Ask the CIO

A panel of federal and industry experts describe each of their approaches to achieving a zero trust architecture to improve the security of systems and data.

Raj Iyer’s last day as the Army’s chief information officer is Feb. 10, after which he plans to return to industry but continue to support the service’s transformation efforts.

NASA is reconstituting its data analysis team to improve its decision making around acquisition. The idea of using data to drive decisions isn’t new for NASA. But with the move to centralize much of acquisition across the space agency, data analysis became more critical. Karla Smith Jackson, the assistant administrator for procurement and the senior procurement executive at NASA, said this data-driven analysis approach is different this time than previous attempts.

Patrick Newbold, the deputy chief information officer, and Rob King, the chief data officer, at the Social Security Administration said technology and data modernization are driving better services to internal and external customers.

Chad Clifford, the executive director of the Grants QSMO at the Department of Health and Human Services, said their goal is to improve the customer’s experience by giving them the tools to help drive greater efficiencies for the agency, users and recipients.

Chris DeRusha, the federal chief information security officer, said new FISMA metrics will ask agencies for more granular data on how they are meeting administration priorities.

Paul Puckett, the former director of the Enterprise Cloud Management Agency (ECMA) in the Army’s CIO office, said the cloud is not only demonstrating value, but are also fundamentally changing the way that the Army looks at requirements, organizational alignment and incentive structures.

A group of former agency chief information officers and other technology executives is offering some specific suggestions for how to evolve the FITARA scorecard in a white paper from ACT-IAC.

The Joint Financial Management Improvement Program (JFMIP) released a new payment integrity report and simulation tool to help agencies think differently about how to combat improper payments.

David Shive, the chief information officer the General Services Administration, said data science, business analytics and the needs of the Public Buildings Service are among some of the upcoming opportunities under the GSA-wide IT services contract.

The National Association of State CIOs (NASCIO) and Guidehouse released the 13th annual survey of state chief information officers and found similar challenges and opportunities as their federal brethren.

Gharun Lacy, the deputy assistant secretary and assistant director for cyber and technology security at the Foreign Affairs Cybersecurity Center at the State Department, said reducing the time between alert and response is their main focus.

The DoD’s CIO and its Office of Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment will remove weapons systems from the network if they are not cyber secure.

Jamie Holcombe, the chief information officer for USPTO, said a new contract award will help the agency move toward a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architecture.

Dr. David Markowitz, the Army’s chief data officer, said a streamlined and unified approach to the data platforms the service uses will enable senior leaders to make better, faster decisions.

Chris DeRusha, the federal chief information security officer, said the focus on securing commercial software comes from the cyber executive order.

The Defense Logistics Agency reached a major milestone on its cloud journey. It recently completed the migration of its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to the cloud.

More than 100 agencies have signed on to extend their current set of telecommunications contracts for an additional year. The General Services Administration gave agencies until Sept. 30 to sign a memorandum of understanding to keep using the Networx and other programs while they transition to the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions or EIS program. Gary Washington, USDA’s chief information officer, said at a recent ACT-IAC webinar, while the transition is important, the focus is on ensuring USDA delivers better services to their customers and stakeholders and getting that right may make the transition to EIS take a little longer. He was joined by Allen Hill, the now former deputy assistant commissioner in the Office of IT Category at the General Services Administration; Jeff Flick, the deputy director for Service Delivery Division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and David Naugle, a senior IT specialist at the Social Security Administration. The panel was moderated by Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has a better understanding of where it’s cybersecurity shortcoming lie. To be clear, NGA recently passed several key audits required for its unclassified systems. But Gary Buchanan, the chief information security officer at NGA, said at a recent AFCEA DC panel these audits are actually helping the agency better protect their data and networks instead of just pointing out problems. He was joined by David McKeown, the deputy CISO at the Defense Department and Angel Phaneuf, the CISO for the Army Software Factory. The panel was moderated by Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency is trying to lighten the ever-increasing load of policy mandates, laws and cyber threats agencies must deal with every day. From the zero trust strategy to the cybersecurity executive order, to the vulnerabilities like Log4j and the latest on five different VMware products, agency chief information security officers probably feel like they are swimming upstream most of the time. But after almost a decade of work, the continuous diagnostic and mitigation (CDM) program from CISA is providing more data, more analysis and more general and specific knowledge. Richard Grabowski, the acting program manager of the CDM program at CISA, joined Jason Miller on this week's Ask the CIO to talk more.

Only in the last year has the 2019 Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act started to demonstrate a real impact on agency missions. As agencies updated their strategic plans for 2022, many used the law to drive better cross-agency conversations. For more, David Walters, the chief of strategic planning, performance management and reporting branch at the NASA Johnson Space Center; Harry Knight, the executive director for China and former director of the Office of Performance Evaluation at the Commerce Department; and Jeff Yefsky, the CEO of the Performance Institute spoke to Executive Editor Jason Miller at a recent panel on this week's Ask the CIO.

As the number of data centers continue to shrink year after year, agencies must make the hard decision about how best to optimize the remaining on-premise facilities. With another 54 planned closures in the final months of fiscal 2022, the 1,500 or so remaining are primed to advance their use of energy metering tools, server virtualization technologies and approaches to decrease the number of servers and increase the utilization of those that do remain. Tom Santucci, director of IT modernization within the General Services Administration’s Office of Governmentwide Policy, and Steven Naumann, a senior advisor in Office of IT modernization within OGP, spoke to Executive Editor Jason Miller on Ask the CIO more about it.

Where are all your assets on your network? That is the first question agency chief information security officers may want to ask on their journey toward a zero trust architecture. Shane Barney, the chief information security officer at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Homeland Security Department spoke to Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on this week's Ask the CIO.

