The Buzz with ACT-IAC

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From the Archives: The Federal Perspective from 11 Years Ago Aug 23, 2022

Show notes

This week, join the Buzz for a journey to the distant past of 2011.
Over a decade ago, ACT-IAC's ELC Conference featured a keynote from Steve VanRoekel, who served as Federal CIO from 2011-2014.
In his presentation, entitled "Our Moment", VanRoekel discussed the federal IT priorities of the day, the opportunities to involve the private sector in improving government services, and what the future will bring.
It's fascinating to see what's changed over the past 11 years (and what hasn't).
This recording has been edited for time.

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Intro/Outro Music: See a Brighter Day/Gloria Tells
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound
(Episodes 1-159: Intro/Outro Music: Focal Point/Young Community
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound)

How Government Built This: How USDA is Paving the Way for Digital Transformation Aug 16, 2022

Show notes

Welcome to “How Government Built This,” a six-part podcast and blog post series developed by the Department of the Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service Office of Financial Innovation and Transformation (FIT) in collaboration with The Buzz with ACT-IAC.
This week, host Jesrael Lopez is joined by Dr. Michael Valivullah, Chief Technology Officer at the US Department of Agriculture.
Michael's perspective on digital transformation is informed by the mission areas of the USDA, which has been collecting data for over 150 years. He emphasizes the importance of cloud computing and upskilling and reskilling the agency's workforce.
Resources:
ACT-IAC Health Community of Interest (COI) White Paper “Policy Considerations for the Use of Synthetic Healthcare Data”

Federal Insights Exchange (FIE) Chief Data Officer (CDO) Panel on September 7th from 10 AM to 11 AM. Register here
Fiscal Service's Digital End-to-End Efficiency Playbook

For more information on ACT-IAC’s Emerging Technology COI’s CDO outreach initiative, please email actiacnucsl@gmail.com

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The Keys to Estonia's Success with Taavi Kotka Aug 09, 2022

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This week, The Buzz presents a follow-up from last month's episode exploring the basics of digital services in Estonia.
In this episode, we'll hear more about e-Estonia from someone who had a significant role in building it.
Taavi Kotka helped expand Estonian e-governance when he became the nation's first Chief Information Officer in 2014. He was subsequently named European CIO of the year and pioneered many of the ideas and concepts behind the modern Estonian digital society.
With his considerable private sector experience, Taavi also shares a more holistic view of the challenges faced and solutions required to build a digital society.

Listen to the first e-Estonia episode here.

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How Synthetic Data Can Improve AI in Medicine with Dr. Amanda Purnell Aug 02, 2022

Show notes

Artificial Intelligence technologies continue to develop in leaps and bounds with each passing year, and their impact on our lives will only become more salient as these tools increase in complexity and variety.
Though AI applications have the potential to revolutionize nearly every sector of the economy, they also carry significant risks that will require careful thought and intentional design to mitigate harm. AI systems - defined their ability to learn iteratively and improve their decision-making capabilities - require massive amounts of data with which to train them. Though we may call them "intelligent", these machines are merely reflections of the inputs we give them, and incomplete or non-representative data sets lead to biased systems.
In the medical field, this issue is particularly salient, as the very health and well-being of humans is at stake. In addition, using patient data to train AI tools raises significant privacy concerns.
Enter synthetic data. As the name implies, synthetic data is entirely computer-generated, so no personal information of actual patients is at stake. Synthetic data can also be designed to fill in the gaps of real-world data sets, thereby reducing bias.
To learn more about how synthetic data is being used in Federal healthcare, The Buzz is joined by Dr. Amanda Purnell, Director of Data and Analytics Innovation at the Department of Veteran's Affairs.
Learn more about the VA's Arches Platform: https://marketplace.va.gov/innovations/arches

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ICYMI: AI in Mission Decision-Making Jul 26, 2022

Show notes

This week, The Buzz with ACT-IAC presents a session from the 2022 Emerging Technology and Innovation Conference.
This panel features a discussion among agency CIO's and industry leaders about how emerging AI tools are being used to manage data and guide decision making, as well as the limitations of AI in the government sphere.
Speakers:
Lexy Guenther (Moderator) - VP & CTO, Civil Enterprise IT & Mission Solutions at Leidos
Gundeep Ahluwalia - CIO at the US Department of Labor
Keith Jones - CIO at US Department of State
Dr. David Keever - Vice President, Technical Fellow at Leidos
David Shive - CIO at GSA
Registration is open for ACT-IAC's next conference: Imagine Nation ELC 2022! Learn more here.

