Ask the CIO

Essye Miller, the principal deputy chief information officer at DoD, is retiring from federal service on June 30 after more than 35 years in government. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Erin Joe, the director of the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC), said the Cyber Threat Framework is creating a common lexicon for agencies to understand and discuss potential and real security threats and vulnerabilities. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

When the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Food and Drug Administration wanted to add cyber rigor to medical devices they turned to a familiar name. VA and the FDA worked with the Underwriter’s Laboratory (UL) to develop new standards and practical certification approaches for connected medical devices. Through a cooperative research and development agreement, the three organizations demonstr...

Dr. Gil Alterovitz, the director of the National Artificial Intelligence Institute at VA, said during a recent AFCEA Bethesda panel that the agency recent completed an AI tech sprint, which involves VA and private sector companies using agency data. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

For much of the past two years, the Small Business Administration has been on a mission to standardize and consolidate its cybersecurity tools and services. In many ways, SBA is modeling what the future of cybersecurity looks like for many agencies. Guy Cavallo, the deputy CIO at SBA, said the agency plans to continue to evolve its cybersecurity tools and strategy through the use of a zero trust f...

Nearly a year to the date of launching its new approach to shared services, the Office of Management and Budget moved the first offering from interim to permanent. This decision means this new approach to shared services also can finally move from theory to practice. Suzette Kent, the federal chief information officer, said the designation of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and...

All the pieces of the Air Force’s digital modernization roadmap finally are in place. It’s been a two-year effort to arrange the money, the oversight and the governance that will make the strategy successful. Bill Marion, the outgoing deputy chief information officer of the Air Force, said this structure will make it easier for the next deputy CIO to pick up where he left off and accelerate the pa...

Deputy chief information security officers at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office say they are in the middle of expanding and maturing their approaches to cybersecurity. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Jim Tunnessen, VOA’s chief information officer and chief digital officer, said the Over the Top product will live in the cloud to ensure latency and performance issues don’t drag it down. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Sean Connelly, the Homeland Security Department’s TIC program manager, said new interim guidance letting remote workers connect to cloud services is heavily influenced by pilots that proved that flexibility and security don’t have to be opposite sides of the same coin. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

As the Air Force rolls out its proof of concept under the enterprise IT-as-a-service, one of the first pieces to go live is something as basic as a modernized help desk. It’s one of several efforts underway, including next generational networking and infrastructure, cloud services and data architecture, that will create this digital Air Force of the future. Bill Marion, the Air Force’s chief infor...

Renee Wynn, the NASA chief information officer, is retiring after about 30 years in government and is leaving the space agency on track to fix long-standing IT governance challenges. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

When the Department of Health and Human Services transforms its back office and mission technologies two themes emerge. The first is more typical of an IT modernization effort — consolidation and reduction of systems and contracts. The second theme is less concrete with a focus on both internal and external customers. Rajiv Uppal, the chief information officer at the Centers for Medicaid and Medic...

Joe Klimavicz, who retired after six years as the Justice Department CIO, said during his tenure the agency has significant strides in modernizing technology and providing improved services. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Jason Gray, the Education Department’s chief information officer, said fixing long-standing problems like laptops that took 20-to-40 minutes to boot up and log in and printer sprawl helped lay the groundwork for the next set of initiatives. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Nagesh Rao, the director of business technology solutions at the SBA, and Jim Trinka, the chief talent management officer in the Office of Information and Technology, say by focusing on customer experience, the applications, systems and people are improving how they meet their mission goals. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#...

The Labor Department is showing the true power of the Technology Modernization Fund. With the fund’s goal being to help agencies accelerate existing technology projects, Labor received $3.5 million to help move off paper-based labor certifications to electronic processes. Gundeep Ahluwalia, the Labor Department’s chief information officer, said TMF funding is just one funding sources for the agenc...

In naming a chief data officer, the Army and the Air Force took different approaches with an eye toward the same goal. The Army dual-hatted its deputy chief information officer with CDO responsibilities. The Air Force named a specific individual to oversee and manage its data. But no matter the path the military services, or really any agency, takes, it’s all about extracting more value out of the...

Ryan Woodward, the Director of the Franchise Budget Office for Infrastructure Operations in the Office of Information and Technology at VA, said the agency has spent the last few years learning how to apply Technology Business Management (TBM) standards and now are starting to see the results of that effort. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://a...

The two lynchpin initiatives under the Air Force’s network modernization effort are set to take major steps forward in 2020. Through both the enterprise-IT-as-a-service (EITaaS) and the Cloud One platform, Air Force is taking an aggressive approach to fix systemic network issues. Lauren Knausenberger, the chief transformation officer for the Air Force, said both of these initiatives are about sett...

Few, if any, are left at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service’s security operations center who just stare at screens looking for cyber anomalies. Instead of using people, USCIS automated those basic functions in order to free up valuable people to work on more complex cybersecurity challenge. Shane Barney, the chief information security officer at USCIS at the Department of Homeland Securi...

As every agency tries to make sense of the ever-growing mounds of data it collects, this big data challenge is giving them the opportunity to experiment and even take some smart risks. At the departments of Agriculture, and Housing and Urban Development, those pilots are paying real dividends to improve program performance. Jenny Rone, the assistant inspector general for data science at USDA, said...

Roger Greenwell, the chief information officer, the authoring official and risk management executive at DISA, said the agency is focused on understanding where the cyber threats are, how does it take that information and make sure they are addressing those key protection priorities. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-se...