Speaking with FedScoop, five AI policy experts said adhering to both the White House’s Blueprint for an AI ‘Bill of Rights’ and the AI Risk Management Framework (RMF), published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, presents an obstacle for companies working to develop responsible AI products.

However, the White House and civil rights groups have pushed back on claims that the two voluntary AI safety frameworks send conflicting messages and have highlighted that they are a productive “starting point” in the absence of congressional action on AI. 

The two policy documents form the foundation of the Biden administration’s approach to regulating artificial intelligence. But for many months, there has been an active debate among AI experts regarding how helpful — or in some cases hindering — the Biden administration’s dual approach to AI policymaking has been.

The White House’s Blueprint for an AI ‘Bill of Rights’ was published last October. It takes a rights-based approach to AI, focusing on broad fundamental human rights as a starting point for the regulation of the technology. That was followed by the risk-based AI RMF in January, which set out to determine the scale and scope of risks related to concrete use cases and recognized threats to instill trustworthiness into the technology.

Speaking with FedScoop, Daniel Castro, a technology policy scholar and vice president at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), noted that there are “big, major philosophical differences in the approach taken by the two Biden AI policy documents,” which are creating “different [and] at times adverse” outcomes for the industry.

“A lot of companies that want to move forward with AI guidelines and frameworks want to be doing the right thing but they really need more clarity. They will not invest in AI safety if it’s confusing or going to be a wasted effort or if instead of the NIST AI framework they’re pushed towards the AI blueprint,” Castro said.

Castro’s thoughts were echoed by Adam Thierer of the libertarian nonprofit R Street Institute who said that despite a sincere attempt to emphasize democratic values within AI tools, there are “serious issues” with the Biden administration’s handling of AI policy driven by tensions between the two key AI frameworks.

“The Biden administration is trying to see how far it can get away with using their bully pulpit and jawboning tactics to get companies and agencies to follow their AI policies, particularly with the blueprint,” Thierer, senior fellow on the Technology and Innovation team at R Street, told FedScoop.

Two industry sources who spoke with FedScoop but wished to remain anonymous said they felt pushed toward the White House’s AI blueprint over the NIST AI framework in certain instances during meetings regarding AI policymaking with the White House’s Office of Science and Technology (OSTP).

Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., chair of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, and House Oversight Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., have been highly critical of the White House blueprint as it compares to the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, expressing concern earlier this year that the blueprint sends “conflicting messages about U.S. federal AI policy.”

In a letter obtained exclusively by FedScoop, Arati Prabhakar responded to those concerns, arguing that “these documents are not contradictory” and highlighting how closely the White House and NIST are working together on future regulation of the technology.

At the same time, some industry AI experts say the way in which the two documents define AI clash with one another.

Nicole Foster, who leads global AI and machine learning policy at Amazon Web Services, said chief among the concerns with the documents are diverging definitions of the technology itself. She told FedScoop earlier this year that “there are some inconsistencies between the two documents for sure. I think just at a basic level they don’t even define things like AI in the same way.”

Foster’s thoughts were echoed by Raj Iyer, global head of public sector at cloud software provider ServiceNow and former CIO of the U.S. Army, who believes the two frameworks are a good starting point to get industry engaged in AI policymaking but that they lack clarity.

“I feel like the two frameworks are complementary. But there’s clearly some ambiguity and vagueness in terms of definition,” said Iyer.

“So what does the White House mean by automated systems? Is it autonomous systems? Is it automated decision-making? What is it? I think it’s very clear that they did that to kind of steer away from wanting to have a direct conversation on AI,” Iyer added.

Hodan Omaar, an AI and quantum research scholar working with Castro at ITIF, said the two documents appear to members of the tech industry as if they are on different tracks. According to Omaar, the divergence creates a risk that organizations will simply defer to either the “Bill of Rights” or the NIST RMF and ignore the other.

“There are two things the White House should be doing. First, it should better elucidate the ways the Blueprint should be used in conjunction with the RMF. And second, it should better engage with stakeholders to gather input on how the Blueprint can be improved and better implemented by organizations,” Omaar told FedScoop.

In addition to compatibility concerns about the two documents, experts have also raised concerns about the process followed by the White House to take industry feedback in creating the documents.

