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Biden taps Clare Martorana as Federal CIO

President Joe Biden has selected Clare Martorana as his federal CIO, the White House announced Tuesday.

Martorana takes on the federal CIO role within the Office of Management and Budget after serving for more than two years as the CIO of the Office of Personnel Management.

She got her start in government during the waning months of the Obama administration as a digital services expert on the U.S. Digital Service team, with a focus on digital modernization at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Prior to that, she served in leadership roles at Everyday Health and WebMD.

“Throughout her career, Clare Martorana worked to improve and simplify the digital experiences people have when interacting with businesses and government,” says the White House announcement. It goes on to credit her for her time at OPM “where for the past two years she stabilized and secured agency operations to deliver better digital-first services for the Federal workforce.”

Martorana is the first to hold the role of federal CIO under the Biden administration. Until now, Maria Roat, deputy federal CIO, had been serving in the role in an acting capacity. She is preceded in the role by Suzette Kent during the Trump administration. Basil Parker, another OPM transplant, also held the role for a brief period at the end of the last administration.

As federal CIO, one of Martorana’s biggest priorities will be leading federal agencies in the ongoing response efforts to COVID-19. In particular, the Biden administration has placed an emphasis on using the Technology Modernization Fund as a vehicle to drive needed digital transformation in support of digital services and recovery. The TMF could see as much as $1 billion in funding under the next pandemic relief bill.

Management of federal cybersecurity will also fall under Martorana’s purview to some degree. She will work with Chris DeRusha, newly hired federal CISO, in the federal response to the recent SolarWinds breach and the broader security of federal networks.

Martorana was a recipient of a 2020 FedScoop 50 Federal Leadership Award.

Her deputy at OPM, Guy Cavallo, will take over as acting CIO with her departure.

Jason Matheny to serve Biden White House in national security and tech roles

Former Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA) head Jason Matheny has been tapped to serve in the White House with a focus on the intersection of technology and national security.

Matheny officially was given three titles: deputy assistant to the president for technology and national security, deputy director for national security in the Office of Science and Technology Policy and coordinator for technology and national security at the National Security Council. 

In addition to his time as the leader of IARPA, Matheny recently founded and led Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET). He also served as a commissioner on the Pentagon-housed National Security Commissions on Artificial Intelligence, which recommended in early March several changes to national AI policy he will now help oversee at the White House.

“In just a few short years, Jason has built CSET into a major player in the field of emerging technology and national security policy, recruiting an incredible roster of researchers and fellows and producing influential papers that are shaping the policy dialogue,” Joel Hellman, dean of Georgetown’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, said in a note to staff about Matheny’s departure. Dewey Murdick, the current director of data science at CSET, has taken over for Matheny as interim director.

Matheny appears well-liked and respected by his colleagues, both for his intellect and kindness, with many taking to Twitter to congratulate him:

Matheny’s new job comes at a critical time for technology and national security. The so-called race for AI is increasing in speed and importance with leaders expressing strong desires to adopt AI in critical defense systems. During Matheny’s time at the helm of CSET, much of the think tank’s research focused on the impacts of AI and similar emerging technologies and their national security implications.

“We are excited to have his expertise as President Biden and the NSC elevate US investment in technology and innovation and work with our allies and partners to ensure emerging technologies are safe, secure, and beneficial to free societies,” an administration official told FedScoop about Matheny’s appointment.

The NSCAI report Matheny helped author is already getting traction one of his new bosses, national security advisor Jake Sullivan. “The U.S. and its allies must continue to lead in AI, microelectronics, biotech, and other emerging tech to ensure that these technologies are safe, secure, and beneficial to free societies,” Sullivan Tweeted after saying he received a briefing by the commission

CISA will control .gov domains by late April

Control of the .gov top-level domain (TLD) will transfer from the General Services Administration to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in late April.

