An interview with Dr. Adele Merritt, CIO of the intelligence community

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence earlier this summer released an information technology roadmap for the intelligence community. The roadmap is meant to provide technological foresight to guide the Intelligence Community to make transformative decisions about the cloud environment, cybersecurity, advanced computing, data analysis, and artificial intelligence among an array of other information technology issues. Dr. Adele Merritt, CIO for the intelligence community, is the official responsible for seeing that intelligence agencies embrace the new roadmap and vision laid out within it. In an interview, Merritt discusses the near-term and long-term goals from the roadmap, her office’s priorities, how the intelligence community is thinking about AI adoption, and more. Also: The National Institute of Standards and Technology has officially released three new encryption standards that are designed to fortify cryptographic protections against future cyberattacks by quantum computers. The finalized standards are meant to prepare for a not-so-far-off future where quantum computing capabilities can crack current methods of encryption, jeopardizing crucial and sensitive information held by organizations and governments worldwide. And, nearly two years after launching its bureau chief data officer program, the Department of State is seeing success and aiming to almost quadruple the size of its current cohort, Farakh Khan, director of communications, culture and training at the agency’s Center for Analytics, told FedScoop in a recent interview. In total, the department wants 52 bureau CDOs in place, one for each bureau or major offices across State. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.