How agencies like Census Bureau are improving network visibility and operations

There is a lot of work behind the scenes to keep the nation’s government IT systems running. When those services fail – as many did last year during the height of the pandemic — it is critical to understand what triggers government websites to crash.

Last year, both state and federal agencies saw their sites overwhelmed by citizen needs for services. The shift in demand for digital services also underscores a greater concern: knowing the health of their IT systems.

That is why leaders are increasingly looking at high-performance AIOps platforms “to collect, unify and analyze data from a vast range of products and applications in real time — and then respond to known and previously unknown anomalies automatically,” according to a recent FedScoop report.

“If there was one upside to the turmoil, it may have been the sudden string of decisions by governors to green-light remedies that IT departments had long been requesting,” says Wylie Vasquez, leadership advisor for observability and AIOps markets at Splunk, in the report.

“AIOPs platforms have become an essential tool for contextualizing large volumes of varied and ever-changing data” says the report, underwritten by Splunk. “What distinguishes AIOps platforms from more traditional analytics tools is their ability to automate routine practices and increase the speed and accuracy of issue recognition. That enables IT staffs to focus more of their attention on higher value needs.”

Splunk’s IT Service Intelligence (ITSI) analytics and IT management solution is a part of a new generation of so-called AIOps platforms that has been recognized by Gartner as a “visionary” application performance monitoring platform.

When systems or applications start to run slow, or issues arise, it usually requires bringing in large teams of people and multiple calls a day to troubleshoot the problem, Vasquez explained. “ITSI allows enterprises to bring all that data together and pre-analyze it, so they can avoid a lot of those ‘War Room’ calls.”

Additionally, the report illustrates how for agencies like the U.S. Census Bureau, ITSI provides a powerful tool for managing large-scale development projects.

When Census officials decided to conduct the 2020 decennial census online it was clear from the start that the bureau would require a whole new approach to their IT, security and data operations — not just to collect and process census data, but to reduce all kinds of technical risks and political concerns.

Vasquez explains the challenge agency leadership looked to address was how to create a single pane of glass view of the bureau’s existing mission-critical applications and platforms, including Oracle OEM and AppDynamics.

With Splunk’s ITSI AIOps platform and its event analytics dashboard, bureau IT administrators could readily identify or narrow the source of an issue across their technology stack, using an automated AI and machine learning approach.

One reason that agencies continue to turn to Splunk’s “Data-to-Everything” platform, according to Vasquez, is it’s unique strengths in being able to ingest and unify nearly any kind of data — structured or unstructured, including logs, metrics, text, wire, API or social-media — from nearly any tool and any system, on-premises or in the cloud. Once assembled and unified, it then becomes far easier to apply AI and ML to get ahead of problems before they happen.

Read more about harnessing data into a single platform to help your agency improve performance and user experience.

This article was produced by FedScoop and sponsored by Splunk.

DOD to allow personal phones to access ‘DOD365’ platform

The Department of Defense is working to allow personnel to access its new collaboration platform DOD365 with personal cellphones, a change to initial plans where only government-provided mobile devices would be allowed to connect.

John Sherman, acting DOD CIO, said several agencies within the department are working to find cyber-secure ways for mobile phones to access DOD365, the DOD’s higher-security version of Microsoft Office 365.

Mobile phones offer hackers many potential access points, hence the initial concerns about having them access the new environment where millions of DOD employees would work, Sherman had previously told FedScoop.

“We are working with the services and [the Defense Information Systems Agency] to test various capabilities to test personal phones and tablets to access the environment in a cyber safe way,” Sherman said Wednesday during the IT Modernization Summit presented by FedScoop. “This initiative is challenging and going to take some time, but we are determined to get it right.” 

The transition to DOD365 is one of the largest modernization pushes inside the DOD. When the pandemic hit, the DOD stood up the Commercial Virtual Remote (CVR) environment, a stop-gap measure that allowed the DOD workforce to stay connected through email, Microsoft’s Teams platform and chat functions. DOD365 is a “parallel” effort the department has been working on for years to create a unified back-office system for employees to access many of the functions they have in-office while working remotely.

“DOD365 is our enduring solution that we must, by necessity, hold to a higher cybersecurity level,” Sherman said.

CVR was only accredited to Impact Level 2, meaning sensitive material could not be transmitted in the environment. DOD365 is expected to handle data up to Impact Level 5 and have a wider range of functions, like OneDrive, Microsoft’s file sharing and storage solution.