Speaking with FedScoop anonymously in order to speak freely, one industry association AI official said that listening sessions held by the Office of Science and Technology Policy were not productive.

“The Bill of Rights and the development of that, we have quite a bit of concern because businesses were not properly consulted throughout that process,” the association official said. 

The official added: “OSTP’s listening sessions were just not productive or helpful. We tried to actually provide input in ways in which businesses could help them through this process. Sadly, that’s just not what they wanted.”

The AI experts’ comments come as the Biden administration works to establish a regulatory framework that mitigates potential threats posed by the technology while supporting American AI innovation. Last month, the White House secured voluntary commitments from seven leading AI companies about how AI is used, and it is expected to issue a new executive order on AI safety in the coming weeks.

One of the contributors to the White House’s AI Blueprint sympathizes with concerns from industry leaders and AI experts regarding the confusion and complexity of the administration’s approach to AI policymaking. But it’s also an opportunity for companies seeking voluntary AI policymaking guidance to put more effort into asking themselves hard questions, he said.

“So I understand the concerns very much. And I feel the frustration. And I understand people just want clarity. But clarity will only come once you understand the implications, the broader values, discussion and the issues in the context of your own AI creations,” said Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a Brown University professor and former top official within the White House’s OSTP, where he helped co-author its Blueprint for an ‘AI Bill of Rights.’ 

“The goal is not to say: Do every single thing in these frameworks. It’s like, understand the issues, understand the values at play here. Understand the questions you need to be asking from the RMF and the Blueprint, and then make your own decisions,” said Venkatasubramanian.

On top of that, the White House Blueprint co-author wants those who criticize the documents’ perceived contradictions to be more specific in their complaints.

“Tell me a question in the NIST RMF that contradicts a broader goal in the White House blueprint — find one for me, or two or three. I’m not saying this because I think they don’t exist. I’m saying this because if you could come up with these examples, then we could think through what can we do about it?” he said.

Venkatasubramanian added that he feels the White House AI blueprint in particular has faced resistance from industry because “for the first time someone in a position of power came out and said: What about the people?” when it comes to tech innovation and regulations. 

Civil rights groups like the Electronic Privacy Information Center have also joined the greater discussion about AI regulations, pushing back on the notion that industry groups should play any significant role in the policymaking of a rights-based document created by the White House.

“I’m sorry that industry is upset that a policy document is not reflective of their incentives, which is just to make money and take people’s data and make whatever decisions they want to make more contracts. It’s a policy document, they don’t get to write it,” said Ben Winters, the senior counsel at EPIC, where he leads their work on AI and human rights.

Groups like EPIC and a number of others have called upon the Biden administration to take more aggressive steps to protect the public from the potential harms of AI.

“I actually don’t think that the Biden administration has taken a super aggressive role when trying to implement these two frameworks and policies that the administration has set forth. When it comes to using the frameworks for any use of AI within the government or federal contractors or recipients of federal funds, they’re not doing enough in terms of using their bully pulpit and applying pressure. I really don’t think they’re doing too much yet,” said Winters.

Meanwhile, the White House has maintained that the two AI documents were created for different purposes but designed to be used side-by-side as initial voluntary guidance, noting that both OSTP and NIST were involved in the creation of both frameworks.

OSTP spokesperson Subhan Cheema said: “President Biden has been clear that companies have a fundamental responsibility to ensure their products are safe before they are released to the public, and that innovation must not come at the expense of people’s rights and safety. That’s why the administration has moved with urgency to advance responsible innovation that manage the risks posed by AI and seize its promise — including by securing voluntary commitments from seven leading AI companies that will help move us toward AI development that is more safe, secure, and trustworthy.”

“These commitments are a critical step forward and build on the administration’s Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights and AI Risk Management Framework. The administration is also currently developing an executive order that will ensure the federal government is doing everything in its power to support responsible innovation and protect people’s rights and safety, and will also pursue bipartisan legislation to help America lead the way in responsible innovation,” Cheema added.

NIST did not respond to requests for comment.

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Known as high-impact service providers (HISPs), the agencies should have their website modernization, connection security, data analytics deployment, form digitization, service mobile friendliness, and electronic signature use evaluated against the 21st Century IDEA.

