NSF’s Dr. Pramod Khargonekar talks about issues in STEM

Dr. Pramod Khargonekar, assistant director for the directorate of engineering with NSF, joins FedScoop TV to discuss the issues in STEM.

Congressman demands action on VA-FedBid scandal

A prominent Republican representative on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs has called on VA Secretary Robert McDonald to explain what, if any, punitive action he plans to take against a former deputy chief procurement officer at the Veterans Health Administration who was found to have engaged in violations of federal procurement law and has called on the agency to evaluate whether the reverse auction company at the heart of the scandal, FedBid Inc., remains a “responsible contractor” under federal procurement law.

In a letter sent Monday to McDonald, Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, details the findings of a VA inspector general report that uncovered an orchestrated campaign by FedBid executives to “assassinate” the character of Deputy Assistant Secretary for Acquisition and Logistics Jan Frye after he suspended the use of reverse auctions throughout the agency in 2012 and that found that Susan Taylor, VA’s deputy chief procurement officer at the Veterans Health Administration, abused her position and “improperly acted as an agent of FedBid in matters before the government.”

“The sheer extent of the abuse of power undertaken by Ms. Taylor at VA alone should warrant her termination,” Coffman wrote. “It is apparent that Ms. Taylor is the personification of the morally bankrupt and ethically impaired culture that exists within the Department.” Coffman also wrote that the IG report substantiates that FedBid “was actively conspiring to defame an honorable public servant in an attempt to protect a friendly, corrupt bureaucrat and continue pushing a system of contracts that undercut fair competition. When coupling that with FedBid’s engagement in inherently governmental  functions, I would call upon VA to examine whether FedBid remains a ‘responsible contractor.'”

Pressure from Coffman could spell trouble for both Taylor and FedBid. Although Taylor has reportedly been reassigned within VA, McDonald has pegged his tenure as the new VA secretary on a commitment to hold VA employees accountable and remain transparent about the steps the agency takes to ensure clear cases of wrongdoing are punished.

For FedBid, a company backed by powerful financiers and a laundry list of former high-level government officials, the fallout could be even worse. The company supports 17 other federal agencies and departments. Although determinations of nonresponsibility are award-specific, analysts say it could set the stage for a broader look at FedBid Inc.’s business dealings with VA and even other agencies, which could lead to discussion about suspension or debarment for either the company or specific executives.

According to the Congressional Research Service, decisions to exclude a vendor are made by agency heads or their designees “based upon evidence that contractors have committed certain integrity offenses, including any offenses indicating a lack of business integrity or honesty that seriously affect the present responsibility of a contractor.”

A source at the VA Office of the Inspector General told FedScoop that FedBid’s previous statement that its reverse auction services “stimulated competition that resulted in lower prices for VHA” is not supported by the facts presented by another VA IG report issued on the same day as the report detailing the misdeeds of Taylor and other FedBid executives. According to the IG, that companion report, Review of the Veterans Health Administration’s Use of Reverse Auction Acquisitions “addressed the contract itself and found that the cost savings were overstated and may have limited competition.”

Lorraine Campos, a partner in the government contracts & grants team at the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Reed Smith, said federal agencies “ought to proceed with caution in touting savings from reverse auctions” in the wake of the VA IG reports. “While reverse auctions promise dramatic savings, such promises may only be smoke and mirrors,” Campos said. “Once transaction fees are factored in, the actual amount an agency saves may not be as dramatic as anticipated. Moreover, since reverse auctions only consider pricing, rather than value, agencies may not get the ‘bang for the buck’ through these mechanisms.”

FCC’s Rosenworcel: D.C. needs to get in the Silicon Valley ‘sandbox’

The federal government can procure every piece of technology it needs to modernize its systems and better serve the public, but FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said Tuesday the nation will only move forward after it adopts a mindset normally seen in Silicon Valley.

Rosenworcel said the government could benefit from adopting a “sandbox” mentality when it comes to crafting technology regulation, moving away from a rigid bureaucracy that fails to keep up with the speed of innovation.

“The traditional regulatory process can be cumbersome,” Rosenworcel said Tuesday during a panel discussion at Georgetown University. “It can be risk averse and hostile to new ideas. It is rarely as nimble as the digital economy itself. But we need to fix this, and I think we can — if we embrace the idea of government in the sandbox.”

Rosenworcel’s comments were part of a panel that discussed how regulators can adapt new policies as new technologies move beyond the consumer and become an everyday facet of life.

