White House joins Snapchat, rolls out digital options for SOTU

If Snapchat star DJ Khaled is to be believed, the Obama administration just unlocked a major key to success.

The White House joined the ephemeral messaging platform Monday, giving the public another way to engage with the administration via social media.

Snapchat is a widely popular mobile app, with 100 million daily active users. With over 60 percent of American smartphone users between ages 13 and 34 using the platform, it gives the White House another avenue to connect with young people.

“In light of the number of Americans who use the service to consume news and share with their friends, the White House is joining Snapchat to engage this broad cross-section of the population in new and creative ways,” wrote Joshua Miller, White House director of product management, in a White House blog post.

First created to send picture messages that disappear after a few seconds, the app now has a variety of ways users can view media. The story function, which is where the White House posted its first message, is viewable for up to 24 hours after it’s been posted. A White House official told FedScoop the content will be fully compliant with Presidential Records Act requirements — snaps will be saved and preserved for the archives.

The announcement comes as the White House rolls out a suite of digital offerings for President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.

Among the new features this year is a deal with Amazon Video to offer the speech on-demand across Amazon’s content platforms. The speech will be available to watch from Wednesday through the end of the week, viewable on smart TV, Web browser, mobile device or tablet.

The digital team will also be cutting up various parts of the president’s speech, posting content on every digital platform imaginable: the administration plans to use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and Vine to blast highlights.

For those wonks looking for a bit of nostalgia, the White House is also offering annotated versions of the president’s prior State of the Union speeches through online annotation platform Genius. All seven speeches have comments from various White House officials, taking the public in-depth on some of the policy measures the president has laid over his two terms.

The White House will also stream the State of the Union Tuesday on both the White House website and YouTube, with an enhanced pre-show available the website. E! television host Terence J, rapper Wale and Matt Berninger and Brent Knopf of the band EL VY will join prior to the speech.

Contact the reporter on this story via email at greg.otto@fedscoop.com, or follow him on Twitter at @gregotto. His OTR and PGP info can be found here. Subscribe to the Daily Scoop for stories like this in your inbox every morning by signing up here: fdscp.com/sign-me-on.

GovTech startups association? The ‘devil [is] in the detail’

The founder of nonprofit government technology advocacy group Code for America wants someone to create an industry association for “Gov 2.0 Startups” that could help new entrants in the field find their footing. But how practical would that be?

A GovTech 2.0. startup association is a “function I’d love for Code for America to serve in a perfect world, but we’re not doing it now and someone should. Perhaps 2016 is finally the year?” Executive Director Jennifer Pahlka wrote in a blog post that lays out her wish list of things that could make governments work better in the new year.

The idea’s not new. Pahlka herself points out that it was first proposed in 2012 by self described “public policy entrepreneur” David Eaves. “How his vision hasn’t materialized yet is beyond me.” she wrote.

That set FedScoop wondering: Is it hard to create an association?

Technically, it’s not, said John H. Graham IV, the president and chief executive of the American Society of Association Executives in Washington, D.C.: Would-be association members just have to file paperwork with the IRS and the state, and make sure they have the right number of volunteer board members. What can be tricky, he said, is figuring out why the group is coming together to begin with.

“At the end of the day, you have to have a value proposition that people are willing and able to pay for,” he said.

He said members of a prospective association have to ask themselves whether there are other organizations doing or trying to do what the new group wants to achieve. Also, they have to determine how to monetize the group — what activities the group will undertake and what will members pay for those activities?

“That really becomes the devil in the detail in order to have an appropriate critical mass to call yourself an ‘association,’” he said.

In her blog post, Pahlka said a government technology startup association could advocate for the interests of their startup members. She also noted that Eaves had proposed “joint procurement and marketing as two possible benefits” of the group. But Graham said that bundling products like that could be tricky legally.

“You have to be careful with that you don’t run into anti-trust or price-fixing issues,” he said.  He added, “If they’re coming together to do that, that might lend itself more to a joint-venture as opposed to an association.”

New task force, meeting aim at stopping terrorists online

The U.S. government is setting up a task force on countering violent extremism, spanning multiple cabinet departments and federal agencies, to neutralize and combat the online propaganda messages and other recruitment strategies of radical Islamic terrorist groups.

The White House announced Friday that the task force will mainly be housed in the Department of Homeland Security, with a focus on thwarting the Islamic State’s use of social media to recruit and radicalize followers. The task force will receive input and staffing from the FBI, National Counterterrorism Center and other Justice Department offices.

The announcement comes as senior administration officials spent Friday meeting with top tech company executives to discuss ways in which they could help combat terrorism. A senior administration official told FedScoop that among the attendees from the administration were White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, Assistant to the President for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security Lisa Monaco, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith. Other media reports also listed FBI Director James Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch in attendance.

Executives from Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Microsoft were in attendance, but it was unclear exactly which high-level executives showed up. Multiple reports said Apple CEO Tim Cook attended.

According to an agenda of the meeting, posted online by the Guardian newspaper, officials discussed how tech companies could make it harder to use the Internet to find and mobilize recruits, as well as how technology could be used to identify recruitment patterns and create alternative content that would undermine Islamic State efforts.

The memo also mentioned encryption as a discussion point, which has been a hot topic in Washington as Comey has called on tech companies to devise a way for law enforcement to access encrypted systems.

Additionally, the State Department will also launch a Global Engagement Center, aimed at creating social media campaigns that will counteract the Islamic State’s social media propaganda.

Focus on thwarting the efforts of the Islamic State’s social media campaign have been thrust to the forefront of administration priorities after attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California.

“Countering violent extremism has become a homeland security imperative, and it is a mission to which I am personally committed,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson in a release. “The interagency task force that we are announcing today…will bring together the best resources and personnel from across the executive branch to ensure that we face the challenge of violent extremism in a unified and coordinated way.”

GSA considers free cloud toolbox for other agencies

The General Services Administration is looking to add yet another program to help federal government departments get to the cloud, this time at no cost to agencies.

The Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies — GSA’s line of business that develops and maintains a free collection of citizen-centered digital shared services for federal agencies, like the Digital Analytics Program, Data.gov and the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program office — issued a request for information last week on the possibility of acquiring “cloud portfolio analysis support services,” or a collection of tools, platforms and services to help agencies in their transition away from legacy systems.  

Through its efforts with the standards-setting FedRAMP and a cloud program management office on the acquisition side, GSA has made significant strides as a guide and adviser helping federal agencies in their journey to cloud, the RFI says. “However, there are still distinct needs and services GSA could provide to assist agencies greater in their move to the cloud.”

“Currently, FedRAMP helps accelerate the adoption of secure cloud solutions, but we know that agencies could use additional help,” GSA Spokeswoman Tania Mejia told FedScoop. “This RFI is the first step in getting OCSIT positioned so that it can provide a full portfolio of products and services that will help agencies research, procure, and effectively use cloud services.”

“No matter where an agency is on their journey to the cloud, OCSIT wants to be able to deliver a product or service that will help an agency get to the cloud faster, with less confusion, and avoid any errors along the way,” the RFI states.

Like OCSIT’s other services, the intention is that the portfolio would be free to agency customers. 

OSCIT anticipates the acquired portfolio would cost between $1 million and $3 million, and it wants to procure it in an agile, startup-like manner, Mejia said.

“OCSIT is looking for industry partners to help grow this portfolio in a lean, startup way by focusing directly on agency needs — creating a portfolio based on true demand,” she said.

The RFI lists several questions for vendors to comment organized around five broad topics, like their experience delivering governmentwide programs and approach to building such a technology program. Vendors have until Feb. 3 to respond. 

DNI names cyber intelligence center leadership

A veteran FBI intelligence analyst will head the Obama administration’s new Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, marking the coming of age of the analyst career track at the bureau, and one of the final steps in getting the multiagency center up and running.

Tonya Ugoretz, the FBI’s chief intelligence officer, will be the cyber center’s first chief, announced Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in a statement Thursday. Her deputy will be the National Security Agency’s senior-most cyber official, Associate Deputy Director for Cyber Maurice “Mo” Bland and the center’s Research Director Thomas Donahue, a three-decade CIA veteran, rounds out the leadership team.

The center will draw on reporting about cyberthreats from across the sprawling and sometimes fractious collection of U.S. spy agencies known as the intelligence community, or IC, fusing them into so-called “all source” analysis. “Connecting the dots” to help policymakers understand foreign cyberattacks and get the best possible information about who is behind them into officials’ hands as quickly as possible.

“CTIIC will lead integrated community analysis of our cyber adversaries and support interagency efforts to develop whole-of-government opportunities against cyber threats,” Clapper said. “It will build understanding of cyber threats to inform government-wide decision-making.”

The center’s “leadership is now in place and building its staff,” Tim Barrett, Clapper’s chief of media relations. “They are not fully staffed yet.”

When President Barack Obama signed a presidential memorandum last February directing the ODNI to establish the center, “the key IC agencies that produce cyber threat reporting worked with ODNI to develop [an] … interagency Pilot Team to plan for CTIIC’s operations,” Barrett said.

The planning at that time called for a staff of 50, drawn from across the intelligence community, he said.

The center received congressional authorization and funding in the December omnibus bill.

Contact the reporter on this story at shaun.waterman@fedscoop.com. Follow him on Twitter @WatermanReports.

Audit: DHS makes progress (but not much) in IT security

The Department of Homeland Security has made significant progress in meeting the demands of the administration’s cybersecurity priorities but needs to do more, according to the department’s inspector general.

In a report released Thursday, the IG detailed an IT audit that looked at the full scope of the department, measuring various benchmarks attached to the 2014 Federal Information Security Management Act.

Among the positives the IG found were various performance plans put into place by DHS Chief Information Security Officer Jeff Eisensmith, including updated and revised metrics specifically tailored to measuring anti-phishing and malware, which provide better insight security plans and continuous monitoring efforts.

Additionally, the report found that three offices — the Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Transportation Security Administration — protected 100 percent of their high-value assets and mission-essential systems, while six of the 10 department sub-agencies exceeded the 95 percent goal for protecting all other FISMA-related systems.

Among the flaws the report finds is continued use of Windows XP, which Microsoft stopped supporting in April 2014. Various DHS offices are still working to fully remove XP from their systems, but some instances still are in use, including on workstations at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, that leave top secret data vulnerable.

Additionally, the IG found that 203 enterprise systems carrying sensitive but unclassified information were operating without an authority to do so, over half of which are managed by FEMA.

The report recommends that DHS build upon the progress made in 2015 by tightening the screws on monthly reporting, including data on classified systems in metrics reports to the Office of Management and Budget, and keeping better tabs on PIV card implementation.

You can read the full report below.

Contact the reporter on this story via email at greg.otto@fedscoop.com, or follow him on Twitter at @gregotto. His OTR and PGP info can be found here. Subscribe to the Daily Scoop for stories like this in your inbox every morning by signing up here: fdscp.com/sign-me-on.

NASA awards $485M contract to consolidate mobile app development

Space may be ever expanding, but the number of centers at America’s space agency developing their own mobile apps should soon be getting smaller.

NASA announced Wednesday it awarded a $485 million contract to Science Applications International Corp. as part of an effort consolidate development of its applications, particularly for internal functions like payroll. Under the contract, NASA’s Enterprise Applications Competency Center — based at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama — may eventually serve as a hub for all application development within the agency.

The overarching goal of the 8-year contract, which will be administered by the NASA Shared Services Center at the agency’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, is to help the agency become more efficient, said Patrick Whelan, the contracting officer for the award. And he said the project aligns with an executive order directing agencies to streamline technology.

“We have to keep the taxpayers in mind because we’re all taxpayers,” Whelan said.

Currently, many of NASA’s 10 centers, like Kennedy Space Center, each have their own people developing applications for use internally. As a result, the agency has between 100 to 125 mobile applications, he said. If the plan is successful, the Enterprise Applications Competency Center will be able to cut that number down as it finds applications that serve similar functions.

The change won’t happen overnight, he said. Chief information officers at NASA’s centers must buy into the plan. But he said that the project has the support of NASA CIO Renee Wynn.

To get the project off the ground, Whelan said he and his colleagues spent the last two years working with headquarters, centers and business units to understand their needs and concerns. The phase-in begins Feb. 1, and the contract itself does not start until April.

“It took a long time to get this point,” said Whelan, who has worked in procurement 15 years. “But we got there.”

Industry fears inflexibility in new OMB software policy

Software vendors want more clarity about how new Office of Management and Budget guidance for more centralized software licensing will affect their flexibility to deliver products and services that fit agencies’ specific needs.

“Industry has a couple of questions frankly about how some of this might work,” said Trey Hodgkins, public sector senior vice president for the Information Technology Industry Council — a trade group representing dozens of leading software companies that serve the federal government. 

OMB issued the binding guidance in December to promote more efficient and effective management and procurement of software licensing across government. The directive, signed by U.S. Chief Information Officer Tony Scott and U.S. Chief Acquisition Officer Anne Rung, was driven by a section of the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act, or FITARA, that requires agencies to take better control of their spending on software and reduce duplicative licensing.

The new guidance broadly calls for the development of governmentwide software deals — like the General Services Administration’s recent agreement to use a single contracting vehicle for all Esri software across every agency — that leverage the government’s buying power and cut redundant negotiations of similar contracts. It’s left some software vendors worried that it might affect their ability to sell to their niche customers.

[Read more: White House will fix way government buys software]

“The downside is that not all my customers may go to those [contractual] vehicles, so now I have customers looking for my product and I haven’t got it in a place where they’re looking for it or where it can be readily acquired,” Hodgkins said. 

His members are worried this type of policy, though still in draft form, may “close off their opportunities to sell products.” ITI plans to file comments on the draft soon, he said.

“One reason you see this multitude of vehicles in the federal government is because you have different customers with different needs,” Hodgkins told FedScoop. However, with the new model of consolidated, governmentwide contracts, “if you have a product, and it ends up not offered on one of those vehicles and you can’t clearly identify how to get it on one of those vehicles, then you’re just out of the market,” he said.

Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president and counsel for the Professional Services Council, which also represents a variety of federal software vendors, agreed that the push for “standardized” contracting might preclude vendors from best serving agencies with specific needs.

“Those kinds of ‘thou shall nots’ tend to be harsh,” he said. “The federal government is very big and very diverse.”

For Esri, a company that’s a pioneer in moving to this kind of contracting, the guidance feels less cut and dry. There’s still room to build custom for customers with special needs, said Jeff Peters, director of global national government sales at the company.

[Read more: GSA — New geospatial software deal could save agencies millions] 

“I think there’s always going to be custom-built software … there [are] always going to be people who need more than what the specification outlines,” Peters said. “It’s not an ‘or,’ it’s an ‘and.’”

But if every contract is thought of as unique — which is not the case, as made evident by the woes echoed throughout the federal government by CIOs overcome by duplicative, legacy systems — it becomes a problem of efficiency and wasting taxpayers’ money, he said. “FITARA has the potential to at least start to help there.”

“Where the capability meets the mission requirement, this is the best value for government,” Peters told FedScoop. “And there are going to be systems that are very custom and very specific to some things. Those systems are going to exist just like they do today. 

“But if you think of everything as a one-off custom build, you’re never going to get there,” concluded Peters.

Concerned software companies and trade groups are, however, grateful the administration released the guidance in draft format with a period to submit comments. The preceding directive on purchasing workstation hardware came without a comment period.

“Kudos to them for putting something out in draft,” said Chvotkin, whose organization, like ITI, intends to comment on behalf of its members. 

Through the comment and revision process, many in industry hope to find a balance between this new unified licensing model and best serving agencies’ one-off needs.

“It’s definitely not the answer to everything,” said Peters, conceding that even Esri’s agreement with GSA isn’t perfect. “It’s a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t include everything. The spirit of the agreement is really about contract efficiency, bringing technology quickly that allows the government to modernize.”

But if federal agencies want to see a faster move toward more efficient and cost-effective software licensing, he said, the power is in the hands of the CIOs under FITARA.

“I think it will be interesting to see if CIOs start to demand FITARA-compliant technology. If [vendors] want to be a big software company selling to the federal government, you’re going to need to be FITARA-compliant,” Peters said. Vendors, Esri included, he said, would have to comply to do business, just like they did after the emergence of the Federal Information Security Management Act and the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program.

“It was a big investment,” Peters said, “and frankly we’re a better country because of it.”

Industry has until Jan. 20 to comment on the draft guidance.

Reach the reporter on this story at billy.mitchell@fedscoop.com. Follow him on Twitter @BillyMitchell89.

Lawmakers to agencies: Stop dragging your feet on doc requests

Federal agencies are falling woefully short on delivering documents requested by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and members took umbrage during a Thursday hearing, accusing agency officials of trying to hide the truth from Congress.

It was an adversarial and at times acrimonious face-off between lawmakers of both parties and officials they slammed for dragging their feet in aiding the committee’s oversight. Some Democratic congressmen counter-charged that the GOP leaders of the panel were singling out politically advantageous fights to pick with the administration — although no officials echoed that.

Rather, representatives from the Justice Department, Homeland Security Department, Office of Personnel Management, State Department, and the White House’s Office of Management and Budget told the committee they have been inundated with congressional requests and have worked tirelessly to fulfill the hundreds they have received over the past few years.

But, when it comes to requests for information related to high-profile incidents, such as the two data breaches at OPM or the Supreme Court case that dealt with the Justice Department use of GPS, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said agencies consistently report the number of documents they produce — rather than the percentage — as a way to obfuscate their failure to give the committee what lawmakers want.

“When they want to talk about the number of documents they produced, I’m not interested in that,” Chaffetz said. “I’m interested in the percentage of documents that you produced. If we want 100 percent of the truth, we’re going to need 100 percent of the documents. Until we get them, it makes us think that you’re hiding something.”

Chaffetz was particularly irritated with the fact that OPM has sent documents that have been fully redacted, preventing the committee from learning any more about the data breaches that affected millions of current and former federal employees.

“The extraordinary lengths OPM has gone to keep basic information from the committee, leaves us with the conclusion that perhaps they’re having a lot to hide,” he said. “If something’s embarrassing, that’s not a reason to keep it from the Congress.”

When told by Jason Levine, OPM’s director of congressional, legislative and intergovernmental affairs that the redactions were to protect people’s privacy, the committee chair scoffed at what he believed to be double-speak coming from OPM CIO Donna Seymour on whether the information provided was the information Chaffetz asked for.

“She tried to get us to go away,” Chaffetz said. “That was a lie. She misled Congress. She is going to pay the price.”

That adversarial tone was woven throughout the hearing, as when multiple committee members pressed Peter Kadzik, DOJ’s assistant attorney general of legislative affairs, for reports on the department’s policies on geolocation and other surveillance technologies.

At one point, Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich., grew indignant after Kadzik pointed out both Walberg and the Justice Department have the American people’s interest at heart when it comes to crafting policy.

“You do not represent the American people,” Walberg told Kadzik. “We do.”

A few committee members tried to push through the tension to common ground, saying that both the committee and federal agencies were to blame, and noting politics often leads to antagonistic behavior. Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., called the committee on the carpet for picking its confrontations when it’s politically expedient.

“Sometimes on this side of the dais, we [in Congress] are responsible for that adversarial relationship,” he said.

Lynch called into question why the committee has hammered former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server, when another former secretary, Colin Powell, admitted to doing the same after he expressed frustration with his government-owned email address.

“We have this situation where Clinton has been pummeled with hearings, but you have Powell who testified before the U.N. Security Council that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and we give him a complete pass,” Lynch said. “That makes us look tremendously biased.”

Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., found middle ground, saying the way in which the government is set up lends itself to the adversarial nature between the two government branches.

“The Constitution builds a dialectic in which we want information and the executive branch does not want to give it,” he said. “It does rely at the end of the day, on common sense, on good faith, on determination as well as statutory enablers.”

However, Connolly said it’s on everyone to move past this political acrimony if the U.S. government is function properly.

“Blatantly partisan efforts to seek information to embarrass, humiliate and undermine will not get bipartisan support and can understandably cause even more friction in the executive branch in trying to be responsive,” he said.

Watch the full hearing on YouTube.

Update, 1/7/16, 5:47 p.m: An earlier version of this story stated that Jason Levine said the redactions in the documents provided by OPM were to guard against “personally identifiable information.” He actually said the redactions were to “protect people’s privacy.” The passage has been edited.

Contact the reporter on this story via email at greg.otto@fedscoop.com, or follow him on Twitter at @gregotto. His OTR and PGP info can be found here.Subscribe to the Daily Scoop for stories like this in your inbox every morning by signing up here:fdscp.com/sign-me-on.

Experts: Privacy and security must be ‘baked in’ as IoT grows

The more the Internet of Things permeates everyday life, the more privacy and security need to be baked into the design of products from their inception, government officials and private sector experts said at the massive CES event Wednesday.

A panel discussion focused on how protecting data is going to become increasingly important as more and more of our everyday objects are connected to the Internet and collecting information.

Julie Brill, a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission, said companies of all kinds, large and small, are going to have consider how their customers learn about privacy and security measures no matter what their line of business.

“It’s not just a connected insulin pump or car, it’s going to be connected pens and bottles,” Brill said.

She added that the much touted agility of contemporary software development brought its own challenges. “What you are going to have is a company, and when a vulnerability is found, they will go to version 2.0 or 3.0, but will they patch 1.0? Will consumers know they shouldn’t be using 1.0?”

John Godfrey, senior vice president of public policy for Samsung, said companies must think about how to empower their users to take control of their data without trying to shoehorn one-size-fits-all policies across the entire IoT landscape.

“The answers [on policies] are going to be different for different people,” Godfrey said. “We shouldn’t decide there is one answer that is the answer for every consumer. It will make IoT too rigid.”

Nuala O’Connor, president and CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology, cited positive examples of how being proactive about privacy and security has materialized during early design stages. She helped work on the privacy policy governing Amazon Echo, the online retailer’s Internet-connected speaker/virtual assistant.

O’Connor said people at Amazon “had the hard conversations” about how they would let users know what’s happening with their data, even implementing a hard power-off capability — a significant feature in a device designed to be constantly listening for verbal cues.

“How do we let people know they are engaging with this device?” O’Connor said Amazon people had asked. She critiqued the current corporate conception of privacy policies: “We are not going to [send] a piece of paper in the mail that says ‘This is what we are doing with the data.’”

On the security side, Brill said more needs to be done to educate programmers about the things they can do to improve security. Her advice to developers was to think more about data hygiene, citing a stat that 20 percent of programming errors that lead to 80 percent of the vulnerabilities.

However, Brill said high-ranking professionals in the computer science community take issue with that advice.

“There is controversy about this among computer scientists, they tell me that data hygiene is worthless and you really need to protect the crown jewels,” she said. “I then ask them, ‘What are the crown jewels and tell me how to protect them?’ They don’t have an answer for that yet.”

Eric Wenger, director of cybersecurity and privacy policy at Cisco, said most software developers just do not have the needed background to bake privacy and security into their devices, a fact that will continue to cost companies money until it changes.

“[Companies] need to think about this from the design up,” Wenger said. “Unmanaged collection of data is a liability. It’s a hidden cost that’s on your balance sheet.”

Contact the reporter on this story via email at greg.otto@fedscoop.com, or follow him on Twitter at @gregotto. His OTR and PGP info can be found here. Subscribe to the Daily Scoop for stories like this in your inbox every morning by signing up here: fdscp.com/sign-me-on.