Why a former Pixar exec joined GSA’s new tech service

Rob Cook has worked with Oscar-winning creative geniuses at Pixar who produced acclaimed animated films like “Toy Story” and “Finding Nemo.” Now at the helm of the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Service, Cook says the talent of the bureaucracy hackers and civic-minded technologists he’s gotten to know since his hire in late October is “as good as anything I’ve ever seen.”

The ability to join such a team dedicated to “inspiring” work that makes “a big difference that trickles down and that impacts people’s lives” is what brought Cook out of his “failed semi-retirement” to take a job in government, something he never imagined he’d ever do.

In first meeting with members of GSA’s 18F team, which is now housed in the newly formed TTS organization, more than a year ago at a conference, “I felt like I was in a group that was full of people that were as good as people I’d ever met in the private technology sector,” Cook told FedScoop.

That, combined with the “potential to do something and have it matter to people” and the immense challenge at hand, drew him in. But he only thought he’d maybe consult with 18F, not take on a role as the commissioner of GSA’s newest governmentwide service.

That’s where tech recruiter-in-chief  and former U.S. CTO Todd Park came in.

The two met at a TED Talks conference. “We started talking and just really, really hit it off,” Cook said. “One thing led to another and that’s how I ended up here.”

Cook saw quite a few similarities in his past work with Pixar using computer graphics to produce realistic animation and in the mission of the roughly 300-member TTS team.

“To have it be just one creative person, the director, and 300 people just doing what they’re told, it’s not going to be a very good movie,” Cook said. “You want lots of creativity going into it. But if that creativity works in all sort of different directions, then it’s not going to cast a spell on you. The things they did to make that work were really similar to the things that make software work.”

The organizations also share the challenge of bringing new practices into industries that have operated the same way for many, many years. At Pixar, it was the challenge of merging teams of artists and software engineers to create something bigger than either of them individually envisioned. With TTS, it’s matching largely private-sector technologists with acquisition and program personnel to digitize and drive efficiency to government services.

“It’s this idea of two completely different worlds who don’t speak the same language getting to know each other and getting to be partners toward something that neither one of them could do by themselves,” Cook said.

That may prove a difficult task for Cook, who has no experience in the government outside of being a citizen. But in his first month, he’s had many people in the federal IT space — U.S. CIO Tony Scott, his adviser and form 18F Executive Director Aaron Snow, GSA CIO David Shive, and former founding TTS commissioner Phaedra Chrousos — giving him a crash course of how it all works.

“It’s actually been one of the best things in my first month, how much people have been willing to spend time with me and fill me in on things, repeat acronyms,” he said while laughing, “and give me history, and give me context, introduce me to people. We touch so many agencies and all parts of government, so there’s a lot of context. I’m still just trying to drink in all that context.”

Relevant to the idiosyncrasies of government work, when Cook started back in late October, he had a week-old GSA inspector general’s report waiting for him claiming 18F had lost $31 million since fiscal 2014 due to “inaccurate financial projections, increased staffing levels, and the amount of staff time spent on non-billable activities.” Despite the contention that continues to swirl around the 18F team, particularly from private contractors and federal-tech trade groups, the new leader saw that report as a “helpful” blueprint for things he needed to address early on.

“Everything in there is pretty straight forward,” Cook said. “I didn’t see anything in there that’s particularly hard to do. Those will be easy problems to fix. I’m actually glad they were spelled out.”

As for the $31 million lost, Cook doesn’t “see any problem with that.”

“Look at a startup company. How many startup companies are profitable their first day?” he said. “This is an investment I think will pay off hundreds or thousands” times more. “If you look at the impact we can have on government as a whole, making the government a better buyer, there’s just vast amounts of money we can save the government.”

Cook has his sights set on doing just that — saving the government money though better IT acquisition — in the long term.

“By far the largest impact I think we can have is to make the government a better buyer of technology,” he said. “It’s just not a very good buyer of technology. The way it works excluded a huge amount of the talent out in the private sector. It requires companies to go through a process that almost sets it up to be super expensive and a lot of extra work and frustrating and not work very well in the end. It’s amazing people can get anything done through that process.”