Larry Downes, a project director at Georgetown’s Center for Business and Public Policy, said while researching 30 different industry segments, he couldn’t find one that was widely disrupted by new technology.

“It’s no longer about computing, communications and consumer electronics,” Downes said. “It’s now starting to disrupt everything.”

However, Downes was quick to say that regulators should avoid the “accident-prone intersection of policy and innovation” and stay away from regulations that stifle burgeoning tech companies.

“We know how to do this right,” Downes said. “It’s not the case there is no role for government. We did it right once before, we can do it again. But it takes a certain regulatory humility.”

John Mayo, an economics professor at Georgetown, said the government can regulate without impeding innovation as long as they practice “results-based regulation.”

“If you look back over the last 50 years, the very best regulatory decisions have been ones that have evolved smartly with technology and changes in institutions,” Mayo said.

Rosenworcel highlighted ways the FCC is pioneering this “results-based regulation,” describing two projects — broadcast channel-sharing experiments in Los Angeles and all-IP network testing in Alabama and Florida — where small-scale testing will eventually influence future large-scale regulations.

“I think this sandbox thinking is yielding dividends — at the FCC and in the communications sector,” she said. “But we need to expand it. Because the flow of digital data over bigger bandwidth combined with the power of cloud computing is bringing us a wave of software systems that are going to disrupt many more sectors of our economy with analog-era regulatory regimes.”

Karen Kornbluh, a senior fellow for digital policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, said with any regulatory framework, the U.S. needs to consider the international impact or risk of “fracturing the Internet” into smaller networks controlled by individual countries.

“We have an awful lot to lose if we don’t take this technology and the importance of having it be open as a serious competitive issue,” Kornbluh said.

One way the U.S. could keep the regulatory process open and transparent is by considering how the security of burgeoning industries, like the Internet of Things, factors into needed policy.

Ron Klain, general counsel for venture capital firm Revolution LLC and former White House aide, said considering security angles in regulatory framework could actually help foster innovation while providing transparency to the public.

“Imagine a world, which we are not so far from, in which driverless cars are on streets,” Klain said. “People are going to want to know there is a series of protections in place that makes it very hard for those things to be hacked into, preventing those cars from driving into people’s living room.”

However regulators arrive at their new policies, Rosenworcel said a sandbox mentality needs to happen in order for the federal government to catch up with the rest of the country’s way of conducting business.

“If we need our regulatory state to be more agile and more innovative, why not take a page from technology itself?,” Rosenworcel said. “I think we need more government in the sandbox. Because by starting small, we can embrace new digital ideas in a big way.”

HP’s Greg Herbold on the importance of STEM education

http://youtu.be/9l4mCVjIONE Greg Herbold, director for state and local government and education with HP, talks with FedScoop TV about the importance of STEM education in America.

White Paper explores data performance and security

Editor’s Note: The following is content sponsored by Intel and Cloudera.

A new white paper written by three chief technology officers with extensive experience in fielding data solutions into government agencies, explores the embedded capabilities of the Intel hardware ecosystem harnessed to the Cloudera enterprise data hub and reveals how agencies can achieve efficiencies in performance, throughput and security in all areas of the architecture.

Cognitio EDH Architecture Implications 2014-09-25

VA refines scheduling contract timing, sees progress on broad tech front

Stephen Warren, the chief information officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs, said Tuesday a final contract award for a new commercial scheduling system will likely happen in January and not by the end of 2014 as originally planned because of “an extensive amount of industry feedback” received on the system’s performance work statement.

“Because we have so much feedback to consider before we can lock down our requirements documentation and post the solicitation, some small adjustments to our aggressive contract deadline are necessary,” Warren wrote in a blog post. “We now believe our request for proposals will come out in October, with an anticipated award of January.”

But a senior VA official, who spoke to FedScoop on background, outlined significant progress on a series of high-tech efforts designed to bring immediate relief to the difficulties that have plagued the agency’s operations and the ability of veterans to access care and services.

According to the official, short term improvements to the existing scheduling module in the Veterans Integrated System Technology Architecture, known as VistA, continue to move forward. “Clinical video teleconferencing, which is increasing access through automated Web-based interface, has deployed across all VA service networks,” the official said. “VA has also completed initial code development of a direct patient scheduling application, which is now moving to testing, compliance and production approval ahead of an anticipated May 2015 release.”

