FITARA scorecard sees sweeping improvements, as agencies look ahead to FedRAMP, AI hiring

A dozen federal agencies received an A in the most recent Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act scorecard, with 18 agencies improving their grades since January. 

In a Friday roundtable hosted by Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., ranking member of the House Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation, officials from USAID, NASA, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Energy and the Government Accountability Office shared the overwhelmingly positive FITARA grades for most of the 24 CFO Act agencies. 

“I was impressed, if not surprised, at how many As there were. I want to celebrate that success, but I’m on my guard,” Connolly said in an interview with FedScoop after the roundtable. “I don’t want complacency to set in.”

The next round of scores on how agencies are faring on a variety of IT-related fronts could include new categories that may prompt agencies to falter in their scores, Connolly said. That might include categories such as FedRAMP, legacy system management, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence workforce.

“Those are all likely candidates for the next or future scorecards,” Connolly said. 

Report cards

During the roundtable event, agencies touted their IT infrastructure and credited FITARA for being a driving force in more serious consideration of technology. Some agencies also called out the need for working capital funds or funding vehicles, such as the Technology Modernization Fund. 

Jason Gray, USAID’s chief information officer, said the agency’s A — its sixth in a row — demonstrates “our commitment to institutionalizing the standards set out in FITARA” as well as the value of how agencies manage and consider IT. 

Gray said the agency’s cloud data center is “fully optimized” and now has improved mechanisms to help collect and project cost savings, pointing to the “value of the impact FITARA has brought” to critical technology, modernization and security within USAID.

NASA CIO Jeff Seaton, however, emphasized the agency’s significant move to modernize within the cloud, noting that the space administration has “more than 113 petabytes of data on the cloud, with significant growth expected in the future.”

“We recognize that cloud computing storage is not the answer for every mission requirement,” Seaton said. “However, we are seeing more NASA missions and projects wanting to transition to commercial cloud data services and applications agencywide. NASA civil servants are also using cloud-based Microsoft submissions for email, file storage, review data analytics and other collaborative capabilities.”

DOE CIO Ann Dunkin shared that the agency continues to work toward establishing IT working capital funds that are authorized by the Modernizing Government Technology Act, but the agency continues to use financial assistance from the Technology Modernization Fund. 

VA CIO Kurt DelBene pointed to a franchise fund that “serves as the same function as the modernization fund.”

Connolly told FedScoop that he disagreed with DelBene’s assertion and said that “it can be used for other purposes.”

“That’s not what the law provides for,” he said. “You get a franchise fund if you want, but that’s not necessarily a substitute for a working capital fund for IT.” 

What could be next

The Virginia Democrat told FedScoop that he is “pleased across the board” for progress made by the relevant agencies, but maintains that “the next scorecard may be very different” due to measuring different parts of IT modernization.

In the past, Connolly shared that lawmakers have retired categories because of consistent and positive performance, “only to see regression” from agencies that might be letting modernization efforts slow down since they are no longer being measured on that particular performance. 

“That’s not what we’re trying to do here,” he said. 

Connolly emphasized concern for FedRAMP and its ability to streamline the cloud authorization process, especially as the program moved away from using the Joint Authorization Board (JAB) for approving cloud service providers. 

“I want a clean, level playing field that gives everyone an opportunity and they know it’s predictable and reliable, and they know roughly what to budget,” Connolly said. “That’s what FedRAMP originally was intended to be. So let’s go back to what it was intended to be.”

Connolly pointed to the scorecard’s inclusion of AI workforce training, development, recruitment and retention as “a good place to start on AI.” This category, according to the congressman, would focus on whether agencies have hired qualified people to work in AI positions and how they attract talent. 

“We may not be able to tackle the whole subject of AI in one fell swoop,” he said. “But it is a fair thing to ask agencies, ‘Well, how are you ramping up?’”

This story was updated Sept. 23, 2024, with a link to the FITARA scorecard.

Civil rights commission finds ‘concerning lack of federal oversight’ of facial recognition

Facial recognition tools are used by agencies with “a concerning lack of federal oversight” that could leave the public vulnerable to “abuses of power and privacy concerns,” the chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights said Thursday during a briefing about the group’s new report on the technology.

