White House announces nearly $100 million in pledges to boost emerging tech workforce
The White House this week announced almost $100 million in commitments from government, academia and civil society to support government access to a diverse pool of emerging tech talent.
The Office of Science and Technology Policy said in its Tuesday announcement that the National Science Foundation, U.S. Digital Response, a handful of universities and other institutions have pledged funding support for furthering artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies’ talent.
The commitments were unveiled during an Advancing Public Service in the Technology Ecosystem event, where OSTP Director Arati Prabhakar reflected on the October executive order focused on AI, the Office of Management and Budget’s memo and the work that Congress has been doing to legislate for innovation and against the technology’s harmful effects.
Looking forward, Prabhakar said the government needs to figure out how to use AI and “wrangle it” in order to upskill, but also emphasized a need for fresh perspectives in the civic tech space.
“We know companies and investors are going to do all kinds of things that can build companies and profits, but also we need AI for public purposes to do the country’s work,” Prabhakar said. “There’s a lot of work ahead [and] there’s tremendous promise. It all hinges on getting terrific people to come do this work.”
NSF will provide at least $48 million, per a White House fact sheet on the commitments, with $32 million going toward an expansion of the agency’s Emerging and Novel Technologies program aimed at supporting “inclusive experiential learning opportunities” for diverse learners. At least $16 million will support a second round of funding for NSF’s Responsible Design, Development and Deployment of Technologies program, ensuring that ethical, legal and societal considerations are implemented with technology development.
Additionally, USDR has committed to doubling the number of state and local governments it supports, with a focus on those that are under-resourced.
Academic institutions including San José State University, Spelman College, Georgetown University, the University of Michigan and New York University have pledged material support, new centers, new scholar opportunities with provided tuition and other assistance, collaborations with justice organizations and local governments and collaborations to support inner-institution growth in tech.
Prabhakar pointed to health care, economic competition and national security as priorities that require the assistance of science and technology.
“It’s a long list of things that we need to do, and science and technology is absolutely essential for every single one,” Prabhakar said during the event. “These are things we have to do. We don’t actually fully know how to do them — and that means we need science and technology and innovation.”
White House advisers push for expanded Pathways Program to fill agency STEM gaps
Advisers to the president on science and technology are urging agencies to “ambitiously expand” the use of the government’s early-career Pathways Program to address a shortage of federal STEM talent.
In a virtual meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology last week, committee members voted to send the White House a letter containing a series of recommendations aimed at growing the federal pool of workers skilled in science, technology, engineering and math.
With Pathways, an Office of Personnel Management initiative that targets early-career talent for federal employment, PCAST members said they see a way to take advantage of expedited hiring practices and boost pre-qualified candidate pools.
“The landscape that we’re dealing with is changing, it’s evolving, and all of a sudden now we need more STEM professionals, not less,” said Dan Arvizu, co-lead of PCAST’s STEM workforce recommendations and the former director and chief executive of the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “The roles that they play are now more pronounced than they were in the past. … And again, the Pathways Program is really a good example of this.”
The PCAST recommendation on Pathways also suggests that the Biden administration should leverage the National Science Foundation and the Department of Commerce’s regional innovation hubs by developing internship programs that “mirror the expertise they gain” from those tech programs.
Another recommendation zeroed in on the other end of the experience spectrum: “seasoned experts,” who PCAST advisers would like to see more regularly on “tours of duty” made possible by lowering federal hiring barriers. Early-career STEM professionals are “obviously high priority,” Arvizu said, but “seasoned professionals” with “a tremendous amount of expertise and ability to support government programs” should also be targeted for agency STEM positions.
Outreach to STEM workers across age brackets would theoretically be easier with modernized and accelerated hiring processes, part of a PCAST recommendation that calls for “differentiating and professionalizing STEM marketing and recruiting.” Those efforts would be more effective if agency HR offices could be upskilled through training sessions and OPM or U.S. Digital Service embeds, the recommendation said.
“Human capital offices in each agency are extremely challenged. In many cases, they have a hard time understanding what are my future STEM requirements for my mission objectives,” Arvizu said. “And at the same time, how will I know that and then how do I recruit those kinds of people? That requires a partnership between the subject matter experts and the human capital offices, so that there is a collaboration.”
To “identify and reduce headwinds to progress” on that recruiting front, PCAST members recommended that each agency designate a senior or executive leader to partner with OPM, HR offices and other stakeholders in assessments delivered to each respective agency head within 90 days of the assignment. OPM, meanwhile, would be charged with creating a repository that tracks governmentwide best practices and successes.
