Senate Committee: Does NIST cyber framework go far enough?

Members of the Senate Commerce Committee challenged a panel of public and private experts Wednesday on whether the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s cybersecurity framework does enough to protect the nation’s critical assets and infrastructure.

While the panel was complimentary of the groundwork NIST has laid, a number of Democrats pressed on whether more needs to be done in the wake of growing attacks, like those on Sony Pictures and Target.

“I believe there needs to be greater government direction, legislative involvement, for the moment,” added Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., the committee’s ranking member, said while he approves of NIST’s work, he is troubled by the lack of information detailing how many companies have adopted the guidelines the framework sets forth. Nelson pushed Ann Beauchesne, vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s National Security and Emergency Preparedness Department, to detail how the framework is being used.

“How can you say that everything’s working, as you testified?” Nelson asked Beauchesne after she said that the framework’s rollout and development have been a success.

Beauchesne told Nelson she didn’t have an exact number of companies who used it, but she said each one she’s talked to is “highly interested” in the framework, given the incentive in protecting their customers’ and their own information.

The framework was created after President Barack Obama’s Executive Order 13636 — Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity — directed NIST to work with the private sector, which owns and operates more than 85 percent of the nation’s critical infrastructure, to develop a voluntary set of guidelines and best practices for reducing cyber risks.

“Voluntary” was a key word during Wednesday’s hearing, as private sector witnesses cautioned against any sort of regulatory framework.

Jeff England, chief financial officer of Wyoming-based telecom company Silver Star Communications, told the committee the framework allowed the company to create a better cybersecurity profile.

“It forced us to communicate at all levels within the organization at a level that had not previously existed before,” England said.

He went on to suggest that any sort of regulation would actually be a detriment to the practices the framework sets forth, creating a “minimum-standard environment” that would lead IT teams to a “checklist approach.”

“A checklist approach is undesirable in this space,” England said. “A minimum set of standards puts perpetrators on alert to where they should be focusing their attention.”

The regulatory approach that England fears could be coming from one of the committee’s members: Nelson introduced a bill that would require companies to notify customers and the government of a data breach no later than 30 days after discovery and would task the Federal Trade Commission to come up with a nationwide standard for data security. The bill comes as President Barack Obama made cybersecurity one of the key tenets of his State of the Union address last month.

While Nelson said he appreciated England’s company’s diligence, he’s more worried about the national security implications of a rise in high-profile attacks.

“If a saboteur came and blew up an electric plant here, that would be an attack upon America,” Nelson said. “Well, a cyber attack can do the same thing. It’s coming whether it’s in the form of an electric plant or a business grid or a water system. Whatever is going to try to inject economic pain and terror into the American people, those attacks are upon us right now, and sooner or later they are going to be successful. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when is it going to be successful?”

Amid ‘trolls’ and backlog, USPTO unveils patent quality initiative

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office debuted a new effort Wednesday to focus on bolstering the quality of patents it issues.

Under the Enhanced Patent Quality Initiative, the patent office said it would concentrate on improving its work products, patent quality measurements and customer service. The agency scheduled a patent quality summit March 25 and 26 at USPTO headquarters as part of the program and is soliciting the public to submit ideas for how it could get better.

“Our Enhanced Patent Quality Initiative is ambitious. But it is essential as the USPTO continues to support ambitious innovations and economic growth,” Deputy Director Michelle Lee said in a blog post about the program on the patent office’s website.

In recent years, the patent office has been dogged by a large backlog of applications. And while the agency has made headway, it still faces 605,000 pending applications.

Also, lawmakers and tech giants have grown increasingly concerned about so-called patent trolls, a derogatory term for firms that engage in frivolous intellectual property lawsuits. Indeed, Lee faced questions on application backlog and patent trolls during her recent confirmation hearings — the president had nominated her to take the top job at the agency — before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

According to a pre-publication version of an upcoming Federal Register post on the initiative, these issues make improving patent quality that much more critical.

“The confluence of these events make it the optimal time for the USPTO to pursue this enhanced quality initiative,” said the post, slated to publish Thursday

In the posting, the office pointed to a number of projects it had already undertaken to improve patent quality, including a few IT initiatives. In particular, it highlighted the development of Patents End-to-End, a software to streamline the patent examination process. The system is currently in the pilot stage, and the office’s recent budget justification said it aims to deploy Patents End-to-End by fiscal year 2016.