Transitioning underway

Some parts of the DOD have already begun transitioning to DOD365, like the Air Force and Marine Corps. Each service will have its own tenancy in the environment, and the Defense Information Systems Agency will provide back-end help for combat support agencies and most of the combatant commands through its cloud tenancy.

“We are well into the process of implementation,” Sherman said. This summer is the target for when all agencies and services to complete the transition.

The U.S. Coast Guard will also transition and be a part of the environment, even though it is technically housed in the Department of Homeland Security.

“I find this to be one of the most impressive transitions I have ever had the chance to help lead and coordinate,” Sherman said.

Former Army acquisition chief tapped to be DOD CTO

President Joe Biden announced plans to nominate Heidi Shyu — former top acquisition official in the Army — to lead the Department of Defense’s research and engineering enterprise.

As undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, Shyu will essentially be DOD’s chief technology officer, a position to which she brings extensive science and technology experience.

Before rising through the ranks of the Army’s Office of Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, she worked in the defense industry as a senior engineer and executive and her work spanned unmanned, space and electronic warfare technologies.

If confirmed by the Senate, Shyu’s main responsibilities will be focused on delivering advanced technology to the DOD through its massive research and engineering enterprise. There is growing support for dramatically increasing DOD’s the research and development budget to reach technological superiority in key areas, including 5G, hypersonic missiles, quantum computing and artificial intelligence.

Shyu is a recipient of the DOD medal for distinguished public service, the Army’s medal for distinguished civilian service and the Air Force’s decoration for exceptional civilian service.

Air Mobility Command works to modernize the flightline

The Air Force command that oversees logistics for global flights is working to digitize data to enable more modern maintenance tracking of its aircraft.

The Air Mobility Command will work with Xage, a cybersecurity company specializing in zero-trust architecture, through a contract awarded by the Air Force Research Lab. The work will focus on digitizing secure data sharing of repair information in “flightline operations,” the work done on aircraft to prepare for takeoff.

The work builds off an initial contract Xage won with the Space Force to secure data and communications coming from satellites using the same kind of zero-trust principles where no users, even known users, are given trust” to move freely around a network.

“The maintenance operations on the flightline traditionally have been pretty manual and pretty paper-based,” Xage CEO Duncan Greatwood told FedScoop in an interview. Xage will work to change that and ensure the new digital means of data sharing through its Xage Fabric product will be secure.

“Mission-critical aircraft require unparalleled cybersecurity to ensure the safety of pilots and mission success. By leveraging zero-trust principles, our Xage Fabric will guarantee the authenticity, confidentiality, and integrity of data across the flightline of the future,” Greatwood said.

Even when not paper-based, current digital practices for collecting flight data consist of downloading flight information on portable drives and then walking them into command centers. Many airmen working on the flightline have resorted to unapproved “shadow IT” where they use their personal cell phones to take videos and photos of maintenance issues.

The use of personal devices creates a security risk if images of sensitive military parts are stored on unsecured devices, Kip Gering, Xage’s senior director for business management, told FedScoop. That is part of the reason the Air Force is modernizing its processes: to give airmen capabilities similar to what they would have in their lives outside of uniform.

“The cockpits have a bunch of useful data…very often someone is going with a portable drive and sticking it into a port,” Greatwood said. “What’s at the heart of this is venture is to digitize the workflows”

Xage was also brought into “harden” other already-modernized methodologies in Air Mobility Command’s digital ecosystem. On top of adding new layers of security to the system, Xage will also bring a new “multi-party” view to the flight data.

“It’s real-time and comprehensive awareness of readiness,” Greatwood said of enabling multi-party data sharing.

More mature 10x program selects 22 new projects

The General Services Administration’s 10x technology investment program will fund 22 Phase 1 projects based on new priorities set last year, the agency announced Tuesday.

Housed within the Technology Transformation Services, 10x selected the projects from a pool of 250 internal submissions to fit three themes: rebuilding public trust, environmental protection and promoting equity.

The announcement comes as 10x nears completion of two Phase 4, public-facing technologies.

“We’re moving from shipping prototypes to shipping live products,” Will Cahoe, project coordinator for 10x, told FedScoop. “And I think this is a testament to how we’ve matured as a program over the last couple of years.”

The 10x program was developed to “crowdsource ideas from federal employees and turn them into real products that improve the public’s experience with the federal government.”