When Keith Jones joined the State Department as its chief information officer in January 2021, he was surprised by the bureaucracy. Jones spent his entire federal career in working for the Justice Department or the Homeland Security Department and thought he’d knew how the system worked. Jones, who recently left after 17 months as the CIO of the State Department, said he tried cut through the bureaucracy to deal with some long standing cultural challenges. He joined Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on this week's Ask the CIO.

The Baltimore Ravens football team may be better known for its winning ways on the field and its rabid fans in the stands. But the Social Security Administration turned to the NFL team because of its prowess in using data to drive customer experience decisions. It also didn’t hurt that SSA headquarters is located in Baltimore County, Maryland, and many of the staff are big fans of the team. Patrick Newbold, the assistant deputy commissioner and deputy chief information officer at SSA, said the Ravens are known for providing a great customer experience for their fans so it just made sense that the agency would reach out. He spoke to Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on this week's Ask the CIO.

The Defense Department has been talking about the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) standards for more than three years. And while the final version 2.0 standards aren’t going to be ready until next summer, the impact of just talking about improving cybersecurity among contractors is real. Stacy Bostjanick, the chief of implementation and policy and deputy CIO for cybersecurity for the Defense Department and Dr. Kelly Fletcher, the principal deputy chief information officer for the Defense Department spoke about this at the recent AFCEA NOVA Small Business IT Day.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Kurt DelBene, the VA’s assistant secretary for information and technology and chief information officer, said he plans to build on and accelerate the progress VA has made over the last decade.

Dan York, the director of data transparency for Office of Governmentwide Policy at GSA, said the new portal should make IT spending data more available, more transparent and more visible.

GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service is putting a larger focus on customer experience both on the front end systems and back end processes.

All of the excitement and consternation about the Defense Department’s Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) over the past year maybe over blown. In many ways, DoD is replicating the Army’s approach for much of the previous two years to buying cloud services. For more, Paul Puckett, the director of the Enterprise Cloud Management Agency that reports to the Office of the Chief Information Officer for the Army spoke to Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on Ask the CIO.

The final zero trust strategy released by the Office of Management and Budget on Jan. 26 is more than just yet another attempt by yet another administration to address long-standing cybersecurity challenges. It's the culmination of a vision started more than a decade ago by federal executives waiting for the technology and culture to catch up, and it’s a roadmap that is both prescriptive enough and patient enough to give agencies a North Star to strive for over the next three years. For more, Chris DeRusha, the federal chief information security officer, spoke to Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller and reporter Justin Doubleday on Ask the CIO.

Hannah Hunt, the chief product and innovation officer for the Army Software Factory, said the third cohort of DevSecOps trainees started in January.

When U.S. Customs and Border Protection considers its supply chain, the range of products and services is almost endless. One day they might be buying food and clothes for migrants. The next day, CBP may be buying unmanned aerial vehicles to protect the border. And the next day, CBP may be buying IT systems to process forms. Mark Borkowski, the assistant commissioner in the Office of Acquisition and the chief acquisition officer at CBP, spoke with Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on Ask the CIO.

Like their federal brethren, state government chief information officers found themselves in an expanded role over the last few years. These CIOs say the biggest change, however, may be how other state agencies see the value of technology, how critical it is to the delivery of services and the productivity of state employees. Doug Robinson, the executive director of the National Association of State CIOs, and Graeme Finley of Grant Thornton, joined Executive Editor Jason Miller on Ask the CIO to talk about their recent survey, which shows just how much has changed over the last few years.

Data and science are at the center of the mission of the Food and Drug Administration. This is why the agency created the new Office of Digital Transformation. It is the final step in a two-year effort to reorganize how the FDA uses data and technology to protect and promote public health, and Vid Desai, FDA’s chief information officer, said the Office of Digital Transformation (ODT) will drive change down to the individual centers and offices to improve their mission delivery. Desai spoke more with Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on Ask the CIO.

The pandemic put unprecedented pressure on state and federal unemployment insurance programs. Systems including call centers and claims processing struggled to handle the demand, but across the states the state of technology for these needs varies. From the Labor Department, Chief Information Officer Gundeep Ahluwalia and Michele Evermore, deputy director for Policy in the Office of Unemployment Insurance Modernization, joined Executive Editor Jason Miller on Ask the CIO to talk about modernizing the federal unemployment insurance program.

Pat Flanders, the chief information officer at DHA, said the military services and defense agencies will see a more consistent and more secure set of technology tools.

Lt. Gen. Michael Groen, the director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center for the Department of Defense, said the military is not in danger of falling behind to China when it comes to taking advantage of AI capabilities.

Just over a year into the e-commerce portal initiative, the General Services Administration is making some major course corrections. GSA’s initial thinking about the program aimed at making it easier for agencies to use online platforms to buy commercial products below the micro-purchase threshold of $10,000 it turns out was a bit off the mark in two key areas. Not only has GSA decided not to test out the other two platforms that it initially offered under the initiative, it now says the overall market it is trying to capture is now $500 million, and not the $6 billion it originally estimated. Laura Stanton, the assistant commissioner for the Office of Information Technology Category in GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, and Keil Todd, program manager for the Commercial Platforms Initiative, spoke to Federal News Network Executive Jason Miller for more details.

Marianne Roth, the chief risk officer at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said the bureau built its enterprise risk management program around mission risks and strategic risks.

Rick Simon, the program manager for the Secure Cloud Management project and a contractor in the Defense Innovation Unit, said the office issued success memos to the three vendors who took part in the pilot program.

Rob Collins, who recently left after four years as the chief information security officer at the Social Security Administration, used his dual background of business and technology expertise to improve how citizens interact with the agency. Now the CISO at AgCo Corporation, he said the business or operational efforts must be integrated with the cybersecurity efforts so both sides understand each other’s opportunities and challenges. Collins spoke more to Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on this week's Ask the CIO.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is implementing a portfolio management approach to managing technology and business outcomes.

