The Daily Scoop Podcast

Earlier this week, I told you about FedScoop’s investigation into federal agencies’ efforts to inventory their artificial intelligence use cases. These inventories are required by a 2020 Trump administration executive order, which also introduced nine principles and a policy process for implementing AI the public can trust. But, across CFO Act agencies results vary. Inventories for civilian agencies are inconsistent, creating a patchwork understanding of the government’s use of the budding technology. To discuss their findings reporting on the AI use case inventories across the federal government for FedScoop, joining me are the authors of the story “The government is struggling to track its AI. And that’s a problem” Rebecca Heilweil and Madi Alder. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.

As federal agencies progress toward IT modernization, cybersecurity is a hallmark of those journeys, one that must be baked in from the start. David Shive, CIO of the General Services Administration, spoke with the Daily Scoop about how his office is going about building out a zero-trust security architecture across the agency via a new cybersecurity solicitation that’s on the street. During our conversation, he also emphasized the importance of upskilling the workforce for the ongoing digital transformation across the federal government, and how GSA is supporting the Biden administration’s major tech initiatives, like those in the President’s Management Agenda, by leading by example. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.

In 2020, The secretary of the U.S. Navy signed out an Information Superiority Vision, naming information superiority as a key strategic focus for the department,as well as restructuring and empowering the role of the Navy CIO, and charting a course for the sea service to take action on its most pressing needs in IT and cybersecurity. Now more than three years later, the Navy is continuing to execute on that strategy, with some new technology leadership in place. One of those leaders is Justin Fanelli, technical director for Navy’s PEO Digital and newly appointed acting CTO for the service. In a conversation with the Daily Scoop podcast, Fanelli touches on how the department has made progress executing the Information Superiority Vision, how the department is approaching AI and what the service is doing to better bridge the valley of death to scale innovation. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently released a data strategy for Intelligence community agencies. The strategy, which runs from 2023 through 2025, provides focus areas and actions for all 18 IC agencies to accelerate adoption of common services and efforts to make data more interoperable, discoverable, and artificial intelligence-ready for both people and machines, according to ODNI. This isn’t ODNI’s first data strategy. The office released one back in 2017. But since then, the I-C has taken steps to mature its data environment and usage, and this latest document looks to usher in a new era of data-driven decisionmaking. To discuss that evolution, now joining the Daily Scoop Podcast is I-C Chief Data Officer Lori Wade. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.

While most federal IT news typically comes out of CIO offices and agency headquarters, lately, Capitol Hill has been the driving force behind developments in our community. From funding decisions in recent appropriations proposals to landmark legislation and discourse on how to best approach regulation of AI, lawmakers have had their plates full with matters that will impact the greater federal technology landscape. Matt Cornelius, a former congressional staffer under Chairman Gary C. Peters on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, joins the Daily Scoop to discuss the full slate of federal IT issues being addressed in Congress. Cornelius also previously served as Senior Technology and Cybersecurity Advisor in the Office of Management and Budget and Senior Advisor to the Administrator at the General Services Administration. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.

With the federal government on large scale journey to zero trust, many large departments and agencies are taking federated approaches in modernizing their cybersecurity. But the Department of Commerce is bucking that trend and instead adopting zero trust in a unified way across its 13 bureaus and many offices. Department of Commerce CIO Andre Mendes is leading that effort and spoke with me about why he chose a department wide construct for zero trust instead of letting each bureau agency chart its own course. And, he explained how Commerce is measuring success and discussed what comes next. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.

In an effort to advance FedScoop’s coverage of federal technology and our commitment to driving better outcomes for the American public, we’ve recently invested heavily in our world-class editorial team. In recent months, the team added a pair of expert reporters to expand focus on the federal civilian executive branch agencies and their efforts to modernize and advance technology to deliver better services and mission outcomes. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.

It’s no secret that the Department of Defense has struggled to scale innovation. Known as the Valley of Death, the challenge is that the department often fails to expand and build innovative pilots into larger production contracts. A new program operated by the Defense Aquisition University wants to attempt to solve that by wrapping its arms around the department’s innovation worfkorce readiness. Called Innovate to Win, the initiative is intended to help the DoD codify and measure the innovation readiness of the Defense Acquisition Workforce and, by extension, that of the whole DoD workforce. Dr. Marina Theodotou, the head of workforce innovation readiness for the Defense Acquisition University, and Christen Goulding, Director of Communications at DAU, join me now to discuss the program, its goals and how they hope to create a metric to measure innovation readiness. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.

There’s a new book captivating audiences across the federal technology space and getting rave reviews. "Recoding America – Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better". Former U.S. Deputy CTO and founder of Code for America Jen Pahlka wrote the book based on her intimate firsthand knowledge of working in and with government agencies for most of the last two decades to improve digital service delivery. And in it, she concludes that there are much deeper issues that are leading to the failure of the U.S. government in the digital age …Or as the book’s synopsis puts it: “we must stop trying to move the government we have today onto new technology and instead consider what it would mean to truly recode American government.” In web application security, compromised credentials are responsible for 80% of breaches. This has highlighted the need to replace passwords with more effective security methods. Passwordless authentication methods offer a faster, more secure, hassle free way to protect our digital lives. In a new interview, Sean Frazier, federal chief security officer at Okta, discusses the advances and their use cases. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.

The Department of Defense is undertaking a massive effort to adopt a zero trust security architecture across its enterprise by 2027. As ambitious as that effort is, it’s not going to happen without the support of automation driving it, according to DOD chief informations security officer Dave McKeown. McKeown spoke recently at the UiPath Together Public Sector summit about the role of automation in cybersecurity and how it also likely could’ve prevented recent leaks of classified information within the DOD. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher. And if you like what you hear, please let us know in the comments.