Phase 1 in the 10x process is the “investigation” phase and consists of a two-week sprint in which project teams determine if their ideas are worthwhile by considering legal and regulatory hurdles, consulting experts in the space, and ensuring similar government projects aren’t already ongoing.

A public trust project being evaluated currently would aggregate all agency Freedom of Information Act responses in one place.

Environmental projects address climate change, national parks and conservation issues, with one currently looking to ameliorate sewage spills into public water resources. That project also crosses into the equity space because it would identify underserved communities that are affected.

The equity theme aligns with the Biden administration’s priority of racial equity in the president’s American Rescue Plan and asks who’s left behind by government services. Translation products, as well as those supporting everyone from rural and tribal populations to former inmates, fall in this category.

Phase 2 is a six- to eight-week “discovery” phase, where project teams decide if there’s a solution to the problem identified in Phase 1. Some remain undecided, but 10x has nine definite Phase 2 projects — one of which is a COVID-19-inspired effort to provide contact tracing for GSA buildings in the event of another public health crisis.

In Phase 3 “development” begins with engineers being tasked to build a minimum viable product, potential partner agencies being identified and an end goal of solving one problem for one active customer. 10x has four Phase 3 projects, the latest of which kicked off Monday.

The Combating Bias in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Implementation project is ahead of schedule in that the product is already live. A suite of digital tools helps data and program professionals identify different types of bias — possibly racial or gender-based — within datasets that will ultimately power AI pipelines.

10x is collaborating with the Census Bureau on the project.

“My understanding is that the Census Bureau is going to be on the forefront of using this new technology because they’re really a data agency,” Cahoe said. “They have so much data, and a lot of the census open data is what’s going to be used to power these kinds of AI implementations across government.”

Phase 4 attempts to “scale” solutions to as many users as possible and identify alternative funding to keep products sustainable when the 10x seed money dries up.

Of 10x’s two Phase 4 projects, Site Scanner is just ending.

There are a lot of mandates for .gov websites, and the Site Scanner platform delivers customizable scans keeping agency web managers abreast of accessibility, uptime and downtime, related security certificates used, and required data files listed. The product is live, additional scans continue to be added and TTS will manage the platform within its Digital Analytics Program portfolio.

The other Phase 4 project is DevOps for Privacy Offices, which created a live dashboard empowering such offices to respond to security issues with people’s personally identifiable information (PII). The dashboard, which resides within TTS’s Identity Management portfolio, could eventually help implement the Creating Advanced Streamlined Electronic Services for Constituents (CASES) Act and allow people to see what agency systems hold what PII of theirs.

10x’s phased approach to innovation investment mitigates risk by increasing the funding and time devoted to projects as they advance, which only a third do from phase to phase.

“We do not view closing down projects as failures,” Cahoe said. “We view it as a success because one of the great value propositions of 10x is that we can save money and prevent duplication.”

The funding for 10x comes out of the Federal Citizen Services Fund (FCSF), just like other programs within the TTS Solutions office: the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, USA.gov, U.S. Web Design System, and Data.gov. While the FCSF received $150 million in the American Rescue Plan Act, 10x won’t see a funding increase because it’s funded specifically out of a smaller pot called the Digital Services Fund.

That dollar cap means 10x is at its hiring limit currently, but it did launch a new website Tuesday detailing its work. And the program could always receive more funding during the budget process, as consistent as that funding has been throughout 10x’s life.

“Are we going to be getting a bump next year? I couldn’t tell you,” said Nico Papafil, 10x director. “I hope we do.”

Frank Kendall picked as Air Force secretary

Frank Kendall — the last head of defense acquisition in the Obama administration before the position was reformed — is President Biden’s pick to be secretary of the Air Force.

The White House announced Biden’s intent to nominate Kendall to the role Tuesday.

During his most recent tenure in government, Kendall served as undersecretary of defense for acquisitions, technology and logistics between 2011 and 2017. In an earlier stint at the Department of Defense, he was deputy director of defense research and engineering, before leaving to serve as Raytheon’s vice president of engineering.

Kendall, an Army veteran who is a lawyer and engineer by training, has been an outspoken critic of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC), the DOD’s new requirements for contractors to verify their cybersecurity compliance with third-party assessments. Kendall could have some sway in how one of the most tech-savvy military services implements the program.

“If they keep charging on ahead, it will blow up,” Kendall told FedScoop about the program last summer.