The posting also discussed the office’s efforts to use crowdsourcing during the patent examination process to uncover prior art relevant to the application.

Wednesday’s release was expected. Lee had teased at some of these initiatives during a Q-and-A last month at Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington, D.C. She also announced the office had appointed USPTO staffer Valencia Martin Wallace to serve as deputy commissioner for patent quality, a newly created position.

“For too long, due to uncertain and limited financial resources, USPTO has had to make do with less,” she said at the event. But after the American Innovation Act of 2011 allowed USPTO to set its own fees, she said the agency is in a better position to invest in ways to reform.

The Application Developers Alliance issued a statement lauding the new initiative, but it still called on Congress to put forth legislation to further protect patent holders.

“PTO’s patent quality improvement program, coupled with the recent appointment of a Deputy Commissioner for Patent’ Quality, is an excellent effort to end the historic problem of poor quality patents being issued,” said Jon Potter, the group’s president. Poor quality patents are the weapons that enable patent trolls to extort businesses. They cost our economy billions.”

He added, “Pre-approval quality efforts do not, however diminish the need for comprehensive patent reform legislation.”

New playbook offers feds tips for engaging citizens

Gwynne Kostin, the director of the General Services Administration’s Digital Services Innovation Center, announced the launch of the U.S. Public Participation Playbook, a resource to help federal managers better engage with citizens.

During a panel at Tuesday’s 2015 Adobe Digital Government Assembly presented by FedScoop, Kostin said the playbook signals a departure from the “if you build it, they will come” mentality so popular in government. The people don’t actually come, she said, and the federal government needs to start engaging them from the start.

“The hard thing is creating a sustainable process and doing that level of engagement to really drive folks and really meet their needs,” she said. “You can’t say ‘Today I’m going to be engaged’ and expect a lot of people to show up.”

GSA has been at work on the Public Participation Playbook for the past few months, but it hasn’t been at it alone. More than 70 “engagement experts” from dozens for federal agencies collaborated on the development of the document. The playbook was subject to three periods of public comment, and it will continue to be a living guidance, open to public contributions through the Federal Public Participation Working Group.

GSA’s federal social media program lead Justin Herman told FedScoop in December that the playbook has been a priority for improving all government programs.

“An open government is one based on public participation, collaboration and transparency, and no matter what your federal program is, in the modern world there will be a need for either more engagement, better accessibility, improved data analysis or reporting,” he said.

The playbook consists of 12 “plays” — with small checklists of considerations and other resources — structured around five broader categories: establish goals, understand the playing field, design participation, facilitate participation, and evaluate and report. These categories “should be addressed in all programs, whether digital or offline,” the playbook says.

“Public participation — where citizens help shape and implement government programs — is a foundation of open, transparent, and engaging government services,” the playbook says. “From emergency management, town hall discussions and regulatory development to science and education, better engagement with those who use public services can measurably improve those services for everyone.”

Here are the 12 initial Public Participation Playbook plays:

1. Clearly define and communicate your objectives.

2. Understand your participants and stakeholder group.

3. Understand and communicate the benefit of participation.

4. Empower participants through public/private partnership.

5. Select appropriate design format for public participation.

6. Design for inclusiveness.

7. Provide multitiered paths to participation.

8. Provide effective and timely notifications.

9. Encourage community building through responsive outreach.

10. Protect citizen privacy.

11. Use data to drive decision-making.

12. Transparently report outcomes and performance of participation.

Whitney Blair Wyckoff contributed to this story

New details released on proposed 2016 IT spending

The Obama administration has released new details on what federal agencies plan to invest on new and existing information technology projects in fiscal year 2016, if Congress were to approve the budget plan the White House released Monday.

The proposed IT investment figures, totaling $79.8 billion, represent a 1.8 percent increase over the $78.3 billion agencies estimate they’ll spend this fiscal year, and a 10.3 percent increase over fiscal 2014 outlays.

The figures include $30.7 billion for the bulk of Defense Department IT projects proposed for 2016, but they exclude an estimated $6.6 billion for IT investments on classified projects.

Altogether, the administration said IT investment spending would total $86.4 billion in fiscal 2016, if approved, according to an
IT summary document released with the proposed budget.

The Department of Health and Human Services continues to top the list of biggest IT spenders among civilian agencies, with plans to invest $11.4 billion on new and existing projects in fiscal 2016. HHS is followed by the departments of Homeland Security ($6.2 billion), Treasury ($4.5 billion) and Veterans Affairs ($4.4 billion).

