out of the box,” like language translation, search, Document AI and others, Palmer explained.

“What we did when we built and designed GDC-H is we built that cloud from the ground up. So instead of taking a cloud and trying to shrink it into a small form factor, we started with the small form factor and made it expandable, right?” Palmer said. “So open Kubernetes-based, very open source software with the idea of multi-cloud, hybrid cloud in mind. Very customized for data analytics and AI at the edge, because that is our sweet spot. That is what Google is really good at.”

Because of the small form factor, there’s immense flexibility, particularly for sensitive missions at the edge, she said.

“So lots of flexibility for that mission need between kind of that enterprise scale, that tactical scale, and then that middle scale of, you know, ‘I need it to be in a data center in Germany,’ for example,” Palmer added.

Sandra Joyce, VP of Mandiant Intelligence

Much of the hype concerning AI has been focused on its ability to drive and defend against new cyberattacks. Many have predicted that threat actors will use AI and gain an upper hand to keep ahead of an organization’s network defenses.

But largely, that is not yet the case, Sandra Joyce told FedScoop, calling it a “period of opportunity” for network defenders in the public sector the bolster their use of AI for cybersecurity.

Joyce said Mandiant tracks “threat actors from nation states, cybercriminals, hacktivists, all types. And thankfully, right now we’re in this real period of opportunity is what I like to call it. Of all the breaches that we investigate, we’re not seeing AI as the main factor in any of those breaches, which means to me that we have an opportunity to develop our own AI for defenses.”

Where Mandiant sees AI being used by hackers is for “information operations,” Joyce said. “We’re seeing it in the underground, with purported jailbreaks of chatbots that they can provide access to. These pretty low-level and very questionable things. It’s experimentation. So there’s not a ton going on that I would say would outpace what you could traditionally do in the threat landscape.”

But on the cyber defense side, things are moving more dramatically, she said, particularly in the ability to supplement the global shortage in cybersecurity talent.

“What we’re doing with AI internally is very exciting. We’re using it for many different uses, including productivity. So we’re using it to reverse [engineer] malware faster. We’re using it to look at adversary smart contracts. We’re doing that type of experimentation and putting it into our workflows. And we’re already getting some gains in productivity,” she said. “And that’s the important part. Because if you’re looking at the future of cybersecurity, what it really is, is a growing problem, and we cannot keep throwing people at the problem. We need to have technical solutions and AI is one way we can start doing that.”

During her time at Next, Joyce and her colleagues at Google-owned Mandiant also spoke about the frustrations that are keeping CISOs up at night.

Chris Hein, Director of Customer Engineering, Google Public Sector

As the director of customer engineering, Chris Hein inherently serves in a more technical role for Google Public Sector. Despite that, the biggest impact felt from the many announcements out of Next, from Hein’s perspective, is the changing nature of how the government relates to its constituents.

“You think about how many of these services are being built out from like a customer perspective. And so what I really enjoy doing, and I think it’s really important for government agencies to think about, is how do they take their constituent services and make them 10 times better than they are today,” Hein told FedScoop.

Though AI models are often shrouded in new levels of complexity from a technical level in how they function, for public sector entities, the barrier for entry to use them is actually quite low, he said.

“Being able to use these things does not take a whole lot of work or a whole lot of know-how. And so I think it really starts to open the door for way better experiences,” Hein said.

With that, it’s still so important, he said, to “do it safely, responsibly, making sure that we’re reducing hallucinations, and all those kinds of things that we talk about these days.”

“You have to start from first principles on a lot of these things,” Hein said, referencing building that safety and responsibility into AI. “What Google has been building, when we look at our AI strategy, is building on top of this overall zero-trust environment that starts from the ground up. The number one thing we’re going to care about is the security of that dataset and the privacy of that dataset. And so AI is not new to that — that’s just another aspect of that exact same paradigm that we’ve been so focused on for so long.”

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But, according to Google Public Sector CEO Karen Dahut, those agencies would be well suited to look to commercial off-the-shelf products when things are going well, too.