CISA will increase .gov security and make it harder for malicious actors to impersonate the TLD, in keeping with the DOTGOV Act of 2020 that mandated the transfer to the civilian cyber agency.

One of six original TLDs in the internet’s Domain Name System (DNS), .gov is being treated as critical infrastructure enabling millions of users to access thousands of federal, state, territorial, local, and tribal services online.

“People see a .gov website or email address and know they are interacting with an official, U.S.-based government organization,” said Eric Goldstein, executive assistant director of the Cybersecurity Division within CISA, in the announcement. “Using .gov also provides security benefits, like two-factor authentication on the .gov registrar and notifications of DNS changes to administrators, over other TLDs.”

GSA spent more than 20 years making .gov a trusted space, but modern threats to .gov’s cybersecurity make CISA a more ideal administrator moving forward.

Registrants will continue to be able to manage, renew and request domains using the .gov registrar without any issues.

CISA is developing a user-centered platform for DNS management that will give government organizations at all levels greater visibility of their systems to help them better identify security threats. The agency will eventually offer services improving .gov privacy, reliability, accessibility and speed.

The DOTGOV Act further requires .gov domains be offered at no or negligible cost, which CISA is working on. Domains are currently priced in relation to the service contract to operate the TLD, with prices expected to remain the same until 2022.

CISA is further partnering with the Federal Emergency Management Agency on how to use Homeland Security Grants for migrating any online service to .gov.

Technologist Cameron Dixon over at CISA credited former top cyber officials at the agency, Jeanette Manfra and Chris Krebs, for helping make the .gov transfer a reality.

In final report, commission makes plea for DOD to field AI fast

The Department of Defense faces a choice: Field artificial intelligence quickly or risk losing the next big war. At least that’s the general message from an influential commission’s final report on AI in national security.

The National Security Commission on AI — a congressionally mandated committee of business leaders and former government officials tasked with exploring and issuing guidance on DOD’s use of AI — submitted its final report to Congress and the executive branch earlier this month. Throughout its more than 700 pages of recommendations, analysis and blueprints for how the U.S. national security agencies should adopt AI, the report is laced with a constant reminder of the importance of AI and the danger in moving too slowly to adopt it.

The risks are already being multiplied, according to the report. From sophisticated cyberattacks to disinformation campaigns, AI is being used as a tool to increase the complexity and precision of threats against national security.

To counter these threats and new ones that will emerge both in battle and everyday life, the U.S. government needs to adopt AI with speed, the report warns.

“It’s important to realize that you can’t just flip a switch and have these capabilities in place, it takes steady, committed hard work over a long period of time to bring these capabilities to fruition,” NSCAI Commissioner and CEO of Amazon Web Services Andy Jassy said in a release.

Other leaders on the commission, including Chair Eric Schmidt, have estimated that the U.S. is only a few years away from being surpassed in technical capabilities by China. Some have said that China already leads in certain areas, like surveillance and facial recognition.

To win in the long term, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work, the commission’s vice chair, boiled the massive report down to four pillars in a recent meeting:

Those four pillars manifest in dozens of ways throughout the report with different target audiences, from the DOD itself to lawmakers that write annual policy bills, receiving different, specific recommended actions.

Commissioners will testify before Congress in the coming days, pushing for their recommendations to be turned into law. Previous interim reports have already gained traction on the Hill, with even the commission’s biggest and boldest ideas, like creating a “digital reserve corps” and others, gaining lawmaker support.

GSA to hold first cryptocurrency auction

The government will offer the public a chance to invest in Bitcoin with the General Services Administration’s first-ever cryptocurrency auction later this month.

GSA Auctions will open bidding on a .7501 share of one Bitcoin, valued at more than $38,000 as of Friday, at 4 p.m. CDT on March 15 for two days.

Agencies haven’t implemented many regulations regarding cryptocurrency, which is considered taxable property and not legal tender, but GSA‘s willingness to auction Bitcoin could boost its acceptance.