And the way to do that? Of course, Cook goes back to the talent.

“In order for government to be better buyers of technology, they’ve got to have people inside the government who are the best and brightest at technology,” he said, citing 18F and TTS’s model of bringing in technologists for two-to-four year terms, “constantly bringing fresh blood in” to keep up with the pace of technology and keep things from getting “stale.”

“It’s just a matter of getting the best brains in here,” he said.

Despite that, Cook said TTS is never going to grow much bigger than it currently is. The intention remains that industry will do the heavy lifting.

TTS is “always going to be reasonably small because the impact we’re going to have is through the leverage into the agencies and industry,” he said. Reforming IT acquisition and how agencies buy digital services, Cook explained, is “an important part of what we do and I think it’s the one that has the biggest chance for leverage.”

Trump’s Homeland pick highlights doubts on DHS cyber role

This report first appeared on CyberScoop.

By picking retired Marine Gen. John Kelly as secretary of Homeland Security, President-elect Donald Trump has amplified concerns about DHS’s role in defending the nation in cyberspace under his administration.

With the department’s new leaders expected to focus heavily on border and immigration security — and the incoming administration seemingly determined to unleash the capabilities of the military and the NSA in cyberspace  — many insiders fret that cybersecurity will take a back seat at DHS.

In formally naming Kelly on Monday, Trump called him “the right person to spearhead the urgent mission of stopping illegal immigration and securing our borders, streamlining [the Transportation Security Administration] and improving coordination between our intelligence and law enforcement agencies.”

Trump lauded his “decades of military service and deep commitment to fighting the threat of terrorism inside our borders,” and the statement mentions his leadership of interagency drug and human trafficking interdiction efforts on the southern border.

There is no mention of DHS’s congressionally mandated role as the lead civilian agency responsible for U.S. cybersecurity.

This may not be an oversight.

“This administration will take border security very seriously indeed,” said Texas GOP Rep Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, “That will be the first priority right out of the gate.”

But former officials say it will come at the expense of the department’s other priorities — including especially cybersecurity. And, privately, people involved with the Trump transition say there is talk that the new administration should “unleash” the military and the intelligence community in cyberspace.

Hawkish conservatives, like onetime Trump transition figure former Rep. Mike Rogers, have warned that the U.S. is “not putting its best players on the field” in cybersecurity because of restrictions on the NSA’s role in cyber-incident response.

The Trump transition press office did not respond to requests for comment.

Connections vs. priorities

One former senior Bush administration DHS official told CyberScoop that Kelly should “aggressively fight to be a leader on cyber,” in the new Cabinet. “DHS needs to build relevant programs that have value to its private-sector partners,” said James Norton, now president of his own consultancy Play-Action Strategies.

Kelly’s background could “immediately help to build bridges with the DOD and intelligence community agencies that are more organized and better funded when it comes to cybersecurity,” added Norton.

The problem, pointed out another former senior DHS official, is that Kelly will face pressure to prioritize immigration and border enforcement above all else.

John Cohen, who held several posts in the department during the Obama administration, added: “DHS is not the department of border and immigration security, it has a very broad mission set” stretching from countering home grown terrorism to improving disaster response and resilience, ensuring the security of the nation’s ports and waterways and, of course, cybersecurity.

“His challenge,” he said of Kelly, “will be serving as a champion and supporter of all of those diverse missions while dealing with [that] pressure from the White House.”

For instance, it takes six to nine months to recruit, select, background check, hire and train a new agent for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — the agency responsible for tracking down and deporting illegal immigrants.

“If the new administration wants to make a difference on day one, the only way to do that is to reassign ICE agents currently working other missions” like counter-proliferation, counter terrorism, and cybercrime.

“Cybersecurity is at or near the top of the list in terms of our priorities” at DHS, Secretary Jeh Johnson said when asked last week about the issue.

He warned the new administration against losing focus on the issue,  “DHS is positioned to be the federal civilian agency that deals with cybersecurity … it needs to be a top priority on a bipartisan basis.”

Cohen is skeptical about a greater role for the military and the NSA in cybersecurity, pointing out that the debate over their role long predates DHS.

