As federal agencies continue migrating more of their IT operations to the cloud, they are also achieving new service capabilities in serving the public. The United States Department of Agriculture is one of several agencies providing more effective services and expanding the way they engage with their constituents and partner agencies.

In a recent Scoop News Group panel, David Peters and Arianne Gallagher-Welcher from USDA and Sunny Kapoor from Amazon Web Service Public Sector each share different ways the USDA has improved how they reach constituents with the help of cloud-enabled applications and improved data sharing.

“The effective deployment of cloud is all about scale and that operationally helps us…deliver value operationally and programmatically,” said Peters, associate CIO at the USDA.

He said the development of a cloud-based application is helping the department communicate with its constituents, citing an example in the meat packing industry. He discussed the Meat Marbling Project (MRP), an application that speeds the process of grading meat using automation. The app is being distributed among meat packing plants of various sizes to bring greater speed and efficiencies to this regulated process.

Gallagher-Welcher, executive director for the USDA’s Digital Service, added a similar example of improving the USDA’s communications with farmers across the nation. The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), she explained, enables farmers to voluntarily adopt environmentally sustainable practices and guides them through the process of what it means to be environmentally sustainable in their operations.

She championed the agency’s adoption of cloud tools as a factor in improving its employees’ focus on the customer experience, mission outcomes and operational efficiencies, “both on the front end for our stakeholders in the public, and in the back end for our staff and employees who have to run all these critical systems to make sure that these programs can continue to run smoothly.”

Kapoor, head of Federal Civilian Civic Services with Amazon Web Services Public Sector, echoed the operational efficiencies the USDA has gained by moving more of their services to the cloud and highlighted how they are able to improve data sharing with their federal partners.

“The data produced from supporting such unique mission sets is a vital asset,” he explained, citing how the cloud has grown the USDA’s capacity to scale, store and analyze datasets that it shares with wildfire.gov and the Department of Interior “that brings together applications, tools and services to support federal, state and local agencies for wildfire planning and incident response.”

Learn more about how cloud technologies can transform operations and support mission objectives and here from more leaders on their modernization initiatives.

This video panel discussion was produced by Scoop News Group for FedScoop and underwritten by Amazon Web Services.

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As federal agencies continue moving more of their data into a cloud computing environment, many are making new headway to support broader mission goals.

That’s the story taking shape at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), an independent federal government agency primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance.

The ability to leverage cloud services has played a pivotal role in helping USAID support several key mission objectives, including efforts to foster global health, climate sustainability, and supply chain initiatives, according to USAID Chief Information Officer Jason Gray.

Gray’s office supports USAID operations in more than 80 countries worldwide, providing disaster relief, poverty relief, and technical cooperation on global issues, such as environment, global health and humanitarian assistance. That includes providing information resources to nearly 14,000 users worldwide. “The cloud has been absolutely critical to our IT operations,” he said in a recent Scoop News Group video interview.

“Being geographically dispersed across the globe, having a central spot [to access data and], not having to depend on local network infrastructure or connectivity,” has made a critical difference in timely decision-making, he said. “In the last few months, we’ve had several order departures where we’ve had to evacuate people from areas like Sudan and Nigeria and Haiti, and the ability to have the data in the cloud to be able to inform decision making in these cases, [has been] absolutely critical. “

Gray pointed out another benefit of the cloud: “being able to develop once and use many [times] and establish best practices and not have to sift through numerous environments. That has been really helpful being in a cloud model instead of having IT siloed,” he said.

Jamie Baker, director of federal civilian health science policy at Amazon Web Services, credited USAID’s progress to being one of the earliest adopters of cloud computing. What USAID and other agencies are discovering, he said, is “that once you get your data into a [cloud] ecosystem, you now have access to cloud-native tools where you can test and try different analytics capabilities, different databases, and get access to hundreds of independent software vendors…and see what are the best ways that you can actually put that data to use.”

Gray and Baker offer recommendations on how leveraging the cloud can reduce administrative overhead, free up resources to support more meaningful work, and accelerate automation and speed up security patching and development.

Learn more about how cloud technologies can transform operations and support mission objectives. Hear from more government leaders about cloud modernization strategies.

This video panel discussion was produced by Scoop News Group, for FedScoop and underwritten by Amazon Web Services.

The post How cloud capabilities are advancing digital services at USAID appeared first on FedScoop.

Federal agencies continue to expand their use of cloud computing to leverage the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning and gain new insights into their operations, and, more importantly, improve their mission outcomes.

Joining us to talk about some of the practical experiences and lessons learned in applying AI and ML are Sonny Bhagowalia, assistant commissioner and chief information officer at U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Mike Lentine, senior sales manager, federal civilian for Amazon Web Services, Worldwide Public Sector.

Bhagowalia explains how CBP is in its early phases of leveraging AI and ML to enhance operational efficiency and effectiveness. He shares that they are using the new technologies to gain insights into their 24/7 operations, automate processes, improve accuracy and support mission delivery. Some key use cases he highlights include:

• Cargo screening: Automating anomaly detection, highlighting regions of interest, and verifying commodities to ensure safe and secure cargo processing.
• Forced labor detection: Using AI and ML to identify and disrupt the importation of goods made with forced labor.
• Video and image redaction: Developing models to identify sensitive information in images and videos.
• Object detection and tracking: Using computer vision to detect and track activities, enhancing surveillance platforms automatically.

“Now, with AI, ML and some of those capabilities, we can reduce the amount of time humans have to spend to perform these tasks…some repetitive, mundane tasks can be given to a machine and intelligence software,” says Bhagowalia.

“AI and ML also give us great value in assisting humans with time-intensive activities. There are large computational elements that suggest sifting through vast amounts of data—we can let AI/ML do that. And then the human can use intuition, training, learning and knowledge—and combine that. I think we’ve been very successful using this modeling and some of these capabilities in achieving our mission,” he adds.

Lentine discusses the impact of AI and ML on capturing insights, both within CBP and across various agencies. He emphasizes that organizations like CBP possess vast amounts of data containing hidden insights that are challenging to identify using traditional methods. “AI, ML unlocks access to these insights in a repeatable, cost-effective manner, resulting in more secure and efficient operations,” he says.

He also mentions the potential to significantly improve officer and agent safety and efficiency, allowing for quicker and more accurate evaluations, leading to higher numbers of shipments processed and better detection of potential violations.

“Imagine that officer at a port, no longer looking at images, but instead evaluating trends, reviewing dashboards and investigating any variations. Combining AI, ML technology with experienced human review creates highly accurate approaches to keeping citizens safe,” adds Lentine. He also emphasizes the role of cloud computing in enabling faster experimentation, robust edge services and scalability for future growth.

Both Bhagowalia and Lentine stress the importance of partnerships, knowledge sharing and technology alignment with the mission to achieve improved outcomes.

Learn more about how these technologies can transform operations and support mission objectives.

This video panel discussion was produced by Scoop News Group, for FedScoop and underwritten by Amazon Web Services.

The post How CBP is deploying AI, ML to improve operational efficiencies and effectiveness appeared first on FedScoop.