Kendall will not be the only senior Air Force civilian leader critical of CMMC. CIO Lauren Knausenberger has expressed skepticism over the program’s efficacy and potential to scare off startups and emerging technology companies from working with the department.

“I have mixed feelings on it personally,” she said in April. “I think if we lock it down so that we are not going to do business with certain people because they don’t meet [CMMC], I think that limits our options.”

Kendall will also oversee the Air Force’s many major emerging technology programs in its broad technology portfolio. One of the highest tech priorities for the service, the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS), will rely on attracting artificial intelligence companies to support the program that aims to create an Internet of Things-like concept for war.

As secretary over the greater Department of the Air Force, Kendall will also be the top civilian in charge of the new Space Force. The newest branch of the military has been focused on advanced technology and securing satellite communications, efforts that will likely draw on Kendall’s engineering background for oversight.

Key Democrats on the hill have already voiced support for Kendall. House Armed Services Chairman Rep. Adam Smith of Washington quickly applauded the president’s decision to nominate Kendall.

“Frank Kendall is exactly the kind of public servant we need at the helm of the Air Force at a time when the service is navigating so many unique challenges, including effective acquisition to meet our nation’s future threats,” Smith said in a statement.

Kendall now faces Senate confirmation.

DOD expands rollout of new EHR

The Military Health System expanded access to the Department of Defense’s new electronic health record system, adding facilities in 12 new states and bringing 10,000 clinicians on to the system, the contractors leading the system’s rollout announced Tuesday.

This most recent launch wave of MHS GENESIS, as it’s referred to, brought the system online at facilities in Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Wyoming, the Leidos Partnership for Defense Health announced Tuesday.

“The staff at these locations worked tirelessly to adopt a new electronic health record system, while continuing to battle a global pandemic,” said Holly Joers, acting director of the Program Executive Office Defense Healthcare Management Systems (PEO DHMS), said in a release. “We applaud their focus on the mission and partnership in this important transformation.”

The pandemic caused initial delays for the system’s expansion but MHS was able to get back on track for its scheduled rollout, Joers previously said. The program is now live in more than 600 military treatment facilities with more than 41,000 active users, according to Leidos.

“We are gaining momentum and improved efficiency with each Wave deployment,” said Liz Porter, Leidos Health Group president. “Our team continues to be impressed by the hard work and dedication demonstrated by the staff at each of these locations. They are the driving force behind our success to date.”

MHS GENESIS is part of a massive multi-billion-dollar program to ensure that the DOD’s and Department of Veterans Affairs’ EHRs are compatible and interoperable. They’re both being developed on the same Cerner Millennium-built cloud system.

The VA, however, has faced a much bumpier rollout of its modernized EHR, bringing it online at just one medical center so far. Since then, the department has paused the program while new leadership reviews its progress as facilities have struggled to train new users on the system and overcome technical challenges that have resulted in delays in pharmacy deliveries and medical care.

More than two-thirds of federal employees teleworked during pandemic’s peak

New data from the Office of Personnel Management’s annual Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey confirmed what we all have heard anecdotally: Federal agencies pivoted quickly to support a massive surge in teleworking employees during the peak of the pandemic.

At the pandemic’s peak, 74% of federal workers teleworked at least part of the week, with 59% of respondents saying they did so every day and 10% saying they did three or four days per week. Prior to the pandemic, just 3% of federal workers teleworked on a daily basis, per the data of the 2020 FEVS report, released Monday.

For those who didn’t telework during this time, 16% claimed it was because their job required them to be physically present, like law enforcement officers and other federal security agents.

“The federal workforce is made up of dedicated and hardworking individuals who are motivated by the opportunity to make a positive impact through their public service,” OPM Acting Director Kathleen McGettigan said in a statement. “Despite the unprecedented workplace challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, federal workers adapted quickly to their new realities, continuing to work on behalf of the American people, taking on additional and sometimes new work to ensure critical services have been available to the public.

While the pandemic surely presented the possibility of disruptions, federal employees stayed positive and engaged, with 87% believing they produced high-quality work during the past year. And overall, engagement across the government was up from 68% in 2019 to 72% last year.

“The 2020 survey shows that federal employees were remarkably resilient during a historically difficult year,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service. “It is important for federal leaders to understand the effects the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the workforce and the opportunities it presents, to listen to employee concerns and reimagine the future of work in the federal government.”

