Labor working to establish CX metrics for unemployment insurance modernization program

The Department of Labor is working to establish metrics to measure states’ progress around customer experience as they work to modernize the U.S. unemployment insurance program, according to a senior agency official.

Speaking at the Adobe Government Forum, produced by FedScoop, DOL Deputy Director of Technology Larry Bafundo said his agency is working to understand how progress on user design should be measured.

“For the UI program today, states are investing heavily in customer experience … however, it’s not a requirement of the program, so there are [currently] no goals or metrics,” said Bafundo.

He added: “For us, unemployment insurance is not dissimilar from programs you see at other agencies [such as] the VA in terms of claims processing … [i]f you can resolve the amount of friction on the front end, you can relieve the need for much intervention and protect accuracy.”

Labor is working with state labor departments and employers around the country to revamp the unemployment insurance system with $2 billion in funding allocated as part of the American Rescue Plan Act.

The effort is led by the Office of Unemployment Insurance Modernization, which was established within the Office of the Secretary of the Department of Labor in 2021. OUIM coordinates across other agencies within DOL and works closely with states, advocates, and the employer community to build a more responsive and resilient UI system. 

Earlier this month, the department issued a new roadmap document for IT modernization, which establishes milestones such as the launch of an AI prototyping project with Stanford University and a joint claims intake project with the state of New Jersey.

The guidance outlines areas where the agency will use American Rescue Plan funds to improve citizens’ experience, including by reducing the complexity of language used on agency websites, improving assistive automation, and making IT systems more flexible.

FBI finance team working on first software bot

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s finance modernization team said Tuesday it will soon roll out a bot for automatically paying invoices and updating budget line items that could act as pilot for the future automation of back-office systems at the agency.

The launch of the bot comes amid a push across federal government to use robotic process automation to streamline agency processes. It will automate the currently manual process of paying invoices every month and updating budget lines items needed to pay invoices to customers or vendors. 

“It’s the first time we’re actually automating something through robotic process automation. So that’s what makes it so innovative for us is because the bureau doesn’t have bots right now, we were just sort of like putting our toes in that world,” Peter Sursi, head of finance modernization, accounts payable and relocation services said at the Adobe Government Forum in Washington on Tuesday. “So for us to get one on the finance side for us is pretty exciting. It’ll save us a lot of labor hours.” 

The tool would affect all 56 FBI field offices and approximately 250 task force officers that process the financial payments within those offices as well as FBI customers who get paid through the invoices which were previously manual processed and time intensive.

Sursi said the new finance bot was created in the past two months and is in final stages of testing, which has energized his team to create a longer list of FBI finance projects that could be automated and made much faster thanks to bot automation.

In March, State Department CIO Kelly Fletcher revealed that her agency had used robotic process automation to cut the processing time for its monthly financial statement from two months to two days.

Speaking at FedScoop’s ITModTalks, Fletcher said financial reporting was one of several areas where the agency is using AI to improve the efficiency of back-office operations, which has the ability to substantially improve reporting processes because of State’s federated structure and global operations.

NASA lack of standardized AI definition creates AI and cyber risks, watchdog finds

NASA has three slightly differing definitions of what classifies as artificial intelligence technology, with the lack of singular designation making it more challenging for the agency to meet federal AI monitoring and cybersecurity requirements, a government watchdog reported last week.

NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) found agency personnel had their own individual understanding of what the term AI means instead of a formal definition provided by the agency and this impairs NASA’s ability to accurately classify and track AI tools and expenditures as well as increases the risk of cyber threats.

NASA has a wide variety of agency programs that use AI technology such as storm prediction tools, the Mars Perseverance rover, and elements of the Artemis space missions which make AI definitions and management to prevent cybersecurity risks and threats critical.

‘NASA has not adopted a standard definition of AI and instead has three separate definitions,” NASA’s OIG found in a May 3rd report titled Management of Its Artificial Intelligence Capabilities. “While all three definitions are similar, subtleties and nuances in each can alter whether a particular technology is properly considered AI.” 