Signed into law in 2018, the 21st Century IDEA requires all agencies to modernize their websites, digitize services and forms, and transition to centralized shared services to improve customer experience (CX), which was also the focus of a December 2021 executive order. But ITIF found HISPs’ digital services adoption remained “too low” based on those requirements.

ITIF is a nonprofit that was founded in 2006 with the mission to formulate, evaluate and promote policy solutions that accelerate innovation and boost productivity in government.

“Most HISPs have expressed lip service in employing digital services to enhance customer experience, but greater digital adoption requires more substantial commitment and greater accountability by HISPs — and, as the following conclusion suggests, greater access to funding — to turn these plans into reality,” reads ITIF’s report. “As it stands, many HISPs are not fully complying with executive guidance or laws such as 21st Century IDEA.”

ITIF found that only one-third of HISPs had websites compliant with government’s resource for accessible, mobile-friendly websites: the U.S. Web Design System.

No HISPs and only nine other agencies used the U.S. Digital Service’s compliant publishing platform, Federalist.

Government’s shared-service search engine, Search.gov, only supported half of HISP websites and 35% of all agencies’, and fewer used login.gov for identity and access management.

Among HISPs, two websites weren’t mobile-friendly, and only 10 had native mobile apps — generally rated worse than popular commercial apps.

“The low level of digital services adoption impacts customer satisfaction,” reads the report. “A GAO investigation and corresponding report would highlight these shortcomings and provide HISPs with greater incentive to accelerate adoption of digital services that have been proven to improve overall customer experience.”

Government ranks last in customer experience among 13 industries with most customers reporting “poor” or “very poor” experiences, according to Forrester’s U.S. 2022 Customer Experience Index.

ITIF recommends Congress help by removing regulatory hurdles like rules preventing data sharing between agencies and the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, which should be automated to accelerate agencies’ cloud migrations. Passing the Advancing Government Innovation with Leading-Edge (AGILE) Procurement Act would also help.

The Office of Management and Budget can help by standing up a task force to evaluate HISP digital platforms’ CX, requiring more thorough reporting on digital services adoption from HISPs, and earmarking Technology Modernization Fund money explicitly for HISP CX, according to the report.

ITIF also advises HISPs integrate feedback surveys across digital channels to collect more CX, in addition to using existing data from the Federal Digital Analytics Program.

“Currently, OMB and HISPs aren’t collecting enough feedback on customer satisfaction with digital services, making it difficult to continuously improve websites and apps based on customer needs,” reads the report.

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Data from Internet of Things technologies, wearables, Internet search histories and social media — not just federal statistical surveys — can help agencies provide services to people they haven’t historically, CDI found in a report released Monday.

The Center for Data Innovation is a research arm of the nonprofit Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

CDI recommends that the Federal Chief Data Officers (CDO) Council amend the Federal Data Strategy (FDS) to acknowledge what it’s calling the data divide: the lack of equitable data collection on certain Americans that impacts their access to health care, education and financial services. The center further recommends directing agencies to increase the amount of high-quality data they collect on underrepresented groups, which could be done through the FDS 2022 Action Plan — assuming one is ever released.

The CDO Council did not publish a Federal Data Strategy for 2021 until October last year.

“I think they should be thinking about how they can use these alternative data sources to fill their existing knowledge gaps,” Gillian Diebold, CDI policy analyst and the report’s author, told FedScoop. “I think there’s a lot of potential that’s gone unexplored there.”

A Year 3 Action Plan could also have agencies amend their own data strategies, increase the number of languages and direct outreach for federal surveys, and redistribute sensors gathering data to underrepresented communities, Diebold said.

Agencies’ data collectors should be required to increase the quality of their annotations, which would in turn avoid biased results and build trust, while agencies should consider the value in crowdsourcing data — like the State Department Humanitarian Information Unit already does through OpenStreetMaps, she added.

A final action the Federal CDO Council could include is equitable deployment of data systems like artificial intelligence in the classroom, which shouldn’t be limited to affluent school districts, Diebold said.

CDI’s report also includes recommendations for lawmakers, namely that Congress establish a bipartisan commission to study the data divide. Legislative action would indicate Congress recognizes the issue, and already some policymakers have moved to protect LGBTQ data, Diebold said.

