NetChoice, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Software & Information Industry Association — which represent some of the largest AI and tech companies in the world — expressed several concerns about the long-awaited 111-page executive order, which marks the most aggressive step by the government to rein in the technology to date.

“Broad regulatory measures in Biden’s AI red tape wishlist will result in stifling new companies and competitors from entering the marketplace and significantly expanding the power of the federal government over American innovation,” Carl Szabo, vice president and general counsel at NetChoice, an advocacy group that represents major AI companies such as Amazon, Google and Meta, said in a statement.

“This order puts any investment in AI at risk of being shut down at the whims of government bureaucrats,” he continued. “That is dangerous for our global standing as the leading technological innovators, and this is the wrong approach to govern AI.”

Szabo added that there are many federal government regulations that already govern AI that can be used to rein in the technology, but the Biden administration “has chosen to further increase the complexity and burden of the federal code.”

The Chamber of Commerce said the EO shows promise and addresses important AI priorities, but also raises concerns and needs more work.

“Substantive and process problems still exist,” Tom Quaadman, executive vice president of the Chamber’s Technology Engagement Center, said in a statement. “Short, overlapping timelines for agency-required action endangers necessary stakeholder input, thereby creating conditions for ill-informed rulemaking and degrading intra-government cooperation.” 

Federal agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau “should not see this as an opportunity to do as they please,” Quaadman added. “All agencies must continue to act within congressional limits and abide by Supreme Court rulings.”

The wide-ranging executive order, which aims to tackle everything from AI privacy risks to federal procurement, calls on several agencies to take on new responsibilities related to artificial intelligence. The order also addresses new strategies for federal agency use of the technology, including issuing guidance for agency deployment, helping agencies access AI systems through more efficient and less expensive contracting, and hiring more AI professionals within the government. 

Some tech executives also pushed back on the lack of inclusion of certain key industry perspectives in the creation of the White House’s EO.

“It’s a good first step, but what I think is lacking here is we need to get more people at the table in the room than just the big three or big five technology companies. Those that work on AI risk and security should be included, too. I think that’s a missing element,” Ian Swanson, CEO and co-founder of Protect AI, which helps businesses secure their AI and machine learning systems, told FedScoop. Swanson previously led Amazon Web Services’ worldwide AI and machine learning business.

A third tech industry association, SIIA, said in a statement that it had “top-level support” for the EO but also “concerns about some of the directions taken,” including with regard to the document’s effect on innovation and American tech leadership. 

“While we are pleased the foundation model review process is focused on high-risk use cases — those that involve national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety — we are concerned that the EO imposes requirements on the private sector that are not well calibrated to those risks and will impede innovation that is critical to realize the potential of AI to address societal challenges,” said Paul Lekas, senior vice president for global public policy & government affairs at SIIA, which represents major tech players including Adobe, Apple and Google.

“While we support the measures to democratize research and access to AI resources and reform immigration policy, we believe the directive to the FTC to focus on competition in the AI markets will ultimately undermine the administration’s objectives to maintain U.S. technological leadership.” 

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment by publication time. 

AI scholars say it’s entirely expected for tech industry associations to oppose AI regulatory steps like the EO, because they have a long history of saying such actions can challenge existing business models and slow down the speed of technological progress. 

“The fact that we’re starting to see pushback on the EO is not surprising from trade groups saying it’s too broad and could impede innovation,” Tom Romanoff, director of the Technology Policy Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told FedScoop. “But everyone sees there’s a need for regulation to happen and both parties on [Capitol] Hill have been supportive, received it well.”

Nevertheless, Romanoff did critique federal agencies for their history of not meeting deadlines for the implementation of time-sensitive tech regulations.

“I can see the government very much slipping on deadlines,” he said. “They need to be realistic with their timelines and resources and we need to hold them accountable when agencies miss their deadlines.”

The EO shows significant progress in developing a U.S. strategy for AI regulation, tackling everything from privacy risks to large models. At nearly 20,000 words, the order is remarkably detailed and includes references to everything from AI models “trained using a quantity of computing power greater than 10²⁶ integer” and obligations of new chief artificial intelligence officers to incentive pay programs for AI-focused roles in government. 

Alondra Nelson, the former White House Office of Science and Technology Policy chief, was highly supportive and complimentary of the Biden administration’s EO, but also highlighted major challenges the government is likely to face in implementing the order.