“This whole discussion has been going on since the 1980s,” he said, pointing out it has repeatedly been resolved in favor of civilian agencies.

If the new administration is “interested in shifting those responsibilities, they will face the same resistance,” he said, “Private-sector folks are very resistant to turning the security of civilian networks over to NSA.”

“You can’t militarize cyber,” said former Rep. Jane Harman, who was the senior-most Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee for many years. She said a civilian agency was needed to protect the private sector.

Open Government Data Act set for progress in 2017 after Senate passage

A bill codifying and building on the president’s executive order and the White House’s Open Data Policy passed the Senate unanimously early on Saturday morning, in a surprising last-minute effort to get the bill through the chamber before the holidays.

The OPEN Government Data Act, which sets in place a presumption that government data should be published in an open, machine-readable format, will likely not make it to President Barack Obama’s desk. But the bill could be reintroduced next year.

“Because transparency keeps Washington accountable to the people, government data should be made public unless an administration makes a compelling reason not to,” said Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., who introduced the legislation with Sen. Brian Schatz D-Hawaii, in a statement. “After passing the Senate with bipartisan support, we have momentum to carry this important work into the new year.”

Hudson Hollister, executive director of the Data Coalition, told FedScoop the bill is well positioned to pass next year, and that Texas Republican Rep. Blake Farenthold’s office told the coalition he plans to reintroduce the very similar House version of the bill again next year.

Hollister also noted that, “because the Senate has passed [this bill] unanimously … it bodes well for quick passage in both chambers when the new Congress begins.”

Center for Data Innovation Director Daniel Castro noted in a statement that the “the Senate’s willingness to support the bill in the final hours of its session should send a strong signal to the incoming Congress that there is momentum and bipartisan support to pass the OPEN Government Data Act in the first days of its session.”

The Congressional Budget Office’s analysis, published Dec. 5, estimated that implementing the Senate bill “would have no significant effect on spending because agencies effectively are already working to implement the requirements of the bill.”

That estimate led to the bill’s quick passage, Hollister said.

Castro said in his statement that the bill would both codify and improve existing open data requirements.

“In addition, by quickly passing the legislation in 2017, Congress will signal to developers and investors that open data will remain a permanent responsibility of the U.S. government regardless of changing political winds, creating less risk for those who may want to build apps or services using the data,” Castro notes.

The bill’s passage, Hollister said, would show Congress is asserting its authority on opening data.

“If we move from having the policy in place to having the law in place… with the beginning of the Trump administration that means Congress is taking the lead in open data,” Hollister said.

He noted that with the passage of law like the DATA Act, Congress had taken a limited role in mandating open data in specific areas, but this law is “broader,” covering nearly everything government does.

“And I think here you’re seeing Congress recognize that this is so important that we can’t leave it up to the discretion of whoever is running the executive branch,” Hollister said. “Congress ought to insist, because Congress has control over the purse.”

The Data Coalition, the Center for Data Innovation and the Sunlight Foundation all pushed for movement on the bill early next year in respective statements.

Despite NIST’s warnings, SMS still being used for two-factor authentication

This report first appeared on CyberScoop.

Despite increasingly loud warnings from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, people are still using SMS messages for two-factor authentication in order to protect their accounts and networks.

Over the summer, NIST pushed U.S. government agencies to move away from SMS authentication, which is impossible to verify and easy to intercept. But six months after the security edict against SMS, little appears to have changed, according to a new report from Duo Security, a firm focused on secure access.

SMS authentication “still accounts for hundreds of thousands of authentication requests a day showing no significant change after NIST updated its guidance,” Duo’s Mayank Saha wrote.

The most popular authentication tool are authentication apps like Google Authenticator and RSA SecurID, a method sharply on the rise over the last year. That’s followed by phone calls and text messages. Last on the list are Universal 2-Factor tools like NitroKey and YubiKey which has seen a “huge spike in orders this year,” according to the company, but remains by far the least-used method of authentication.