The Biden administration launched the Equitable Data Working Group, which made recommendations in April for disaggregating health data by race, ethnicity, gender, disability, income, veteran status, age, and other demographics.

“The working group signals to the agencies that this is something to be taken seriously,” Diebold said. “And obviously the Biden administration has been putting out a lot of directives related to getting greater equity.”

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Augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) — immersive technologies that enable users to experience digitally rendered content in both physical and virtual space — have the potential to meet these immediate needs and transform the way businesses, nonprofits, and government organizations work going forward.

The need for such a transition is especially evident in the federal government. Not only are a significant number of federal employees working from home, but restrictions on travel, in-person meetings, and public gatherings limit the day-to-day functions and skill-building capacity of federal agencies.

AR/VR can bring virtual and in-person work together in ways that less immersive technologies never could. With AR, users can introduce virtual elements such as directions or three-dimensional objects to their physical environment, while VR fully immerses them in a virtual environment like a classroom or conference hall. These capabilities are well suited to meet the needs of federal workers operating in a virtual capacity. AR/VR can enable colleagues to meet face-to-face from their living rooms, simulate hands-on scenario trainings, and facilitate virtual services such as health care and emergency response.

The most well-known examples of AR/VR come from historically high-tech arenas such as national defense or space flight, with Air Force pilots training on complex VR simulators and NASA technicians replacing thousand-page manuals with real-time AR instructions. But the potential uses expand across government functions from emergency management to direct service provision.

Achieving this widespread use will require investment in new resources for the digital workforce. Many potential use cases, such as AR-based training, are possible with smartphones, tablets, and personal computers. But fully immersive experiences, such as virtual gatherings or simulations, will require specialized hardware like headsets. Similarly, while existing AR/VR services already offer basic capabilities like virtual meeting spaces or training scenarios, specific applications will require customized software as well as content.

Such investments in AR/VR are more than just a stopgap solution to the immediate challenges of collaboration, skill-building, and public interactions in a newly virtual workforce. AR/VR can expand federal workers’ potential well into the future by enhancing both their long-term professional development and their day-to-day operational efficiency. But in order to effectively implement AR/VR solutions, federal agencies need to understand the technological possibilities—and limitations—of specific use cases.

With the urgent need to pivot to more flexible work and professional development arrangements, now is the time to begin adopting AR/VR technologies at scale in the federal workforce. Because this is a relatively new and rapidly changing technology, it is important that implementation plans allow for exploring new use cases safely and responsibly.

One approach is outlined in the VR TECHS in Government Act. There has been no action on this bill since Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) introduced it last year, but the shifting circumstances of a pandemic workforce lend a new sense of urgency to the proposal.

The act would establish a multi-sector advisory committee “to promote the use of reality technology as a tool for professional development for Federal workers, and for other purposes.” Rather than lay out rigid parameters for the use of AR/VR in the federal workforce, this legislation offers a foundation to explore the possibilities of these technologies in a government context, share best practices across agencies, and determine whether and how to integrate these tools into existing operations and trainings.

Such an advisory committee would be a beneficial first step in introducing AR/VR solutions across the federal workforce. Input from members representing the technology industry, academia, and multiple government agencies would ensure any new uses unlock the current and future potential of AR/VR, meet the actual needs of federal employees, and include preventative measures to proactively address misuse and safety concerns. It can also adapt recommendations to address unforeseen circumstances—like a global pandemic that moved most federal employees to telework overnight.

The future of work is here, and the federal government should adapt. AR/VR technologies can help address immediate concerns about staffing, training, and service provision during a global pandemic, while also positioning the federal workforce to excel in a dynamic and increasingly networked environment. By introducing mechanisms to continually grow and adapt the use of AR/VR for professional development, service provision, collaboration, and other functions now, federal employees will be better equipped to participate in the workforce of the future.

Ellysse Dick is a research fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), the leading think tank for science and technology policy.

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Just 26 percent said that yes, they do support strict government limits on the use of facial recognition technology, while nearly 45 percent said they wouldn’t want this. The percentage of people supporting strict limits dropped further to 18 percent when the question mentioned public safety. The survey does not dig into what “strict” means to respondents.

