Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness

Appian Corporation is a 25-year-old technology company that focuses on improving process automation for large organizations. Once a year they have an annual conference for developers and partners. They rotate this meeting all over the world, we are lucky enough to have them meet in Washington DC where we have the chance to sit down with one of Appian's co-founders, Michael Beckley. During the interview Michael Beckley covered topics like the impact of artificial intelligence on process automation; process automation and acquisition professionals; and how to improve process automation. Appian Corporation was one of the first companies to embrace a platform that was described as no-code, low-code. The interview will give you a detailed understanding of the benefits of that approach. After these questions, we pivoted to looking at how Appian Corporation can help the federal audience reach agency goals. Michael detailed concepts like re-using code, compliance, and how Appian uses objects. During the event, I decided to meet some developers and ask them what questions they would ask if they had the opportunity to sit down with one of the founders of Appian. Let us begin with the questions from the "floor." Minor Mata from Costa Rica. "No questions, we just appreciate all the free training." He expanded on the concept of not just technology training, but instruction in solving business problems as well. Appian understands that software needs to enable execute in practice. Noe Miniel from Miami. "Can you improve the speed of the interface?" Appian gives you the tools to speed up the system. That is the purpose of the Appian data fabric. Jason R. from the federal government. "Can you make the code easier to review?" Appian incorporates the ability to configure Appian. This can allow senior architects to review the code and not create redundancy. They have template libraries as well as visual tools to allow comparison of code in development. Listen to the interview to get a bird's eye view of the progress Appian has made over the years to help federal agencies develop flexible code as well as maintain high compliance standards. = = = Want to leverage you next podcast appearance? www.podscorecard.com Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Want to listen to other episodes? www.Federaltechpodcast.com

In connecting with some new listeners, I learned that some have never sold to the federal government and listened to the podcast to see how other companies manage to work with federal agencies in reaching agency goals. Well, it seems time to pull back with a bonus episode on how to sell technology to the federal government. To accomplish this task, I looked for a person with twenty years of experience in public sector marketing. The logical choice was Brian Chidester. He has worked for many companies in the past two decades and, as a bonus, has a podcast as well. His podcast is called The Government Huddle https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-government-huddle-with-brian-chidester/id1506796636 In a far-ranging discussion, Brian overviews topics like regulations, contract vehicles, and partnerships. COMMERCIAL VS. FEDERAL The interview begins by listing how selling to a commercial organization differs from a federal agency. For example, you may not realize that a contracting officer for an agency may be prohibited from discussing the purchase with the end users. For-profit companies may have some compliance requirements, but none come close to the layer and layer of regulations on a federal site. The federal site cannot just respond to the needs of one segment, like shoe buyers. They serve the public and, as such, must provide access for all citizens equally. CONTRACT VEHICLES The federal government is allocated funds in a completely different manner than a commercial organization. For example, an agency like NASA may have Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP). It provides information on products available to contractors. PARTNERSHIPS During the discussion, Brian details what can happen. The federal government may have allocated money for a project and mandated a certain amount for small businesses. Your company may be a perfect fit, but you do not qualify to bid on the contract. It is perfectly feasible to partner with companies like Carahsoft or The Immix Group on a proposed solution. You may have the technical talent, and a company like Carahsoft understands the complex compliance process. It is a win-win proposition. Brian Chidester ends the interview on a high note. He reinforces the idea that the federal government is actively seeking talent that will solve their problems. = = = Want to leverage you next podcast appearance? www.podscorecard.com Want to connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Want to listen to other episodes? www.Federaltechpodcast.com

Not all threats to the United States are discussed in English. That simple concept is well known in the intelligence community; however, making an obvious statement and being able to understand the nuances of a foreign language is a different matter. Today's interview is with John Weaver, the Chief Strategy Officer for a company called Babel Street. The company began in 2009 with its name recognizing its ability to understand languages. From this humble beginning, it has grown into a powerhouse for looking at open-sourced information and doing advanced analytics. During the interview, John Weaver talks about the dilemma many federal agencies are encountering. On the one hand, they have an increased number of sensors and storage where they can amass tremendous amounts of raw data. The dilemma federal leaders face is how to unlock the insight that matters. Babel Street focuses on open-sourced information for situational awareness on topics that go beyond linguistics. Of course, they can do a multilingual search, but they have enhanced that basic skill to include social media monitoring, entity resolution, and situational awareness. Listen to the interview to gain insight on how Babel Street can help you ingest insights promptly. John Weaver refers to an article called "What is the Risk-Confidence Gap" that can help you understand how to leverage your budget and resources to reduce threats to your agency. = = = Want to leverage you next podcast appearance? www.podscorecard.com Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Want to listen to other episodes? www.Federaltechpodcast.com

