State Department providing extra cyber-supply chain risk training for 150 contracting officers

The Department of State is working to provide extra cyber-supply chain risk training to 150 contracting officers around the globe, according to a senior official.

Speaking Tuesday at an industry event in Washington, D.C., State Department Director of Cybersecurity Supply Chain Risk Management Zetra Batiste said the agency’s Bureau of Information Resource Management is providing the additional training to help combat the rising threat of procurement processes being used to introduce malware into U.S. government systems.

Her comments come amid heightened concerns over cyber supply chain risk and what measures, such as the provision of software bills of material, should be imposed on technology companies working with government agencies.

She said: “My top priority is continuing to stay on top of our acquisition requirements because that [the procurement process] is how threats are introduced into the environment.” 

The State Department employs hundreds of contracting officers based around the world, speaking different languages, who are responsible for negotiating contracts on behalf of the agency. 

Batiste said her bureau is focused on creating repeatable processes for managing the IT supply chain that allow it to manage risks.

Last year, the Biden administration announced new plans under which all software vendors working with federal government agencies would be required to sign and provide attestation forms guaranteeing the cybersecurity of their products.

The new measures will make the collection of attestation forms a key part of federal government technology procurement, but contractors will not have to submit them for open-source software they use.

Concerns over cyber-supply chain risk across U.S. government agencies have risen since the 2020 SolarWinds cyber breach, during which foreign hackers used the software supply chain to exfiltrate data from departments including the Treasury and Homeland Security.

State Department shutters AI-based project that aimed to forecast violence and COVID-19

The State Department is no longer pursuing an artificial intelligence project that aimed to “test the statistical relationship between social media activity overseas and activity by violent extremist organizations,” an agency spokesperson told FedScoop.

The shuttered pilot is one of several initiatives disclosed in the agency’s AI use case inventory and is still listed on the State Department website.

The pilot’s inclusion on the list comes amid questions over the approach that federal agencies take to cataloging the technology. A recent investigation by FedScoop found a lack of standardized processes for disclosure across the government.

On the website, the use case is currently titled “forecasting” and is described as “using statistical models, projecting expected outcome into the future.” The online page also says that the tool has been “applied to COVID cases as well as violent events in relation to tweets.”

The use case was attributed to the “R” bureau, which commonly refers to the agency’s public affairs division.

The State Department did not say why it’s no longer working on the project — or if the pilot ended because the technology did not work or because the use case did not align with responsible AI principles established by Executive Order 13960, which was issued by the Trump administration in 2020. The State Department previously told FedScoop that it was, in response to that executive order, “employing a rigorous review process and making necessary adjustments or retirements as needed.”

The pilot is a reminder that the State Department is looking to apply artificial intelligence to increasingly-sensitive domains. Notably, researchers have questioned the efficacy and appropriateness of deploying similar kinds of technology, but it’s not immediately clear how this particular system was designed or tested.

State did not address FedScoop’s questions about whether outside companies were involved in developing the system, and its accuracy in predicting outcomes.

The State Department is also working with a system for detecting deepfakes developed by the Global Engagement Center, a State Department-based government organization that focuses on combatting disinformation. A spokesperson described the technology, which was also disclosed in the inventory, as “a custom AI-based algorithm to detect synthesized social media profile pictures on foreign social media accounts that are engaged in spreading disinformation and propaganda that could undermine U.S., ally, and partner national security interests.”

The State Department is looking at other technologies, both those created internally and outside the agency, to “identify synthetic media or altered media at scale,” the spokesperson added.

The State Department public inventory now includes nearly 40 use cases, overall.

As the government continues to weigh its approach to artificial intelligence, the State Department has been particularly focused on implementing the technology into its own operations, as recent interviews with officials have exemplified. The agency’s enterprise AI strategy is expected soon, as well.

OPM: All federal employees in DC area must leave office by 3 p.m. as storm approaches

The Office of Personnel Management announced Monday afternoon that all federal government employees located in the Washington, D.C. area should leave government buildings by 3 p.m. today, due to severe weather including possible tornados expected in the region.

Unusually severe thunderstorms are expected to hit the D.C. area as well as parts of Maryland and Virginia on Monday, with the potential for damaging winds, tornadoes, torrential rain and frequent lightning between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., according to the National Weather Service.

The NWS has issued a Level 4 out of 5 risk for severe storms for the first time in about a decade and a tornado watch, which is in effect until 9 p.m.

“Employees of Federal agencies in the Washington, D.C. area are authorized for Early Departure,” an OPM announcement on Monday afternoon said. 