Survey participants were also in favor overall of the use of facial recognition technology in circumstances where it provides efficiency benefits — like speeding up airport security lines.

These results come at a time when the government’s proper role in regulating the use of facial recognition and other artificial intelligence-powered technologies is being actively debated.

Microsoft President Brad Smith has called for “proactive” congressional oversight of the emerging technology. In remarks at the Brookings Institution in early December, and a concurrent blog post, Smith advocated for legislation to protect against the risk of bias and discrimination, the risk of intrusion into personal privacy and the risk of mass surveillance by government.

He even gave examples for what he thinks this legislation could look like — for example requiring that companies submit algorithms to third-party system testing. “As a society, we need legislation that will put impartial testing groups like Consumer Reports and their counterparts in a position where they can test facial recognition services for accuracy and unfair bias in a transparent and even-handed manner,” Smith wrote at the time.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s approach to emerging technologies has been characterized by the argument that any further government regulation will stifle private sector innovation. Specifically in the case of artificial intelligence, the technology that powers facial recognition software and has been a big focus for the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, leaders have continuously argued against regulation.

The director of the Center for Data Innovation, Daniel Castro, said the results of the survey are a little surprising, but understandable.

“Often consumers fear new technologies, and this fear leads to calls for regulation, so it is somewhat surprising that the public does not support government limits on facial recognition,” he told FedScoop in an email. “However, these results are likely explained by the fact that consumers are increasingly familiar with facial recognition technology, such as using it to unlock their phones, so they understand its convenience. When they understand a technology, they are usually willing to embrace it if they come out ahead.”

The survey was done via a national online poll of 3,151 adult U.S. internet users. The Center fro Data Innovation is a “non-profit, non-partisan research institute.” It’s associated with The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank that promotes policy solutions that “accelerate innovation.”

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“The good news is that it’s not as bad as we feared,” New America’s Denice Ross said, talking about the concern, after the 2016 election, that the new administration would not honor President Barack Obama’s level of commitment to open data. This, Ross suggested, is partially owing to the attention that initiatives like Data Refuge, which preserves datasets on climate change, have brought to the issue.

“[Data Refuge] really raised the nation’s awareness about these valuable data assets that could be at risk,” Ross said at the event held by the Center for Data Innovation and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. “And I think the mere act of holding these Data Refuge events around the country itself probably stemmed some of the data loss we might have seen.”

Paul M. Farber, managing director of the Penn Program in the Environmental Humanities, agreed that post-election 2016 calls to action to save open data — from Data Refuge and others — stopped the “doomsday scenario” of mass data deletion.

Panelists also stated that although some datasets — such as those on climate change — can be politically charged, open data isn’t really a partisan issue. They cited the bipartisan OPEN Government Data Act, which would require that public data is published in a machine-readable format, as proof.

But deleting full datasets is not the only way to damage open data, the group acknowledged. For example an agency could release data but with fewer attributes — meaning it is still technically available, but less useful. The most recent FBI Crime in the United States report, as one example, contains close to 70 percent fewer data tables than its 2015 version did.

An agency could also decrease openness by changing the data schema, so that the data is not comparable across multiple years. Such changes could be intentional, or owing to limited funding or low staffing levels, panelists pointed out. Opening government data takes investment.

The group agreed that storytelling — finding specific individuals who have benefitted from open data and showing how it impacted them — is key to gathering support for open data initiatives.

“I mentioned a use case of ranchers requiring the NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] data in order to apply for federal relief when they have a drought,” Ross said, by way of illustrating the storytelling point. “Find a rancher who used that data to apply for relief and what it meant to that rancher.”

The panel ended with a thought-provoking question from moderator Daniel Castro. Is it possible, he asked, that data could see an attack on the basis of veracity, similarly to the “fake news” attack on the media?

The panelists did not speculate.

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The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation comes to this conclusion in its latest “Benchmarking U.S. Government Websites” report, which in its second installment has once again found more than 90 percent of federal websites to be poor performing.

ITIF applauds the Trump administration’s “general step in the right direction” regarding IT modernization, but it thinks the Office of American Innovation should take a deeper look at .gov website performance and security, recommending the White House “direct agencies to launch a series of ‘sprints’ to address known problems, especially those that fail to meet security and accessibility requirements for websites,” among other things.

