The Daily Scoop Podcast

Allen Hill has been on the job as the CIO of the Federal Communications Commission for roughly a year now. And during that time, he’s made it a priority to move as many systems and applications as possible within the agency’s portfolio to as-a-service models. To discuss that, what he’s learned and accomplished in this first year, and how he’s thinking about cybersecurity as part of that journey, Hill joins the Daily Scoop Podcast. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.

Each year, the National Security Agency hosts the Codebreaker Challenge – an annual cryptanalysis and reverse engineering event that gives U.S. students a hands-on experience working with an NSA mission-centric scenario that showcases the type of work the agency does every day. The challenge for 2023 will launch in late September and NSA will soon begin accepting registrations for the event. To discuss more about the Codebreaker Challenge and the push to attract more students to computer science, engineering and other tech and cyber fields, Rita Doerr, academic outreach lead at the NSA's cybersecurity directorate, joins my CyberScoop colleague Elia Groll for a conversation.

The podcast discusses the federal government's focus on customer experience (CX) and the initiatives taken by the Biden administration. It explores the importance of CX in various federal agencies and the proposed funding to support CX efforts. The slow progress in implementing the 21st Century IDEA Act and the White House's commitment to improving CX are also highlighted.

The podcast discusses the misalignment between federal IT teams and the delays in improving government websites. It explores the lack of prioritization and strategic vision from key technology leaders and the challenges in implementing Biden tech priorities. The podcast also highlights the aversion to focusing on big ticket items, the missed deadlines under the Biden administration, and potential solutions for the future.

In this podcast, the CIO of the VA discusses the department's digital transformation, including the EHR modernization program and special pay authority for IT and cybersecurity. They emphasize the importance of culture-driven change and discuss the role of AI in improving services. The guest also highlights the need for a great user experience in the VA's digital transformation journey.

Dan McCoy, former chief innovation officer at TSA and current head of business development for BMNT, discusses the importance of establishing a culture of innovation in federal agencies. Topics include empowering employees to innovate, the role of a chief innovation officer, overcoming roadblocks to innovation in government, and the transition process of implementing innovations.

Small pieces of space debris or space junk have become a massive issue across the space industry, threatening the nation’s future space operations. As commercial space flight grows in popularity, and some of the U.S.’s greatest threats bolster their anti-satellite military operations, the more than 100 million debris objects greater than 1 mm in size orbiting the earth have become a matter of national security that has caught the attention of the Intelligence community’s research arm. The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency recently issued four awards to prime contractors to support its Space Debris Identification and Tracking program. SINTRA, as it’s called, aims to investigate the interaction of orbital debris with the surrounding space environment and drive the state of the art to detect, track, and characterize lethal non-trackable orbital space debris, which poses a risk to all space missions, including those of the Intelligence Community. Program Manager Dr. Alexis Truitt, a former NASA Hubble researcher turned IARPA PM, talks joins the Daily Scoop podcast to discuss the ambitions of the SINTRA Program. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.

Earlier this week, I told you about FedScoop’s investigation into federal agencies’ efforts to inventory their artificial intelligence use cases. These inventories are required by a 2020 Trump administration executive order, which also introduced nine principles and a policy process for implementing AI the public can trust. But, across CFO Act agencies results vary. Inventories for civilian agencies are inconsistent, creating a patchwork understanding of the government’s use of the budding technology. To discuss their findings reporting on the AI use case inventories across the federal government for FedScoop, joining me are the authors of the story “The government is struggling to track its AI. And that’s a problem” Rebecca Heilweil and Madi Alder. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.

As federal agencies progress toward IT modernization, cybersecurity is a hallmark of those journeys, one that must be baked in from the start. David Shive, CIO of the General Services Administration, spoke with the Daily Scoop about how his office is going about building out a zero-trust security architecture across the agency via a new cybersecurity solicitation that’s on the street. During our conversation, he also emphasized the importance of upskilling the workforce for the ongoing digital transformation across the federal government, and how GSA is supporting the Biden administration’s major tech initiatives, like those in the President’s Management Agenda, by leading by example. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.

In 2020, The secretary of the U.S. Navy signed out an Information Superiority Vision, naming information superiority as a key strategic focus for the department,as well as restructuring and empowering the role of the Navy CIO, and charting a course for the sea service to take action on its most pressing needs in IT and cybersecurity. Now more than three years later, the Navy is continuing to execute on that strategy, with some new technology leadership in place. One of those leaders is Justin Fanelli, technical director for Navy’s PEO Digital and newly appointed acting CTO for the service. In a conversation with the Daily Scoop podcast, Fanelli touches on how the department has made progress executing the Information Superiority Vision, how the department is approaching AI and what the service is doing to better bridge the valley of death to scale innovation. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.