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Reflections on a Career in Federal Service with Maria Roat Jul 19, 2022

Show notes

After a storied, four-decade career in federal IT, Deputy Federal CIO Maria Roat retired in March of this year. Maria spent 25 years in the Navy and Naval Reserve, then served in leadership roles in an array of federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Small Business Administration and the Department of Transportation.
Few can claim the breadth of professional experience that Maria can, and fewer still can match her extracurricular activity. Maria has served as both ACT's President and Vice President as well as a conference chair and frequent speaker and moderator at ACT-IAC's many events.
In this episode, Maria sits down with her friend and former Federal CIO Suzette Kent to reflect on Maria's years of hard work and discuss what the future holds for her and for the government IT sector.
ACT-IAC would like to profoundly thank Maria for her valuable contributions and decades of service.

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How to Build a Digital Society from Scratch with Carmen Raal Jul 12, 2022

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On the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, south of Finland and west of Russia, lies the nation of Estonia. Since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, this tiny-but-mighty country has embarked on one of the most successful IT modernization efforts in the world.
In less than 30 years, Estonia has gone from technological desert to fully digitized society, in which 94% of residents regularly use the internet and 99% of government services can be accessed online - everything from social benefits, to medical records, to even voting.
This week on The Buzz, we're exploring Estonia's transformative journey, what a digitized government means for the citizen experience, and how the Estonian private and public sectors have interacted to build one of the most technologically convenient nations on Earth. We're joined by Carmen Raal, a Digital Transformation Advisor at the e-Estonia Briefing Center, an NGO formed to share Estonia's digital expertise with the rest of the world.
Visit the e-Estonia Briefing Center

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Lessons in Digital Transformation from Government and Industry Jul 05, 2022

Show notes

This week, The Buzz with ACT-IAC presents a discussion about the many pieces of successful digital transformation - cultural change, new software and technologies, service design and more - from leaders in the Federal IT community who have undertaken these changes first-hand.
This episode is hosted by Ben Kutil, Director for Technical Solutions at Ad Hoc, with guests
Christopher Corpuel, Co-Founder and CEO of Catalest, and Melvin Brown II, Deputy CIO at OPM.
This episode of The Buzz is sponsored by Ad Hoc. Learn more at https://adhocteam.us/

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Adapting to IT Supply Chain Risks with Leo Alvarez Jun 28, 2022

Show notes

Software development and hardware manufacturing has become increasingly globalized over the last 10 years. A single application can contain hundreds, or even thousands, of software components sourced from just as many vendors located all over the world. And each one of these components presents a potential entry point for attack.
As evidenced by the Solar Winds hack, the lack of transparency in our supply chains represents a significant impediment to securing the United States' IT systems . The Biden Administration said as much with last year's Executive Order 14028, "Improving the Nation's Cybersecurity".
Now, a year later, federal agencies are beginning to roll out new requirements and guidelines for contracting firms to improve the integrity of these IT supply chains and reduce systemic risk. As with much of cybersecurity, this will require comprehensive efforts throughout the federal technology ecosystem, and a careful balancing of security and ease of use.
This week, The Buzz is joined by Leo Alvarez, Principal at Baker-Tilly and member of ACT-IAC's Cybersecurity Supply Chain Risk Management (C-SCRM) Working Group. He shares some insights on what effective C-SCRM strategies look like and how these new requirements will affect the acquisitions process.
Referenced in this episode:
CISA C-SCRM Task Force
NIST C-SCRM Practices
ACT-IAC Acquisitions C-SCRM Working Group

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Building Trust through Service Design with Eddie Hartwig Jun 21, 2022

Show notes

Earlier this year, the United Nations Development Program released a special report entitled “New Threats to Human Security in the Anthropocene”, which details some of the unique, large-scale issues faced by human society in the 21st century. These are problems that require collective, comprehensive action. Unfortunately, such action has been difficult to achieve.

A reason for this is the global decline in institutional trust - the kind that facilitates buy-in and civil participation from communities. When institutions lose trust, the people they are supposed to serve feel less secure and less willing to engage with them, which makes it even more difficult to promote collective action and social cohesion, further worsening the situation, which further degrades trust, and so on.

Between a government and its people, the building blocks for this trust relationship are the tiny, everyday interactions that citizens have with government services. So how can we best design these services to build trust?
Joining the Buzz this week to discuss is Eddie Hartwig, the former Deputy Administrator of the US Digital Service, and currently the Chairman and Partner of the Service Design Collective.
Follow Humans of Public Service on Instagram!
Register for ELC 2022 here!

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