FedScoop Radio

Artificial intelligence tools are increasingly being used by government agencies to meet their mission needs. This last year in particular, the need to help people remotely and respond to the public health crisis pushed many federal and state agency leaders to evaluate and implement AI tools. Technology evangelist Alexis Bonnell worked alongside several agencies to imagine the “art of the possible” as they took significant steps towards AI and machine learning adoption. Bonnell breaks down several myths about AI development and how public sector organizations have been able to implement simple and effective projects to improve mission outcomes in this podcast, produced by Scoop News Group and underwritten by Google Cloud. Guest: Alexis Bonnell, Senior Business Executive, Emerging Technology Evangelist, Google Host: Wyatt Kash, SVP, Content Strategy, Scoop News Group Look for more coverage of “IT Modernization in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen or www.statescoop.com/listen

U.S. Customs and Border Protection director Ed Mays and Dell Technologies’ John Garrett discuss what’s driving the need for increased edge computing resources. They discuss the increase of users and devices on federal networks, in addition to the surge in data generation. That is driving a need for higher performing computing capabilities at the edge of their networks. “As we get more and more of these embedded devices out there — and the possibilities of what AI is capable of expands — you have no choice but to do the compute at the edge,” says Garrett. Guests: John Garrett (left), Senior Director, Federal Civilian, Dell EMC Ed Mays (right), Executive Director, Enterprise Data Management and Engineering Directorate, U.S. Customs and Border Protection; Host: Wyatt Kash, SVP, Content Strategy, Scoop News Group Look for more coverage of “IT Modernization in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen

Throughout the public health crisis, cloud and artificial intelligence-enabled tools have been a great help to advancing research, collaboration and mission activities. Particularly encouraging is the way that public health leaders are able to share biological information across the globe, says Google Cloud’s Dr. Alexander Titus. “I think that collaboration across science has always been pretty strong. But this has really shown us some of the strengths around how fast we can collaborate [together],” he says. Titus joins us to discuss how AI will improve the way public health agencies make data-informed decisions and respond to public health needs. Sponsored by Google Cloud. Guest: Dr. Alexander Titus, Strategy Leader, Health and Life Sciences, Google Cloud Host: Host: Wyatt Kash, SVP, Content Strategy, Scoop News Group Look for more coverage of “IT Modernization in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen or www.statescoop.com/listen

The volume and velocity of data generated by government continues to grow at astronomic rates. At the same time, federal agencies have a lot of legacy applications that need to be re-factored to take advantage of modern architectures While government organizations continue to look for more effective ways to handle high-volume data management and analysis strategies, they can benefit from taking advantage of tools that have already been tried and tested within the private sector. John Dillon, CEO of Aerospike points to companies like Verizon Media, which uses Aerospike’s platform to handle large scale data correlations at a significantly lower cost compared to past platforms in this FedScoop podcast. Sponsored by by Aerospike. Guests: John Dillon, CEO and Srini Srinivasan, co-founder and chief product officer for Aerospike Host: Wyatt Kash, SVP, Content Strategy, Scoop News Group Look for more coverage of “IT Modernization in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen

The pandemic was a forcing agent causing agencies to rethink identity and how users access government resources and placed a greater emphasis on cloud-based services. As a result, IT leaders are looking more holistically at how they manage identity across the enterprise network while still complying with federal identity, credential and access management (FICAM) rules. Andrew Whelchel and Dmitry Kagansky join FedScoop to discuss strategies around modern identity and security in the cloud and how agencies can take advantage of FedRAMP-approved services to fast-track implementation. This podcast was sponsored by Okta and AWS. Guests: Andrew Whelchel, Principal Sales Engineer, Okta Dmitry Kagansky, Senior Solutions Architect, Amazon Web Services (AWS) Host: Wyatt Kash, SVP, Content Strategy, Scoop News Group Look for more coverage of “IT Security in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen

Government agencies have been trying to reduce their reliance on paper for decades. While Congress moved to speed up this process when it passed the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act in 2018, agencies are still processing millions of paper forms a year. One of the many challenges agencies continue to face is that these processes also require new infrastructure, website updates and digital services to streamline the customer experience. Foxit's DeeDee Kato says there are challenges surrounding government's ability to digitize documents, however, there are alternatives to traditional PDF software that offer friendlier licensing terms and editing tools. Sponsored by Foxit. Guest: DeeDee Kato, Senior Director, Marketing, Foxit Software Host: Wyatt Kash, SVP, Content Strategy, Scoop News Group Look for more coverage of “IT Modernization in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen

Having a data strategy is not a "nice-to-have" anymore, rather it’s a "must-have" for federal agencies, according to Aileen Black. Agencies are making progress in incorporating principles and practices from the Federal Data Strategy, but many still struggle to provide trust in, and secure access to, government data. “I have the opportunity see governments around the world. And the U.S. federal government is advanced relative to many of their international counterparts in implementing a data strategy, thanks to the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act and the work being done on the Federal Data Strategy by OMB,” says Black. She discusses what 2020 taught organizations in terms of the importance of data and having an agile data strategy. Sponsored by Collibra and AWS. Guest: Aileen Black, Senior Vice President for Sales, Collibra Host: Wyatt Kash, SVP, Content Strategy, Scoop News Group Look for more coverage of “IT Modernization in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen

As the federal government transitions to a new administration, and new priorities, one initiative that’s expected to remain on track is the Federal Data Strategy — a set of principles, practices and action steps to make more productive use of federal data. But where and how agencies move forward with their data strategies — and whether they get the IT funding they need — will play an important part in advancing the Biden administration’s priorities, say two federal government data experts in a new FedScoop podcast underwritten by NetApp and immixGroup. Guests: Kristen Verderame, vice president of government relations at NetApp Jessica Parks, market intelligence analyst at immixGroup Host: Host: Wyatt Kash, SVP, Content Strategy, Scoop News Group Look for more coverage of “IT Modernization in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen

Data management platforms not only play a part in driving digital transformation in the public sector, but also represent a key factor in attracting talent into public service. Brian Chidester says the future of government work is playing out across three different theaters: work, workforce and the workplace. Each one of them are key to improving the of delivery of government services. Chidester says that while federal agencies have been charged with leveraging data to improve citizen services, having modern data management platforms — that enable the workforce and the work they do — sends an important signal when it comes to recruiting and retaining IT workers. Sponsored by OpenText. Guest: Brian Chidester, Global Public Sector Marketing Executive for OpenText and host of “The Government Huddle Podcast." Host: Wyatt Kash, SVP, Content Strategy, Scoop News Group Look for more coverage of “IT Modernization in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen

Bonus Podcast: IC's Nancy Morgan at the Data Cloud Summit by FedScoop