But HHS’ portfolio of 577 major IT projects would receive $1.2 billion less in 2016 than this year, due in part to extraordinary spending over the past year to fix the administration’s troubled health care insurance exchange.

The breakout of
Federal IT Spending for Budget Year 2016 also reveals that about $78 out of every $100 the government plans to spend on civilian agency IT projects goes to basic operations and maintenance. Only $22.14 would go to new development initiatives in 2016. That’s down from $23.01 estimated for this year.

The departments of Labor, Treasury and State, along with the Office of Personnel Management and the U.S. Agency for International Aid, showed the most significant increases in proposed 2016 IT spending. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the General Services Administration and the Department of Housing and Urban Development were among those posting reductions in investment spending for in the 2016 budget.

Administration officials did not respond to requests for explanations regarding the changes. At least some of the changes reflect adjustments following back-to-back years of department budget cutbacks.

Less evident in the budget numbers are continuing efforts to improve the performance of agency IT portfolio investments, through the administration’s PortfolioStat reviews and through cross-agency initiatives. PortfolioStat, which measures how well agency IT projects are meeting budget and scheduling targets, customer needs, and protecting federal data and systems adequately, has helped reduce the number of out-of-control IT projects.

The Office of Management and Budget said 74 percent of all rated IT investments were meeting the administration’s standards in January 2014, compared to 69 percent in 2012. Figures for the current year are not yet available.

The administration has also touted efforts to promote and support
digital services teams. The president’s budget request noted the president wants to designate $105 million to support governmentwide digital services and the recently created office of U.S. Digital Service.

FCC’s Wheeler: We’re invoking Title II for net neutrality rules

After months of frenzied debate, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler will move to protect net neutrality by invoking the commission’s authority under Title II of the Communications Act.

In a op-ed posted on Wired magazine’s website Wednesday, Wheeler said he will invoke “enforceable, bright-line rules” that will ban paid prioritization, and prohibit the blocking and throttling of lawful content and services. The move would cover wireline and mobile broadband.

“My proposal assures the rights of internet users to go where they want, when they want, and the rights of innovators to introduce new products without asking anyone’s permission,” Wheeler wrote.

Despite hinting at employing Title II as far back as September, Wheeler elaborates on his thought process in the op-ed, saying that he considered invoking Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act. He ultimately decided against that route once he “became concerned that this relatively new concept might, down the road, be interpreted to mean what is reasonable for commercial interests, not consumers.”

Wheeler’s proposed rules come after President Barack Obama had advocated for using the same approach late last year. “The time has come for the FCC to recognize that broadband service is of the same importance and must carry the same obligations as so many of the other vital services do,” Obama said in November.

The rules deal a significant blow to large telecom companies, who say Title II regulations would stifle innovation, burden them with red tape and shouldn’t be applied due to the law being written in 1934. Wheeler addressed these concerns in the op-ed, saying that the new rules will modernize Title II for the 21st century, including no rate regulation, tariffs or last-mile unbundling.

Despite the assurances, AT&T has been previewing a lawsuit it intends to file if the FCC invokes Title II.

“When the FCC has to defend reclassification before an appellate court, it will have to grapple with these and other arguments,” Hank Hultquist, AT&T’s federal regulatory vice president, wrote in a blog post on the company’s website. “Those who oppose efforts at compromise because they assume Title II rests on bulletproof legal theories are only deceiving themselves.”

The move is a massive victory for Internet advocates who waged immense campaigns to persuade the FCC to adopt strong regulations after a court ruling last year threw out previous net neutrality rules.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who has fought for new net neutrality rules over the past year, praised Wheeler’s announcement, saying it will “save the Internet.”

“Millions of American small businesses, consumers and innovators spoke and Chairman Wheeler listened. Without the open Internet, start-ups will never leave the garage,” Wyden said in a released statement. “The FCC should adopt this proposal and ensure that monopolies are never allowed to slam the door on American innovation.”

“The Internet has flourished because people have the power to choose for themselves what they see and do online,” said Alan Davidson, director of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute. “The approach proposed by the FCC Chairman today would protect the free and open Internet for a next generation of broadband Internet users.”

Doug Brake, the telecommunications policy analyst at the nonpartisan Information Technology and Innovation Foundation called Wheeler’s proposal an “unjustified, overblown response to what has in actuality been a by-and-large hypothetical concern.”