“I think that it is critical and important that our public sector customers look to consumer products. First of all, these consumer products are used by billions — with a ‘b’ — users in the world with ease and with security built-in,” Dahut told FedScoop during an interview for the Daily Scoop Podcast ahead of Tuesday’s Google Public Sector Summit, presented by Scoop News Group.

“How do our public sector missions leverage these consumer products at an enterprise level to really help support and drive mission outcomes that are fast, effective and more efficient in its use?” said Dahut, who’s been CEO of Google Public Sector for just over a year now. The tech giant launched its public sector arm just months before in June 2022.

But too often, Dahut said, public sector agencies look to invest in customized or bespoke applications when not pushed by the rapid demands of an emergency. “Sometimes we spend too much time trying to ensure safety, security, you know, proper open architectures, etc., during a nonconflict time, and that just is really time-consuming. And so how do we accelerate the adoption of these consumer technologies at the enterprise level?” she explained.

Dahut pointed to a number of examples — from the COVID-19 pandemic to the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the war in Ukraine — of times when government, faced with a time crunch or uncertainty, looked to commercial products and used them for what they were.

“We were called upon to support the Ukrainian government,” she said. “We’ve offered 50,000 free licenses to [Google] Workspace to just enable the government to continue to work and be effective. Google Docs is a well-known consumer product that so many people use and it’s been turned to a number of times to create a collaboration platform for people that are trying to resolve really hard international challenges.”

Harnessing commercial products, such as software-as-a-service cloud applications or emerging artificial intelligence capabilities, is one way for agencies to rapidly introduce technologies to their tech stacks that can transform operations. But it can also be a challenge for government organizations that have missed out on previous transformational shifts to plunge into the latest technologies like generative AI, Dahut said.

“The challenge with our public sector customers, which I’ve really come to internalize and understand this year, better than I have at any time in my career, is that because the public sector has not been able to keep pace with those platform shifts, they have not really been able to leverage the power of their data enterprise, they haven’t been able to leverage the power of AI,” she said.

She continued: “And so one of the things that is weighing heavy on my mind is how do we help our public sector customers first get to the cloud so that they can really leverage their data, enterprise and AI, and then adapt those technologies to their mission so that they can really achieve the benefit of digital transformation.”

AI, after all, is the “most transformational technology that is being introduced and used worldwide,” Dahut said. “And it is an incredible accelerant to the public sector mission, but also to human ingenuity. And I think our opportunity is to really apply AI to every aspect of public sector services and mission.”

Many agencies are unsure, though, how AI fits in their IT enterprise and are cautious to jump headfirst into using it. But as the federal government nears a more coordinated agenda for how agencies will be directed to build it into their portfolios with a forthcoming executive order and guidance from the Office of Management and Budget expected soon, Dahut said: “You just need to get started.”

“Let’s talk about some use cases that, you know, are desperately in need for your public sector constituents,” she said. “And let’s show you the art of the possible with those technologies.”

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Dahut acknowledged that there are still a lot of questions government leaders are asking about how to properly implement the technology across the government space. Among them, she said, is how to implement AI capabilities into mission activities while protecting agency data.

“Google is the first cloud provider to develop world-class generative AI enterprise tools—like Vertex AI—which allows you to create a special and unique enclave for your data, so your data isn’t exposed to the public,” she explained.

Citizen engagement

Dahut touched on ways government agencies are implementing generative AI tools to improve how citizens engage with public services.

For example, in Dearborn, Michigan, where 48% of the population is non-English speaking, city officials implemented a translation AI tool powered by Google Cloud Contact Center AI (CCAI) to help its citizens access information.

“The city has a long history of immigration and bringing people from across the globe to work in the car industry in Dearborn,” she explained. “They’re U.S. citizens. They just happen to speak Arabic, Spanish and French as their primary languages. And so now they can engage with their government in a really meaningful way.”

At a time when there is a lot of public attention on the role of government, Dahut stressed the importance of modernizing access to services as a method of trust-building between government and citizens.

Employee empowerment

Another benefit Dahut touched on is the idea that generative AI “empowers government employees with AI superpowers.”

She cited two new products that can assist with, and expedite, certain workflows. The first, Duet AI, is an “always on assistant” that is trained to help employees be more productive on Google Workspace, for example, by pulling together a presentation or creating content. And second, she said, is Codey, a generative AI tool that assists with developing or correcting code in more than 20 different programming languages.