“Employees should depart 2 hours earlier than their normal departure time and may request Unscheduled Leave to depart prior to their staggered departure time. All employees Must Depart no later than 3:00 at which time Federal offices are Closed,” the announcement said.

The OPM notice said that in-person employees or telework employees at the office will “receive weather and safety leave only for the amount of time required to commute home,” and then be expected to complete any remaining portion of the workday teleworking from home. 

Telework employees performing telework from home or elsewhere or remote workers will not receive weather and safety leave and must continue their workdays as normal.

Federal emergency employees are the only ones “expected to remain at their worksite unless otherwise directed by their agencies,” the OPM announcement said.

GOP lawmakers criticize federal agencies for failing to provide telework policy docs

House Republican lawmakers Monday blasted Biden administration federal agencies for allegedly failing to turn over materials related to telework and remote work policies that the House Oversight and Accountability committee requested months ago as part of an investigation into federal agency telework policies and their effect on agency performance.

House Oversight Chairman, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., Subcommittee on Government Operations and the Federal Workforce Chairman Pete Sessions, R-Texas., and Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., renewed their initial May request to Biden administration federal agencies regarding telework and remote work.

“One of two options is currently playing out: either federal agencies are withholding information from Congress or federal agencies are not tracking telework and remote work policies as required by the law,” said Comer, Sessions, and Boebert in letters to dozens of federal agencies. 

“Both possibilities are deeply concerning. The American people show up to work every day and federal agencies should follow their example. Committee Republicans remain steadfast in our pursuit of answers and if federal agencies continue to withhold this information, we will resort to compulsory measures,” the Congressman said.

The Republican lawmakers, in the latest missive, said the Biden Administration has not provided them current data about the specific amount of telework occurring within federal agencies or across the entire federal workforce and has provided “no evidence concerning the impact of elevated telework on agency performance.” 

GOP lawmakers have sought to investigate agencies’ varying approach to telework, and in January introduced the SHOW UP Act, which was intended to compel departments to return to their pre-pandemic telework policies. That legislation was introduced by Rep. James Comer, R-TN, Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., Byron Donalds, R-Fla., and Michael Cloud, R-Texas.

Furthermore, they cite a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) study on federal building occupancy which suggests that in some components of federal agencies the vast majority of employees are not coming to the office on a regular basis, with some agencies reporting occupancy rates as low as nine percent.

Last week, President Biden called for his Cabinet to “aggressively execute” plans for federal employees to carry out more in-office work this fall after years of working remotely.

Congressional inquiries to OPM have surged

Amid scrutiny of the retirement services division within the Office of Personnel Management, congressional inquiries to the agency have grown drastically, according to a February letter sent by Retirement Services Associate Director Margaret Pearson.

According to the missive, which was sent in response to questions from House lawmakers, OPM’s Congressional, Legislative, and Intergovernmental Affairs branch received more than 9,000 congressional inquiries in 2022, compared with more than 3,000 in 2020. In other words, the number of inquiries from Congress to the agency has approximately tripled in three years.

FedScoop obtained the letter from Pearson through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Retirement services managers associated with a retirement case receive a notification when they receive a congressional inquiry about the applicant associated with that application, Pearson wrote. In the letter, she added that the agency’s CLIA “is working to improve its operations regarding congressional inquiries by focusing on customer service, improving processing times and educating congressional offices about best practices.”

“Seems like average response time of ~4 months to congressional inquiry,” observed Jason Briefel, the policy and outreach director at the Senior Executives Association and a partner at the government-focused law firm Shaw, Bransford, & Roth, in an email. “OPM’s congressional relations office seems overwhelmed with requests for information.”

OPM was contacted for comment.

OPM planning four-month trial for online retirement system later this year

The Office of Personnel Management is expecting to conduct a four-month trial of a new online retirement application platform for federal employees later this year, FedScoop has learned.

In a letter to lawmakers, which was obtained by this publication through a Freedom of Information Act request, agency director Kiran Ahuja said OPM will conduct an approximately 120-day pilot in coordination with the National Finance Center, which is a federal agency division under the United States Department of Agriculture.

Responding to questions from lawmakers including Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Il., Ahuja wrote: “Between the electronic employee data received from the payroll center and the online retirement application, RS will receive all the information necessary to process a retirement application electronically.”

She added: “The pilot will likely last 120 days, at which point RS will evaluate the results and determine the appropriate next steps to expand the program.” 

Details of the anticipated pilot come as escalating concerns about delays and retirement application backlogs attract increasing attention from Congress. Last month, FedScoop revealed that the Government Operations and Border Management Subcommittee, which is held within the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, is considering a new hearing focused on the retirement application backlog at OPM.