“Title II common carrier regulations represent a strong shift towards a European-style, precautionary regulation, over-regulating up-front without legitimate justification,” Brake said. “This path will make it much harder to do pro-consumer network management and is more likely to balkanize the Internet into distinct private networks and specialized services.”

The rules will be circulated to the other FCC commissioners Thursday, with a full vote coming at the FCC’s open meeting Feb. 26.

Digital services take center stage at Adobe assembly

Everybody knows that big data has been key to the growing success of digital government services. But it’s no longer enough for data to simply be available. Rather, the data driving the digital transformation in government has to enable engagement.

That was the central theme kicking off Tuesday’s Adobe Digital Government Assembly in Washington, D.C. Produced by FedScoop, the event attracted nearly 1,000 federal and industry IT professionals to exchange ideas on the latest lessons leaned in a variety of areas, from digital content engagement to big data and cloud computing to security and e-learning.

Adobe Systems Inc. used the event to announce the launch of its Adobe Cloud for Government. The company is currently undergoing the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) certification process.

Call to action

Erie Meyer, one of the founding members of the U.S. Digital Services Team, kicked-off the event with an impassioned and energetic call for more IT professionals to get involved in helping to transform and improve government services through technology.

“I’m here because I need you to all agree to join me on several things and the first is on the playbook,” Meyer said. “We have a playbook, we have a problem, now we need the people.”

Meyer heralded the progress of government digital services after her keynote talk. Despite the initial bugs of the Healthcare.gov rollout, Myer said the crisis was crucial in the development of the small digital services groups popping up in government.

“A small group came together to work with the feds and other people who were already on the ground in order to turn around a site that was struggling,” she told FedScoop. “The government sort of saw that as proof of concept of something that could be scaled, and we’re now seeing teams being built to do exactly that at different agencies.”

While some industry groups might feel threatened by new digital services groups, which in some cases are building products internally rather that outsourcing the need to private companies, Meyer said the commercial sector can play a big role in this revolution.

“The IT industry has a huge opportunity to make sure we get $50 billion worth of IT every year,” she said of the chunk of the IT budget dedicated to contracting each year. She pointed to the TechFAR as a major resource for industry in helping government agencies with their digital needs.

Data and more data

Lynn Overmann, the deputy chief data officer at the Commerce Department, provided critical insights into one of the federal government’s biggest data collectors. It’s virtually impossible for Commerce to know with any accuracy exactly how much data it collects and stores for use by other agencies and businesses, but it spans everything from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to the Economics and Statistics Administration to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and the U.S. Census Bureau.

It’s a lot of data. NOAA, for example collects 20 terabytes of data every day but can only release 2 terabytes due to capacity limitations, according to Overmann.

For Overmann, the government’s push to the cloud has taken on a unique mission at Commerce. “For us, the cloud is really about building capacity and a way to get the data out of the agency,” she said.

So the common challenge at the bureau level in the Commerce Department is that officials understand power data users, but they are struggling to figure out a way to optimize wholesale data use, she said. “It’s hard to see how and where our data lands after we push it out.”

Cloud migration

Agency IT leaders, including those at the Air Force, the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Agriculture, expressed renewed concern bracing for the inevitable data management demands as agencies continue migrating to the cloud.

Moving to the cloud offers improved agility, but it doesn’t fully address the flood of data and a host of related issues headed government’s way, said Michael Valivullah, chief technology officer for the National Agricultural Statistics Service at the USDA.

The emerging use of unmanned aerial vehicles and remote sensors by farmers and third-party agricultural monitoring services, for instance, promises to unleash torrents of new data — from higher-resolution images to new data on ground temperatures, humidity and crop vitality, he said. Agencies like the USDA will need to develop strategies “to filter the data it actually needs,” from those sources, he said.

That will likely mean greater reliance on edge computing — processing more of the data at the source before it hits an agency’s cloud — and developing a cadre of data scientists and new funding streams to properly analyze that data, he said.

Frank Konieczny, chief technology officer for the Air Force’s Office of Information Dominance, also pointed to the challenge and complexity of rationalizing hundreds of applications on Air Force servers that are creating an aerodynamic drag on the Air Force’s IT initiatives.

GSA’s Public Participation Playbook goes live

Gwynne Kostin, director of digital government at the General Services Administration, announced that the agency’s
Public Participation Playbook would go live Tuesday at participation.usa.gov. It’s an open source guide aimed at sharing how federal government agencies can bolster public participation.