“The rapid rate of change in science is much, much greater than the rate of change in the federal government. And that’s why we’re so far behind,” said Frances Arnold, co-chair of PCAST and a professor of chemical engineering, bioengineering and biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology. “We really need to rethink the way that STEM talent is recruited and retained in the federal government.”
Current and former White House officials who served as consultants to PCAST on the STEM recommendations were Kiran Ahuja, the OPM director until April; Jason Barke, OPM’s deputy associate director for strategic workforce planning; Beth Cobert, acting OPM director in the Obama administration; Olivia Zhu, who leads the Office of Science and Technology Policy’s AI talent surge efforts; and Nafeesa Owens, OSTP’s lead on STEM education and workforce. Max Stier, CEO of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, was also a consultant to the group.
The recommendations come a little more than two months after OSTP unveiled a national science, technology, engineering, math and medicine strategy aimed at improving workforce diversity and opportunities in those fields.
VA moving to Login.gov and ID.me for managing health care services
The Department of Veterans Affairs is transitioning online users to Login.gov or ID.me sign-ins to access benefits and health care service accounts, a move that is expected to impact three million veterans and other beneficiaries.
In a press release announcing the change, the VA said that after January 2025, veterans and beneficiaries will not be able to use usernames or passwords for My HealtheVet — a digital service that stores information about health records, communications, appointments and prescriptions for veterans’ use. Those who have not transitioned will be able to access data, resume using services online and manage benefits once they have created a new account — a process the VA estimates will take about 10 minutes.
The transition to these alternative ways of signing on and managing health care needs are part of the agency’s implementation work on executive orders to improve national cybersecurity and transform federal customer experience and service delivery for trust in government.
Kurt DelBene, the agency’s assistant secretary for IT and chief information officer, said in the press release that Login.gov and ID.me “enhance the existing security and safety of online interactions.”
“The transition is all about putting the veteran first,” DelBene said. “By streamlining accounts, simplifying access and providing tailored support, we’re empowering veterans with a more user-friendly and modernized online experience that caters to their needs.”
The agency said that the move to Login.gov and ID.me is a step for both the VA and the Biden administration’s efforts to “safeguard and protect veteran data and that of their beneficiaries.”
Login.gov, which is operated by the General Services Administration, is currently piloting biometric validation technology. GSA is working with an internal tech equity team to attempt to reduce algorithmic bias in light of concerns that different advocacy groups have raised about the technology.
ID.me, an identity credential service that reportedly works with 16 federal agencies along with other state entities and health care organizations, has previously faced scrutiny from lawmakers for misleading the Internal Revenue Service on processing times for identity verification. The company currently works with the IRS for verifying the biometric identity of individuals looking to file a Freedom of Information Act with the tax agency.
Israeli firm behind tech that reportedly cracked Trump shooter’s phone wants more fed business
Cellebrite, the Israeli firm that made software reportedly used by the FBI to break into the phone of the man who shot former President Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally, has picked up a growing amount of work with U.S. agencies over the past decade, federal contract records show.
According to Washington Post reporting, the FBI used Cellebrite software to break into the device of Thomas Matthew Crooks at the bureau’s lab in Quantico, Va. That followed an initial stop at the nearby Pittsburgh office in which attempts crack Crooks’ newer Samsung model were unsuccessful, according to Bloomberg, noting that the Cellebrite software was “unreleased.”
Less than a week later, Cellebrite announced that it had purchased Cyber Technology Services Inc. and that it was establishing Cellebrite Federal Solutions. Cellebrite Federal Solutions will function as a parent company to Cellebrite with proxy status, the digital firm told FedScoop in an interview Wednesday.
The move is intended to boost the company’s U.S. operations, Cellebrite CEO Yossi Carmil said, helping the firm engage with more departments and divisions within the federal government. Carmil said that Cellebrite is close to announcing a federal agency sponsorship for a FedRAMP cloud accreditation, which would allow the company to offer more cloud — rather than on-premise — services. He anticipated an announcement in 2025.
Federal customers currently constitute roughly 20% of Cellebrite’s annual recurring revenue in the public sector, according to a press release from the company. Barry West, a former CIO at several government agencies, is also joining a new board of directors involved in the company.
Carmil, meanwhile, said there was no connection between the reports that Cellebrite software had been used by the FBI to unlock the shooter’s device and Wednesday’s announcement, calling the timing a “coincidence.”