U2F keys are widely considered the most secure authentication tool because they cannot be spoofed, intercepted or phished the way other methods can. By design, however, U2F requires a new piece of paid hardware and a short but significant learning curve. When compared to the ease of use for apps and text messages, U2F will struggle mightily to gain widespread use for that reason. The method may thrive in highly regulated environments, though, where security practices can be strictly mandated.

Although there has been no significant change since NIST issued the new guidelines, the use of SMS has been in “gentle decline” since the beginning of 2016.

Using SMS as verification for your accounts is widely seen as a clear step up from passwords alone. But when you’re looking at highly-targeted people like U.S. government personnel, the security problems that plague SMS are widely seen as beyond repair. Highly vulnerable texts leave government networks open to the kind of hacking seen against targets in Iran, Russia and America.

“While a password coupled with SMS has a much higher level of protection relative to passwords alone, it doesn’t have the strength of device authentication mechanisms inherent in the other authenticators allowable in NIST draft SP 800-63-3,” Paul Grassi, NIST’s senior standards and technology adviser, explained earlier this year. “It’s not just the vulnerability of someone stealing your phone, it’s about the SMS that’s sent to the user being read by a malicious actor without getting her or his grubby paws on your phone.”

NIST’s Digital Authentication Guideline has concluded its public comment period. A new draft is due by the end of the year. The agency is still accepting comments until December 16 on biometric authentication.

Army’s cybersecurity director takes over as DOD CISO

The Army’s former director of cybersecurity is taking over as the Defense Department’s chief information security officer, effective Monday, FedScoop has learned.

Essye Miller is replacing Richard Hale, who left the post on Nov. 26 to retire from government. Hale had served in the role for more than five years.

[Read more: Defense CISO Richard Hale to retire]

In an interview with FedScoop in April, Miller said the Army had made “great strides in the cyber arena.”

“I think we’re working to better see ourselves and understand what is happening internal to the network so we can become a bit more predictive and prescriptive in what we do,” Miller said at the time. “I think we’re very well postured to deal with threats, but we’re continuing to grow in that area as well.”

[Watch: Essye Miller on the Army’s cybersecurity]

In the past, Miller has also served as the chief information officer at Air Force headquarters.

In her interview in April, Miller said she views cybersecurity as “an opportunity” to strengthen the military but also to “enforce discipline, and rigor across the network, and to get back to the basics and the hygiene.”

“You know the more increased awareness we have I think the more responsiveness we’ll get, not only from the user base but it postures us to defend ourselves much better,” she said.

Contact Samantha via email at samantha.ehlinger@fedscoop.com, or follow her on Twitter at @samehlinger. Subscribe to the Daily Scoop for stories like this in your inbox every morning by signing up here: fdscp.com/sign-me-on.

Chief data officer leaving Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

Niall Brennan, chief data officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is leaving the agency, FedScoop has learned.

Brennan, also CMS’s director of the Office of Enterprise Data and Analytics, will “pursue new opportunities,” according to an email sent to CMS staff last week.

During his tenure as CMS’s first chief data officer, Brennan was a leading advocate for the liberation of health data and spurring innovation around it to improve the quality of medical care.

“Under Niall’s leadership, CMS took its data governance, analytic, and dissemination efforts to a new level. Niall has been at the forefront of the government data liberation movement, resulting in CMS being recognized as a model for other public and private organizations,” the email from CMS leadership says. “Niall and his team have also modernized and increased CMS analytic capabilities, resulting in increased access to real-time analytics and more interactive dashboards for both internal and external users. Niall also led the back-end data reconciliation effort for healthcare.gov and continues to lead CMS reporting and analytics for the marketplace.”

FedScoop caught up with Brennan in July 2015, highlighting the growth of CMS’s data movement under his leadership.

Brennan’s deputy, Chris Cox, will replace him as acting CDO. Cox, who’s served as deputy CDO for more than five years, has more than 30 years of federal service, beginning her career at the National Center for Health Statistics.

CMS did not comment further on Brennan’s departure.

DHS: Georgia incident was legitimate work, not a hack

This report first appeared on CyberScoop.

The Department of Homeland Security told Georgia’s Office of Secretary of State that the IP address associated with an attempted breach of the state agency’s firewall was tracked to an office in U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a revelation that has DHS “deeply concerned.”