“You can’t say, ‘today I’m going to be engaged’ and expect a lot of people to show up,” Kostin told attendees of the “Delivering Personalized Digital Citizen Experiences” presentation. It’s about building relationships ahead of time, she said.

Earlier in the panel, Brad Radichel, associate director business programs in the chief business office systems management at the Department of Veterans Affairs, talked about his agency’s efforts to help veterans apply for benefits, like the 10-10EZ.

Digital publishing

Other breakout sessions focused on a range of topics. At the “Creating and Managing Engaging Content” discussion, panelists talked about how graphic designers and multimedia professionals have gained prominence as leaders look to better engage the public.

“The new frontier for commercial and public sector agencies is learning how to craft and manage design-led customer experiences” — or, design with the customer in mind, said panel moderator Jerry Silverman, principal solutions consultant at Adobe.

Several government representatives discussed difficulties they face.

“One of the challenges we have at State is people don’t know what they want,” Eric Nelson, director of the Office of eDiplomacy at the State Department, said.

The State Department operates in 180 countries and different offices have different needs.

“It’s difficult for our teams to develop the skills and identify which skills to add to the tool kit.”

He said the department, which has 50 million followers around the world on its various social media platforms, offers a virtual internship program. The department encourages offices to create projects for students to complete.

Mark Hernandez, the CIA’s art director, said he is engaged in a massive effort to digitize what has historically been a paper-based process. “We’re trying to engage a publishing world that’s stuck back in paper,” he said. “We’ve turned reports, visuals into really low-budget interactives.”

Cybersecurity

The publicity surrounding cyber attacks on companies like Sony, Target and Home Depot served as cautionary reminders as top agency officials spoke about protecting their confidential content. Rod Turk, associate CIO for cybersecurity at the Energy Department, said it’s difficult to know when the next hack could come.

“We don’t know the unknowns at this point, because these types of malware propagations are going to continue,” Turk said. “The bad guys have portfolios of the malware out there. They have identified the vulnerabilities, and we can assume, when it’s advantageous to them, they will employ them. We in the cyber world have to be aware … so we can maintain the confidentiality of our systems.”

Mark Schwartz, CIO at the Department of Homeland Security’s United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office, said agencies should tackle the problem by responding rapidly when attacks do happen.

“I agree you need early warning signs to figure out what’s wrong,” he said. “My thing is, how quickly can we respond? What I do is make a small change, wipe out old DMs that are compromised. The model is changing and focusing on the speed of response.”

e-Learning

Scott Biegel, a solutions consultant for Adobe, said the trick to make adults want to participate in e-learning is to make the Web interface more appealing and user friendly.

“E-learning is not making a PowerPoint and putting it on a website,” he said. He added that, to build a successful online course, developers need to think about content, repetition, alignment and positioning. “We are now more than ever in the industry of entertainment,” he said. “Keep me awake.”

Biegel said it’s important to create compelling e-learning platforms now, so the next generation of government workers — the millennials — can seamlessly transition after school.

“The next generation of folks who are going to be working for our agencies are used to digital media,” he said. “They are expecting it. It does not take them long to figure out how to absorb online data.”

Wyatt Kash, Corinne Lestch, Billy Mitchell and Whitney Blair Wyckoff contributed to this report.

Defense budget offers few details on innovation

The Pentagon urged Congress Monday to get behind President Barack Obama’s $534 billion baseline defense budget proposal, warning that any reduction in funding below that request would make the risk to the national defense strategy unmanageable and future modernization all but impossible.

The administration’s budget proposal is nearly $35 billion above the mandatory spending cuts called for under the Budget Control Act of 2011 — known as sequestration. Still, even at that level, officials warned it will be challenging for the department to keep up with current operations while simultaneously trying to recover from more than a decade of war, reorganizing for a strategic pivot to the Asia-Pacific region and investing in modern technologies to defeat potential future adversaries.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work, who presides over the department’s Defense Innovation Initiative, characterized the budget proposal as the “best balance of ends, ways and means that we could possibly achieve.” The budget presents “manageable” risks to the national defense strategy, as outlined in the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review, he said.

“Any reduction in funding below what is in the president’s budget … will make the overall risk to the strategy unmanageable,” Work said. And even at the funding levels in the president’s request, defending the nation against emerging threats and preparing for future technologically sophisticated adversaries “remains extremely challenging,” he said.