“Generative AI is going to be the thing that drives digital transformation across government, because it’s going to require cloud services, it’s going to require the data enterprise to be applied and available to you, and I do think that it will enable and empower digital transformation,” Dahut stressed.

Getting started

Dahut shared her experience working with customers on implementing generative AI projects and concluded that organizations that engage in a long process to develop an AI strategy will quickly find three things that tend to stand in their way—technology, trust and having the right talent.

“I always say, let’s just get started. Let’s just go!”

Dahut explained that there are always people within an organization who want to use the latest technologies that can fit within the organization’s current reference architectures, and they can produce good results on a small scale.

Getting started on small ideations and small innovations can help drive an organization’s modernization strategy in a meaningful way, she said.

Watch the full interview with Karen Dahut and hear more from our government leaders on Accelerating the Mission with Artificial Intelligence.

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That’s according to government executives from the U.S. Army, U.S. Postal Service and the State of New York who joined Google leaders on stage for the opening keynote at the Google Government Summit in Washington, D.C. on November 15.

From both a warfighter perspective and a user experience perspective, the U.S. Army “needs data for decision-making at the point of “need” with the “the right tools to get the job done” across a diverse set of working conditions, explained Dr. Raj Iyer, Army CIO for the U.S. Department of the Army.

During the event, Dr. Iyer shared that Google Workspace will be provisioned for 250,000 soldiers working in the U.S. Army. The first 160,000 users have migrated to Google Workspace in just two weeks – with plans for the remaining personnel to be up and running by mid-2023. Google Workspace was designed to be deployed quickly to soldiers across a variety of locations, jobs and skill levels.

Thomas Kurian, CEO for Google Cloud, also took the stage and expressed Google’s “deep commitment” to providing products and solutions that are mature, compliant and meet government’s mission goals.

“In the last four years, we’ve really heightened our work for the government…in the breadth of our products that are focused as solutions, and significantly ramped up our compliance certifications to serve agencies more fully. And we culminated that by launching Google Public Sector, the only division that Google has in the whole company dedicated to a single industry,” Kurian explained.

Though cloud was once mainly viewed as a solution that can mainly provide economic elastic compute, what makes Google Cloud competitive against other providers is its ability to offer solutions for different needs as the nature of cloud computing evolves, said Kurian.

“Organizations want to get smarter to make decisions, combining both structured and unstructured data. And they want to be able to do analysis no matter where the data sits — whether it’s in our cloud or other clouds. We are the only cloud that lets you link data and analyze it across multiple clouds, structured and unstructured, without moving a single piece of data.”

Cybersecurity was also a key concern raised during the keynote, namely the need to simplify security analysis tools so cyber experts can detect threats faster.

“Protecting governments isn’t just for something for extraordinary times. The business of government requires constant vigilance,” said Karen Dahut, CEO for Google Public Sector, the company’s independent division, focused solely on the needs of federal, state and local government and the education sector.

She cited the success of the New York City Cyber Command, which works across city government to detect and prevent cyber threats. They are accomplishing this “by building a highly secure and scalable data pipeline on Google Cloud so their cyber security experts can detect threats faster.”

Google has also recently strengthened its ability to help its customers access data on known threats with the recent acquisition of Mandiant. Kevin Mandia, CEO and director for Mandiant, now a part of Google Cloud, took the stage to explain how the company has been uniquely positioned to “own that moment of incident response” and threat attribution. This has given the company an immense collection of data on cyber incidents and intrusion techniques.

“When Mandiant and Google combined,” he explained, “we took the security DNA of Mandiant…and joining — what I believe is the best AI on the planet, best machine learning on the planet, best big data on the planet — and we’re bringing what we know [about cybersecurity] to scale.”