USCCR Chair Rochelle Garza called the lack of government oversight and standardized regulations regarding agency use of facial recognition technology “alarming,” though the release of the 194-page report on the civil rights implications of federal use of FRT represented “a pivotal moment” for the country in how it will regulate the tech going forward.

“We discovered troubling disparities, especially in how this technology misidentifies women, people of color and other marginalized groups at higher rates,” Garza said. “How we respond now will shape the future of civil rights in the age of AI.”

Instances in which members of those groups have been misidentified by the technology can lead to “potential violations of civil rights, including wrongful arrests … and denials of essential services,” she added.  

The bipartisan report is the result of what Garza, a Democrat, called “a comprehensive investigation” into how facial recognition is being used by the departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Housing and Urban Development, specifically. 

Panelists raised specific concerns Thursday over the use of FRT by HUD-funded public housing authorities. Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., who has introduced a bill to ban the use of facial recognition and biometric identification technologies in public housing, pointed specifically to a housing project in the Brownsville neighborhood of her Brooklyn district that “attempted to install facial recognition technology for its tenants in place of physical keys.” 

“Someone living in public housing should not and cannot be the guinea pig for the emerging technology of biometric facial recognition, just to enter their own homes,” Clarke said. “As we enter this new age of AI, too many untested technologies are being given carte blanche to run the system and services that Americans rely on.”

Democratic Commissioner Mondaire Jones echoed those comments, criticizing the “significant coercive aspect” of living in a public housing complex “where you don’t have a say in whether you are being surveilled by facial recognition technology. You don’t truly get to opt out of it.”

Republican Commissioner Stephen Gilchrist also noted the “significant privacy” issues with facial recognition that are especially pronounced for “low-income tenants” as landlords and public housing authorities contract with private companies to store data on residents.

“The more entities that have access to the sensitive stuff and identifying data, the more vulnerable not only the systems become, but [so too are] the people who … some would identify as being victimized by the process,” Gilchrist said.

The report details specific recommendations for HUD, DOJ and DHS, as well as a series of recommendations for Congress, federal chief AI officers and agencies that use facial recognition technologies. Federal agencies have perhaps the tallest order, with the USCCR breaking out overarching oversight, transparency and procurement proposals for any agency that uses facial recognition.

Chief AI officers are asked by the commission to work with the National Institute of Standards and Technology on the development and implementation of field testing programs for facial recognition systems, with specific provisions on real-world assessments, community consultations and the mitigation of bias and disparities in rights-impacting FRT. 

NIST, meanwhile, would be empowered by Congress to evaluate FRT algorithms purchased by law enforcement agencies, report demographic-specific error rates, develop ongoing testing procedures, condition federal funds on the adoption of standards, and require biannual testing aimed at lowering error rates.

The release of the report comes six months after Jones railed against the DOJ and HUD for skipping an opportunity to testify before the commission about their use of facial recognition. The former congressman from New York said at the time that the absences of the agencies were “offensive,” claiming that they were “embarrassed by their failures and are seeking to avoid public accountability.”

The DOJ told FedScoop in an emailed statement that it was in contact with the commission regarding its response, and provided its interim policy on facial recognition to the USCCR later that month. 

HUD acknowledged in testimony submitted in April that local public housing authorities that receive federal aid from the agency may use facial recognition technologies, but it “does not require specific policies on FRT for [public housing authorities] and does not keep a list of PHAs that elect to use FRT.”

Jones said in an interview with FedScoop on Thursday that the DOJ and HUD took his March comments “very seriously,” which was reflected in their responses to USCCR questions and the documentation they have since submitted. “I’m looking forward to a much more collaborative partnership in addressing the concerns we raise in our report,” he said.

In the new report, the USCCR recommends that the Department of Housing and Urban Development update its federal grant material to align with the commission’s other agency recommendations, and publish that information on HUD’s website. DHS and DOJ are urged by the USCCR to do the same.

The recommendations laid out by the commission in Thursday’s report follow previous guidance delivered to the president and his advisers this year regarding facial recognition technology. In May, the National AI Advisory Committee’s Law Enforcement Subcommittee endorsed policies that would require federal policing agencies to create and publish yearly summary usage reports for safety- or rights-impacting AI, such as facial recognition tools, with those reports included in each agency’s AI use case inventory.