According to DHS, someone on the federal department’s security network was conducting legitimate business on the state office’s website, verifying a professional license administered by the state. The state office manages information about corporate licenses and certificates on its website.

The Wall Street Journal was the first to report on the federal department’s response.

A spokesperson for Georgia’s secretary of state office told CyberScoop on Monday that the agency was unaware of any correspondence and is “working with DHS” to resolve the matter.

Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp issued a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Thursday after the state’s third-party cybersecurity provider detected an IP address from the agency’s Southwest D.C. office trying to penetrate the state’s firewall. According to the letter, the attempt was unsuccessful.

In a reply, a DHS official said the agency tracked the office to an address associated with CBP, which hosts a portion of DHS’s network. The agency, which is the largest law enforcement agency inside DHS, does not typically get involved in cybersecurity matters.

“DHS has not intentionally scanned the systems of the Georgia Secretary of State office. DHS has not tried to break into those systems,” Phil McNamara, DHS’s Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs wrote in an email obtained by the Journal. “When DHS does scans of a customer, we do not do them through the CBP Internet Gateway. CBP is an entirely different organization. We are deeply concerned with this situation. We’ve had a team working throughout the day trying to determine what has happened.”

Georgia’s cybersecurity provider informed the Office of the Secretary of State that the breach attempt occurred Nov. 15, a few days after the presidential election. The office is responsible for overseeing elections in Georgia.

“At no time has my office agreed to or permitted DHS to conduct penetration testing or security scans of our network,” Kemp wrote in the letter, which was also sent to the state’s members of Congress. “Moreover, your department has not contacted my office since this unsuccessful incident to alert us of any security event that would require testing or scanning of our network. This is especially odd and concerning since I serve on the Election Cyber Security Working Group that your office created.”

Obama’s biggest achievement in tech? Getting nerds into the room, DJ Patil says

Technologists were welcomed into the highest echelons of government during President Obama’s eight years in office — a shift that allowed the White House to discuss the nation’s biggest problems in completely novel ways, says the administration’s chief data scientist.

“People look around the room and it’s that moment where somebody says, ‘who here is the technologist?’” said U.S. Chief Data Scientist DJ Patil in an interview with FedScoop. “And this is happening in the Oval [Office], this is happening in the Roosevelt Room, this is happening in some small room totally off-campus in some other agency.”

While the administration was able to celebrate several tangible projects that incorporate technology or data in big ways — the Precision Medicine Initiative, Data.gov, Code.gov and others — Patil says Obama’s presidency is just as noteworthy for a shift that nobody saw. Great tech minds are now at the proverbial table in federal government, he says, citing the presence of techies like adviser Ed Felten and the creation of groups like the U.S. Digital Service.

Patil’s most important takeaway from his time in government? When there’s a technologist at the table, “suddenly you get a much different approach of potential ideas,” says Patil, the first person to hold the U.S. chief data scientist title.

As an example, Patil noted Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s Hack the Pentagon program. It happened not only because Carter is interested in technology, but also “he has people like the Defense Digital Service right there, down from his office.” Carter established DDS to improve the Pentagon’s tech capabilities.

Patil noted that Carter — and even Obama — are in regular touch with the data science team.

“The president calls us all the time, like ‘there’s an issue. What’s your thoughts?’” Patil said. “That’s a difference.” Obama, Patil said, looks to data and technology in general to support real-world problems — on everything from delivering better health care to improving policing.

When asked about how to make the administration’s gains in technology and data stick, Patil pointed to his “data cabinet” — a group of chief data officers and data leaders in agencies that meets once a month to discuss ways to better use data. More than 24 agencies have some type of chief data official, Patil noted.

“That’s kind of the part that also gives me the biggest hope, is like, those aren’t politicals,” Patil said of the data cabinet. “Those are all career people.”

Patil himself is a political appointee who is unlikely to stick around for Donald Trump’s administration. FedScoop talked to Patil at Amazon Web Services’s re: Invent conference about everything from Obama’s technology legacy, to what he sees ahead in the federal data landscape. Here’s what he said:

Obama’s approach: ‘We design with you’

“I think the reason this president has been so singularly effective is because he’s seen in every single thing, from the beginning of his campaign, how data and technology have transformed and been literally a force multiplier,” Patil said. “You’re on the campaign trail. How do you get the word out more effectively, how do you talk to people, how do you communicate? Data. Technology. Things that now are taken for granted.”