The keynote featured several seasoned technology leaders who each shared how cloud, artificial intelligence and machine learning tools are helping their agencies achieve mission outcomes and keep pace with cybersecurity needs, including:

• Pritha Mehra, CIO and Executive VP, United States Postal Service
• Rajiv Rao, CTO and Deputy CIO, New York State
• Teddra Burgess, Managing Director, Federal Civilian, Google Public Sector
• Leigh Palmer, VP, Delivery and Operations, Google Public Sector

Watch the keynote in its entirety on the Government Summit On-Demand page. This article was produced by Scoop News Group for FedScoop and underwritten by Google Cloud.

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But as that marketplace has matured, federal agencies have increasingly turned to multicloud arrangements, looking to take advantage of offerings from multiple providers rather than locking themselves into the products of a single vendor.

Recognizing this appetite for more choice in the federal cloud marketplace, Google recently spun off its public sector-focused business line from Google Cloud to launch an independent division focused purely on federal, state and local governments and the education sector that can serve as an alternative, multicloud-friendly provider.

Karen Dahut, a federal technology industry veteran who spent a large part of her recent career leading Booz Allen Hamilton’s defense business, was named the first CEO of Google Public Sector in September.

Now, just more than two weeks into the job, Dahut spoke with FedScoop in an exclusive interview about her vision for delivering more of that choice into the federal marketplace and how Google hopes to inject the innovative DNA it’s known for in the commercial world into the federal government.

Editor’s note: This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

FedScoop: You’ve been in the CEO role now for roughly two weeks. How are you settling in with Google?

Karen Dahut: I will tell you that Google is such an American, iconic brand that the privilege of being able to take the great work that they’ve done for consumers, for commercial entities, for citizens, and apply that at a global level for federal government, state and local governments, educational institutions, is just, honestly, the privilege of a lifetime. You know, the last 20 years, I’ve been with Booz Allen, and I held a lot of different roles there. And there were two things that became very apparent to me in my 30-plus years in this industry. The first is that the advancements in technology have really demanded a different approach in government. And what I mean by that is, most government leaders find that their data is held captive in these very large, vertically integrated, monolithic systems. And it has less utility to them because they can’t integrate it at a more substantial level. The second thing is that most of our leaders in government, either they do have the experience of working with the ease of use of Google products and solutions or their kids have. And they’re demanding that same ease of use. And so when I thought about this role at [Google Public Sector], I thought, wow, it’s the perfect opportunity to really bring the power and magic of Google engineering into the federal government, because they’re ready for that transformation, and to really help them drive those digital transformations.

FS: You’re very early into your tenure as CEO, but what is your vision for this new organization? What’s the biggest thing you want to achieve as this organization is essentially getting off the ground and up-and-running?

KD: Well, it’s a great question. And I’ve given that a lot of thought, obviously. I mean, yes, I just started, but I had been thinking about this for a while. First things first, Google Cloud, and all of the tools that they have available on Google Cloud … it’s just a brilliant platform, right? It is scaled at planet-level scale. It has remarkable tools that it can leverage: Google Earth, Google Maps, these tools that we have become very accustomed to using. So the first principle of strategy is how do you bring not just cloud, but all of those additional incredibly accessible tools to significant federal, state, local challenges. The state of West Virginia is a good example. They switched from a Microsoft product to Google Workspace … primarily to enhance collaboration, because Workspace is truly a collaborative tool born in the cloud, native to the cloud, and it’s less expensive. They saved $11.5 million by making that switch. Another great example is that the [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] worked with Google to bring in Google Analytics and Google Cloud to help understand the potential impacts of climate change and predict those changes. So I share those examples with you because I think the opportunity for Google Public Sector is to listen to our clients, provide and enhance the choices they have available to them, and solution in partnership with them. Because all of these products that I’m talking about are already scaled tools accessible to the world. And our opportunity is to tailor them for specific use cases for our public sector clients.

FS: It’s no secret that the cloud market in the federal government is very competitive. How do you look to differentiate yourself from those companies that have come to dominate the federal cloud space?