“I think implementation is going to be hard and I think it’s encouraging that part of the executive order includes the standing up of a White House Council on AI,” Nelson said in an interview with FedScoop. “It’s going to take that level of senior coordination to do that. 

“I think we’re going to need scientists, technologists, funding and infrastructure to implement it at the scale in the government that we’ll need to preserve privacy from a technical perspective while we wait on the Congress to act and get us closer to something like federal privacy law.” 

Nelson added that the executive order hit the “sweet spot” of containing parts that everyone likes and doesn’t like, so “no one’s too unhappy.”

This story was updated to include additional comments and context from SIIA.

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The VA’s new artificial intelligence tech sprint is meant to encourage American innovators to create AI-centered tools to aid in clinicians’ note-taking and/or integrate patients’ medical records. 

Monday’s executive order called for advancements in the development of AI systems to improve veterans’ health care, with two three-month AI Tech Sprint competitions within a year of the EO. The measure also seeks to support the “innovative capacity” of small businesses.

“It’s really about looking at making these private-public partnerships, right, and establishing that connection on the journey together with companies, industry, nonprofits, academia and others around this theme,” Dr. Gil Alterovitz, the VA’s chief AI officer and director of the agency’s National Artificial Intelligence Institute, said in an interview with FedScoop. It’s “around making sure that AI is trustworthy for our veterans.”

The agency called for proposals that address one or both of its focus areas: speech-to-text solutions for appointments and document processing to more seamlessly integrate an individual’s non-VA medical records into their VA record. 

“AI solutions can help us reduce the time that clinicians spend on non-clinical work, which will get our teams doing more of what they love most: caring for veterans,” Shereef Elnahal, the VA’s under secretary for health, said in a statement. “This effort will reduce burnout among our clinicians and improve veteran health care at the same time.”

This tech sprint is the first of two nationwide competitions that the executive order requires the VA secretary to implement. The order also notes that the competitions can be “in collaboration with appropriate partners.”

The sprints are required to provide participants with technical assistance, opportunities for mentorship, personalized expert feedback on developing products, opportunities for contract work and other resources.

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“In parallel with [the AI executive order], we also have announced previously that the Office of Management and Budget is putting out guidance for how the government uses AI,” Arati Prabhakar, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and Biden’s top technology adviser, said during a Washington Post event. “And that is a very big deal because getting that right is a tremendous opportunity for leadership.”

“Staff has been working [on the OMB guidance] in parallel with the EO and I expect that to be released soon,” Prabhakar added.

There have been multiple reports this week stating that the White House had sent out invitations for a “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence” event on Oct. 30. The AI executive order is expected to be announced during the Biden-hosted event. 

Prabhakar in September teased the upcoming AI executive order, saying that it will determine how the executive branch uses AI to mitigate risks while also “seizing the huge opportunities.” The EO will “be broad,” she added.

The OMB guidance on AI is expected to be far more detailed about how specifically federal agencies and officials should implement AI technology and policies within their organizations. 

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The Executive Order on Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets lays out a governmentwide strategy that gives the Office of Science and Technology Policy and U.S. chief technology officer only 180 days to perform a technical evaluation of the potential infrastructure, capacity and expertise agencies need to introduce a central bank digital currency (CBDC) system. The Treasury Department and other agencies are tasked with several evaluations, as well.

Digital assets, including cryptocurrencies, surpassed a $3 trillion market cap worldwide in November with 40 million U.S. adults investing in or using the technology, prompting the aggressive White House effort to rapidly address six priorities: consumer and investor protection, financial stability, illicit finance, U.S. global competitiveness, inclusion, and responsible innovation.

White House officials stressed that establishing a CBDC would put the U.S. in the driver’s seat for ensuring global financial stability by supporting efficient, low-cost transactions and greater access to the financial system — in contrast with privately managed cryptocurrencies. For now, there are many variables to consider, said Sean Frazier, federal chief security officer at Okta, told FedScoop.

“My gut tells me it’s probably going to be a lot of work because agencies are going to have to look at that vis-à-vis all the other currencies they maintain, regulate, monitor and control,” Frazier said. “This has to then be fit into that model, and the challenge for them and the challenge for government is we work on the models of old, more antiquated models, and cryptocurrency is a new, digital technology that does require a lot of digital infrastructure to keep tabs on it.”

Frazier still applauded the “innovative” executive order for bringing cryptocurrency in from the margins, where it’s been rife with fraud and nefarious characters using it as their means to transact untraceably.