He added: “In every policy decision or discussion, you just see data and technology just continues to compound.”

Patil said Obama’s own way of approaching problems led to a people-centric approach to using technology to solve problems. That “design thinking” influenced some of the president’s major initiatives, like the Precision Medicine Initiative, a push to use patients’ genetic, environmental and lifestyle data to find better ways to treat illnesses, Patil said. The president reminded everyone that patients would always be “directly” at the table, Patil said, not just an advocacy group.

“That has been a game-changer that I think is going to be forever changing the way federal government happens,” Patil said. “And that comes singularly from the president.”

Instead of government saying it will design for the citizen, Patil said the president’s approach emphasizes designing with the citizen. Patil thinks that mindset comes from Obama’s time as a community organizer.

“The most stunning thing to me has always been, and I still don’t understand this is, how does a congressional law scholar get this form of design thinking?” Patil said of Obama. “Where the first question he asks is like, so how are you going to make sure that real humans are around the table at this?”

Examples from the field: AI policy and Data.gov

When discussing how artificial intelligence would impact the country, Obama’s first question was: “What’s it going to mean with autonomous vehicles for the trucking industry? What’s it going to mean for these other jobs?” Patil said.

“That, I think, is deeply, deeply profound given the complexity of the space, and being able to reduce it most to what is important for people,” Patil said.

The administration made an effort explore the implications of artificial intelligence through workshops and requests for information from the community, which coalesced in a report and a “high-level framework” of goals for the executive branch related to research and development of AI.

But getting to that people-centered approach is not always easy, and Patil said one of the administration’s initiatives in particular is still struggling to establish a good feedback loop. Data.gov launched in 2009 as the government’s first data catalogue, and while the site has seen the opening of many government datasets, it has also been subject to some criticism for its usability and success at reaching intended audiences.

Patil noted that from the site’s launch, government staff had been trying to figure out how to create a good user feedback model.

“No one’s figured out a good way to make that scalable on a website,” Patil said. “And so there’s versions of it that we’ve tried over time and that’s going to have to continue to iterate and try.”

Patil said another issue in the website’s future is figuring out who stores the data.

“There’s a lot of really great datasets, particularly in sciences, where people say ‘Hey, I’m out of funding, or these computers are getting old, where do I put this data?’” Patil said. “Where is that supposed to go, how are we supposed to think about that? That’s another turn that the teams are going to have to think about in the next iteration.”

But he did note that the site has been extremely effective in giving cities a model for opening data.

“You have cities who have said, ‘Oh that’s Data.gov. Well let’s take that idea of Data.gov and let’s make it ours,’” Patil said.

Cities and states: ‘Zika doesn’t care that the city line is here’

During Patil’s tenure, he also worked on White House initiatives that necessitated working with city and state leaders, like the Data-Driven Justice Initiative.

“Many of the problems that we’re talking about don’t care if it’s federal or state, Zika doesn’t care that the city line is here,” Patil said, referring to the mosquito-borne virus. “So as you start to work on a problem, a lot of the times you realize, you’re like, ‘Hmm who owns this?’”

Patil said local initiatives are often held back by a lack of knowledge-sharing between cities.

“We talk about A/B experiments, A/B testing in websites, like ‘button green worked better than button blue.’ But we forget that every city is an A/B experiment,” he said.

And that’s where federal leaders come in, Patil said.

“Data-Driven Justice is a good example of this, and that now covers 94 million Americans, 138 jurisdictions, 10 states,” Patil said. “It kind of started by getting a bunch of police chiefs and commissioners and all the right people in the room and sort of starting to talk.”

Patil noted that the initiative doesn’t involve passing any data to the government, “we’re just acting as an excuse in many ways, or an accelerant for the criminal justice system to talk to the healthcare system. And bringing in the [Chief Information Officer], because those parts of the city don’t talk.”