Artificial Intelligence is at the phase where federal and commercial technology leaders are amazed by novel model architectures. Each one can perform a function like data preprocessing, feature extraction, or prediction. The demonstrations are impressive; today we look at the data behind the dazzle. Adam Kowalski from proximal has spent years helping organizations follow a data-centric AI approach. During the interview, he expands on having high-quality, relevant data has precedence over any model architecture. One weakness of generative AI systems is they can be subject to bias. You may have insufficient data. Taking a data-centric approach can eliminate many of the errors we are seeing in AI results. The results of varying from this precept can be disastrous as well as entertaining. In the commercial world, this can result in millions of dollars of loss. In the federal government, there can be much more grave consequences of ignoring the data. It is not all serious. Adam Kowalski mentions an entertaining term from the AI community. If you ask a public language model a question about ancient Rome, you may discover a key player was Abraham Lincoln. This is called a "hallucination." = = = Want to leverage you next podcast appearance? www.podscorecard.com Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Want to listen to other episodes? www.Federaltechpodcast.com

Cheap storage and fast Internet have made data collection cheap and fast. It is no wonder that we have federal agencies that are drowning in data. Some will argue that the federal government is the largest collector of data in the world. That may be a fantastic fun fact that will dazzle your neighbors, but how is that data being used to move forward the goals of the agency? Today, we sat down with Jason Green from Virtru. He brings his considerable experience to bear when he describes how agencies can optimize that data. He provides his thoughts on digital strategy, collaboration, and safeguarding that data. STRATEGY During the interview, Jason makes a sage observation. He remarks that when looking at the overview of digital transformation strategy, the focus has been on applications and not the data itself. AI will be making increasing inroads around decision-making and serious decisions cannot be derived from dirty data. COLLOBORAGE – When a data analyst is limited to one data set their conclusions can be biased. The need for collaboration is obvious. The "how" is the tricky part. Jason suggests that more careful attention be paid to tagging data so that some fields can be shared and some not. SAFEGUARDING – Years ago, data was guarded with hashing techniques. In today's fast-changing world, mere hashing is not sufficient. Data stores can be injected with poison data; this means continuous monitoring must be stretched into the data stores themselves. If you would like to learn more about managing data, you may want to attend "DMV Rising" a networking event at Virtru headquarters in Washington DC on September 5, 2024. You will be able to sit in on sessions as well as ask face-to-face questions for subject matter experts. = = = www.podscorecard.com Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Got goin' to Mars on your bucket list? Listen to Constellations Podcast https://www.kratosdefense.com/constellations/podcasts Want to listen to other episodes? www.Federaltechpodcast.com

In 2021 the federal leaders recognized a problem with citizen experience on federal websites. As a result, Executive Order 14058 was released dedicated to improving citizen services for federal technology. However, a 2023 McKinsey & Company report states the average score for federal services is only 31%. Justin Fessler from Yext appears on the Federal Tech Podcast to offer some insights on how to improve the citizen experience, especially as it pertains to search. Everyone has laughed at the misleading results that a search engine gives. Everyone has opinions. It is one thing when you search for some obscure historical fact, and another when you are looking for a tax ruling. During the interview, Justin Fessler observes that much of the information citizens require may be sitting in a data store somewhere in the agency. He suggests that generative AI can be applied to these data sets to provide answers more easily and in the context of the user. One concern that is expressed by everyone is the "black box" nature of generative AI. How can you trust the answer from a faceless system? Justin Fessler provides the answer: citations. In the Yext search platform, stacks of data are searched quickly, and citations are offered for the answer. Improving citizen experience means documents can be retrieved for important ranging from legal to emergency services. = = = www.podscorecard.com Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Got goin' to Mars on your bucket list? Listen to Constellations Podcast https://www.kratosdefense.com/constellations/podcasts Want to listen to other episodes? www.Federaltechpodcast.com

The Federal Trade Commission recently estimated that nationwide fraud tops ten billion dollars. Most of the efforts to stop this abuse start with identification. However, the federal response has been weak. Today, we have a former federal leader and current Vice President and Head of Public Sector Strategy for Society on the podcast, Jordan Burris. He opens with the obvious – if malicious actors are leveraging artificial intelligence to attack identities, then the only logical response is to use AI against AI. AI allows malicious actors to assemble identity information for fast access. Recent reports highlight a concept called an "identity access broker." This is a company that stores compromised credentials and sells them like one would buy shoes. From his perspective, the federal government has not moved away from legacy systems fast enough and is leaving itself vulnerable. For example, a traditional system may approve an identity, but not be able to continuously maintain that identification. It has been shown that Multi-factor Authentication can leave sessions open where an initial valid identity can be compromised. Identity is not stagnant and innovative approaches can look at many aspects of identity, including liveness detection. CrowdStrike's Global Threat Report shows a 147% increase in identity attacks. Federal agencies are not immune to these attacks. = = www.podscorecard.com Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Got goin' to Mars on your bucket list? Listen to Constellations Podcast https://www.kratosdefense.com/constellations/podcasts Want to listen to other episodes? www.Federaltechpodcast.com