“That agency is one of those agencies who has — on a permanent basis — a significant amount of Cellebrite licenses in order to operate [on] a regular basis,” Carmil said. “There is a routine here and the conclusion is that there is no need for any event in order to operate with our softwares, which are sitting there … on [a] permanent basis.”
Before the acquisition, Cyber Technology Services was contracted for work with the federal government, according to federal contracts records.
Cellebrite already has a range of contracts with federal agencies. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has had several contracts with the company, including for forensic equipment and licenses. The Secret Service has also purchased technology from the company, as has the Defense Department. Other agencies that appear to have purchased technology from Cellebrite include the State Department and the Department of the Interior.
Requests for comment sent to many of these agencies were not answered by publication time.
Cellebrite has faced myriad criticisms for its approach. TechCrunch reported last year that the company encourages law enforcement to stay mum about the software in training videos, citing concerns over the release of their techniques. On Wednesday, the technology journalism outlet 404 Media reported on documents that appeared to show phones on which the software does and does not work. (Cellebrite responded to both those publications with statements).
Jake Wiener, an attorney at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, expressed concern about Cellebrite. He argued that the firm has an unethical business model and takes advantage of cybersecurity flaws in phones.
“When law enforcement agencies contract for access to phone hacking technology, they create tremendous risks of abuse, wrongful surveillance, and mass surveillance,” Wiener said. “Federal agencies should not be endorsing or contracting for Cellebrite’s services at all. If Cellebrite is getting more federal contracts, your taxpayer dollars are increasingly funding an unethical and harmful business.”
Those concerns echo what privacy and technology scholars have told other outlets. Cellebrite disputed criticisms of its business model and referred FedScoop to its ethics and integrity page.
The FBI declined to comment and the Department of Justice did not respond to a series of questions by publication time.
Apple did not respond to repeated requests about whether the shooter’s device was an iPhone or if it assisted in the investigation. Apple famously refused to help the FBI break into the phones belonging to the individuals behind the San Bernardino mass shooting in 2016. The FBI eventually turned to an Australian company called Azimuth Security to get into the phone.
This story was updated July 19, 2024, with a response from Cellebrite and additional reporting from Bloomberg.
Treasury group unveils guidance for financial sector on cloud adoption
The Treasury Department and an industry-led nonprofit on Wednesday released secure cloud adoption guidance for financial institutions, the culmination of a year-long effort that the agency’s deputy secretary called “critically important to our work on cybersecurity.”
The suite of resources released by Treasury and the Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council as part of the public-private Cloud Executive Steering Group is intended to address gaps called out in the department’s February 2023 report on the industry’s use of cloud services.
During a press briefing in Washington, D.C. to unveil the cloud guidance, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said the steering group’s work with cloud providers “is a demonstration that we have the ability to work beyond just the financial system.”
Treasury has grown “increasingly concerned” with cyber threat actors “looking to make money or state actors seeking to target our financial systems,” Adeyemo said. The steering group’s work with cloud providers on these resources “put us in a position where we can go provide information to financial institutions and also the regulators, but also work collaboratively with these institutions.”
The resources for financial institutions include a roadmap for comprehensive or hybrid cloud adoption, best practices for third-party risks tied to cloud service providers, an assessment of existing oversight authorities for cloud providers, and strengthened transparency and monitoring of cloud services for “security by design” practices.
Additionally, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency led work on establishing “a common lexicon” for cloud discussions among regulators and financial institutions, while the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau guided resource production on information sharing and coordination.
Much of the guidance unveiled Wednesday was produced with small financial institutions in mind, regulators and Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council leaders said during the event. Todd Conklin, deputy assistant secretary for Treasury’s Office of Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection and the department’s chief artificial intelligence officer, noted that some large banks interviewed as part of the steering group’s work had hundreds of cloud technologists on staff and were able to take a “judicious” approach to cloud adoption.
But the smallest financial institutions were often at the mercy of third-party vendors and “forced” into full-scale cloud adoption “before they were ready,” Conklin said.
“What we’re releasing today in this batch of work really is aimed at our smallest financial institutions who are 100% cloud and yet are really still struggling,” added Conklin, who previously warned of small banks’ limitations in using AI to ward off cyber threats.
CFPB Director Rohit Chopra echoed Conklin’s concerns about small financial institutions, particularly with regard to “bargaining leverage” that banks and credit unions of that size lack “to make sure their systems can be turned on quickly, just like the biggest names on Wall Street.”