Eric Olson, the former Treasury Department chief information officer, said the agency moved key systems to highly secured cloud services over the last four years.

The Biden administration has a new zero trust draft strategy in response to major cyber attacks on US networks in the last year. Chris DeRusha, federal chief information security officer, said there previously was not a clear roadmap for agencies to follow. Meanwhile, as the Quality Service Management Office (QSMO) for federal financial management continues to outline its long-term strategy, the Bureau of Fiscal Service isn’t forgetting about the last two decades of work. Matt Miller, the acting commissioner for the Bureau of Fiscal Service in the Treasury Department, said four legacy federal shared service centers will play a big role in this long-standing effort. Miller and DeRusha spoke to Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on this week's Ask the CIO.

Sylvia Burns is the FDIC chief information officer, and Keith Jones, the State Department’s CIO, highlighted individual efforts to drive innovation to their internal and external customers.

Soraya Correa, who recently retired after 40 years in government, including the last six as Homeland Security's chief procurement officer, said six years into the Procurement Innovation Lab's existence, the benefits to her former agency’s acquisition process is clear.

The General Services Administration has almost completed its first set of initiatives under the Federal Marketplace Strategy. GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service created a foundation over the last few years that focused on improving the customer and employee experiences. Now FAS is ready to build on that foundation with four new initiatives that will expand the use of technology, further the buying and selling experiences in GSA’s $75 billion marketplace and bring more and better data to those who need it to make decisions. Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller spoke to FAS Commissioner Sonny Hashmi, on Ask the CIO for more insight.

Patrick Gould, cyber portfolio deputy director at Defense Innovation Unit, said on behalf of cyber mission teams his organization tested out two tools that advanced the use of deception approaches to stop hackers.

Chris DeRusha, the federal chief information security officer, said the annual Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) report to Congress further highlights why the administration is focusing on some key areas to improve.

On this week's Ask the CIO, Federal Chief Information Officer Clare Martorana discusses the Office of Management and Budget working on the new 21st Century IDEA Act guidance and a new IT modernization strategy.

Kevin Cox, the outgoing program manager of the continuous diagnostics and mitigation (CDM) program at CISA, said CISA has implemented the cyber dashboard at 13 CFO Act agencies and plans to provide it to all agencies later this year.

The Air Force’s software development platform Cloud One is too vendor heavy - Cloud One has only 20 federal and military employees out of a staff of 275. But it’s not just about numbers, it’s ensuring the employees have the right skillsets to manage a DevSecOps environment as well as work in a healthy environment. Nicolas Chaillan, the Air Force’s chief software officer, and John Weiler, founder and chairman of the IT Acquisition Advisory Council, discussed it with Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller, on this week's Ask the CIO.

The acting director of the Federal Risk Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), Brian Conrad, discusses how their program management office is taking steps to make the process easier in 2021 and beyond.

Lisa Costa, the chief information officer of the Special Operations Command in the Defense Department, said her office is offering a DevSecOps-as-a-service approach to make it easier to push capabilities out securely.

Federal News Network Executive Editor spoke to Alan Hill, deputy assistant commissioner for Category Management in the Office of the IT category in the General Services Administration's Federal Acquisition Service - about the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions program. Miller also spoke with Serena Reynolds, the 5G initiative lead at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, about the Federal Mobility Working Group. The group released a framework to standardize the testing of 5G devices set a security baseline and provide uses cases. Hear both conversations on this week's Ask the CIO.

Joe Castle, a recent PhD graduate from Virginia Tech, who studied federal technology policy and open source software, and is a federal employee, said culture, public engagement, structural factors and organizational location are all drivers for why an agency would share open source code.

On this week's Ask the CIO, Jack Gumtow, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s chief information officer, discusses how his office is leading three levels of effort to modernize the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communication System (JWICS) and more.

On this week's Ask the CIO, several agencies are trying to streamline and reduce the burden of cybersecurity processes in an effort to get capabilities to the mission areas faster. You hear from the Energy Department's Emery Csulak, the Patent and Trademark Office's Jamie Holcomb, Agriculture's Venice Goodwine, and the Census Bureau's Beau Houser.

On this week's Ask the CIO, Jason Miller speaks with Greg Garcia, who recently left government after 38 years. He spent his last two-plus years as the deputy chief information officer of the Army, and is now CIO at Inserso. Garcia discussed his time in government, all the changes in technology he has seen, his accomplishments and more.

Brian Goodger, the program manager for CIO-SP4 and acting director of NITAAC, said the final solicitation for the health IT services governmentwide acquisition contract should be out mid-to-late March.

Matthew Shallbetter, the director of security design and innovation at the Department of Health and Human Services, has an unusual job in government. He actually goes out and meets with cybersecurity vendors. Shallbetter is on the lookout for the next great cybersecurity technology or tool. He often is attracted to those that have grabbed the attention of venture capital groups. Shallbetter said this approach helps HHS make better decisions for how to protect its technology networks and data, because sometimes failure is a good thing. He shared more insight with Jason Miller on Ask the CIO.

The Federal Acquisition Service at the General Services Administration brought in record revenue last year for IT products and services. This week we hear from some key players in the community about why they were successful and more on what's to come.

Mark Forman, the former administrator for e-government and IT at OMB and Gloria Parker, a former CIO at HUD, helped author a new white paper from the Partnership for Public Service to further accelerate IT modernization.

Sean Brune, the deputy CIO for IT Modernization at SSA, said IT developers and business leaders are working closer than ever to revamp legacy systems.

Stuart McGuigan, who was the chief information officer at the State Department for the last two years before leaving on Jan. 20, said a recent application summit drew more than 800 attendees from across the department who want to develop new software capabilities.