Other letters obtained through freedom of information requests, illustrate a range of challenges facing the agency in relation to the backlog. These include an increase in errors in retirement packages, difficulties filling vacancies, new in-person work limitations created by the pandemic, and a decline in legal administrative specialists at the agency. 

In at least two of the letters to members of Congress, OPM said that plans for an online retirement application platform — considered a first step in reforming a still largely paper-based system — are expected at the end of this year.

“OPM has made investments to drive OPM’s retirement claims inventory to six year low in June 2023. OPM remains committed to helping federal employees transition from serving the American public to enjoying their hard-earned retirement,” a spokesperson for the agency told OPM.

In an effort to boost online access to its retirement services tools, the agency has released content urging retirees to use Login.gov and created a survivor benefits-focused chatbot, among other initiatives.

Despite details of the pilot, which is set to launch in the coming months, other efforts seem farther out. In a March letter, Ahuja told Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., that the agency would not open the retirement services online portal to representative payees — citing issues with authentication challenges. In the letter, Ahuja noted that the new modernization and oversight of the payee program would “enable us to authenticate the payee so we can consider opportunities to provide payees with access to additional online tools.” 

In an email to FedScoop, John Hatton, staff vice president of policy and programs at the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, emphasized the importance of ensuring the online system pilot is successful and that it is implemented governmentwide.

He said: “For a federal retiree community that has faced multi-month delays for decades, and failed modernization attempts in the past, history cautions skepticism. But recent signs provide at least a sparkle of hope.” 

Jason Briefel, who is both the policy and outreach director at the Senior Executives Association and a partner at the government-focused law firm Shaw, Bransford, & Roth, reviewed these letters before publication. In his view, in these letters there was “[n]o clear plan for modernization” — and there wasn’t a clear timeline for when the online application would actually become usable. 

“OPM’s answer is simply more money and hiring more people,” Briefel said in an email to FedScoop, adding: “not addressing root causes of issues, reliance on paper-based systems.”

The National Finance Center at the USDA provides human resources, financial and administrative services for U.S. government agencies.

NASA cautiously tests OpenAI software for summarization and code writing

NASA is cautiously testing OpenAI software with a range of applications in mind, including code-writing assistance and research summarization. Dozens of employees are participating in the effort, which also involves using Microsoft’s Azure cloud system to study the technology in a secure environment, FedScoop has learned. 

The space agency says it’s taking precautions as it looks to examine possible uses for generative artificial intelligence. Employees looking to evaluate the technology are only invited to join NASA’s generative AI trial if their tests involve “public, non-sensitive data,” Edward McLarney, digital transformation lead for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at the agency, told FedScoop.

In June, Microsoft announced a new Azure OpenAI tool designed for the government, which according to the company is more secure than the commercial version of the software. Last week, FedScoop reported that the Microsoft Azure OpenAI was approved for use on sensitive government systems. A representative for Microsoft Azure referred to NASA in response to a request for comment. OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

Experimentation with the technology has just begun, McLarney noted, and “many iterations” of testing, verification, validation, bias mitigation, and safety reviews, among other types of evaluations, are still ahead. 

“NASA workers are assessing usability of the tools, accuracy of the results, completeness of AI-generated outputs, security behavior of the overall cloud services, speed of the models, costs, supportability and more,” McLarney said. “NASA is excited about the potential of generative AI and is also being clear-eyed about its risks and shortcomings.” 

He added: “NASA also uses cloud services from other companies and is interested in testing generative AI capabilities from them. NASA may conduct additional generative AI testing with Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, or other companies in the future.”

Right now, the space agency plans to study OpenAI’s chat, code assistance capabilities, and image-generating capabilities. AI-generated art could help provide “inspiration” for NASA artists, McLarnley explained, while the system’s text-generating software could help with writing documents. He pointed to other use cases, too. 

FedScoop learned about NASA’s generative AI tests after receiving a list of employees titled “Initial NASA OpenAI on Azure Testers” in response to a public records request. Last month, FedScoop obtained an email — which was sent by NASA’s chief information officer to employees in May — focused on preliminary guidance for using AI tools like ChatGPT. That email noted that some “early adopters” within the agency were preliminarily working with the technology. 

Notably, the space agency’s generative AI testing had not begun when NASA began collecting its fiscal year 2023 AI use case inventory, which was required by a 2020 Trump administration executive order. Still, McLarney noted that as “NASA generative AI testing and nascent use begins, it will be included as appropriate in future AI inventory reporting cycles.”

NASA’s experimentation with OpenAI software is just one part of the agency’s growing focus on AI. Officials also released a Responsible AI plan last September — and artificial intelligence and machine learning remain an element of the agency’s digital transformation efforts.