“It’s a constant Rubik’s Cube. This is a deferred modernization problem,” Work said. “We have three years of built up demand on modernization that we haven’t been able to get to.”

Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman Adm. James Winnefeld echoed Work’s warning. “We have little margin left for error or strategic surprise,” Winnefeld said, referring to the military’s ability to respond effectively to unforeseen events or adversary capabilities. “Potential adversaries are eroding our technical advantages.” And unfunded changes to the budget by Congress would be the same as a reduction, ushering in sequester-level funding that would likely force a recasting of the national defense strategy, Winnefeld said.

Budget documents show an increase of $6.3 billion in research, development, testing and evaluation compared to last year. But the proposal offers few details on how much money the Pentagon plans to invest in the Defense Innovation Initiative or what specific programs might be covered. And when reporters pressed Defense Department Comptroller Mike McCord for those details, he offered little in the way of an answer.

While the “budget reflects an increased emphasis on innovation … we have not attempted to put a [dollar] figure on innovation,” McCord said. “It’s not only about money but a way of thinking.”

The funding details that were made available show that the Pentagon plans to invest $5.5 billion for cyber capabilities enhancements and $821 million for additional MQ-9 Reaper drones.

Obama ups cybersecurity, IT spending in budget proposal

Cybersecurity and federal IT spending were given a boost in President Barack Obama’s 2016 budget proposal, as the federal government looks to better procure, promote and protect its technological capabilities.

The White House is asking Congress to secure $14 billion for cybersecurity in 2016, up from $13 billion in the two previous years. The money would go toward strengthening defenses, allowing the government “to more rapidly protect American citizens, systems and information from cyber threats.”

“No system is immune to infiltration by those seeking to steal commercial or Government information and property or perpetrate malicious and disruptive activity,” the White House said in a fact sheet that accompanied the budget release.

Some of that $14 billion would be funneled toward two programs at the Department of Homeland Security: the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation Program, and the EINSTEIN intrusion detection system. Money also would be set aside for the first phase of construction for a civilian cyber campus ($227 million) and for increasing cybersecurity measures ($190 million) at the National Nuclear Security Administration.

The funding request comes as cybersecurity has evolved into a major issue for Obama, who introduced a number of initiatives in the past week aimed at protecting government and privately owned data. The measures were in response to the increase in cyber attacks on private companies and government agencies in the past year.

The budget also would set aside $86.4 billion for federal IT spending, up from last year’s $84.1 billion. The budget makes a point to say that while the government has made strides in improving its technological footprint, the public’s opinion on the government’s tech acumen is poor.

“The president is committed to creating a government that makes a significant, tangible and positive difference in the economy and the lives of the American people, and to driving lasting change in how government works,” a budget passage reads. “Yet, despite this progress, public trust in government remains low and there is more work to be done.”

The White House commends the savings brought in by PortfolioStat, a Web-based tool used by agencies to measure the return on various IT investments. According the Office of Management and Budget, PortfolioStat is among a suite of tools and initiatives that has saved the government more than $2.7 billion.

The budget also notes improvements in embracing agile development, adoption of cloud computing and the closure of 1,336 federal databases, strengthening the federal government’s IT footprint.

The IT budget also references a number of upcoming initiatives, including increased information sharing and better implementation of the TechFAR handbook. At the same time, it calls on Congress to earmark $16 million for e-government and open data projects, and set aside $105 million for federal agencies to create their own agency’s version of U.S. Digital Services.

“The 2016 budget includes funding that will launch the nation on a path to hire the leading digital experts, institutionalize modern digital delivery practices and establish more effective partnerships both within government and with the private sector that will ensure our citizens are provided services at a historically unprecedented level of quality and timeliness,” a budgetary supplement analysis read.

Parse the entire presidential request for the fiscal year 2016 budget
here.

President’s budget calls for 25 more digital services teams

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect the comments of USDS Administrator Mikey Dickerson and OMB Deputy Director of Management Beth Cobert.

Riding the early buzz around the U.S. Digital Service, President Barack Obama’s new budget proposal would allocate more than $100 million to give 25 agencies their own digital shops.

The president’s budget request, released Monday morning, says Obama wants to designate $105 million to governmentwide digital services and the USDS.

“These small, high-impact teams will drive the quality and effectiveness of the agencies’ most important digital services,” Obama’s budget proposal reads.