The USCCR report notes that OMB has set a Dec. 1 deadline for agencies to “provide public notice and plain-language documentation” of such use cases in its AI inventory. 

“It’s crucial that we examine these technologies with a civil rights lens at the forefront,” Garza said, “and ensure they are used in ways that protect — not undermine — our constitutional freedoms.”

House lawmakers scrutinize VA officials for issues with community care claims data repository

The Department of Veterans Affairs is once again facing congressional backlash for challenges with its IT infrastructure, despite officials maintaining that internal operations are on the mend. 

During a House Veterans Affairs subcommittee hearing Thursday, lawmakers dissected the consequences of the pause and rebuilding of the agency’s Program Integrity Tool — a consolidated data repository for claims from community care claim payment systems that equip the agency to identify and address fraud and waste — after the VA’s Office of Inspector General found that the system’s pause kickstarted a new backlog that is expected to pose a “significant challenge” to revenue collection in July. 

Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., who chairs the VA technology modernization subcommittee, and Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., the ranking member, both shared concerns about the pitfall, focusing specifically on the potential for veterans to be billed for co-pays that are more than a year old, the backlog of 40 million paid claims and the event’s impact on the agency’s overall budget. 

Kurt DelBene, the agency’s CIO and assistant secretary for IT, told the subcommittee that the VA expects the full backlog to be completed and “in Revenue Operations’ hands” by the end of fiscal year 2025, and said in his testimony that the agency expects to collect $8.66 billion over FY24 and FY25 after recovering from the PIT challenges. 

“Since pausing PIT operations, we have made significant strides in addressing the identified issues,” DelBene said during the hearing. “We implemented more rigorous oversight and expanded our team to support our rebuild efforts. We’re happy to report that Revenue Operations has resumed functionality and is steadily processing the backlog of data.”

Jennifer McDonald, director of the agency’s Community Care Division, testified on behalf of OIG and said that to help veterans who are billed 18 months after the fact due to this event, VHA is working with the Office of General Counsel to implement “a regulatory change to allow for debt waivers for these veterans.”

Sherfilus-McCormick said that while she is “glad to hear” that the PIT has resumed, she is still “concerned” about the weight of the backlog as well as the strain it will put on both VA employees and veterans themselves.

“We cannot allow VA’s struggling IT infrastructure to cause financial stress to our veterans,” Sherfilus-McCormick said. “VA has not yet quantified how many veterans will be impacted by these delayed bills, or to what extent. I urge VA to fully assess the impact that this pause has had on our veterans before beginning co-pay collections.” 

Sherfilus-McCormick also said during the hearing that it is “unreasonable” to expect veterans to “choose between paying a year-delayed bill or navigating the system to secure a debt waiver.” Further, the Floridian Democrat said she is concerned about veterans shouldering “massive debt” due to another VA IT system failure.

Rosendale said that “IT system failures are no excuse to waste taxpayers money” and added that “VA’s leaders need to understand they cannot incite a panic and pressure Congress to bail them out for their mistakes.”

The chairman said that the subcommittee is aware that the agency’s “struggles with budgeting and management have existed for many years and will not be resolved overnight. “I, for one, don’t believe this is the last shortfall that the VA will find in itself,” he said.

The public-facing issues with PIT began in February 2023 after the agency released a memorandum announcing it was pausing the tool due to issues with its database code logic and compromised data stored within the repository. Specifically, the Department of Program Integrity found that there was a defective line of code with added outpatient data to inpatient claims, the PIT duplicated claims, and there was a distortion of claim payment statuses. 

OIG’s July report stated that until the VHA could resume revenue collection activities for claims from non-VA providers, the potential lost revenue would accumulate to about $55.5 million per month.

State Department opens online passport renewal service to full public 

The days where the only option to renew your passport was mailing the State Department a printed application and a $15 check — or worse, going in person — are coming to an end.

The Department of State announced Wednesday that its new online passport renewal system is now available to the general public, expanding on the success of a limited pilot conducted earlier this year.

“Our online passport renewal system is an important example of how the Department is modernizing government services for the benefit of Americans and delivering on” President Biden’s 2021 customer experience executive order, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. “By offering this online alternative to the traditional paper application process, the Department is embracing digital transformation to offer the most efficient and convenient passport renewal experience possible,” which has resulted in passports on average being processed “in roughly one-third the time as at the same point last summer, and well under the advertised six to eight weeks processing times.” 