The road ahead: More opportunities to serve?

Looking back, Patil said there were many projects he wanted to start, but never had the time.

“Criminal justice, one of the ones I think we haven’t done is how to make the judiciary more data-driven?” Patil said. “The ability to help a judge be more efficient, to make a smarter decision that actually will have an increased outcome base for them.”

He noted too, that he wanted to get involved with making sure every training program around data and technology has a “true, good, quality curriculum around what ethics and security should look like.”

“I think academia will get there, and they’ll do the right thing, but I would love to have seen that happen,” Patil said.

Another initiative he wished he had time to delve into was finding a way to better facilitate the rotation of people into and out of government.

“Both ways, allowing people to go back and forth without this feeling that — Why do we make it feel like you sold out if you went to industry?” He said. “It’s like no, great. Let’s celebrate. Come back though — come back and share.”

He added: “We should live in a world where it’s not did you serve, but when did you serve? That would be much much better.”

Contact Samantha via email at samantha.ehlinger@fedscoop.com, or follow her on Twitter at @samehlinger. Subscribe to the Daily Scoop for stories like this in your inbox every morning by signing up here: fdscp.com/sign-me-on.

President Obama calls for intel report on Russian hacking

This report first appeared on CyberScoop.

The White House is calling on U.S. intelligence agencies to deliver a comprehensive report that will contain evidence concerning Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The request is making headlines just days after lawmakers in both the House and Senate announced plans this week to launch similar probes into the matter.

In early October, the Homeland Security Department and Office of the Director of National Intelligence formally accused Russia of hacking into the Democratic National Committee. Internal DNC communications were subsequently leaked and shared on social media, causing reputational damage to an organization at the center of a presidential election.

NBC News, citing an unnamed senior intelligence official, reports the information may be made public. White House counterterrorism advisor Lisa Monaco told reporters Friday about the White House request.

A timeline for when the report will be delivered remains unclear. CyberScoop has reached out to the White House and ODNI for comment.

During an event hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, Monaco said that cyberattacks against the U.S. crossed a “new threshold” in 2016.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., and Senate Select Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., are reportedly working closely together to investigate Russia’s suspected interference.

But as Washington rushes to uncover information collected by the country’s intelligence agencies, lawmakers do so in the shadow of a presidential inauguration for an individual who has continuously denied Russia’s aggression in cyberspace.

As a presidential candidate, Trump not only praised Russian President Vladimir Putin but also called on the Kremlin to find missing emails belonging to his then political opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

VA CIO creating IT demand management office

The Department of Veterans Affairs will launch a new tech office in 2017 to help meet the needs of the department’s health care, benefits and cemetery lines of business.

Ron Thompson, who was the principal deputy assistant secretary and deputy CIO for VA’s Office of Information and Technology, will lead the creation of a new Demand Management Office, CIO LaVerne Council announced in an email to staff this week.

Thompson’s office will “address our need for a more defined process for accepting business partner requirements, prioritizing them throughout the organization, and helping our Account Managers communicate their status,” Council wrote in the email. “DMO is the cornerstone of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) model and will give us the foundation we need to align IT services with business needs to drive improved Veteran-focused outcomes.”

ITIL is a common set of standards for IT service management and aligning tech capabilities with business needs. The model was created by the United Kingdom government’s Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency to give agencies and private contractors a common set of standards for IT management.

Focusing on this model, Council said, “will build on our success and advance toward a new framework of service management to create the best experience for all of our Veterans and business partners across the country.”

The announcement explains the news earlier this week that Rob Thomas had been named to replace Thompson as acting deputy CIO. Bill James, new to VA’s OI&T leadership team, will replace Thomas in his former position as deputy assistant secretary for the Enterprise Program Management Office.

“These changes are exciting, and they represent a commitment to our 2017 goal of continuing transformation through service management,” Council said. “I am exceptionally confident that each of these three leaders will enable our team to create a better VA for every Veteran.”

The new office comes as the department will see a turnover in leadership with the change in administration. As a political appointee, CIO LaVerne Council will resign as the Trump administration takes office.

VA didn’t return FedScoop’s requests for comment prior to publication.