In her first public statements since the Nov. 23 decision to ascertain the election results, Emily Murphy, the GSA administrator, explained her thinking behind the decision and how she prepared for it and dealt with the noise that came from it, as well as her tenure leading the agency.

Rona Bunn, the acting chief information officer at the International Trade Administration in the Commerce Department, said the launch of a new website is part of how the agency is making interaction with its customers integrated and seamless.

The Defense Department is running out of fingers to plug up the ever-increasing amount of cyber threats it faces to its dam. But hiring more people, with more fingers, to block the holes is not the answer either. Jeff Kleck, the director of the cyber portfolio for the Defense Innovation Unit at the Defense Department, said DIU is testing artificial intelligence to keep up with the velocity, volume and veracity of cyber threats. He shared more details on Ask the CIO with Federal New Network Executive Editor Jason Miller.

The security operations center (SOC) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory thought it knew the online patterns and actions of most of its scientists and employees. Then the pandemic hit and everything was thrown into a tizzy. Kevin Kerr, the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory chief information security officer, said the SOC adjusted in the short term but it needs to be more nimble and agile as the future of computing continues to change. Meanwhile Bill Rucker, the president of Trustwave Government Solutions, said agency security operations centers have been on an evolutionary path for the last several years. Hear more on Ask the CIO with Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller.

The Defense Information Systems Agency moved its cloud based internet isolation program into production after testing it out for the last year under a $199 million Other Transaction Agreement. Steve Wallace, the systems innovation scientist at the Defense Information Systems Agency, said the cloud based internet isolation program could be the game changer many have been waiting for in cybersecurity. Sherri Sokol, the program manager of the CBII program, said the technology demonstrated its value earlier this year when cyber experts warned of a zero day vulnerability in the browser. Hear more on this week's Ask the CIO with Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is partnering with the Federal Risk Authorization Management Program or FedRAMP to remove some of the arduous parts of the cloud security certification process. Through the development of a common machine-readable language known as the Open Security Controls Assessment Language (OSCAL), NIST is bringing automation to the program. David Waltermire, the technical lead for OSCAL at NIST, and Milica Green, a compliance subject matter expert with Telos Corporation, spoke to Jason Miller on Ask the CIO.

Cynthia Mendoza, the intelligence community’s chief architect, said the reference architecture framework is defining consistent, repeatable approaches to ensure security and interoperability among enterprise IT capabilities.

The Air Force’s initiative to modernize its network didn’t miss a beat over the last few months despite the pandemic and other related challenges. In fact, the Air Force expanded its test of network-as-a-service to move into the early stages of reaching full capacity, Maj. Gen. Kevin Kennedy, the Air Force’s assistant deputy chief information officer for digital transformation, said the service is opening up the technology and culture change throttles under the Enterprise IT as a service (EITaaS) initiative. He spoke more with Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on Ask the CIO.

Innovation doesn’t just happen at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division - it’s something that people like Judy Conley and Jessica McElman promote, encourage and demonstrate. Conley, the science and technology coordinator for platform integrity, and McElman, the division head for underwater electromagnetic signatures and technology division, are both finalists for the Women in Technology leadership awards, which will hold their 21st annual, virtual, award ceremony on Oct. 29. Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller spoke to them on Ask the CIO.

Mark Munsell, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency chief technology officer, said industry, particularly non-traditional companies, should use the tech focus and technology strategy documents as guides for how to help that agency overcome long-standing challenges.

The Food and Drug Administration is about a year into its IT modernization strategy that focused on three core elements: A modernized IT infrastructure; the ability to demonstrate capabilities of a modern technology and data organization; and the constant communication with stakeholders and other experts to ensure the technology doesn’t fall behind. In the end, the FDA’s IT modernization strategy really is about one thing: data. Amy Abernethy, the principal deputy commissioner and acting chief information officer of FDA, spoke more to Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on Ask the CIO, sponsored by Vion.

The Office of Management and Budget has tried at least two other times to get agencies to consolidate and optimize their security operations centers. At some departments, there are eight or 10 SOCs, meaning there is no single pane of glass for the chief information security officer, or the Department of Homeland Security, or OMB to understand what’s really going on. Grant Schneider, the federal CISO, said the latest attempt to improve the value and reduce the number of security operations centers is well underway.

Christie Canaria, the Small Business Innovation Research program director at the National Cancer Institute and a finalist for the Women in Technology leadership award, said her role in helping small business successful navigate the Small Business Innovation Research program depends bring an assortment of ideas to the table.

Nicolas Chaillan, the Air Force’s chief software officer, said the service is testing its cloud native access point approach through Platform One with the F-35 and Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) teams.

For Suzette Kent, among the biggest frustrations of being federal chief information officer for more than two years was how Congress viewed IT modernization. While a handful of lawmakers understood what it takes to move agencies off legacy systems, Kent said most saw it as a one-year project. Kent, who left her position as federal CIO earlier in July, said changing the funding model for technology is among the biggest impediments to modernization. She spoke more with Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on Ask the CIO.

Ryan Cote, the chief information officer of the Transportation Department, said he shuddered to think what might have happened if not for the previous two years’ worth of work.But it took more than just a modernized network. Cote personally got involved in nearly every aspect of the effort to get the network ready for the telework surge.

Bill Vajda, Interior’s chief information officer, said IT modernization is letting the agency train its employees to be problem solvers and not focused on wires and pliers.

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.

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.

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 demonstrated that the use of the UL 2900 Series of standards, related product testing and certification gave the VA greater confidence and assurance of the medical devices. Hear more from VA's Gary Stevens and Paul Tibbits on this week's Ask the CIO with host Jason Miller, Federal News Network executive editor.

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.