KD: Yeah, it’s a reasonable question. And one, I suspect that I’m going to answer a lot. It’s certainly not a surprise to me or not unknown to me that we were a little bit late to the cloud game in government. And I think what we really want to focus on is, first of all, the government really wants choice. They don’t want to be emboldened to a single provider. So that’s important to understand. We also believe in the power of choice and the power of multicloud. Most government organizations are going to choose different clouds for different applications. We want to be one of those that they consider — we want to provide that choice. And in fact, our Anthos tool and solution really allows governments to switch workloads between different clouds, so you’re not wedded to a single cloud. And that is going to be our approach: to understand that government wants choice. We’re one of those providers, we believe we have some very unique capabilities, to provide them that choice, and then solution with them.

FS: You’ve spent much of your career focused on the defense space. How do you plan to use that experience as a guide in this new role, particularly as the Department of Defense has place great focus on moving to the cloud, namely though the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract and others?

KD: I am super proud to be a Navy veteran and having served. I follow in the footsteps of my father who served for 42 years, and my sister who served, so super proud of that service. I think that for defense specifically, there is so much opportunity to bring the power of data analytics and AI to bear on their big challenges like JADC2, Joint All Domain Command and Control. That is a data challenge. I’ve had the opportunity to talk to many people across the department and in the services and they are looking for ways to integrate that data that gives them better perspective and insight into the world and the threats that they face. And I truly believe that using Google’s products and capabilities, whether it’s Cloud, Maps, Earth, or all of those great capabilities in combination to solve for some of the challenges — not just in defense, but in civil agencies and the like — is super exciting. And I really have a fervent belief that once we can unlock the power of the cloud and the power of data and AI from that cloud, the sky’s the limit in terms of what we can do to support government.

FS: Are there other public sector-specific mission sets or problem sets that come to mind that Google’s solutions could be a good fit for?

KD: I think it’s always instructive to go back to some of the work that we’re doing in commercial because there are direct applications In government. So for example, Ford Motor Co. hired us to use data and AI to predict maintenance. You have probably heard this is a significant issue across the military services — how do they maintain their fleet or their tanks or whatever it may be … We believe we have a solution that can help them easily do that. One of the things that [Google Cloud CEO] Thomas [Kurian] said to me as I was assuming this role is: ‘There is a world of opportunity. Our challenge is going to be to focus in on the top areas where we believe we can, with rapidity, really help government.’ And so I think that’s what I’m going to be focused in on: What are the best use cases that we can solution with clients to bring to bear on their challenges?

FS: With security such a major focus in the federal government right now, particularly with zero trust, how does Google Public Sector plan to make that a key element of its work with agencies?

KD: Google pioneered the idea of zero trust and built the first-ever zero-trust architecture. So we are a cloud provider that has security built in from the outset. And that’s really important. We know that our government clients, and the degree of sensitivity of the data that is housed in that cloud, absolutely has to have assurances around security. And so we fundamentally understand that and have always built that into our products. The second thing that’s really exciting is the acquisition of Mandiant. You know, Kevin Mandia, is a force for good. He built an amazing company that is really based upon understanding the threat landscape, providing true, no-kidding incident response capabilities, has built an incredible threat landscape library and is building a security-as-a-service platform within Google Cloud’s architecture. So the combination of all of those components of security will beautifully serve, I think, all aspects of government, but more importantly, ensure citizens that may be using that cloud or enterprises within government that are using that cloud, that their data, their information is secure.

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The executive joins from federal contracting giant Booz Allen Hamilton, where she was previously president of the company’s global defense business.

In the new C-suite role, Dahut is tasked with expanding Google Public Sector’s presence in the the federal, state and local government markets and growing its education sector portfolio.

Dahut replaces Will Grannis, who designed and launched Google Public Sector as founding CEO earlier this year. Grannis returns to his role as CTO of Google Cloud at the end of October, when the transition will occur.

“Today, it is my pleasure to introduce Karen Dahut as the new CEO of Google Public Sector,” Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud said in a statement.

“With more than 25 years of experience in technology, cybersecurity, and analytics, Karen is a highly accomplished executive who has built businesses, developed and executed large-scale growth strategies, and created differentiated solutions across both commercial and federal industries,” said Kurian.

At Booz Allen, Dahut previously led the company’s $4 billion global defense business, which represented approximately half of the firm’s annual revenue. She also served as chief innovation officer and built Booz Allen’s strategic innovation group, which develops new services in cybersecurity, data science, and digital technologies.