“As a result, NASA does not have a singular designation or classification mechanism to accurately classify and track AI or to identify AI expenditures within the Agency’s financial system, making it difficult for the Agency to meet federal requirements to monitor its use of AI,” the report added.

The NASA OIG recommended the agency create a standardized definition for AI that would “harmonize” the three existing definitions and the new definition should thereby be able to maintain the agency’s AI use case inventory; identify a classification mechanism to assist in the application of federal requirements for cybersecurity controls and monitoring practices; and develop a method to track budgets and expenditures for AI use case inventory.

NASA agreed or partially agreed with the OIG’s recommendations and outlined how it would address them.

USDA’s Farm Service Agency has halved paperwork for farm loan applications, CX chief says

The Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency earlier this year succeeded in slashing the volume of paperwork farm owners must fill out when applying for farm program loans, according to the USDA’s chief customer experience officer.

Simchah Suveyke-Bogin said Tuesday at the Adobe Government Forum, produced by FedScoop, that the department in February had halved the 30-page application form required to access funding from its funding programs.

In particular, Suveyke-Bogin said launching a prototype online platform as an alternative to the submission of physical forms had helped to improve access to funding for farmers in remote communities.

“It’s about thinking … where can we not be duplicative? How can we reduce the burden over time?” Suveyke-Bogin added. “We think that the process, in the long run, will be better for customers.”

Improving the experience of all citizens interacting with government remains a top priority for the Biden administration and federal agency leaders.

In March, the administration launched nine new “life experience projects” that were intended to improve citizens’ access to government websites and services through human-centered design.

Late in 2021, President Biden signed an executive order intended to reshape digital service delivery and customer experience across the federal government.

The order mandated that federal agencies commit to placing citizens’ user experience at the center of everything they do and that departments take actions including piloting new online tools and technologies to provide a “simple, seamless and secure customer experience.”

White House and GSA launch platforms to improve equity in federal procurement

The White House and General Services Administration on Monday announced two platforms for federal agencies to improve equity in procurement through a new government-wide procurement equity tool and a supplier base dashboard. 

The tools, which launched earlier this spring, are intended to help agencies find businesses that are new to the federal marketplace, identify qualified vendors, and track agency progress toward equity in procurement goals.

They are intended to help achieve the Biden Administration’s federal contract spend goal for small disadvantaged businesses that has been increased to 15% by 2025 while the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) set a target that 12% of contracting dollars in fiscal 2023 go to small disadvantaged businesses.

“These two tools are going to help agencies make more connections with the diverse array of businesses offering their products in the federal marketplace,” said GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan. “By providing our federal partners with more information when they make procurement decisions, we’re better able to set ourselves up to achieve our contracting goals and create more equity in the marketplace for everyone.”

The tools, some of which will require government accounts, will support achieving equity goal by improving access to procurement opportunities for Small Disadvantaged Businesses (SDBs), Women-Owned Small Businesses (WOSBs), Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses (SDVOSBs), and Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUBZone) Small Businesses.

​​“We’re committed to helping the acquisition workforce strengthen stewardship and efficiency in the federal procurement process while simultaneously advancing equity,” said OMB’s Associate Administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy Mathew Blum. “We can maximize the power of procurement as a catalyst to help address our nation’s top priorities.”

The Government-wide Procurement Equity Tool uses dynamic data from SAM.gov and the Federal Procurement Data System to support market research that focuses on SDBs.

The Supplier Base Dashboard tracks the total number of entities that have done business with an agency; their size and socio-economic status; and the number of new, recent, and established vendors in the supplier base and in market categories and subcategories of interest.

The new procurement tools are helping implement executive orders passed by Biden in his first day in office, directing the federal government to use its power and dollars to advance racial equity and support underserved minorities.

VA, HHS tech leaders among Sammies 2023 finalists

Technology leaders at the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Health and Human Services are among the finalists selected for this year’s Samuel J. Heyman Service to America awards.