The budget also calls for increased funding to the central USDS team “to aid in building the agency teams, increase oversight and accountability for IT spending, improve IT procurement, and improve agency cybersecurity and cyber readiness,” a White House fact sheet says. A different budget fact sheet says the central USDS team would receive $35.2 million in funding for IT oversight an reform.

The proposal further clarifies the U.S. Digital Service’s central role in the development of such teams around government. U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith said recently the Office of Management and Budget’s team was the center of many networks, like the hub of spokes in a bike wheel.

Mikey Dickerson, the administrator of USDS and ex-Google engineer, shed more light on the new digital service teams during a conference call with media Monday afternoon. Under this proposal, USDS will pivot somewhat to focus on “removing barriers that effect, across government, things like hiring authority, stuff like that,” Dickerson said. “We’ll also act as an umbrella organization that brings the whole movement together.”

The funding would be enough to hire about 500 new digital service employees total, he said, which would give each of the teams an average size of 20. The 25 teams USDS will stand up are all CFO Act agencies except the Defense Department, Dickerson told reporters, and already they are working with agencies like the Education Department and its student loans, and the State Department’s efforts to modernize the Visa application process.

Dickerson said he never expected the demand within in government for digital services shops or that so many talented IT professionals would want to leave the private world for the federal government.

“Virtually every agency we’ve talked to is very interested in the kinds of people we are able to bring to help them out,” he said. “Everybody wants this kind of assistance much more than we ever imagined delivering it with the small amount of people we have today.”

And recruiting talent away from Silicon Valley, he said, “was more successful than I expected it to be, to be perfectly honest.” This budget proposal is “the most lazer-focused way we could come up with” to connect that overwhelming demand with the talent it needs, Dickerson said.

Obama’s budget also mentions USDS’ Digital Services Playbook and the TechFAR as key tools in coming years to train the federal IT acquisition workforce and the agile backbone for the new digital services teams.

“It’s moving from hundreds of pages of detailed requirements to things that are focused on outcomes and producing modular results that deliver progress along the way,” said Beth Cobert, OMB’s deputy director of management, in the media call. “I know from the employees who I talk to everyday, that if they feel like they can feel like they’re making faster progress in delivering services to the citizens they’re trying to serve, they are more engaged.”

This proposal comes as part of Obama dedication to “creating a Government that makes a significant, tangible, and positive difference in the economy and the lives of the American people, and to driving lasting change in how Government works.” Along with support for the USDS, Obama is looking to double down on his management agenda, which, in addition to promoting wiser spending on IT, calls for the creation of new Idea Labs around government, the opening of more government data, and attracting and retaining the best talent in the federal workforce.

The president’s $4 trillion budget proposal is actually a request. The budget must pass the Republican-controlled Congress.

Focus on early education, STEM programs in Obama’s budget

If approved, President Barack Obama’s budget would be a win for states trying to expand universal pre-kindergarten programs, with a proposed $750 million in grants to allow every 4-year-old access to high-quality programs.

Currently, the grants – about $500 million – help about 18 states develop and expand preschool programs in low-income communities. The increase in funds would help schools in more than 40 states, according to the budget, released Monday.

“Far too many families still don’t have access to high-quality preschool,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a call with reporters.

He said Obama has allocated $75 billion over 10 years to provide pre-k programs to all families.

If the budget wins approval from Congress, more states would follow in the footsteps of New York, where Mayor Bill de Blasio made expanding universal pre-k a cornerstone of his administration. More than 50,000 students enrolled for slots last year.

Obama’s budget focused heavily on early education, and proposed increasing the duration of Head Start programs and providing families with a credit of up to $3,000 per kid to cover childcare expenses.

To tackle areas in science, technology, engineering and math, the budget also includes a new $125 million competitive program for STEM-focused schools.

The program would “promote the re-design of America’s high schools by integrating deeper learning and student-centered instruction,” according to a fact sheet about the budget.

The program would also try to foster more participation of women and minorities, who are traditionally underrepresented in STEM curricula.

Along with Obama’s community college proposal – which would make two-year colleges tuition-free – the budget also includes $200 million for a new American Technical Training Fund.

Modeled on community colleges in Tennessee and Texas, the proposal would help colleges across the country create partnership programs with companies like CVS and the United Parcel Service to help students train for jobs.

“Programs could be created with current community colleges, other innovative, non-traditional training providers, or entities in partnership with secondary programs,” read the release.

The funds would be overseen by both the Department of Education and Department of Labor.