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 framework. Hear his conversation with Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on Ask the CIO.

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 Infrastructure Security Agency as a cybersecurity shared service center is an important milestone for the government for many reasons. Hear more on Ask the CIO, with Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller.

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 pace of transformation. He spoke more to Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on Ask the CIO.

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.

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.

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.

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 information officer, said the help desk initiative went live recently and it kicked off a busy 2020 for the enterprise IT-as-a-service initiative. Hear his conversation with Federal News Network's Jason Miller on Ask the CIO.

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.

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 Medicare Services, said his IT modernization strategy leans toward the second theme. For Jose Arrieta, who became the CIO at HHS in May, the customer, too, is critical but in the short term IT modernization was more about cutting costs. Hear more on this week's Ask the CIO with Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller.

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.

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.

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.

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 agency’s bigger IT modernization effort. Hear more on this week's Ask the CIO with host Jason Miller.

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 data they have and taking advantage of the information in different ways. For this week's Ask the CIO, host Jason Miller spoke to Greg Garcia, the deputy CIO and chief data officer for the Army, and Eileen Vidreen, current Air Force CDO, at the AFCEA NOVA Small Business Enterprise IT Day.

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.

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 setting the foundational infrastructure in place and ensuring it will serve the service for decades. She joined Ask the CIO to discuss more with Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller.

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 Security, and Togi Andrews, the CISO at FEMA, joined Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller for a panel during the recent AFCEA Bethesda breakfast to discuss the issue. Hear more on Ask the CIO.

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 over the past year, her staff has thrown the proverbial spaghetti against the wall to see how they can make the data work for them. Meanwhile, HUD is using data to measure risk was at the heart of several proof-of-concepts. Larry Koskinen, the department's chief risk officer, said the agency received an innovation grant from the Treasury Department to help make better sense of A-133 single audits. Hear more on this week's Ask the CIO, hosted by Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller.

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.

Matt Goodrich, the former director of the cloud security program known as FedRAMP and now is a principal solutions engineer and security specialist at Salesforce, said he survived personal and professional attacks by his own stubbornness and the fact what his team was doing was right.

The General Services Administration and the Energy Department are taking two different paths to achieve the same goal—reducing cyber risk. Energy Department Chief Information Security Officer Emery Csulak joined Ask the CIO to talk about his agency's efforts.

Gary Barlet, the chief information officer of the Postal Service’s inspector general’s office, and Dorothy Aronson, the CIO of the National Science Foundation, say they both spent the last several years preparing their individual agencies for the move to the cloud and use of advanced analytical capabilities.

The new Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) policy that the Office of Management and Budget released in September was step one to reducing the burden of using cloud services. The Department of Homeland Security is getting ready to give agencies the second step in this process. Jeanette Manfra, the assistant director for cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at DHS, said as part of this evolution for how agencies can secure their internet connections, her agency will soon release a TIC document catalog. She spoke more about it with Federal News Network's Jason Miller on Ask the CIO.

Suzette Kent, the federal chief information officer, says the Federal Data Strategy, and its corresponding implementation plan, will drive improvements to how agencies deliver on mission and services as well as supporting economic research and development and national security.

Dr. John Zangardi, the DHS chief information officer, said he is streamlining the authority to operate (ATO) cyber process to help components move applications to the cloud faster without giving up any of the security rigor required.

With the rise of mobile devices from smartphones to tablets, the Marine Corps must deal with an ever-more-delicate balancing act. The corps knows its Marines want to stay connected with family and take courses online, while also relying on these devices for mission needs. Renata Spinks, cyber technology officer for the Marine Corps; Gema Howell, an IT security engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology; and David Harris, information security architect for the Interior Department, spoke on a panel hosted by Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller at the ATARC Mobility Summit on Aug. 6. Hear excerpts from that panel on this week's Ask the CIO.

From an Air Force secretary vote to taking on the Environmental Protection Agency, Congress has returned after a two-week recess to take on a host of pressing topics. Bloomberg Government Editorial Director Loren Duggan joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin for a rundown of what's to come.

When the Justice Department named a new chief data officer, it didn’t name a position, but a person. Joe Klimavicz is that person, wearing both the chief data officer and chief information officer hats for the Justice Department. He said it makes sense for him to do both jobs, at least for now. Klimavicz said in the future Justice may separate the CIO and CDO roles, but for now bringing them under one person makes the most sense. Hear more on Ask the CIO with host, Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller.

A lot of agencies and vendors talk about the move to a zero trust architecture, but few are actually putting the pieces in place to improve their cybersecurity. The Defense Information Systems Agency may be one of the few exceptions. Jason Martin, the vice director of the Development and Business Center at DISA, said the agency is working with the U.S. Cyber Command to launch a zero trust pilot. Jason Miller had more details on this week's Ask the CIO.

Ryan Cote, the Transportation Department’s chief information officer, said by bringing together technology management and delivery under his office, the modals would be freed to focus on mission and receive better, cost-effective services.

Transitioning to a new telecommunications contract has never been easier for the federal government. But the move to the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions or EIS contract brings a whole new set of complexities. Allen Hill, the director of the Telecommunications Services Office at the General Services Administration, said an agency’s network is more than just voice, video and data. He discussed more on Ask the CIO with Jason Miller.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued more than 10 million patents and millions of trademarks, but up until now there was no good way to search through the troves of data. The agency is testing natural language processing to let patent examiners and trademark attorneys more easily find historical information. Jamie Holcombe, the chief information officer of the Patent and Trademark Office, said the agency’s new approach to search is one of about 19 ongoing IT modernization projects. He offered more details to Federal News Network's Jason Miller on Ask the CIO.