Dahut started her career as an officer in the U.S. Navy and served as controller for the Navy’s biomedical research institute. 

Google created its standalone public sector division in June as a separate legal entity from Google Cloud operating as its own independent company with a board of advisers to help scale its services to more government agencies nationwide.

In recent years, Google has expanded its public sector presence. At the federal level, it has won large tech contracts on both the civilian and defense sides, including at the Department of Energy, U.S. Postal Service and Department of Veteran Affairs, as well as with the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Defense Innovation Unit.

The tech company recently bid on the Pentagon’s billion-dollar multi-cloud acquisition, the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC), despite dropping out of the running for that procurement’s failed predecessor, the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract due to reported ethical concerns.

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Karen Dahut

Group Leader, Civil Agency and Commercial Business Portfolio, Booz Allen Hamilton

Karen Dahut is set to make huge strides in 2018, taking over Booz Allen Hamilton’s defense business after longtime head Joseph Logue retires June 30. Until then, Dahut leads Booz’s $1.5 billion civil agency and commercial business portfolio. Talking with FedScoop, she encouraged men and women of all kinds to take the leap into STEM careers because of the immense shortage of talent and the opportunities the field provides. “The demand for technical and STEM related jobs are extraordinary, and the gap between the supply of this talent and its demand is increasing every day. We need everyone to consider jobs in these skill areas — not just the engineers and computer scientists,” she said. “We need music majors, physics and science majors to consider these roles as well. We know that people from all backgrounds can be successful in technology related jobs.”

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America has always been a nation driven by innovators. But the need to encourage more women into the fields known for spurring innovation — including technology, science, engineering and math — has become a pressing national priority.

That’s why FedScoop has once again sought to recognize 50 women whose vibrant energy, determination and imagination are making a monumental difference in the federal government IT community, and whose impact is being felt across America.

We call it D.C.’s Top 50 Women in Technology. But in reality, we believe these women are the leaders of our time who will inspire a new generation of women about the possibilities of embracing technology, just as
Rear Adm. Grace Hopper did a generation ago with her pioneering work developing the precursor to COBOL and later standardizing communication between different computer languages.

This year’s list reflects an impressive range of talent and accomplishments, with diverse backgrounds representing government, Congress, the commercial sector, defense and academia.

Women like Arati Prabhakar, who leads some of the most forward-leaning technology developments in the world for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; Megan Smith, who headed Google’s business development before becoming chief technology officer of the United States; Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, whose has become a champion for harnessing data for U.S. innovation; Margie Graves, who as deputy chief information officer at the Department of Homeland Security has been a voice of continuity for agile development, mobile and cloud technologies; and Lynda Pierce, the second-highest-ranking IT leader in the Navy.

But the list also includes many others whose behind-the-scenes presence is equally noteworthy for the billion-dollar IT budgets they oversee, the influence they wield over data and cybersecurity standards, and the impressive ranks to which they’ve climbed in the public and private sectors in and around Washington.

What they all have in common is their passion for putting technology to work — and for leading and mentoring others — in an effort to make government and public service more innovative.
As we did last year, when we launched
D.C.’s Top Women in Technology for 2014, FedScoop’s editorial staff sought recommendations from across the federal government and the IT community to develop and ultimately narrow down this year’s list of 50 women. We then interviewed each one about what drew them into public service, what they’ve learned about leadership and what inspires them in their current roles.

We know by limiting our list to 50, we had to leave out many other deserving women. Our hope in highlighting these 50 remarkable women, however, is to shine a bright light on the incredible trails these women are blazing in and around Washington’s technology community — and hold them up as examples for the next generation of women to follow.

The following FedScoop staff editors contributed to this report: Wyatt Kash, Corinne Lestch, Billy Mitchell, Greg Otto, Dan Verton, Jake Williams, Whitney Blair Wyckoff with additional help from Ryan Verhey and Emma Whitehead.

(Megan Smith photo by David Sifry via Flickr.)

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Karen Dahut, executive vice president and group leader of the Strategic Innovation Group at Booz Allen Hamilton, discusses with FedScoopTV the role of innovation in the federal sector and why it’s key to overall government reform.

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