VA also recently completed the roll out of version 7.1 of its claims processing system called the Veterans Benefits Management System (VBMS). According to the official, VBMS has allowed VA to move to a paperless process and 90 percent of all claims under VA review now are in VBMS. New functionality includes the ability for authorized users to download multiple documents simultaneously and the addition of the ability to ingest Disability Benefits Questionnaires from Veterans Health Administration contractors and additional Veterans Benefits Administration contractors.

Release 7.1 development also included Digits-to-Digits (D2D) integration, which will provide Veteran Service Organizations with the capability to establish claims, enter contentions, upload electronic documents and create an eFolder, the official said.

“VBMS is an agile success story for VA, with new functionality being delivered to claims processors every 90 days,” said the official, referring to the department’s focus on agile development methods of creating and deploying software in smaller, more manageable chunks.

The VA also deployed its Enterprise Voice Services (EVS) initiative Sept. 19, launching the first full production pilot site at the Fort Harrison, Montana, VA Medical Center. EVS is focused on modernizing the VA’s aging private branch exchange (PBX) infrastructure, introducing a consolidated voice-over-IP (VoIP) platform served from VA’s national data centers.

“As one of the many VA efforts that are contributing to improvements in the way VA interacts with and supports our nation’s Veterans, EVS will not only provide enhanced functionality and reliability but will also serve to eliminate unnecessary duplication and driving down costs,” the official said.

Two additional EVS pilots comprised of more than 30 locations supporting VA medical centers in Charleston, South Carolina, and the VA Tennessee Valley Healthcare System are planned for this calendar year.

The CIOs of 2020 will lead with ‘soft skills’

Come 2020, a hard-nosed technical expertise is not going to cut it for federal IT leaders. Tomorrow’s IT leaders and the people who fill their vacancies are going to require softer, more-personable skills like the ability to communicate and putting customers first, a group of current federal chief information officers said Tuesday.

The importance of cybersecurity, cloud, big data and other federal IT trends won’t disappear in the next five years, and there’s no telling what others will emerge. But Renee Wynn, the acting CIO of the Environmental Protection Agency, told an audience at an ACT-IAC panel Tuesday on next generation competencies in federal IT that there’s more to making a federal IT leader than technical skills.

“We are all in demand on cybersecurity, but if cybersecurity specialists can’t communicate to me that we’ve got a serious problem, then how are we going to solve the problem?” Wynn said. “That communication piece becomes pretty key.” Wynn referred to qualities like communication as “soft skills,” ones that are less teachable and not printed on a typical resume but key to any IT specialist hoping to manage and lead effectively.

At the Small Business Association, a major mission is serving small business customers through loan programs and others. And while the SBA’s IT infrastructure and operations are certainly important, CIO Renee Macklin said IT leaders have to also understand the customers and the business as well.

“My expectation is that my staff can do two things: Have technology skills but also have business skills,” Macklin said. “Understand what the business is doing, understand where the businesses are going…We can’t give technical solutions if we don’t understand the business.”

Even within the Department of Homeland Security, an agency strongly rooted in top-notch cybersecurity IT, Deputy CIO Margie Graves said the “role of the CIO is changing to that of broker, facilitator, customer liaison, more business acumen and less of the technical delivery, because the technical delivery will be done through partners, and that’s a good thing.” Graves said she expects the pipeline of incoming IT leaders for DHS to reflect that.

The Department of Transportation is currently recruiting a cadre of IT experts to lead it into the future. CIO Richard McKinney said he is looking for balance in his next IT leaders, rather than those who might be the top of their classes or the lead experts in a given technical field.

“Specialists have their place; I wouldn’t deny that. But from a manager’s standpoint, I’m looking for people who are ‘comprehensivists,’ people who can understand the technical side, understand the business side and understand the political side,” McKinney said. “I think what makes a great manager is someone who can sit down in front of a customer and put themselves in that person’s shoes; see it from their point of view.”

So, McKinney is investing in those qualities, targeting employees with upside for leadership rather than those who fit immediately as more of a temporary fix. That might entail some training along the way, something he said other managers often stray from, but what he credits as a key to transforming the city of Nashville, Tennessee’s IT operations during his six years there before joining DOT.

“People say ‘Well if you train them, you’ll lose them,'” McKinney said of those fearful managers. “But what if you don’t train them and they stay?”

What it comes down to, Macklin said, is a paradigm shift in the way IT operates — one of more flexibility focused on service.