The Census Bureau is getting a new chief information security officer just as preparation for the 2020 count hits its full stride. Beau Houser will join Census after spending the last two years as SBA’s chief information security officer. Houser will begin his new position in mid-September and Jeff Harris, SBA's director of security operations, will be the acting CISO until the agency hires a new permanent executive. Houser replaces Jeff Ruland, who retired last September. Houser said he’s looking forward to the challenge of protecting the technology and systems behind the population count.

Amira Boland, who is coordinating the implementation of the Customer Experience Cross-Agency Priority Goal and the GEAR Center for OMB, and Jim Thompson. the director of private sector engagement at the State Department, are spearheading different approaches to bringing new thinking into the government.

The U.S. Marshals Service technology modernization effort actually has little to do with the actual technology.The Justice Department bureau is upgrading its processes that will lead to successful IT implementations. Karl Mathias, the chief information officer of the U.S. Marshals Service, said the agency is adopting a risk-based and agile approach to system updates. He also hired a new CIO to help develop a 5-to-10 year technology modernization roadmap. Mathias joined Jason Miller on Ask the CIO to discuss the agency's agenda.

Irv Dennis, the CFO of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, says the data analytics portion of the Centers of Excellence effort is helping to transform the agency’s financial management processes and technologies.

In early fiscal 2020, the Department of Health and Human Services will pilot its new contracting writing system called Accelerate. HHS will work with a small group of contracting officers and industry to prove that using the cloud and blockchain technology is not only possible, but real. Jose Arrieta, who is currently the chief information officer and was the acting deputy assistant secretary for grants, acquisition policy and accountability at HHS, said the agency has made a lot of progress since December when the Accelerate platform received the authority to operate. He shared more details on Ask the CIO with Federal News Network's Jason Miller.

The U.S. Agency for International Development has no legacy systems. With more than $7 billion in technical debt across the government, USAID is not responsible for any of that. Jay Mahanand, the chief information officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development, said the agency accomplished what few others have been able to do: Get out of deep technical debt, by taking full advantage of the cloud and consolidating data centers. Hear his conversation with Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on this week's Ask the CIO.

Since 2004, the Defense Department has been a part of an international Computer Emergency Response Team through NATO. But only in the last few months has DoD and some of its allies been able to share cyber threat information and work together in real time.Ian West, the cybersecurity chief of the NATO Communications and Information Agency, told Ask the CIO with Jason Miller, the launch of a new encrypted workspace lets five countries test how they can share secure video, voice, chat and information gathering capabilities.

It’s one thing to get an “A” or a “B” in the different areas of the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) scorecard. It’s another to translate those grades into real IT reforms. While the results are far from final, the Department of Health and Human Services seems to be on a path to transform how it manages technology and delivers services. Amy Haseltine, the deputy chief information officer for enterprise services at HHS, said the agency’s IT reform efforts are starting to pay off in measurable ways. Hear her conversation with Jason Miller on Ask the CIO.

NSA’s six-year-old program challenges students and others to solve a multi-step cybersecurity problem as a way to expose them to the type of work the agency and the government does.

Federal chief information officer Suzette Kent said in an exclusive interview that during her time leading federal technology she has learned the biggest areas agencies need to catch the private sector in is processes and people, but not technology.

OMB’s draft cloud smart strategy is one of several ongoing efforts across the government to help agencies deliver services and modernize systems more quickly.

Eric Jeanmaire, the former division chief for Identity, Records and National Security Delivery in U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service and now the CEO of Finality, said moving E-Verify to the cloud made surviving the government shutdown not only possible, but a success.

Like legacy technology systems, agency chief information officers are struggling to modernize their own roles. Federal technology executives and their private sector counterparts still face an uphill battle to shed the long-held viewpoint that they are back-office, cost centers. A new survey of public and private sector CIOs indicated the modernization of their role isn’t happening as fast as many would expect, and technology executives feel the way others judge their value remains stuck in the 1990s. LaVerne Council, the national managing principal for enterprise technology strategy and innovation practice at Grant Thornton, and Todd Tucker, the general manager and vice president of the TBM Council, talked more about this challenge on Ask the CIO with Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller.

Gordon Bitko, the chief information officer of the FBI, said the bureau is relaying on a combination of tools, training and shared services to better manage data.

Eddie Hartwig, the deputy administrator of the U.S. Digital Service, said the goal is to train 250 contracting officers under the Digital IT Acquisition Professional Program (DITAP).

The General Services Administration will host an industry day on April 18 to detail initial thoughts around a new contract writing system. Crystal Philcox, the assistant commissioner for Enterprise Strategy Management at GSA's FAS, among others joined Federal News Network's Jason Miller for Ask the CIO.

Michelle Jacobs, the director of DLA’s hosting office, said the agency is using commercial cloud services to host more than 60 percent of its applications and wants to move toward a software-as-a-service model. Jacobs joined Federal News Network's Jason Miller on Ask the CIO.

Vince Urias, a distinguished member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories, said the HADES program creates a fake environment where cyber defenders can lure hackers and better understand their techniques.

Suzi Connor, the chief information officer at CDC, said a new three-pronged approach will change the way the agency manages and uses technology. Connor joined Federal News Network's Jason Miller on this week's episode of Ask the CIO.

Whether or not the Section 809 panel’s recommendation to exempt the Defense Department from the Clinger-Cohen Act makes sense or goes too far, the congressionally-mandated group hit upon a bigger issue to be solved for every agency: The way Congress provides funding for agencies to buy technology is frozen in time. Former Office of Management and Budget and Defense Department IT executives weighed in on why the frustrations over IT management boiled over in the Section 809 panel report, on this week's Ask the CIO with host Jason Miller.

Max Everett, the Energy Department’s chief information officer, said about one-third to one-half of the department still needs to move their email to the cloud.