ChatGPT has overwhelmed the headlines in the past few months. It has brought the concept of artificial intelligence to the forefront of many discussions. Like everybody talking about swimming in the Olympics and then forgetting about it for four years. Well, Primer.ai has been deeply involved in artificial intelligence since its inception seven years ago. It did not start with creating a bot for a site selling shoes, it got its start from I-Q-Tel and has a laser focus on helping the defense community apply technology to real-world problems. The company has deep relationships in the defense community and understands the need of applying natural language processing to the warfighter's needs. During today's interview, Mark Bruner from Primer set up the discussion by talking about innovation from Silicon Valley and the requirements of the hardnosed military community. Rather than walking away from the potential benefits of technical innovation, Primer sees itself as an intermediary with the skill set to be able to bridge the gap between real-world requirements and the software community. One of the key elements that is glossed over is the need for ethical application of artificial intelligence. This means understanding how large libraries are assembled and then, at the output end, knowing when to assist the data analysis with human values. The military knows it must adapt to a rapidly changing world, Primer can broker relationships and see value where others cannot. Here is an article from Primer that may help To go faster on AI, Start with Existing Gaps https://primer.ai/featured/to-go-faster-on-ai-think-small-and-build-trust/ = = = www.podscorecard.com Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Got goin' to Mars on your bucket list? Listen to Constellations Podcast https://www.kratosdefense.com/constellations/podcasts Want to listen to other episodes? www.Federaltechpodcast.com

In most of my interviews, I sit down with a company and talk about innovation in solving federal technology goals. Today, a twist. Sonny Hashmi was at the center of the battle for improving federal technology. For the past three years, he was the Commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service at the GSA. This has given him a unique perspective on what the bottlenecks are in streamlining federal technology. He dealt face-to-face with issues like Zero Trust, remote work, and digital innovation. After looking at a myriad of issues, he decided that the way to apply Occam's law to federal technology was to reduce the complexity of software development. Sonny Hashmi explains that 80% of the technology budget is spent on maintaining systems. This means continuous monitoring, patching, and applying new compliance regulations. His approach to solving the problem is to start at the beginning, software development itself. The solution is quite simple: adopt a codeless method that allows a wider range of people to work with legacy systems, rapid application, and compliance. During the interview, Sonny Hashmi details some problems he has seen. He talks about everything from struggles with ATO to end-of-life application management. Listen to the interview to learn how the Unqork approach can assist in many aspects of the major digital transformation the federal government is undergoing. www.podscorecard.com Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Got goin' to Mars on your bucket list? Listen to Constellations Podcast https://www.kratosdefense.com/constellations/podcasts Want to listen to other episodes? www.Federaltechpodcast.com

Everyone reading this has seen the movie Top Gun with Tom Cruise and heard the classic phrase, "The Need for Speed." Well, a desire for speed is not limited to Naval Aviators. People in federal technology may not have call signs but need to optimize communication speed between data centers. If you were to stand in front of a whiteboard with a bunch of enterprise architects, they would dazzle you with CPU and GPU speeds. Memory tricks with virtualization give you tons of memory. However, at the end of the day, the real choking point is the connections between those stacks of silicon. During today's interview, Rob Shore from Infinera unpacked how optical speeds have drastically changed over the years. Today's speeds allow for transmittal of 1.2 Terabits per second. That makes the speed of your home wi-fi look like a bicycle racing a Maserati. The conversation took a fascinating twist. While everybody is debating the methods of data collection for artificial intelligence, systems engineers are worrying about the hardware being able to "catch up" to the speed demands that, for example, driverless cars demand. At the end of the conversation, Rob talks about applying the concepts for fast optical cable to inside the data center. Same principles, a need for speed between servers and routers inside a data center as well as between data centers. You can watch the short video starring Rob Shore that explains one technical aspect of technology, coherent optics. = = = = = = Got a podcast interview coming up? What's your score? www.podscorecard.com Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Got goin' to Mars on your bucket list? Listen to Constellations Podcast https://www.kratosdefense.com/constellations/podcasts Want to listen to other episodes? www.Federaltechpodcast.com