While it’s “to be determined” if 180 days is enough time to evaluate the government’s infrastructure for CBDC viability, OSTP should be able to develop “first pass” at a framework, Frazier said.

“I think they picked the right group of folks to do it because these are the forward thinkers; these are the scientists who have been steeped in the technology,” he said. “It’s the same group that’s been working on mobility programs and practices over the last decade.”

The executive order also gives OSTP 180 days to issue a report on the connections between the distributed ledger technology behind cryptocurrencies and economic and energy transitions in the short, medium and long term — a report it must update in a year.

OSTP isn’t the only agency the executive order charges with working toward a CBDC, with the Treasury Department tasked with most of the heavy lifting.

Treasury has 180 days to work with other agencies on report on the future of money and payment systems including their technical innovation, as well as policy recommendations addressing the digital assets sector’s impact on consumers and investors. The executive order gives Treasury 210 days, meanwhile, to convene the Financial Stability Oversight Council to produce a report on addressing the regulatory gaps digital assets have created.

“This approach will support responsible innovation that could result in substantial benefits for the nation, consumers and businesses,” said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in a statement. “It will also address risks related to illicit finance, protecting consumers and investors, and preventing threats to the financial system and broader economy.”

Treasury also has 120 days to create a framework for interagency international engagement on the use of digital assets, the Commerce Department 180 days to create a separate framework for enhancing U.S. economic competitiveness in the space and the Department of Justice 90 days to report on strengthening related international law enforcement cooperation.

“As is the case for the digital assets market, innovation and growth tend to be accompanied by emerging challenges,” said Commerce Secretary Gina Raimando in a statement. “As threats to the security and integrity of our financial system scale, the department remains committed to addressing them and supporting our partners across sectors in their anti-money laundering efforts, countering terrorist and other illicit financing, and combatting other abusive activities.”

For its part, DOJ also has 180 days to assess legislative changes needed to issue a CBDC and 210 days to produce a legislative proposal, as well as 180 days to report on the role of law enforcement agencies in detecting, investigating and prosecuting criminal activity.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., praised the “urgency” in studying a central bank digital currency.

“I applaud the executive order’s recognition that maintaining the centrality of the United States in the global financial system – and, in particular, the role of American governance standards and the primacy of the U.S. dollar – is absolutely fundamental to our efforts with regard to digital assets,” Warner said.

‘Organize ourselves with urgency’

A number of other agencies have roles to play in assisting with the development of the reports and other products the executive order requires, among them the: departments of State, Defense, Energy, Labor, and Homeland Security; Environmental Protection Agency; offices of Management and Budget, Director of National Intelligence, and Information and Regulatory Affairs; Council of Economic Advisers; National Science Foundation; U.S. Agency for International Development; and Federal Reserve.

“All of these issues are tied up in the question of whether to issue a digital currency and, if so, how to do so in a way that advances our strategic objectives,” said a senior Biden administration official, on a press call Tuesday. “And so this is a way to organize ourselves with urgency so that we have a coherent and coordinated view on digital assets and that it’s articulated at the very highest level of our government.”

Identity and access management is one component of securing digital assets that’s “conspicuously absent” from the executive order, Frazier said.

But it could be addressed in future executive orders.

“One of the things you need to do to protect digital assets is you need to make sure the right people are getting access to those assets and not the wrong people,” Frazier said.

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Speaking on a briefing call Monday, Jason Miller, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, told journalists that existing centralized resources, including those from the two agencies, would be made available to government departments.

“It’s important to note that [for] the specific actions that are included here, we are utilizing existing resources,” he said. “These may be existing agency resources, existing capabilities that we can bring to bear, whether that’s from USDS or GSA, including resources from recent legislation to support improvements in service delivery.”

President Biden on Monday signed the executive order, which requires agencies to place user experience at the center of every system and to pilot new online tools and technologies to improve citizens’ interactions with government.

The directive seeks to place the key life events at the center of digital services, in an attempt to redefine citizens’ relationship with the federal government. It mentions several key touchpoints for citizens, which include: retiring, filing your taxes, surviving a disaster, traveling, financing post-secondary education and accessing VA benefits.

The White House has said that it will demand transparency from agencies and that departments use transparent metrics to measure progress made in complying with the order.

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The executive order, expected Monday afternoon, is intended to fundamentally reshape how citizens interact with government services. The White House wants to monitor agencies closely, said Jason Miller deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget.