Raghav Vajjhala, the chief information officer of the FTC, said a new blanket purchase agreement with four vendors will help the agency take a low risk approach to IT modernization.

Contracting officers are getting some much needed help to make sure solicitations include language to guarantee accessibility for people with disabilities. Section 508 requires agencies to buy technology products and services that are compliant with accessibility standards. Where no human could review the tens of thousands of requests for proposals (RFPs) that come out every year to make sure they include the correct Section 508 clauses, computers can.Marina Fox, who leads the DotGov Domain Services in Office of Governmentwide Policy at the General Services Administration, joined Jason Miller on Ask the CIO this week to discuss.

Margie Graves, the deputy chief information officer of the government at the Office of Management and Budget, said the administration is trying to identify innovative approaches for recruiting and training IT workers.

Lt. Gen. Bruce Crawford, the Army’s chief information officer, said the service’s new artificial intelligence task force will focus on tasks ranging from automating cybersecurity to identity management.

Josh Moses, the former Office of Management and Budget’s chief of the cyber and national security branch in the office of Federal CIO, said agencies are in better shape to defend against cyber attacks because of a combination of policy, people and programs.

Artificial intelligence and the cyber workforce will be front and center when the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on IT comes back for the 116th Congress. Both Reps. Will Hurd (R-Texas) and Robin Kelly (D-Ill.), currently the chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee, respectively, said they want to see progress across the government in both of these areas. House Information Technology subcommittee Chairman Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, talks with Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill. on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 18, 2015, before the start of the subcommittee's hearing on Cybersecurity. While it’s still unclear what the shape of the committee and subcommittees will look like and whether Hurd and Kelly will switch roles both say they plan to remain involved in federal IT and management issues. They spoke with Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on Ask the CIO.

Glenn Davidson, the former executive director of enterprise services at the Commerce, said after three years the agency is seeing better services and cost avoidance from consolidating IT, acquisition and HR services. He joined Federal News Network's Jason Miller on Ask the CIO.

Jothi Dugar, the NIH’s clinical center’s chief information security officer, said she is using the agency’s Diversity of Science effort to increase the number of women in cybersecurity.

The General Services Administration is creating new special item numbers under its IT schedule to make it easier for agencies to buy mobile computing services.

The Air Force is the second military service to restructure its chief information officer’s role by moving it to a higher level in the organization. The service named Undersecretary Matt Donovan as its new CIO to go along with his current role as the chief management officer. And while there is more to finalize around the Air Force’s restructuring efforts, Bill Marion, the Air Force’s deputy CIO, said the work continues to modernize its network and systems. Hear more on Ask the CIO with host Jason Miller.

Janet Vogel, the acting chief information security officer at HHS, said the Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center (HC3) replaces the Healthcare Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (HCCIC).

Jeanette Manfra, the assistant secretary for the Office of Cybersecurity and Communications at DHS, said her office will focus on helping agencies manage and mitigate vulnerabilities through the CDM program.

Kathy Hutson, NSA’s senior strategist for academic engagement, said a 20-year partnership with the University of Maryland, Baltimore County helps keep current employees growing and brings in new ones.

USDA and HUD are taking advantage of both the Technology Modernization Fund and the Centers of Excellence to jumpstart IT modernization efforts. David Chow, the chief information officer at HUD, said TMF and CoE are part of HUD’s financial transformation.

Jason Gray, the Education Department’s chief information officer, said IT modernization is all about making both the policy and the infrastructure more flexible, agile and customer focused.

Renee Wynn, the NASA CIO, said during the upcoming ACT-IAC ELC ImaginationNation conference she’s interested in learning about SDN and zero trust networks.

Alan Thomas, the commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service at GSA, said the Technology Modernization Fund and the EIS contract are helping to push agencies toward better IT services.

Dave Bottom, the chief information officer in the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at DHS, said upgrading to Windows 10 will buoy its larger IT modernization effort.

The State Department's approach to modernizing its technology is focused on two major shifts: The first is centralization of back-office or commodity IT. The second is all about consuming IT-as-a-service. Ken Rogers, the State Department’s deputy chief information officer for business management and planning, said State’s strategy is all about getting off of the buy, build and maintain train. Based on the two-year analysis, State CIO Karen Mummaw published the agency’s new strategy in June that lays out the implementation plan to get the value proposition from cloud services. They joined Federal News Radio's Jason Miller on Ask the CIO.

The Defense Logistics Agency is five months into using its new Business Decision Analytics tool and the impact is obvious for them. The platform is giving DLA contracting officers more specific and better information to know what they are buying isn’t counterfeit or filled with computer malware. For more, Federal News Radio's Jason Miller spoke with Michael Scott, the deputy director of DLA’s logistics operations, and Kathy Cutler, the director of DLA’s Information Operations and chief information officer, on Ask the CIO.

On this special episode of Ask the CIO, host Jason Miller talks to Mark Bradley, the director of the Information Security Oversight Office, and Shawn McCarthy, the research director for IDC Government Insights.

David Powner left the Government Accountability Office in early August after spending 16 years overseeing federal technology management issues.

Dave Nelson, the chief information officer of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said it just took one success and a little bit of time to get the NRC fully on board with cloud services.

Leonel Garciga, the CTO of the Joint Improvised Threat Defeat Organization (JIDO), broke from the traditional federal model with open source to get capabilities out faster.

Jerry Davis retired from federal services after more than 20 years, including the last five as the NASA Ames CIO.

The Health Resources and Services Administration awarded $11 billion in grants across 90 programs in fiscal 2017. And with that comes petabytes of data and the need to analyze that information. Adriane Burton, the Health Resources and Services Administration’s chief information officer, said a new modern data analytics platform holds the key for improving how HRSA manages its grants process.

Frank Konieczny, the CTO for the Office of Information Dominance and chief information officer in the Air Force, said the service is figuring out how to authenticate connected devices.