Using the department’s travel.state.gov website, American adults with a U.S. address looking to renew their 10-year passports that have expired in the past five years or will expire in the coming year can answer a series of questions to ensure they’re eligible to submit for renewal online. If approved, they can then submit the renewal application, a photo and the fee using the digital system any time of day instead of heading to a passport office or mailing the materials in. During this summer’s pilot, the program would open submissions to participants daily before closing the system off once it reached a cap of applicants.

“We estimate that up to 5 million Americans a year will be able to use this service,” Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs Rena Bitter said in a press call, adding that in 2023, State processed 24 million “passport products,” about 40% of which were renewals. “We’ve been testing it … since June, actually, of this year and actually even prior to that. We’ve been getting very good customer reviews. We’ll continue to seek customer feedback as people use the service, but as of now it’s open to all Americans, and we’re really excited about that.”

While the new service commits to issuing renewed passports within six to eight weeks, Bitter said processing times “are really historically low,” and this online system adds a new option and greater convenience for renewal applicants. 

The hope, Bitter said, is that State can continue to build off of this success and expand the system to account for other passport submissions. Currently, the system does not allow for expedited or urgent travel requests.

“This is a first step in what we hope will be a much longer-term process to be able to modernize the systems that we’re using and to be able to provide a better service — to continue to provide good service to the American people,” she said. “I think we just want to get this off the ground, make sure that it’s something that the American people are able to use, that it provides a convenient service, and then we’ll see where we go from there.”

House announces new AI policy establishing guardrails, approval process

The Committee on House Administration and Office of the Chief Administrative Officer announced the implementation of a new House-wide policy Thursday for the safe deployment of artificial intelligence tools by member and institutional offices.

That policy, which was not released in full, “provides a framework for the expanded use of AI in the House,” according to an overview from the CAO. It also establishes guardrails and principles to guide members and offices and includes a process by which the Administration Committee — known as CHA— and CAO will approve AI tools for use cases. 

Implementation of the policy comes as there’s been some, though seemingly limited, experimentation with the AI-based tools by lawmakers’ offices in both chambers. Similar to guidance established by executive agencies, the policy appears to strike a balance between permitting uses that could bring efficiencies while ensuring those uses are safe, responsible and secure.

“The policy is based on a reliable framework which will continue to evolve as AI technology continues to develop,” Chief Administrative Officer Catherine Szpindor said in a written statement in the release. “The policy is to assist Members and staff to safeguard potentially sensitive information while also empowering them to leverage AI to better serve the American people.”

Szpindor praised the CAO Cybersecurity team for its work with the CHA to create the policy.

Also in statements provided in the release, CHA Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., said that “the House will become more effective and innovative” with the new policy, and Rep. Joe Morelle, D-N.Y., the panel’s ranking member, said it “provides a strong foundation to begin safe use in the House.”

Under the new approval process, the CAO will review AI tools for “defined use cases” and the CHA will approve them. That process is intended to help “offices to reduce the security and privacy risks associated with AI,” according to the CAO overview. 

In addition to guardrails and principles, the policy also outlines permissible and prohibited use cases. It also provides “a foundation for Members to use approved AI tools which are aligned to authorized use cases or are permitted under their office’s inter AI use policy,” the outline said.

The policy became effective Aug. 28, as approved by the CHA.

In response to a FedScoop request for additional details about the approval process, permitted and prohibited use cases, and security and privacy policies, a spokesperson for the CHA said: “Right now, the CAO and CHA are focused on generally permissible use cases. CHA regularly collaborates with the CAO to discuss new use cases. We have a robust foundation that we are constantly building on. As an example, the generally permissible use cases are managing scheduling requests, translation, and transcription services. We cannot share any information related to security and privacy.”

The office of the CAO told FedScoop in a statement that when it comes to reviewing use cases, the policy takes “a risk-based approach.” 

“The CAO will not be recommending approval of AI for sensitive data or processes for the foreseeable future. However, we will learn from lower risk data sets as the technology evolves and matures,” the office said in the statement.