Chopra also raised concerns about the current cloud market, which is dominated by a few major service providers tied to a handful of Big Tech companies. Chopra wondered aloud whether federal agencies should be “enhancing some of the regulations” covering top cloud providers, while also crediting the participating financial institutions in providing a roadmap to secure services.
“Just imagine what will happen to families and businesses in this economy if they cannot make payments, they cannot withdraw money, or they cannot do what they need to do in their daily lives,” he said. “We need to make sure that our cloud infrastructure is resilient, that it is always working, and that an outage does not create a massive financial crisis.”
CIO-SP3 contracts extended through April 2025 amid issues with successor
The CIO-SP3 governmentwide acquisition contract for IT services operated by the National Institutes of Health were again extended, this time for nine months, while bid protests over the embattled successor CIO-SP4 persist.
In an update posted this week, NIH’s Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center (NITAAC) said that CIO-SP3 and its small business counterpart would be extended through April 2025 to ensure there won’t be a break in service.
The extension “ensures CIO-SP3 and CIO-SP3 Small Business are available for use during the busy end of year buying season. From laptops to desktops to everything IT, NITAAC will continue to be your one-stop shop for all your IT acquisition needs,” the post said.
The new extension of CIO-SP3 — which stands for Chief Information Officer-Solutions and Partners 3 — comes as its fourth iteration continues to face challenges from companies competing for awards. That contract, CIO-SP4, is a 10-year contracting vehicle valued at $50 billion. NITAAC began soliciting proposals for CIO-SP4 in May 2021.
After the resolution of dozens of bid protests last summer and the agency’s commitment to corrective action, NITAAC in January began sending new notices to successful and unsuccessful offerors. Almost immediately, bid protests at the Government Accountability Office and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims resurfaced, and in February, NITAAC announced it was requesting to extend the contract through October.
NITAAC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the exact reason for the extension.
Energy highlights roadmap for FASST AI program
The Department of Energy on Tuesday released an artificial intelligence roadmap focused on its Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence for Science, Security, and Technology — or FASST — program.
The initiative, which is focused on national security, building the AI workforce, and advancing breakthroughs with energy and science, would help coordinate Energy’s work on advancing AI technology.
The FASST effort includes components on assembling datasets that are ideal for training artificial intelligence, building AI-capable computing resources, developing trustworthy AI models, and advancing myriad applications of the technology.
“Artificial intelligence is an innovative technology that can help unleash breakthroughs in energy technologies and enhance our national security,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a press release. “FASST builds on DOE’s role as the nation’s steward of advanced supercomputing and research infrastructure across our 17 national labs to provide a national capability in AI and enable technological breakthroughs for decades to come.”
The Energy Department has been eager to highlight how its network of national laboratories, and its supercomputers could be used to accelerate artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, legislation introduced last week by Sens. Joe Manchin, I-W.Va., and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, would authorize the FASST initiative and advance the agency’s role in boosting the technology.
“As AI technology takes the world by storm, the United States needs to meet the moment quickly and effectively before our adversaries do,” Manchin, who serves as chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement last week.
He continued: “The DOE and its network of national laboratories are ready and able to bring our nation to the next level of scientific discovery and global competitiveness through the innovation of safe and responsible AI.”
GSA calls for nominations to emerging tech-focused acquisition advisory committee
The General Services Administration’s Acquisition Policy Federal Advisory Committee (GAP FAC) is seeking nominations for members who have expertise in emerging technology and acquisition.
In a Federal Register posting Tuesday, the GSA said the recently renewed GAP FAC will be composed of between 10 and 30 federal and non-federal members to support the group’s new focus area within artificial intelligence, cloud computing and infrastructure, machine learning, cybersecurity and other technology-related subjects.
The committee will focus on turning the following topics into “more detailed and actionable priorities,” per the posting: policy and regulatory changes that could enable the use of generative AI for federal acquisition; how the GSA acquisition policy could strengthen the role of disruptive, emerging technologies in the acquisition process; and cybersecurity and accessibility considerations adopted to ensure equitable environments, among others.
“In the selection of members for the advisory committee, GSA will follow the process in GSA Order ADM 5420.40E, GSA Federal Advisory Committee Management Program, and consider a cross-section of those directly affected, interested, and qualified, as appropriate to the nature and functions of the advisory committee,” the notice states.
Along with its exploration into the use of AI in the acquisition process, the committee will also be focused on “identifying guardrails to safeguard the acquisition of disruptive technology — to ensure clarity on requirements and business value.”