The Export-Import Bank of the U.S. received an unusual report from its inspector general. Auditors praised the agency’s efforts to modernize its infrastructure and deploy new systems. Howard Spira, the chief information officer of EXIM, said on Ask the CIO with Jason Miller that he focused the agency on the nuts and bolts of operations and maintenance to create this successful approach.

The Agriculture Department is moving closer to ending the planning stage and entering the operational stage of the Trump administration’s Centers of Excellence IT modernization initiative. USDA and the General Services Administration will host a CoE phase 2 planning session on June 27 for contractors to learn about their procurement strategies. The details from phase GSA and USDA awarded four vendors contracts to support phase 1 in March. Gary Washington, the USDA chief information officer, said his agency as well as GSA, detailees and vendors helping on this transformation effort have to keep one very important fact in mind: This is not about technology.

Wayne Jones, the chief information officer at the NNSA, said he is taking a hybrid approach to modernizing systems and applications.

John Sherman, the Intelligence Community’s chief information officer, wanted to tamp down any rumors about why the IC signed a deal to bring Microsoft’s cloud into the mix. He tells it all to Executive Editor Jason Miller on Ask the CIO.

Pam Wolfe, the chief of the Enterprise Services Division in the NASA Shared services office, said because of robotics process automation, her office can review grant applications more quickly.

GSA started down the path using the Technology Business Management (TBM) framework more than two years ago. David Shive, the chief information officer for GSA, said he began with TBM for purely selfish reasons.

Jonathan Sullivan, a digital services expert at the U.S. Digital Service, said modernizing the Quality Payment Program for CMS required a change in approach.

The U.S. Digital Service helped SBA modernize the applications to apply for government contracting programs.

The Veterans Affairs Department is working on no less than 11 different modernization projects to improve the Vets.gov portal. These include straightforward efforts like getting VA to the cloud and improving procurement of technology. Marvo Dolor, the deputy executive director of digital services at the VA, said one of the more challenging initiatives was to create a single-sign on capability for the Vets.gov portal.

Dominic Cussatt, VA’s chief information security officer, said VA has addressed several long-standing cyber problems, including the use of two-factor authentication.

Russell Roberts, the TSA chief information officer, said IT network and hardware upgrades are laying the groundwork for cloud migration.

Steve Grewal, who recently joined Cohesity as its CTO after leaving as the deputy CIO at GSA, said agencies should categorize the apps that can move to the cloud immediately.

The National Cancer Institute is sharing data and moving applications to the cloud in an effort to make life easier for its employees.

Alfred Rivera, who retired after serving more than 20 years at the Defense Information Systems Agency, said DoD can’t underestimate the costs and time it takes to migrate to a single cloud foundation.

Howard Whyte, the FDIC chief information officer, said a third-party assessment set the cyber roadmap for the future.

Mittal Desai, the chief information security officer at FERC, said his office now knows more about how the program offices use and protect information. Desai joined Federal News Radio's Jason Miller on Ask the CIO.

Jada Breegle, the Legal Services Corp.’s chief information officer, tells Jason Miller on Federal News Radio's Ask the CIO a new solicitation will help detail the current grant making processes.

On this week's Ask the CIO with Jason Miller from Federal News Radio, Dorothy Aronson, the chief information officer of the NSF, said a new user interface for its grants application system will come online in April.

Ross Nodurft, the vice president at One World Identity and the former OMB unit chief for the cyber and national security unit, said managing high valued data is key for better cybersecurity.

Jason Gray, the Education Department's CIO and the co-chairman of the CIO Council's IT Workforce Committee, said there are four main goals for the upcoming governmentwide hiring fair.

John Owens, the chief information officer of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, said automated tools and human analysis ensure software code is secure.

George DelPrete, the director of the Federal CIO Survey from the PSC and Grant Thornton, said those questioned online offered a different viewpoint than those surveyed in person.

Brian Burns, the Coast Guard's acting chief information officer, said the service is on schedule to move to Windows 10 by March 2018.

Max Everett, the Energy Department's chief information officer, said the agency can help secure and improve the technology behind the Internet of Things.

Jennifer Kron, the acting chief information officer of the Intelligence Community up until Sept. 13, said the ICITE program is having a bigger impact on the IC than most realize.

Dave DeVries retired after 35 years in government including the last year as the chief information officer at OPM.

The University of Maryland University College is trying to fill a void by offering a new Masters program in cloud architecture and management

Vincent Groh, the CIO of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, said by moving to the cloud he cut MCC's spending on data centers by half.

The Department of Navy is a much different place than when Rob Foster arrived two years ago. Now as Foster, the DoN chief information officer, heads to a new job in government, he said the Department of Navy is well positioned to ride the technology wave for its sailors, seamen and civilian employees to be successful.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service and the Federal Communications Commission are further along with using dev/ops to modernize applications in the cloud.

Todd Simpson, the chief information officer at the Food and Drug Administration, said its cloud advisory board and innovation lab work together to bring new capabilities to bear while also reducing costs and duplication.

Sean Torpey, the acting deputy assistant administrator for Information and Technology and acting chief information officer for the FAA, said the agency is swinging the spending pendulum from legacy IT to newer systems.

Jeanette Manfra, the acting undersecretary for cybersecurity at the Homeland Security Department, offered an in-depth look into the steps DHS and the government took to keep federal agencies safe from WannaCry.

Greg Hall, the assistant director and chief information security officer in the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys in the Justice Department, said the office hired Okta to provide a cloud service to federate its identity management capabilities.

Butch Luckie, the Air Forces chief of IT business analytics, tells Federal News Radio's Jason Miller on Ask the CIO the service is doing a better job capturing software and hardware asset data to help make better buying decisions.