“This auction marks the first time cryptocurrency will be made available for public sale through GSA Auctions,” a GSA spokesperson told FedScoop. “And it is the only piece of cryptocurrency to have fallen under the purview of the U.S. General Services Administration.”

GSA wouldn’t disclose the source of the Bitcoin share citing privacy concerns, but the agency frequently auctions surplus government equipment, seized property and gifts from foreign governments. The platform GSA Auctions functions as the government’s online clearinghouse for everything from office furniture to military vehicles.

The starting price for the Bitcoin auction is $25,000, and people interested in bidding must register on GSA Auctions. The winning bidder must make a wire transfer no later than March 19 and have a digital wallet to receive the Bitcoin share.

“Whether it’s a car, or a piece of jewelry, or now even cryptocurrency, you never know what kind of treasures you’ll find on GSA Auctions,” said Kevin Kerns, acting regional administrator of GSA’s Southeast Sunbelt Region, in a statement. “A special thanks to GSA’s Southeast-Great Lakes Personal Property Management team for making our very first cryptocurrency auction a reality.”

Vilsack looks to return USDA to more-liberal telework policy

Pandemic or not, Secretary Tom Vilsack wants the U.S. Department of Agriculture to have a more flexible telework policy in line with what it had the last time he was in charge.

During his first tenure as Agriculture secretary under President Obama, Vilsack’s USDA moved to a telework policy in 2014 that allowed employees to work remotely up to four days a week. But in 2018, Sonny Perdue took the agency in a dramatically different direction, dialing the policy back to allow only one day of telework a week.

Vilsack told 17,000 USDA employees during a virtual town hall last Thursday that he plans to return the department to the prior policy, a USDA spokesperson confirmed to FedScoop. Vilsack hosted the town hall, the first one in his return to the role, roughly just over a week after his Senate confirmation.

As the COVID-19 pandemic forced federal offices to send employees home for mostly full-time telework beginning last March, it has also caused agency leaders to rethink what normal work will look like when it’s safe to return the workforce to physical office spaces. And for Vilsack, four-days-a-week telework is just the “starting point,” the spokesperson said.

“USDA will embrace workplace flexibilities – to include increased telework, expanded use of virtual and remote duty stations, and enhanced work schedule flexibilities,” the spokesperson said. “This will allow us to recruit and retain the absolute best talent which will make USDA an employer of choice. This will be one of our highest management priorities.”

Not only does such a policy provide the benefit of opening the aperture on talent recruiting and retention, but it would also save federal dollars, the spokesperson said.

Moving forward, USDA will seek the input of union partners, employees and their supervisors, stakeholders, and congressional leaders about the next steps.

Navy reorganizes JADC2 project office, boosting tech authorities

The Navy has centralized some IT and wartime network authorities under the project office in charge of building stronger networks and data management for future maritime warfighting operations.

The newly created office overseeing Project Overmatch — the Navy’s stab at turning the concept of Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) into a reality — was given authority over IT and technology spending in research and development portfolios related to networked warfare in a recent memo.

The authorities will allow the office to move faster in developing new IT and technologies to extend network connectivity across the seas, a Navy spokesperson confirmed.

“Information has become the cornerstone of how we operate, and we need to be able to decide and act faster than anyone else,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday recently said after a visit with the Project Overmatch team. “Simply put, Project Overmatch will provide us a decisive advantage over our adversaries and help us deliver a more lethal and better-connected fleet far into the future. This is a top priority — we must deliver it.”

The changes give Rear Adm. Douglas Small, leader of Project Overmatch, new authorities to oversee programs related to research and development, acquisitions and sustainment programs for warfighting networks. Small also is bestowed with the responsibility of unifying data architecture and analytic capabilities to enable JADC2, according to the Navy.

The authorities were transferred from Naval Sea Systems Command, Naval Air Systems Command and Naval Information Warfare Systems Command.