“On the accountability component of this…a key part of the ongoing process of this is that we are going to measure customer experience. We’re going to measure it at a granular level, including designing and delivering these services from a user perspective,” Miller said Monday during a press briefing in advance of the new mandate.

He added: “We’re going to report on that performance, and those high impact service providers are going to be required to have annual improvement plans. Those will have leadership visibility, and ownership of, on an ongoing basis.”

President Biden planned to meet with federal agency leaders Monday as he signed the executive order, which is expected to include 36 specific customer experience improvement commitments across 17 federal agencies.

A list of 35 government agencies that make up high impact service providers was previously established by OMB circular no. A-11 (2020). These are departments that function as especially significant touchpoints for citizens.

“There is accountability at each of the high impact service providers to drive improved performance over time,” Miller added.

The president wants federal agencies to commit to placing citizens’ user experience at the center of everything they do. Departments should take actions such as testing out new online tools and technologies to provide a “simple, seamless and secure customer experience,” the White House said.

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The study identified also low representation of minority groups within the sector. Hispanic, African American, Asian and American Indian/Native Alaskan workers made up 4%, 9%, 8% and 1% respectively.

The publication of Aspen’s research comes amid a push from senior technology leaders at federal agencies to expand the government’s technology talent base and to create a more diverse pipeline of new recruits.

Late last month, General Services Administration leader Robin Carnahan in a speech called on women working in tech to consider a career in public service, and described the current gender balance of technologists working in government as “not good enough.”

Women currently make up less than one-quarter of all technologists working in the federal government.

In June, the Biden administration issued an executive order intended to boost diversity within the federal government.

As part of this, agencies are required to work with education institutions that specialize in cybersecurity to advance opportunities for groups that previously have faced employment discrimination, including people of color, women, and individuals with disabilities.

The legislation mandates that all agencies assess the current state of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility within their workforces and that they develop plans to eliminate any barriers to success faced by underserved employees. It directs agencies to seek opportunities to establish or elevate chief diversity officers within their organizations.

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Speaking on a second-quarter earnings call, Horacio Rozanski praised the creativity of the company’s clients during the COVID-19 pandemic and said many continue to embrace new ways of working.

“[W]e have a group of people who work full time at government and our facilities. And that too will continue, although we expect it to proportionately decline from historical levels,” Rozanski said. “Our clients have shown a great deal of creativity over the course of the pandemic. And based on this experience, many are interested in flexible models that better serve their missions while reducing the number of people who are 100% onsite.”

The comments come as agency staff return to the office and follow an earlier policy advising federal departments to consider embracing a more geographically distributed workforce. The Office of Personnel Management also issued further guidance on that policy July 23 “to assist agencies … as they plan for the safe, increased return of Federal employees to physical workplaces (“reentry”) and the post-reentry work environment.”

Agencies have each set their own strategy for bringing their workforce back to the office with input from the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force.

According to the prior guidance, federal departments were advised to embrace more telework “where possible and appropriate,” and where it could help to benefit equity, inclusion and the delivery of missions.

The geographic location of the federal government jobs was highlighted last month with the Biden administration’s Executive Order on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility, which was intended to examine new ways of getting underserved and minority communities into the workforce.

Responding to questions from analysts on the company’s earnings call, Booz Allen’s executive team said also that the company’s projection for achieving about $200 million in cost savings from its acquisition of Liberty IT, remains unchanged.

In an interview earlier this year with FedScoop, Booz Allen’s head of civil business Kristine Martin Anderson said the consulting company’s “number one” job following the $725 million deal would be to deliver on existing contracts with the Department of Veterans Affairs, but that the transaction will allow the company to deploy Liberty’s resources across other areas of its balance sheet.

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The order calls for assessments of current unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), and it requires agencies to tell Office of Management and Budget if they have the ability to halt those existing procurements, grants and contracts. Trump’s order has no firm deadline. President-elect Joe Biden could choose to reverse it or alter it after taking office Wednesday.

The executive order is an attempt to secure the federal drone fleet and airspace by limiting agencies’ reliance on potentially compromised UAS to access, gather and maintain sensitive data during operations like natural disaster relief efforts. North Korea, Iran, China and Russia are named. China, in particular, has a big share of the global market for drones.

“The use of UAS and critical components manufactured and developed by foreign adversaries, or by persons under their control, may allow this sensitive information to be accessed by or transferred to foreign adversaries,” reads the executive order.

The action by the White House applies to existing purchases. The General Services Administration, meanwhile, is trying to ensure that civilian agencies purchase drones from a list of manufacturers approved by the military.