Anne Lord Bailey and Caitlin Rawlins have been selected for the longlist for their work at the Veterans Health Administration. The two federal agency executives have led the development of a nationwide immersive technology network to improve treatment of veterans’ injuries ranging from anxiety, depression, pain management and spinal cord injuries.

As part of this year’s nomination process, Dr. John Palmieri, Richard T. McKeon and James Wright at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration within the HHS have also been selected. 

The trio worked to establish a new 988 national three-digit suicide prevention and drug crisis telephone, text and chat lifeline service, which has focused on ensuring that people in crisis receive faster professional help.

Other finalists in this year’s longlist include Senior Advisor for Strategic Integration within the Air Force, Mark Ingram and Eric Feuer, who is chief of the statistical research and applications branch at the National Cancer institute. A full list of the 27 finalists is available here.

The announcement of the 2023 Sammies finalists, which are organized by the Partnership for Public Service (PPS), came at the start of Public Service Recognition Week.

The Service to America Medals program has honored nearly 700 federal employees since its inception in 2002. It was renamed in 2010 to commemorate the organization’s founder. 

CIO-SP3 procurement extended through October

The National Institutes of Health’s Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center has extended its CIO-SP3 IT procurement vehicle so agencies can continue to place orders through October 29.

The new date extends the previous end date by six months as the HHS agency seeks to avert a gap before the start of CIO-SP4, which has yet to be awarded.

In a statement, NITAAC Deputy Director Ricky Clark said the extension “pushes the 5-year performance period of CIO-SP3 task orders well into FY29, giving agencies plenty of runway to place their acquisitions through the remainder of the fiscal year and get all the benefits and value adds of FAR 16 flexibilities.”

He added: “The driving force behind the extension is to ensure agencies can continue to have access to best in class information technology, while we work to successfully resolve the pending protests.”

NITAAC is currently working to resolve a raft of protests that have been filed with the Government Accountability Office in recent months.

According to a senior government official, 75 protests relating to CIO-SP4 currently remain open.

A precise timeline for the expected resolution of the protests is not available, but resolution for the earliest still-open legal challenge is due no later than June 29, and the most recently filed challenge is due to be resolved no later than August 14.

The latest round of protests were filed after a previous group of legal challenges to the procurement were dismissed in March.

At the time, NITAAC indicated that it would reassess the source selection methodology and make a new determination as part of further corrective action, according to a person familiar with the matter.

CIO-SP4 is a 10-year, $50 billion vehicle that is the fourth iteration of a primary contract for acquiring commoditized IT products and specialized services to meet biomedical research and healthcare needs.

White House federal agency AI guidelines may focus on pilots and info sharing

The White House’s guidance for federal agencies using artificial intelligence that will be issued later this summer is likely to focus on gathering and sharing information on AI experiments taking place along with best practices learned from such pilot programs.

The Office of Management and Budget in its upcoming draft AI policy guidance may focus on gathering empirical data on the use of AI tools within the federal agencies and then sharing best practices and risks from such AI programs, according to Catherine Sharkey, an NYU law professor who is one of the nation’s leading authorities on federal regulatory law.

“I don’t think they’ll lay out any comprehensive policy in the beginning, it first signals OMB’s interest and involvement in having a new explicit focus on regulating AI tools within federal agencies and providing a canvas of AI use in the government followed by best practices,” said Sharkey.

“Most federal agencies are not fully apprised of AI experimentation happening in other agencies and that knowledge could be fruitful – sharing AI tools and resources and learning from others’ trials and errors,” Sharkey added.

She said that OMB would likely look internally to federal agencies that have taken the lead on AI technology and policies like the Department of Health and Human Services, rather than look to European nations and other countries government AI policies and regulations.

Federal agencies that provide approval or regulate AI use of consumers externally are most likely to take the lead in experimentation of AI in the government, like the Defense Department, the Food and Drug Administration, and the General Services Administration.

Major federal agencies like the Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Science Foundation have already started to experiment internally with appropriate use cases for popular generative AI while also building safe guardrails for government use of such technology.