A Navy spokesperson described the memo and ensuing changes as the next step in the “natural progression” of the program’s development. Gilday also signed a memo in October that named Small a direct report manager for Project Overmatch, an early step in the progression of transitioning to the networked warfare JADC2 promises.

The goal of JADC2 is to integrate the domains of land, sea, air, space and cyber by sharing sensor-driven data and using artificial intelligence-enabled machines to process the newly generated information — described as a military Internet of Things. The department has orchestrated several recent tests of network capabilities in 2020.

C4ISRnet first reported on the memo and its changes.

House Armed Services to focus on tech, procurement under new chair Smith

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., has his eyes set on finding new ways for the Department of Defense to purchase technology and develop resilient information systems, he said Friday.

Improving information systems will be one of the most critical investments in upcoming military budgets, Smith said during a virtual appearance at the Brookings Institute. And to pay for new command and control and IT systems, he said his committee will be “scrubbing” older weapons systems and cutting funding to bloated programs — a common refrain that often proves easier said than done.

“Our C2 systems have got to become more durable, more resilient and also more replaceable,” he said, adding that DOD’s “acquisition and procurement process over the last 20 years can only be described as a complete disaster.”

Smith’s priorities as the top House representative overseeing the DOD could have even more impact this year as Democrats now also control the Senate, with Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., leading the Senate Armed Services Committee.

To raise tech’s presence in committee work, Smith has already reshaped the subcommittee structure. The former Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee has been split into the Cyber, Innovative Technologies, and Information Systems (CITI) and Intelligence and Special Operations subcommittees to allow members to focus on tech and innovation.

Smith’s added emphasis on tech and innovation follows the work of the Future of Defense Task Force that he authorized to look at similar issues. In its final report, the task force recommends a “revolution” to the innovation, technology and acquisition systems in line with Smith’s pledged priorities.

Smith said he wants Congress and the DOD to recalibrate thinking away from focusing on this top-line budget, explaining that the number of ships and other often-cited budget numbers are not useful. Instead, he wants to shift the focus to “outcomes, not process,” especially in the realm of networks and emerging technology.

He also turned his ire on his own colleagues, saying members need to stop only voting to send money back to their districts through military spending. “You have got to get past that, we just don’t have the money to waste,” Smith said.

For the new Congress, Smith and Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., the committee’s ranking member, recently announced a supply chain task force. The bipartisan panel will investigate ways to improve the industrial base that provides DOD with much of its innovative technologies.

Senators envision International Technology Partnership to oppose China’s dominance of emerging tech

A new interagency office inside the State Department would work to establish a technology partnership among democratic countries in opposition to China under a bill proposed by a bipartisan group of senators Thursday.

The Democracy Technology Partnership Act seeks an International Technology Partnership (ITP) for setting policies and standards, conducting joint research, and coordinating export controls and investment screening on 5G, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other emerging technologies.

Dominance in these technologies will determine dominance in modern international politics, economics and warfare, and the U.S. wants to ensure authoritarian regimes, namely the Chinese Communist Party, don’t win out.

“In order to compete and counter the expansion of Chinese dominance in critical technology sectors, we need to create a strategy that leverages the power of American partnerships to protect and advance our technological edge,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who authored the bill along with Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., said in the announcement. “This bipartisan legislation will help foster partnerships among the U.S. and like-minded democratic countries to better protect and compete against China in critical emerging technologies while helping set global rules, standards, and protocols for the market.”

The U.S. on its own, the senators say, simply can’t compete with Chinese tactics, which include: heavy subsidizing of its own companies, foreign incentives, pressure on international standards-setting bodies, unfair restrictions on foreign companies, and intellectual property theft.

Per their bill, the Technology Partnership Office would be led by a special ambassador for technology with deputies from the departments of Commerce and Treasury and representatives from key agencies. In addition to creating the ITP, the office would identify multilateral mechanisms for advancing the partnership’s objectives, coordinate with other countries on tech strategies and help find alternative tech for countries about to buy from authoritarian regimes.