“In the days past, we usually would have a lot of folks who would just say no” to a customer with a unique problem, she said. “What we’re talking about really is thinking outside of the box. You do need a technology person, but the technology person has to have the soft skills to…find an alternative and deliver. Basically what we need to be able to say is ‘I get and understand what you want. Let me go back and find out how technically I can deliver that to you.'”

The DATA Act journey is just beginning

More than four months after President Barack Obama signed the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 into law, discussion has only just begun on how the administration plans to put the law into practice.

The law, which aims to make the U.S. federal government’s financial expenditures more transparent and open, is jointly administered by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget and the Treasury Department.

Speaking at the Data Transparency Coalition’s Data Transparency 2014 conference, David Mader, OMB’s controller in charge of DATA Act implementation, said the newly signed law is a journey toward a more open government.

“When I think about the DATA Act, I think about a journey,” Mader said.  “When I think about the journey and I think about what we’ve accomplished with USAspending, I think we’ve learned an awful lot from putting up that website and with working with the agencies and working with the Congress.”

Mader, the former chief information officer at the Internal Revenue Service, returned to government in May after a stint in the private sector. One of the reasons he said he made the return was to aid in the execution of the DATA Act.

“Back in the late winter, I was contemplating coming back into government service,” Mader said. “One of the motivations for coming to OMB was the ability to be engaged in this initiative.”

USAspending.gov, established in 2006 by the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, includes information about any contract award granted from a federal agency to any entity. Last week, at the Open Government Partnership meeting at the United Nations in New York, Obama announced that the administration would work on improving USAspending.gov in order to make it more accessible and transparent.

David Lebryk, the fiscal assistant secretary at the Treasury Department, said the DATA Act has the potential to be transformational, but it is not an easy challenge.

“We also know our data resides in a number of places, and our ability to have those systems speak and talk to one another and actually extract meaningful data is not easy,” Lebryk said. “It’s going to take a lot of hard work moving the efforts forward. This really has to be a data-centric effort.”

To guide the rollout of the law, the two agencies have created a joint steering committee and an advisory committee made up of people interested in the initiative. The steering committee will divide the responsibility of the key components of the law among the two agencies in order to define the data elements, determine the source of the data and decide how the data should be published.

“The DATA Act is a broader view of federal spending than has been in the past,” Lebryk said. “When we talk about a 360-degree view of federal spending, it’s about making sure that you understand the distinctions of those three things. How do you do a good job at articulating that and visualizing that?”

During a morning keynote, the White House’s Deputy Chief Technology Officer Nick Sinai said the DATA Act builds on critical efforts for the federal government to provide access to citizens’ government documents online in a safe and secure manner.

Sinai said the guiding focus of the act’s execution should be a relentless focus on the users of data and being iterative and open.

“Data by itself doesn’t do anything,” Sinai said. “It’s the use of data that’s really exciting. At the end of the day, that’s how we’re really going to transform federal spending data.”

FCC stiff arms NFL on sports blackout rule

The Federal Communications Commission unanimously voted to end the sports blackout rule Tuesday, dealing another blow to an already image-damaged National Football League.

Since 1975, local broadcast networks were unable to air NFL games if a home team did not sell out its stadium. The league stood by the rule as a way to boost attendance numbers, but the commission now views the rule as unnecessary.

“It’s a simple fact, the federal government should not be party to sports teams keeping their fans from viewing the games, period,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said. “For 40 years, these teams have hidden behind the rules of the FCC. No more. Everyone needs to be aware who allows the blackouts to exist and its not the Federal Communications Commission.”

The rule’s elimination looked to be in the commission’s crosshairs for weeks. Wheeler wrote a blog entry earlier this month saying the rule “makes no sense at all.”

“The sports blackout rules are a bad hangover from the days when barely 40 percent of games sold out and gate receipts were the league’s principal source of revenue,” he wrote. “Clearly, the NFL no longer needs the government’s help to remain viable.”

The NFL has come under increased scrutiny in Washington as the league deals with a number of scandals. Earlier this year, the Patent and Trademark Office removed the trademark from the Washington Redskins after it ruled the name was disparaging to Native Americans. More recently, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said Congress could intervene in the league’s investigation surrounding former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice’s domestic violence incident.

The NFL has said revoking the rule would force the league to consider moving its games to pay-TV outlets, something Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai said would be akin to the league “cutting off its nose to spite its face.”

“I hope the NFL won’t dig in its heels, and use this an opportunity to connect with its fans,” Pai said.

In a statement to FedScoop, NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy said the league’s teams “have made significant efforts in recent years to minimize blackouts,” with blackouts occurring for only two of last year’s 256 games.