The agency is one of the first government departments to disclose details of its approach to experimentation with OpenAI. The use of generative AI tools can raise privacy, trust and oversight, and national security concerns, as a Government Accountability Office brief from June highlighted. Relatedly, the Department of Transportation recently deleted a reference to using ChatGPT from its AI use inventory, in response to FedScoop’s reporting.

IRS launches digitization effort to go paperless by 2025

The IRS Wednesday announced an ambitious digitization effort that will give taxpayers the option to go paperless for all IRS correspondence by 2024 filing season and provide the added benefit of reducing tax evasion by wealthy individuals and large corporations.

According to the agency, the effort will eliminate up to 200 million pieces of paper annually, cut processing times in half, and expedite refunds by several weeks.

The digitization initiative is being financed through an $80 billion infusion of cash for the IRS over 10 years under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) which President Joe Biden passed into law last August.

“Thanks to the IRA, we are in the process of transforming the IRS into a digital-first agency,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said during a visit to an IRS paper processing facility in McLean, Virginia with IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel on Wednesday.

“By the next filing season,” she said, “taxpayers will be able to digitally submit all correspondence, non-tax forms, and notice responses to the IRS,” Yellen added.

The IRS also said in its announcement of the digitization program, that it would help enable agency data scientists to implement “advanced analytics and pattern recognition methods to pursue cases that can help address the tax, including wealthy individuals and large corporations using complex structures to evade taxes they owe.”

Using IRA resources, taxpayers are now able to respond to more notices online, and the IRS says it has made significant progress adopting new technology that automates the scanning of millions of paper returns. 

In the coming two years, taxpayers will be able to digitally submit all correspondence, non-tax forms, and responses to notices which will allow more than 94% of individual taxpayers to no longer ever need to send mail to the IRS, according to the agency. 

It added that taxpayers who still want to submit physical paper returns and correspondence will be able to do so.

Taxpayers use non-tax forms to request or submit information on a range of topics, including identity theft and proof that they are eligible for key credits and deductions to help low-income households. 

SBA pauses applications for 8(a) business program

The Small Business Administration has “temporarily suspended” applications from federal contractors to the 8(a) Business Development Program, which is intended to help small businesses whose owners are socially and economically disadvantaged.

In a note on its certify.sba.gov portal, which was shared with FedScoop, SBA said it had stopped accepting new applications following an injunction issued last month by a federal court in Tennessee that enjoined the use of presumed racial and ethnic disadvantage as a qualification for the contracting program.

The agency wrote: “SBA has temporarily suspended new 8(a) application submissions while it revises the application questionnaire to comply with the Court’s decision. Thank you for your patience and interest in the 8(a) Business Development Program.”

Last month’s ruling by a Tennessee federal judge halted the Department of Agriculture and the SBA from considering these factors, which are cornerstones of the 8(a) program, when making contracting decisions.

Last month’s ruling relies in part on the Supreme Court’s recent decision striking down the use of race in college admissions through affirmative action. 

Contracting experts previously told FedScoop that it could have a broad impact on the governmentwide program, although they noted that the full scope isn’t clear and will likely be appealed.

Commenting on the 8(a) program suspension in a blog post, federal contracting attorney Nicole Pottroff wrote: “SBA appears to be taking the “wait until we tell you otherwise” approach to new 8(a) Program applications … [w]e are all anxiously awaiting more information on the potential implications the decision could have on both applicant and current 8(a) Program participants.”

The SBA had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.

NIST appoints G. Nagesh Rao as deputy director of Manufacturing Extension Partnership

G. Nagesh Rao has joined the National Institute of Standards and Technology as deputy director of the agency’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership.

Rao moves to NIST from another Department of Commerce division, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), where he was chief information officer.

The Manufacturing Extension Partnership is a public-private partnership that acts as an intermediary between the standards bureau and small and medium-sized manufacturers. It has centers in all 50 states and Puerto Rico.

Over the course of his career, Rao has held a variety of public sector and private sector roles. Prior to serving as BIS chief information officer, he was director of business technology solutions at the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of the Chief Information Officer. Before this, he was chief technology and entrepreneur in residence within SBA’s Office of Investment and Innovation.

Commenting on Rao’s appointment, NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program Director Pravina Raghavan said: “We are excited to have Nagesh join NIST and the MEP National Network. His prior experience at the Department of Commerce and Small Business Administration and his record of implementing innovative tech solutions will help MEP strengthen domestic supply chains and support small and medium-sized manufacturers across the U.S.”

Editor’s note, 8/3/23: This story was updated to correct references to NIST and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership.