Ask the CIO

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New House Digital Services Office seeks to fill gaps to modernize Congress Jun 17, 2022

Show notes

The House of Representatives Chief Administrative Office is close to adding another shared service to the 100 or so it already provides. These range from acquisition support to human resources to finance and logistics. But the one area where those services were missing and sorely needed was around digital transformation. So in the coming months, the CAO will launch its new digital services office. Catherine Szpindor, the House of Representatives chief administrative officer and Alan Thompson, the House’s chief information officer spoke to Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on this week's Ask the CIO.

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Quick pivot during the pandemic highlighted DIU’s ability to solve DoD problems Jun 10, 2022

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The impact of the Defense Innovation Unit shouldn’t be measured in the number of agreements awarded or the amount of dollars obligated. Both, by the way, are breaking new records each year. Rather, the impact of DIU should be measured in number of problems it helps solve for the Defense Department. Mike Madsen, the deputy director of Defense Innovation Unit, spoke to Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on this week's Ask the CIO.

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FEMA sets self-imposed deadline for moving more applications to the cloud May 26, 2022

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For FEMA, cloud services are a lifeline to disaster survivors. There may be no better uses cases than when a hurricane or tornado strikes and FEMA must scale up its grants management or flood insurance program to tens of thousands of users in a matter of hours. Lytwaive Hutchinson, FEMA chief information officer; Greg Edwards, FEMA chief information security officer; Kevin Long, the insurance systems branch chief and Alonna Barnhart, a senior technical adviser spoke to Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on this week's Ask the CIO.

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IRS’ quick wins by procurement, finance demonstrate power, value of RPA May 20, 2022

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For the last few years, the IRS has been changing its external reputation and internal culture of an agency that doesn’t take technology risks. The Pilot IRS program may be one of the most well-known examples of this external evolution, reaching out to vendors to bring in innovation and new approaches to contracting. Internally, the use of robotics process automation in the procurement and financial offices has been a strong influence on the workforce’s culture. Shanna Webbers, the assistant deputy commissioner for operations support at the IRS, and Chief Financial Officer Teresa Hunter, spoke to Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on this week's Ask the CIO.

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Former deputy federal CIO Roat leaned on her relationships to achieve results May 09, 2022

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Before Maria Roat retired at the end of March, she made sure one important initiative was well on its way. The former deputy federal chief information officer said the effort to create shared calendar and collaboration tools across all agencies is on the right track. The next federal deputy CIO needs not only to pick up this collaboration initiative and others, including modernizing the IT workforce, but also establish strong connections and understandings on the budget side and with agency CIOs. Roat joined Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on this week's Ask the CIO.

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Federal CIO Martorana says agencies adjusting to TMF 2.0 model May 02, 2022

Show notes

Don’t call the $10.5 million infusion of funding the Department of Veterans Affairs received to modernize its identity management platform an "award" or a "loan." Federal Chief Information Officer Clare Martorana prefers to call it an "investment" by the Technology Modernization Fund Board. She and TMF Director Raylene Yung joined Jason Miller on Ask the CIO to discuss more.

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DISA’s milCloud replacement is open for business Apr 22, 2022

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When the Defense Information Systems Agency decided to end its milCloud offering, it didn’t mean the end of on-premise cloud options for its Defense customers. DISA is replacing that long-time, possibly underutilized offering with something new called Stratus. Sharon Woods, the director of Hosting and Compute Center at DISA spoke about how Stratus works with Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on Ask the CIO.

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On April 4, say goodbye to DUNS and hello to UEI Apr 01, 2022

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The federal government will finally pull the plug on the use of Dun and Bradstreet numbers and fully move to a brand new identifier for contractors, called the unique entity identifier (UEI). On April 4, GSA will complete a major technology modernization project that started in 2012, picked up steam in 2016 and finally will come to completion after a six-month parallel test. Memi Whitehead, the deputy assistant commissioner of GSA’s Integrated Award Environment, spoke about the shift with Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on Ask the CIO.

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GSA using data, analytics to push agencies to accelerate move to EIS Mar 25, 2022

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Amy Haseltine, the deputy assistant commissioner for acquisitions in the Office of the IT Category in the Federal Acquisition Service, said GSA is offering a neutral environment to address EIS transition challenges.

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After 40 years of service, Vogel offers ways to make federal IT better Mar 18, 2022

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From futuristic telephones with screens on desks in the 1990s, to punch card mainframes using FORTRAN, Janet Vogel, the former acting chief information officer and chief information security officer at the Department of Health and Human Services, has seen significant change in the federal technology sector. Vogel recently retired after 40 years of federal service and said her experiences, her political science background and learning technology taught her several things about how to be successful in the federal sector. She spoke more to Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on Ask the CIO.

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