Daniel Castro, an author of the report and vice president of ITIF, told FedScoop the latest report was a chance to gauge any widespread progress around federal websites made under the new administration.

“[The Trump White House] put forward this Office of American Innovation, they said they are going to make modernizing government a priority — what does that actually look like nine months into the administration?” Castro said. “We wanted to see if there was a big increase in performance, you know, is this being taken seriously? And the short answer is it’s not. Nothing’s really changed. And that’s actually quite disappointing.”

Castro said the response to the first report, issued in March based on research done the previous November, made him optimistic that they would find meaningful progress this time around.

“I was actually expecting to see more of an improvement across the board,” he said. “But there hasn’t been, which suggests kind of that at the top level this isn’t being taken seriously as a priority. And I think that’s a problem.”

The transition isn’t to blame, Castro said. Though the new administration had been in office only about nine months when ITIF conducted its research on federal websites, he said many of the most needed short-term improvements could have been made in that time frame. Modernization sprints — much like the cybersecurity sprints then-U.S. CIO Tony Scott directed after the breaches of the Office of Personnel Management’s network in 2015 — would push agencies to play catch up in a short time “where there’s a federal standard they’re supposed to meet and they’re not meeting them,” he said.

“A lot of the fixes are not always that hard,” Castro said. “It’s really just accountability in a sense.”

Much of it comes down to a lack of leadership, he said. Another of the report’s recommendation is for the White House to appoint a federal CIO. Margie Graves has been acting CIO since Donald Trump took office. The position does not require Senate confirmation.

“We need a federal CIO,” Castro said. “We need leadership.”

So far, the White House has looked at tech project-by-project rather than with a “big picture view” that spans all agencies, he added. “That’s the role of a federal CIO.”

There hasn’t been “a lot of vision and movement in that space,” Castro said. “There isn’t this ‘We’re the new administration, this is our vision for using the internet to connect with the American people, we’re going to prioritize making it better.'”

Additionally, ITIF recommends that the White House mandate that websites meet standards for page-load speeds, launch a website consolidation initiative, mandate monitoring and reporting of website analytics via the General Services Administration, and encourage non-executive agencies to meet the same standards with their websites as executive branch agencies.

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The biggest need, said Josh New, policy analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation’s Center for Data Innovation, is “regulatory clarity.”

“Agencies need to all be talking to each other to make sure they’re not implementing conflicting standards or conflicting frameworks,” New told FedScoop. “We want their frameworks to be very supportive of driving induction growth we basically want a minimal regulatory environment, one the doesn’t prevent good things from happening by only focussing on potential, hypothetical harms.”

New’s comments come on the heels of a new report from the Government Accountability Office that lays out the security risks, possible economic ramifications and other implications of IoT to inform members of the federal government, specifically Congress, so they might have the knowledge to create such a strategy.

“We prepared this report in order to inform Congress on IoT, what it is, how it works and some of the considerations and implications of IoT,” said Greg Wilshusen, one of the report’s authors and director of information security issues at the GAO.

Some experts say a national, overarching philosophy on IoT is necessary not only to ensure the freedom to innovate for private businesses but also to protect the security of consumers’ information.

“Government has a lot of work to do to ensure US leadership in IoT, which is not a given at this point. As we lay out, there are many policy areas that will impact IoT, but the Commerce Department and NTIA have significant expertise to lead the government’s work on developing a cohesive approach to promoting and enabling these new technologies,” said Vince Jesaitis, vice president of government affairs at the IT Industry Council said in a comment to the Department of Commerce earlier this year.

But because so much of IoT is cross-sectional, agencies may have conflicting standards and regulations regarding the same aspects of the technologies involved.

“At present, within the federal government at least, there isn’t any single agency that has responsibility overall for IoT monitoring, management or regulation,” Wilshusen said. “A number of different agencies have roles in that as it relates to specific sectors or functions with that, and that is the purview of those individual agencies.”

To date, one of the most significant congressional efforts in creating a unified strategy surrounding IoT was the creation of the DIGIT Act, which was originally introduced in 2016.