The Biden administration in recent months has worked to hold private organizations and companies accountable for addressing bias that may be embedded within AI systems while also promoting innovation. In October, it published an AI ‘Bill of Rights’ blueprint document, which was followed by NIST’s voluntary risk management framework in January.

These recently introduced responsible AI guidelines can be used voluntarily by federal agencies, but haven’t been created explicitly for their implementation which is what makes OMB’s AI policy guidance for the federal government later this summer particularly relevant.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo last week called NIST’s AI Risk Management Framework, which was first released in January, the “gold standard” for the regulatory guidance of AI technology.

However, NIST’s AI framework and the G7 agreement contrast in some ways with the foundational rights-based framework laid out in the White House’s October 2022 Blueprint for an AI ‘Bill of Rights,’ that some AI experts have advocated as a model for AI regulations going forward.

White House extends timeline for collection of attestation forms from software vendors

The Office of Management and Budget has extended the deadline by which federal agencies must collect forms of attestation from software vendors, FedScoop has learned.

Agencies will now have three months from finalization of the secure software attestation form to submit the documents from vendors for critical software. For non-critical software, departments will have six months to collect the documents from vendors.

Previously, federal agencies had until June 11 to collect the forms from providers of critical software and until Sept. 14 from providers of non-critical software. The prior deadlines were included in a White House software supply chain memo, which was issued in September.

Details of the timeline extension come amid a delay in finalization of the secure software attestation form, according to a senior official. An initial draft version of the attestation form was published last month by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Stakeholders have until June 26 to comment on that document as part of a 60-day comment period.

Each agency is responsible for collecting the forms and holding them in a central agency system until CISA establishes a central repository for storing them.

The White House’s cyber supply chain memo from September is one of several recent policy initiatives spearheaded by the White House to improve cybersecurity standards across federal agencies. 

In March, the Biden administration published a new national cybersecurity strategy, which sought to shift the responsibility for maintaining the security of computer systems away from consumers and small businesses onto larger software makers. 

That strategy document planted a major flag in the debate over whether software makers should be exposed to further liability claims. “Companies that make software must have the freedom to innovate, but they must also be held liable when they fail to live up to the duty of care they owe consumers, businesses, or critical infrastructure providers,” the strategy document argued.

Labor Department sets out new vision for IT modernization

The Department of Labor has issued new guidance for IT modernization, including a revamp of the unemployment insurance program launched as part of the American Rescue Plan.

In an online update, the agency set out a roadmap for modernization, which establishes milestones such as the launch of an AI prototyping project with Stanford University and a joint claims intake project with the state of New Jersey.

The guidance outlines areas where the agency will use American Rescue Plan funds to improve citizens’ experience, including by reducing the complexity of language used on agency websites, improving assistive automation and making IT systems more flexible.

The guidance restates DOL’s focus on offering improved self-service options for citizens through an increased focus on customer experience, which has been a top priority for the Biden administration.

In the document, DOL wrote: “Achieving this long-term vision will require sustained investment in the UI program and a new ecosystem built around open and modular solutions that promote innovation, software reuse, and incremental – rather than all-or-nothing – approaches to modernization.” 

“It will also require the Department to serve as a ‘helper agency’ to state workforce agencies. The Department can do this by providing foundational perspectives around ‘what good looks like’ across the various dimensions of modernization, as well as providing core infrastructure, or building blocks, for states, vendors, and other groups to build on and extend in ways that strengthen equitable access, timeliness, and program integrity,” the guidance explains.

The American Rescue Plan Act, which was enacted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, led to a $2 billion mandate for the DOL to modernize the country’s unemployment insurance programs.

This effort is led by the Office of Unemployment Insurance Modernization, which was established within the Office of the Secretary of the Department of Labor in 2021. OUIM coordinates across other agencies within DOL and works closely with states, advocates, and the employer community to build a more responsive and resilient UI system. 

Last month, DOL said its Employment and Training Administration in September would issue new guidance on the use of facial recognition technology by state workforce agencies.

That new guidance is expected to require that users are provided with an alternative identity verification option and that state labor agencies carry out testing and mitigation for bias before implementing any such tools.