Additionally, the office disclosed that some AI tools are in the process of being reviewed.

House calendar, social media tracker among tools launched since last Congressional Hackathon

The Congressional Hackathon will return Thursday, once again bringing together lawmakers, staffers, and technologists for a large-scale brainstorming session on tech-driven ideas that could solve problems faced by the legislative branch.

That event, which was first held in 2011 with Facebook as an experiment, has gradually become more and more of a fixture for congressional modernization efforts, providing a launchpad for ideas like providing access to raw legislative data and digitizing casework. It’s now been held annually since 2022, and last year, formally gained institutional support from the House Office of the Chief Administrative Officer. 

As the sixth hackathon gears up, the event has new progress to show for its efforts. Two of the five top recommendations from last year’s event have been implemented and others are on their way to being realized, Steve Dwyer, senior director for innovation at the CAO, told FedScoop.

“This last year has been a tremendous success. I think more has been done in this past year than any prior year,” said Dwyer, who helped spearhead the first event as a staffer for then-Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland. 

Completed items from last year’s recommendation list are an internal unified House calendar that was launched in July and an internal social media tracking tool that was announced in recent weeks by the CAO to compare lawmakers’ social media statistics, Dwyer said. 

That calendar, which he said staff are using “a ton,” was a priority of the now-concluded Select Committee on the Modernization, including videos from every committee, member rosters, and schedule conflicts.

Meanwhile, the social media tracking tool allows staff to compare their social media analytics against other offices to provide context for how outreach on those platforms is doing, which was a high-demand need among staff, Dwyer said. That tool, he said, collects public statistics such as follower counts and number of posts per day and pulls them together into one place.

Projects to come

While not yet completed, the remaining three recommendations from last year are in the works, including an online staff directory for the entire legislative branch. Dwyer, who is leading that project, said the CAO has been working on that effort a lot over the past six months and expects to both demo that tool at the Thursday hackathon and pilot it in the coming weeks.

“These are ones that I’m really excited about, but they haven’t even launched yet, mostly because they’re just larger projects,” Dwyer said.

Progress is also being made on an anonymized constituent casework database, a project championed by Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Wash., ranking member of the House Committee on Administration’s Modernization Subcommittee who is slated to speak at the event. 

That tool, which was also recommended by the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, would aim to create an opt-in system that would use anonymized constituent casework data to identify issues and trends. Dwyer said some offices are participating in a “limited, early pilot” of that project. 

Additionally, the third recommendation to create bill summaries using artificial intelligence is also in progress, though that project is being led by the Congressional Research Service. At a House hearing in March, CRS’ Interim Director Robert Newlen told lawmakers the agency was working to implement AI for legislative summaries “soon.” 

Development and pilots

Success on projects this year from the 2023 hackathon is due in part to the fact that “a lot of the stars have aligned,” Dwyer said, pointing specifically to the creation of the CAO’s House Digital Service team, of which he’s a part. That group was announced in 2022 and has grown “quite a bit in the past year,” according to Dwyer.

The process of developing those tools follows a methodology focused on users, rapid prototyping, and delivering early and often, Dwyer said. While the hackathon serves as the CAO’s “biggest listening event of the year,” they also hold listening events throughout the year to get feedback, he said. 

Projects start by piloting with small groups of 20 to 30 staffers that get early, exclusive access and give their feedback in exchange. The CAO collects that feedback through things like surveys and meetings in which the test users share their screens while they use the tool. 

“Then we just ever expand,” Dwyer said. Pilots gradually increase to more and more staffers and the feedback and analytics continue until the CAO is ready to formally announce the project. That was the case for both the unified House calendar and the social media tracking tool.

This year

In addition to the anticipated idea-swapping, the Thursday event is expected to feature remarks by Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, N.Y., and House Chief Administrator Catherine Szpindor.

Johnson is expected to address the country’s technological competitiveness against geopolitical adversaries, such as China, according to prepared remarks his office shared with FedScoop. “This is an exercise to protect America’s place in the world, and I’m grateful for your role in it,” Johnson’s remarks state.

Bipartisan bill to boost oversight of agency digital services clears Senate panel

A bipartisan House bill aimed at improving customer service interactions with government technology breezed through a key Senate panel Wednesday, putting it one step closer to becoming law.