Udaya Patnaik, chief innovation officer for the Office of IT Category in GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, said last month during a Professional Services Council event that the limited knowledge of AI’s capabilities aren’t clear, presenting a challenge when trying to interact with a “constantly evolving technology.”
“That requires a level of transparency between industry and government to really say, ‘look, this is what we know, and this is what we don’t know,’” Patnaik said
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers have introduced bipartisan legislation that would require federal agencies to assess risks posed by AI, including data ownership and civil liberties, before purchasing.
After 2023 outage that paused flights nationwide, FAA now has backup system
Back in January of last year, contractors working with the Federal Aviation Administration accidentally deleted files while trying to update a database, inadvertently disrupting the Notice to Air Missions system that the agency uses to communicate important flight information to pilots. The outage forced the FAA to issue a nationwide ground stop and pause thousands of flights — one of the largest disruptions to air traffic since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
But the agency has now confirmed that there’s a backup system in place and that systems involved in sending NOTAMs have been updated.
“The FAA developed a contingency system which is used to issue Notice to Air Missions (NOTAMS) to pilots if the primary system is experiencing an outage,” the agency said in a statement to FedScoop. “Equipment and systems dealing with NOTAMs have been updated and a NOTAM Task Force has been created to improve policies and processes. These are still in place and have been communicated to staff.”
The agency addressed the issue within hours of the initial outage in 2023 and flights resumed soon afterward. Still, the malfunction catalyzed bipartisan interest in improving the country’s NOTAM system, which are used to communicate important issues to pilots, like warnings about weather and closed-off airspace.
The National Archives and Records Administration sought further information from the FAA about potentially destroyed records almost immediately after news outlets reported on the ground stop. While there were other copies of the records, the FAA told NARA that it had subsequently implemented a staggered backup database approach in order to avoid “a cascading system failure.”
The agency also told NARA that it now requires that two people be on site when the NOTAM system is undergoing maintenance and that a federal employee provides supervision.
In June of last year, the Biden administration approved the NOTAM Improvement Act, which required that the FAA create a task force to study potential improvements to the system. Last July, the FAA sought information from private industry about potential ways to improve the system.
VA plans to award AI tech sprint winners contracts for ambient medical transcription services
The Department of Veterans Affairs released a notice of intent to issue sole source contracts for an artificial intelligence-enabled healthcare dictation tool late last week.
On behalf of the Veterans Health Administration, the VA’s Strategic Acquisition Center announced that it plans to award non-competitive, fixed-price contracts to Abridge AI, Inc. and Nuance Communications, Inc., two AI platform providers for the healthcare industry, according to the notice. The two vendors will conduct cloud-based, ambient scribe pilots that use AI to transcribe clinical encounters and generate notes in medical settings.
The anticipated sole-source awards are the result of the businesses winning the first track of the VA’s AI Tech Sprint, which focused on generating transcriptions from ambient recordings of patient encounters within specialty care, mental health care and primary care settings, according to the agency’s site.
Through the notice, the VA is also soliciting feedback from other parties that believe they could meet the needs of the contracts.
The VA was tasked in President Biden’s October AI executive order with running two tech sprints. In addition to the first track, the agency held a second tech sprint seeking an AI system to process documents generated in patient-provider encounters and other complex medical documents for “increasing continuity of care for veterans” and sharing “key points” with VA providers, the agency said.
The pilot program will integrate with the VA’s electronic health record modernization program and workflows, the notice states. Providers will be able to start recording without the manual entry of a patient’s identifying information, and draft notes can be automatically inserted into the EHR without manually copying and pasting.
Charles Worthington, the chief AI and technology officer for the VA, said in a recent interview with FedScoop that the agency has a list of high-priority AI use cases that it is “really leaning into,” including the tech sprints.
“I feel like right now, we’re in that awkward stage where most of these tools are a different window … where there’s a lot of flipping back and forth between tools and figuring out how best to integrate those AI tools with the more traditional systems,” Worthington said in the interview. “I think that’s just kind of a relatively unfigured-out problem. Especially, if you think of a place like VA, where we have a lot of legacy systems, things that have been built over the past number of decades, oftentimes updating those is not the easiest thing.”
In the same interview, Worthington said that the VA’s technical infrastructure was on “pretty good footing” — despite the threat of funding reductions from Congress for fiscal 2025. That potential for forthcoming fiscal challenges comes after the VA has faced trouble on Capitol Hill regarding concerns with modernization upgrades, a lack of AI-related disclosures and inadequate tech contractor sanctions, and consistent scrutiny of the department’s Oracle Cerner-developed EHR, which has just seen a contract extension.