Meanwhile the ITP will work on a private-sector led, politically neutral standards process; promote data privacy and sharing; ensure supply chain security; cooperate with academia; coordinate investments and co-financing in targeted countries; and raise awareness about authoritarian efforts to erode democracy using tech. Members must be democratic national governments that promote those values, have advanced tech sectors and want to work with the U.S. on defense and intelligence.

The bill would also create a $5 billion Technology Partnership Fund for joint research projects between international governments, universities and companies, as well as the targeted investments in third-country markets.

A Technology Partnership Advisory Board created by the legislation would consist of emerging technology and international trade experts, who would advise the State Department‘s new office. And the State Department would be required to report to Congress on the partnership’s focus areas, as well as a supplemental report on other countries’ standards and governance.

The bill’s sponsors include Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; Todd Young, R-Ind.; John Cornyn, R-Texas; Ben Sasse, R-Neb.; Marco Rubio, R-Fla.; and Michael Bennet, D-Colo.

“Too many nations fall prey to the trap of incentives associated with Chinese tech that only results in lost privacy, reduced autonomy, and greater dependence on Beijing,” Rubio said in a statement. “The U.S. must lead likeminded countries in establishing and supporting alternatives that are safer and technologically more advanced.”

Report: OMB should devise a new server-use metric for agency data centers

Agencies lack a way to measure their progress on server efficiency ever since the Office of Management and Budget stopped requiring them to report use in June 2019, according to the Government Accountability Office.

OMB originally had agencies report the percentage of time their servers were busy using continuous, automated monitoring but later determined the metric failed to account for each one’s operational needs and technological capabilities.

Instead, OMB asked agencies to report their underused servers based on their own definitions, which ignores progress toward server efficiency goals, according to a GAO report released Thursday.

“OMB’s current server utilization metric does not require agencies to report the utilization rates for their servers, nor does it provide the necessary parameters to evaluate agencies’ [Data Center Optimization Initiative] performance,” reads the report. “Without such information, agencies are not providing a complete picture of their server utilization and cannot ensure they are making meaningful progress toward better server utilization.”

OMB hadn’t made progress establishing a new metric as of December, GAO’s one recommendation in its report.

Still, the 24 Chief Financial Officers Act agencies saw progress reducing data center duplication and costs in fiscal 2019 and 2020.

Only the Department of Defense failed to meet its fiscal 2019 data center closure goal, closing 33 of the 39 planned facilities, citing litigation delays around the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract. But it had exceeded its overall Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI) closure goal of 233 facilities by 12 as of January.

All other agencies planned to meet, met or exceeded their data center closure goals for fiscal 2020 as of August — expecting to close 229 facilities for a savings of $1.1 billion over two years, according to GAO.

Agencies continue to exclude about 4,500 facilities from their data center inventories since May 2019, when OMB narrowed its definition to stop counting spaces not originally intended for that purpose. Excluded facilities are typically smaller, but not always, and still present cybersecurity risks, according to GAO.

GAO recommended in a 2020 report that OMB continue to have agencies report those facilities as data centers to retain cyber-visibility, but the agency hasn’t addressed the recommendation to date.

“We continue to maintain that, because of OMB’s decision to remove non-tiered data centers from agency DCOI reporting requirements, agencies risked losing the overall visibility and oversight that is needed for these facilities and the potential security vulnerabilities that they represent,” reads the report.

OMB launched the DCOI two years after the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act of 2014 directed GAO to regularly review agencies’ data center inventories. Agencies have addressed 72 of GAO’s 125 recommendations regarding the DCOI to date for an estimated savings of $6.2 billion.

Regarding GAO’s latest report five agencies agreed with its findings, six neither agreed nor disagreed and 13 had no comments. OMB did not comment on GAO’s lone recommendation regarding a server use metric.