The Government Service Delivery Improvement Act passed the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee by an 11-0 tally, setting it up for a vote before the full chamber. The bill, first introduced by Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., Byron Donalds, R-Fla., Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., and William Timmons, R-S.C. in the House last October, passed that chamber in May.

The legislation tasks agency heads with designating a senior official to oversee service delivery improvements and charges the Office of Management and Budget with choosing a senior official to coordinate governmentwide efforts on the issue.

Khanna said in an email to FedScoop that the bill “will make it easier and more efficient than ever for Americans to access government services including Social Security, retirement benefits, Medicare health coverage, veterans’ benefits, and student loans.” He added that he was “grateful” to HSGAC Chair Gary Peters, D-Mich., and ranking member Rand Paul, R-Ky., for shepherding the bill through the committee, and “hopeful it will pass the Senate and head to the president’s desk.”

Following the House’s passage of the bill in May, Loudermilk said the requirements of agency staffers laid out in the text would ensure “a more effective, reliable, and responsive federal government” that “works to keep its promise to deliver quality services to the American people.” 

In the same press release, Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., ranking member of the House Oversight and Accountability Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation Subcommittee, stressed the importance of the federal government’s ability to “measure its progress” in how public-facing agency products are modernized.

“It’s absolutely imperative that the public interacts with a modern, accessible, and customer-focused government,” Connolly said.

The legislation builds on Khanna’s the 21st Century IDEA Act, which called for a “consistent look” in government websites that complied with Technology Transformation Service standards. The bill, which was signed into law by then-President Donald Trump at the end of 2018, also featured a variety of measures to modernize and improve the accessibility of agency websites. OMB and the Office of the Federal CIO last year released guidance aimed at holding agencies accountable to provisions in the law.

Two other government tech-related bills passed the Senate panel Wednesday: the GSA Technology Accountability Act from Connolly and Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, and the Telework Transparency Act from Peters and Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa.

The Connolly-Sessions bill would “ensure GSA is held accountable to Congress and the American people in how it spends taxpayer dollars on technology projects and initiatives,” per a press release from Sessions’ staff in March that accompanied the bill’s introduction. 

The Senate telework bill, which was introduced in April, would require federal agencies to collect data on remote work and track its impact on performance and property decisions. 

“My bipartisan bill will require agencies to gather accurate data on telework policies to provide more transparency and help ensure federal agencies are effectively carrying out their missions for the American people,” Peters said at the time. 

Federal Acquisition Security Council would get ‘teeth’ under bipartisan House bill

The Federal Acquisition Security Council would be empowered to better protect the federal supply chain from adversarial technology companies and products under a new bipartisan bill from a quartet of House lawmakers.

The Federal Acquisition Security Council Improvement Act of 2024 — from Reps. James Comer, R-Ky. and Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the chair and ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, and Reps. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., and Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., chair and ranking member of the chamber’s Select Committee on the CCP — would improve the council’s abilities to safeguard the federal supply chain by excluding or expelling entities “owned or controlled by a foreign adversary” from federal information systems.

Comer said in a press release that the bill equips the council with “teeth” by allowing it to issue binding removal and exclusion orders through a standardized process from Congress, while also expanding the focus of the FASC to “include acquisition more broadly.” Part of that expanded focus would include acquisition security at large and a requirement of the council to “proactively monitor and evaluate certain covered articles for ongoing risk.” 

“We have bipartisan consensus that protecting our nation’s supply chains is key to national security,” Raskin said in the release. “This legislation takes an important step to protecting the federal government against the purchase of products and services from our foreign adversaries. It will help address any vulnerabilities in our technology infrastructure and guard against national security threats.”

The council itself would undergo changes in membership and administrative location pending  passage of the legislation. The bill would move the council to the White House’s Office of the National Cyber Director to provide “operational, legal and policy support.” According to the bill’s text, the program office would provide the council with “analysis and subject matter expertise on information communications technology acquisition security” and supply chain risk. 

Additionally, membership from the council would include officials from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the General Services Administration, ONCD and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Officials who are granted membership must “have expertise in supply chain management, acquisitions, law or information and communications technology,” according to the bill’s text.

