The Daily Scoop Podcast

Longtime Department of Labor CIO Gundeep Ahluwalia recently stepped away from government after more than 8 years with DOL and another four with the FDA. Leaving behind a legacy of wholesale digital transformation across Labor, Ahluwalia now takes on a role as executive vice president and chief innovation officer for government technology contractor NuAxis Innovations. Ahluwalia joins the podcast f...

The Biden administration has finalized guidance for federal agencies’ 2024 artificial intelligence use case inventories. While much of the document remains the same as the draft, the final version includes several changes, such as narrowing the scope of excluded use cases and adding a section on deadline extension requests for compliance with risk management practices. The guidance also establishe...

Democratic National Committee delegates approved a party platform on Monday that scarcely mentions cybersecurity, reversing a trend from the 2020 version and mirroring the Republican party document. There were just two explicit mentions of cyber in the 2024 Democratic platform, both fairly vague. “We will remove barriers to legal access, combat hate crimes, and counter cyber threats,” the platform...

With the long-awaited release of NIST’s post-quantum cryptographic standards last week, there’s work ahead for federal agencies to make sure they’re ready for the age of quantum. Nick Polk, senior adviser on cybersecurity in the Office of the Federal CIO, joins the podcast to break down the significance of the new standards, how the White House is coordinating government and industry to take next...

As OpenAI looks to make inroads with the federal government, it has struck a deal with the U.S. Agency for International Development as the first agency partner to use its ChatGPT Enterprise platform. Anna Makanju, OpenAI’s vice president of global affairs, told FedScoop that USAID plans to use the technology to help reduce administrative burden and “make it easier for new and local organizations”...

The Pentagon cleared a major milestone Thursday on the path to instituting its cybersecurity standards program for contractors known as the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification 2.0. The Department of Defense submitted a proposed rule that, once approved, would incorporate new cyber requirements into all contracts for vendors who want to do business with the U.S. military that involves sensit...

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management issued a new memo on Wednesday calling on federal agencies to to improve the hiring experience for job seekers and officials who hire them. Among the various calls to action in the memo, the guidance orders agencies to develop hiring objectives that are informed by data-driven workforce planning, promote colle...

One of the longest-tenured CIOs in the government announced this week he is stepping away from federal service. Gundeep Ahluwalia sent a letter to staff stating that Friday will be his last day after more than eight years with the Department of Labor. In his note, Ahluwalia called the department’s biggest accomplishment during his time its “ability to attract talent and create leaders,” saying tha...

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence earlier this summer released an information technology roadmap for the intelligence community. The roadmap is meant to provide technological foresight to guide the Intelligence Community to make transformative decisions about the cloud environment, cybersecurity, advanced computing, data analysis, and artificial intelligence among an array of oth...

Federal agencies with highly sensitive workloads now have the opportunity to use OpenAI GPT-4o. Microsoft announced that it received FedRAMP High accreditation to offer the OpenAI generative AI platform through its Azure Government cloud. The FedRAMP High designation denotes that the OpenAI services have met a higher security threshold to work with sensitive civilian datasets, including those in t...

Palantir and Microsoft on Thursday announced an expanded partnership giving national security leaders the ability to leverage a “first-of-its-kind, integrated suite of technology” to operationalize their missions. In Microsoft’s government and classified cloud environments, intelligence and defense officials will be able to utilize the company’s large language models through the Azure OpenAI Servi...

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris on Tuesday announced Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, to be her running mate for vice president. As Walz steps into the spotlight, he brings with him a deep record on cybersecurity issues, including spearheading a 2022 letter urging the Biden administration not to complicate state cybersecurity measures with federal ones and publishing his own exec...

Ransomware attacks have prompted legislative action to classify such cyber offenses alongside terrorism. A provision authored by Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., included in the annual intelligence authorization act, seeks to combat the surge in ransomware by naming specific gangs and designating host nations as 'state sponsors of ransomware,' subjecting them to potential U.S. sanctions. Although the U.S....

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has introduced a series of amendments aimed at scaling back the Biden administration's efforts to regulate artificial intelligence (AI). His proposals, discussed at a recent Senate Commerce Committee markup, include repealing the AI executive order and preventing environmental impact assessments on AI systems. While some of Cruz's proposals failed to pass, an amendment to r...

Lisa Einstein, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s senior adviser for artificial intelligence, has been named the agency’s first chief AI officer. Einstein, a Stanford and Princeton graduate, joined CISA in 2022 as executive director of its Cybersecurity Advisory Committee. CISA Director Jen Easterly highlighted Einstein's role in the agency's AI advancements, calling her an ins...

Amid concerns about U.S. competitiveness in artificial intelligence, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Technology Committee advanced several AI-focused bipartisan bills on Wednesday. However, fault lines emerged, signaling potential growing tension between the parties. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who chairs the committee, highlighted the global stakes for AI development, noting that the technolo...

An artificial intelligence hub led by the Department of the Air Force and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is now including Marine Corps members. Previously, only airmen and guardians participated in the DAF-MIT AI Accelerator. Two Marines will join the next cohort of “Phantoms” to conduct research and produce a “publishable impact paper” over five months. Lt. Gen. Matthew Glavy highlight...

The Department of Defense’s inspector general has launched a new evaluation of the Replicator program, which aims to field and deploy thousands of autonomous drones by 2025 to contend with China. A memorandum issued Monday solidifies plans for the review. An OIG spokesperson stated that the evaluation will determine the effectiveness of the Services and Defense Innovation Unit in selecting capabil...

The White House marked nine months since the signing of President Biden’s executive order on artificial intelligence with a new voluntary safety commitment from Apple and several new completed actions on the technology across the government. Apple’s agreement to safety, testing, and transparency measures outlined by the Biden administration brings the total number of AI companies that have signed...

The White House will issue final FedRAMP modernization guidance on Friday, addressing changes in the cloud market and agency needs for diverse mission delivery. The guidance aims to reform the cloud security authorization program by focusing on strategic goals, including rigorous reviews and swift mitigation of security weaknesses by cloud service providers. The memo emphasizes an automated proces...

A North Korean hacking group, newly designated as APT45 by the FBI and Mandiant, has broadened its ransomware operations to target healthcare providers, financial institutions, and energy companies. Previously known as Andariel or UNC614, the group has been active since at least 2009 and supports the interests of the North Korean government. Mandiant, a subsidiary of Google Cloud, emphasizes the g...

The Technology Modernization Fund has allocated $13.8 million to enhance nuclear emergency response capabilities at the Department of Energy and establish safety standards for artificial intelligence at the Department of Commerce. The Energy Department will receive $3.8 million to upgrade its radiological response data portal, aiding the operations of the Nuclear Emergency Support Team. The Commer...

In today’s episode of the Daily Scoop Podcast, we delve into the ongoing impacts of the CrowdStrike IT failure. Last week’s outage has left several federal agencies scrambling to restore services. At the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, over 5,000 workstations were affected, though the agency's primary systems remain operational. The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network also exp...

The U.S. global development agency, USAID, is intensifying its focus on artificial intelligence, exploring both its potential benefits and challenges. Following the recent announcement of a new policy on democracy, human rights, and governance, USAID Administrator Samantha Power underscored the importance of leveraging technology to bolster democracy. However, she also cautioned about the potentia...

A Microsoft outage linked to CrowdStrike has disrupted several federal agencies. CISA and DHS are collaborating with CrowdStrike, Microsoft, and others to address the outages. President Biden has been briefed and is in contact with affected entities. The Social Security Administration (SSA) has closed all offices, warning of longer wait times and unavailable online services. The Justice Department...