While the topline trends on federal telework appeared mostly good, it wasn’t without challenges. While 72% of employees said they needed and received expanded tech collaboration tools to perform their jobs, 15% said they needed expanded IT support and didn’t get it, and 14% said they didn’t get the training they needed for remote work applications and tools.

The report’s authors conclude that the data can be used to inform future discussions about the planning of the federal workforce, especially now that “changes in management practices and policies in responses to the pandemic have driven widespread speculation about how workplaces might look and function post-pandemic.”

“Sweeping changes to agency designs, for example, have meant a substantial portion of Federal employees have worked in technology-mediated contexts, completely remote from traditional worksites,” the report says. “Such changes have profound implications for management of the workforce, with typical questions centering on performance management. Next steps should include review of OPM FEVS results by decision-makers at all levels to identify how workplace innovations can be retained to foster and support an agile workforce capable of performing despite any external disruptions.

Former federal CIO applauds additional TMF funding

Former Federal Chief Information Officer Suzette Kent is overjoyed by — and a bit envious of — the recent $1 billion injected into the Technology Modernization Fund under the American Rescue Plan Act.

The money will help agencies quickly implement IT solutions addressing challenges that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic, Kent said. Agencies will be looking to manage risk, leverage data and apply modern technologies at both the component and enterprise levels based on lessons learned, she told FedScoop, ahead of her speech at OnSolve Nexus 2021.

A champion of funding the TMF, Kent never saw the amount of money available now for cybersecurity, employee management and shared services projects in her time as federal CIO from February 2018 to July 2020.

“In a way I’m jealous; I am thrilled that it is funded because the mechanism works and agencies need to drive change,” Kent said. “As the TMF Board looks at the projects that agencies bring to them, those projects are supposed to be about pandemic response, use of new and emerging technologies, improved use of data, and leapfrogging for modernization.”

Congress approved the $1 billion TMF appropriation in the American Rescue Plan Act passed in March and not just for IT modernization projects. Cyber projects will likely feature prominently as well.

The exponential increase in remote work during the pandemic has also increased agencies’ cyberattack surfaces exponentially and driven a move to zero-trust security architectures to shore up their environments.

That’s in addition to “back-to-back-to-back supply chain disruptions” and an active hurricane season that left agencies looking to use data and artificial intelligence capabilities to address such challenges, Kent said.

The Biden administration would be wise to fund solutions addressing technology and behavioral changes due to the pandemic and subsequent rise in remote work, Kent said.

Agencies are “generally as effective” having shifted to remote work, Kent said. But they may push for a return to the office, or else supplement remote work with technology solutions like design platforms, in instances where it still posed challenges.

“The training for certain employees and how they’re supervised and managed isn’t structured enough that it works really well in a distributed environment,” Kent said. “So maybe there are types of roles that have more of an apprenticeship model or you need hands-on training — access to certain kinds of facilities that just don’t don’t fit well in a simulation.”

The Army’s first software factory fully up and running

The Army took another step toward getting more code-savvy soldiers in its ranks by embedding its first cohort of developers at its software factory located at the Austin Community College.

The factory will help produce both new applications for Army usage and train soldier-coders to find ways to enhance operations through technology. The software factory’s office space opened in mid-April and is located near the headquarters of Army Futures Command, which houses the factory.

Before the physical location opened, the first cohort started work remotely in December.

The Army recently issued an other transaction agreement contract to VMware to help set up the office, according to a service spokesperson. The factory is intended to eventually be self-sustaining without the need for contractor support.

“This is the first time that we have a soldier-led [software] factory,” said Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Now some of the services, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, have little software factories and little incubators, but none have been organized, led and driven primarily by troops, by soldiers.” Milley was referring to other military services’ similar factories and software acquisition-focused units, like the Air Force’s Kessel Run.

Milley was joined by Gen. John Murray, commander of Army Futures Command, and other leaders in Austin for a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new office space.

“It has everything to do with modernization, seeing the future and being able to prevent a great power war,” Milley said of both the factory and the broader push across the Army to use tech more. “It’s to prevent great power war. It’s to maintain great power peace. It’s to maintain cutting-edge and overmatch against any potential adversary.”

Leaders across the Army have said they want the service to transform from the “Industrial Age” to the “information age” and using software is a key part of that. Similarly, under another modernization mission, Project Convergence, the Army has relied on getting code-savvy soldiers in the field to connect weapons systems to increase their targeting speed.