National Science Foundation, Simons Foundation launch two AI institutes for astronomy

Two new artificial intelligence institutes announced by the National Science Foundation on Wednesday will focus on astronomy, with the aim of using the budding technology to advance humans’ understanding of the universe. 

The institutes, which will be funded by NSF and the Simons Foundation, add to the agency’s existing 26 AI institutes across the country. Each new institute will receive $20 million over five years, which breaks down to $10 million from NSF and $10 million from the Simons Foundation, according to a press release from the agency.

“Astronomy has incredibly rich and open data sets and is poised for more deep and profound inquiry,” David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation, said in a statement included in that release. “AI offers novel tools that can use this data both to produce transformative results and to develop tools that can have impact in other fields.”

The two new centers will be called the NSF-Simons AI Institute for Cosmic Origins, abbreviated NSF-Simons CosmicAI, and the NSF-Simons AI Institute for the Sky, abbreviated NSF-Simons SkAI. According to the release, the work of those institutes also won’t be limited to advancing AI for astronomy alone.

“Both institutes aim to advance the capabilities of AI beyond just astronomical sciences so it can become a more useful tool for all scientific disciplines involving large datasets, sophisticated models and the iterative process of generating and experimentally testing theories,” according to NSF.

The NSF Simons CosmicAI, for its part, will be led by the University of Texas at Austin in collaboration with the University of Utah, University of Virginia, UCLA, and NSF’s NOIRLab, which focuses on nighttime astronomical science, and its National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which is made up of multiple radio telescope facilities around the U.S. and Chile. 

That institute will work “to accelerate traditionally time-consuming aspects of astronomical research, such as processing and analyzing large amounts of data and creating and evaluating simulations of complex phenomena like the chemical processes within stars,” according to the release.

The NSF-Simons SkAI institute, meanwhile, will be led by Northwestern University in collaboration with the University of Chicago, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Illinois Chicago, and the Chicago-based Adler Planetarium. 

It will focus on what the release called “exceptionally complex problems in astrophysics and astronomy,” including the physics of exotic objects (such as black holes and neutron stars), the formation of galaxies, and the roles of dark matter and dark energy.

In remarks included in the release, NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan pointed to the vast amount of data that will come from large projects such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which is a joint operation by the agency and the Department of Energy, saying the information is “simply too vast and rich to be fully explored with existing methods.”

“With reliable and trustworthy AI in their toolbox, everyone from students to senior researchers will have exciting new ways to gain valuable insights leading to amazing discoveries that might otherwise remain hidden in the data,” Panchanathan said.

The photo used is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.

NRC enlists GSA to help with artificial intelligence governance

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the General Services Administration are partnering for an artificial intelligence maturity assessment as a foundational step in the nuclear agency’s path to finalizing a strategic plan.

Over the next nine months, the NRC will welcome a GSA provided-project manager to work directly with staff to consult on what the agency needs to solidify an enterprise strategic plan, Basia Sall, the chief data officer and director of the NRC’s Data, Information Management and Enterprise Governance division, told FedScoop during an AI workshop at agency headquarters Tuesday. This partnership, according to Sall, is through a resource within the GSA’s AI Center of Excellence.

Sall teased the partnership last week during a press conference regarding the AI workshop and pointed to GSA’s assistance during the Tuesday event. The contracted project manager is expected to assist the agency in finding what it would need to build a strategic plan. 

“We actually will have a contractor … that hasn’t been identified yet, that will work directly with our staff,” Sall told FedScoop. “They’ll come over, they’ll actually embed themselves and really do outreach in the agency and probably do outreach to our external stakeholders as well to really help us.”

The NRC had released an AI strategic plan in the spring of 2023, but is now working to release another strategic plan in compliance with Office of Management and Budget guidance.

Sall said the NRC has to work through an interagency agreement with GSA because the project manager is “doing all the contracting work, all the acquisition work on their side.”

“That is a huge benefit to us because we just don’t have enough current bench strength, as we’re hiring up right now to manage that,” Sall said

The partnership is in the early stages, according to Sall, and the agency is “still solidifying the deliverables and what we’re looking for.” She said that “in the next month or two, I expect us to have a much clearer path forward.”

The GSA declined to comment on the partnership, though its AI Center of Excellence offers details to users on how it measures AI readiness, specifically focusing on both organizational and operational maturity.