“The NFL is the only sports league that televises every one of its games on free, over-the-air television,” McCarthy said. “The FCC’s decision will not change that commitment for the foreseeable future.” 

The NFL is still able to enforce blackouts due to its contracts with over-the-air broadcasters, which run until 2022. However, the Sports Fans Coalition, a nonprofit sports advocacy group, cheered the ruling on its website Tuesday.

“Sports fans have a lot to cheer about,” a blog post on SportsFans.org read. “We watch the games, buy the merchandise, support our teams through thick and thin. All we ask is that, if leagues and teams get a benefit from our government, we get something in return.”

Other rulings made by the FCC Tuesday:

• Commission voted 5-0 to revise rules for unlicensed operations in the 600 MHz spectrum band, including fixed and personal/portable white space devices and wireless microphones. Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said people’s lives depend on these bands for life-saving services, including medical telemetry. “These key services striving for space deserve attention under the law,” Rosenworcel said.

• Commission voted 3-2 to clarify rules related to participation of broadcast television stations in the upcoming spectrum incentive auction. “Only in Washington is it possible to get wound up on whether something is modification or clarification,” Wheeler said. “Let’s be clear, this does not modify the treatment of coverage areas. This does explain how the report and order meets the statute.”

• Commission voted 5-0 to streamline rules related to satellite licenses.

The FCC’s next open meeting will be held on Oct. 17.

‘Shark Tank’ meets smart cities at NIST’s Global Cities workshop

 

Take one-part “Shark Tank,” one-part creative writing workshop, add in more than 200 highly-intelligent people from across the world and have them all figure out ways to leverage the Internet of Things. The result: just what Sokwoo Rhee was expecting when he was planning the Global Cities Challenge.

Rhee was joined Monday by leaders from federal, state and municipal governments, along with representatives from private industry, nonprofits and academia to create ways for the world’s cities to leverage cyber-physical systems, better known as the Internet of Things.

Two-minute “elevator pitches” formed the crux of the challenge, during which people made a case for how their technology or expertise could help a city leverage already-existing systems or allow a company to better refine a program already in effect.

From there, teams formed “action clusters” to create projects that will be built and tested over a nine-month period. Next summer, Rhee plans to highlight the projects at NIST’s Global City Teams Festival.

“The goal is to have every team who participates show some kind of tangible milestone,” Rhee told Fedscoop. “That can be a lot of different things. It can be a real deployment in five different cities or it can be the blueprint for the next step of the real deployment. Something that these teams can agree on and set as a goal.”

The teams had a host of ideas and projects to choose from in the plenary sessions. In just one, elevator pitches covered projects dealing with renewable energy, driverless transit, disaster response, smart buildings and wastewater management.

Sandra Baer, cities director for the advisory group Smart Cities Council, said the NIST event helps coalesce all of these ideas, which eventually will lead to cities harnessing already existing technology.

“There are so many diverse interests,” Baer told Fedscoop. “Somebody wants to work on transit or data or energy infrastructure. If you look at a big framework which NIST is planning to create, the idea is that you create this framework so that everybody has a piece in it, but in general we can work together.”

Baer said this technology helps serve as a path forward for many cities who are hesitant to devote already-tight funds to ambitious new products and services.

“If I’m a company, and I knock on the door of a city leader, big or small, they may or may not be receptive to that knock,” she said. “Should I talk to this company or should I talk to five other companies that are going to help me with my problem? How do I move forward with that priority? It’s not the technology. It’s much more ‘Can we get organized to set a focus and start making decisions?'”

Rhee said the challenge comes as an interesting pivot point for NIST, with the agency trying to lay new standards for a market that will see 8 billion non-phone devices connected to the Internet by 2018.

“There are two different ways of doing it,” Rhee said. “We wait until things sort out and we jump in at the last moment. The other way is we actually participate in the process of sorting things out. I think this is the right thing to do for NIST.”

Rhee, who said the event’s registration exceeded his expectations, was excited about the projects he saw coming out of Monday’s challenge. While he said the Internet of Things has been around for some time, its future is not far off thanks to the projects coming from these challenges.

“This whole sensor network, end-to-end, all those things have existed for probably 20 years,” Rhee said. “It’s just that so far it has been the engineers’ work. Now we are at the point in the last couple years, because of big data and cloud computing, now having sensors all around started making sense.”

“We are at the junction point, a critical inflection point and this will accelerate going forward,” he said.