“The introduction of the DIGIT Act would go a long way to direct federal agencies to reconsider the role of government, and begin taking steps to what we we believe would be the basis for this national strategy,” said New. “It has to do with addressing cybersecurity concerns, it has to do with addressing spectrum concerns, it has to do with addressing regulatory framework, whether it’s a patchwork, whether there’s a lack of clarity, whether there are conflicting rules”

The bill didn’t pass initially but was reintroduced in early 2017, giving legislators another opportunity to convene around IoT standards, particularly after the spread of the Mirai botnet, which targets internet-connected devices via a distributed denial-of-service attack.

But even in the aftermath of the Mirai attack, businesses are wary of government regulating IoT.

“We cannot regulate our way to cybersecurity,” Matt Eggers, executive director for cybersecurity policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in October. “There’s a tendency for policymakers to try to run before they can walk in this [technology] space.”

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Research from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation found that legislative branch websites performed worse overall than other federal sites on tests for things like accessibility and page-load speed.

An example: Only 69 percent of legislative websites passed the desktop page-load speed test, while 78 percent of the most popular federal sites passed, according to ITIF data.

“Legislative websites are not performing well, and this is likely because they’re not subject to the same standards as the rest of the government,” said Alan McQuinn, research analyst for ITIF. “They should be subject to those standards.”

Websites belonging to members of Congress were not tested, but the think tank compiled a list of 94 sites belonging to the legislative branch in general, including those for congressional committees and commissions.

The tests were a follow-on to a report the think tank published in March after analyzing nearly 300 of the most popular federal government websites. A few of the original nearly 300 tested were legislative branch websites, so the comparison isn’t perfect, but this time a smaller percentage of legislative websites passed desktop page-load speed tests, and a smaller percentage were deemed accessible to people with disabilities than other federal websites.

And only 29 percent of legislative websites passed the test for domain name system security implementation, while 90 percent of the nearly 300 most-popular federal websites passed, according to ITIF data.

“Legislative websites only outperformed its peers on metrics for mobile friendliness and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) implementation,” according to an ITIF blog post. The SSL certificates underpin most HTTPS connections.

The think tank also compared scores along party lines, comparing 25 Democratic websites with 26 Republican websites. Democratic websites scored lower on average on mobile friendliness and SSL, but Republican websites scored lower on average on accessibility, according to ITIF.

The March report found that in general, non-executive-branch websites, like those for the judicial and legislative branches, tended to score lower than executive branch websites. That prompted the think tank to take a deep dive into legislative branch websites, McQuinn said.

ITIF made a few recommendations to fix problems identified in the data published last week, including that, “the House and Senate Administration Committees should require legislative agency and committee websites to follow the same standards for websites that executive-branch agencies follow.”

Legislative branch websites should also report metrics to the Digital Analytics Program, ITIF recommended.

“Many poorly performing federal websites are part of the legislative branch, and thus they are not bound by the same rules and guidelines as executive-branch websites. But that does not mean these websites are less important resources for the public or that users expect a different experience when visiting these sites,” the blog post notes.

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Maybe another website consolidation effort could help, said experts of Adobe, Amazon Web Services and Akamai Technologies at an event Wednesday in Washington.

When the question becomes, “Do we need one standard for websites across government,” then government should think about what is good for the citizen, said Brett McMillen, general manager of civilian government at Amazon Web Services. It’s not ideal when two sites under the same department have different designs, he said.

“Sometimes we’re confusing to citizens in having lots of different looks and feels,” McMillen said.

John Landwehr, a vice president at Adobe and chief technology officer for the software company’s public sector business, said it had a good experience in helping Canada’s government in a consolidation effort.

Many organizations are worried that they are going to lose control if their sites are consolidated, and that afterward, changes to the website will be slow to be implemented, he said.

“That is completely false,” he said.

He said agencies can get management responsibility for different sections of website content, while the overseeing department maintains one look and feel for the whole website.

Another thing to consider, Landwehr said: “If there are these scorecards and there continue to be a number of agencies that score low on accessibility and mobility and other key metrics, perhaps they should be the first ones to be consolidated into a portal that provides those capabilities by default for all the tenants of that main website.”

He added: “That could be a good way to make sure that there’s incentive for organizations to stay current, and if for some reason they can’t because of budget or expertise, they do have another platform where this can be consolidated.”

White House leverage

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