The order provides no further guidance on what OMB must do with the information it receives from agencies.

Other provisions within the order may have more bite in terms of securing the federal drone fleet.

Agencies have 60 days to report the manufacturer, model and security protocols for drones they or their contractors operate, that are covered by the order, to the directors of the offices of National Intelligence (ODNI) and Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).

To fall under the executive order, the entire UAS does not have to be built by a U.S. adversary. A system could run afoul of OMB if one of the specified countries built the software or hardware used for storing, transferring or manipulating digital data. Passive electronics like batteries or wiring aren’t covered by the executive order.

The director of national intelligence has 180 days to work with the attorney general, Department of Homeland Security, OSTP and other relevant agencies to review those reports for security risks and make recommendations to President-elect Joe Biden on discounting use and removal of covered drones.

The Federal Aviation Administration director has 270 days to issue regulations restricting UAS use on or over critical infrastructure and other sensitive sites.

And agency heads are advised to budget for the removal of covered drones in favor of domestically developed ones. The order directs the OMB director to help agencies find funding for UAS replacements.

Trump’s executive order is similar to one preventing U.S. companies from using telecommunications technology made by firms with ties to foreign adversaries, namely China, and comes little more than a month after at least eight agencies were compromised in the SolarWinds supply-chain cyberattack conducted by Russia.

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President Trump signed an executive order Friday allowing federal agencies to prioritize skills-based hiring in addition to traditional educational-based requirements.

Michael Rigas, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, said in a press call that OPM will set new ground rules for agencies to “shift from vetting candidates based largely on educational credentials and written questionnaires to using assessment methods that more directly determine whether job seekers possess the knowledge, skills and abilities to do the job they’re applying for.”

Many in the federal IT community have been critical of the pre-existing educational requirements for hiring talented technologists, as many of the most eligible candidates increasingly receive non-traditional educations and other training. Without a college degree, applying for IT jobs and others, like “laboratory scientists to law enforcement officers and everything in between,” is pretty much a nonstarter, Rigas said.

“Today, as you may know, a college degree or a graduate degree is necessary to work in many of these occupations for many other fields, so those without a degree are at a major disadvantage in the federal hiring process,” he said on the call. “While education credentials are critical in many lines of work, such as the medical and legal field, necessity is far less clear in other areas. The federal job classification and qualification framework was put in place decades ago, well before the onset of the 21st century. And as you know, a lot has changed since then — education has changed, the nature of work itself changed, but federal hiring has been largely unchanged.”

To be clear, educational experience will still be on the table as a way agencies can evaluate applicants. But now, there will be competency-based alternatives for vetting them as well. These include online tests or having subject matter experts participate in an interview instead of a candidate self-assessing their skills, which is the current process.

“Unnecessary degree requirements exclude otherwise qualified Americans from Federal employment, impose the expense of college on prospective workers, and disproportionately harm low-income Americans,” says a White House release. “As a result of this reform, talented individuals with apprenticeships, technical training, and apt backgrounds will have greater opportunity to pursue careers in the Federal civil service.”

The hope is this will better balance the weight of actual skills with education in job postings, as often applicants meet the educational requirements and over-rate themselves in a self-assessment for a job but don’t have experience in that field, which causes an abundance of unqualified applicants. Rigas said this model is already used successfully in the private sector.

“For instance, if someone is applying for a job in information technology, presently, they can just self-assess on a questionnaire to rate themselves more highly qualified in all the categories that an agency is seeking,” said a senior administration official. “And the result of that is today about 40% of [jobs] go completely unfilled. No one is hired for them because the assessment is a self-assessment. By having qualified subject matter experts assess candidates first and then put them into the pool for further interviewing, you really reduce the amount of unqualified candidates that are getting through the process right now.”

The Federal CIO Council recently issued recommendations for such skills-based hiring reform and including subject matter experts in hiring decisions in its recent study on the needs of the federal IT workforce.

“Employment and advancement based on ability is the underlying principle of the civil service. Hiring based on the skills and competencies of job seekers, the civil service will create a more merit-based system,” said Rigas. “So I’m very eager to pursue the directive of the president will sign today. I will overhaul federal job qualification standards where they are limiting opportunities for those with diverse job backgrounds. And I will work to ensure they have a fair chance to demonstrate all they have to offer to federal hiring managers.”

Trump will sign the executive order in conjunction with a meeting of the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board at the White House.

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