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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <rss xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/"><channel><title>Nextgov/FCW - All Content</title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/</link><description>Federal technology and cybersecurity news and best practices.</description><atom:link href="https://www.nextgov.com/rss/all/" rel="self"></atom:link><language>en-us</language><lastBuildDate>Wed, 27 Nov 2024 13:27:00 -0500</lastBuildDate><item><title>Lawmakers want to enhance HHS cyber engagement with health care orgs</title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2024/11/lawmakers-want-enhance-hhs-cyber-engagement-health-care-orgs/401350/</link><description>The bipartisan proposal, introduced by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., came out of the efforts of a working group focused on protecting medical institutions from digital attacks.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Edward Graham</dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 27 Nov 2024 13:27:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2024/11/lawmakers-want-enhance-hhs-cyber-engagement-health-care-orgs/401350/</guid><category>Cybersecurity</category><body>The growing number of cyberattacks targeting the U.S. health care sector in recent years has pushed a bipartisan group of senators to propose legislation that seeks to bolster institutions&rsquo; security practices and enhance engagement with federal agencies.&nbsp; The <a href="https://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/cyber_wg_bill_textpdf.pdf">measure</a> &mdash; introduced on Nov. 22 by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and co-sponsored by Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and Mark Warner, D-Va. &mdash; would direct the Department of Health and Human Services and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency &ldquo;to coordinate to improve cybersecurity in the health care and public health sectors.&rdquo;&nbsp; HHS, in particular, would be required to update privacy, security and breach notification regulations that apply to health care-related entities. These new cyber practices would include using multifactor authentication, adopting &ldquo;safeguards to encrypt protected health information,&rdquo; establishing requirements for conducting audits and &ldquo;other minimum cybersecurity standards&rdquo; determined by the department&rsquo;s secretary. Within one year of the bill&rsquo;s enactment, the HHS secretary would be required to develop and implement a cybersecurity incident response plan that includes strategies for assessing cybersecurity risks, detecting and preventing cyber threats, mitigating intrusions and quickly recovering from cyber incidents. HHS, in cooperation with CISA, would also make additional resources available to health care and public health sector organizations, including &ldquo;sharing information relating to cyber threat indicators and appropriate defensive measures.&rdquo; Health care and public health entities would also have increased access to cybersecurity-related grants, and the department would also be required to issue cybersecurity best practices for rural health entities and clinics. In a statement, Cassidy said the legislation &ldquo;ensures health institutions can safeguard Americans&rsquo; health data against increasing cyber threats.&rdquo; Cassidy &mdash; ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee &mdash; and the three other lawmakers <a href="https://www.help.senate.gov/ranking/newsroom/press/ranking-member-cassidy-warner-colleagues-launch-bipartisan-senate-health-care-cybersecurity-working-group">launched</a> a working group in November 2023 to examine potential solutions for enhancing the cybersecurity of health care and public health institutions. In a <a href="https://www.help.senate.gov/ranking/newsroom/press/ranking-member-cassidy-colleagues-introduce-legislation-to-strengthen-cybersecurity-in-health-care-sector-as-part-of-bipartisan-working-group">press release</a>, Cassidy&rsquo;s office said the legislation evolved out of the group&rsquo;s work.&nbsp; The rollout of the legislation comes as cybercriminals have increasingly attacked U.S. health care institutions. A February ransomware attack that targeted Change Healthcare &mdash; a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group and the nation&rsquo;s largest health care payment system &mdash; disrupted provider payments and prescription services at hospitals and medical centers across the country. The Government Accountability Office <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2024/11/hhs-has-still-not-addressed-key-cyber-recommendations-gao-says/401028/">warned in a report</a> earlier this month, however, that HHS has still not implemented several critical cybersecurity recommendations despite growing threats. </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/27/112724CassidyNG/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:description>Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), ranking Member on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, participates in a hearing on prescription drugs costs at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on February 08, 2024. Cassidy led introduction of a bill to improve communication between HHS and health care orgs.</media:description><media:credit>Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/27/112724CassidyNG/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>NOAA awards key contract for space situational awareness system</title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2024/11/noaa-awards-key-contract-space-situational-awareness-system/401348/</link><description>Slingshot Aerospace, Inc. nabbed a contract worth up to $13.3 million to provide a “presentation layer” for the Traffic Coordination System for Space.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Frank Konkel, GovExec Space Project</dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 27 Nov 2024 12:03:33 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2024/11/noaa-awards-key-contract-space-situational-awareness-system/401348/</guid><category>Emerging Tech</category><body>The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration awarded a multi-million dollar contract this week to Slingshot Aerospace, Inc. to provide the website and user experience for the Traffic Coordination System for Space, or TraCSS.TraCSS &mdash; pronounced &ldquo;tracks&rdquo; &mdash; is a three-phase effort being developed through NOAA&rsquo;s Office of Space Commerce to provide situational awareness data and information services to civil and private sector space operators and to support space safety, sustainability and coordination. &ldquo;We are delighted to welcome Slingshot to the team to help us bring TraCSS to the entire world,&rdquo; Richard DalBello, Director of NOAA&rsquo;s Office of Space Commerce, said in a statement. &ldquo;Their visualization tools will make our technical data accessible via a modern interface reflecting the latest innovations in software and user experience design.&rdquo; NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said the agency expects to have the website &mdash; TraCSS.gov &mdash; &ldquo;online and ready to sign up public users by late 2025.&rdquo; &ldquo;This contract award represents the next major step forward in our effort to provide spaceflight safety services to global space operators,&rdquo; Spinrad said. The El Segundo, California-based company&rsquo;s space traffic coordination software, Slingshot Beacon, is a key component of the award. In an interview with GovExec, Slingshot&rsquo;s chief revenue and marketing officer Kelli Furrer said the software &ldquo;gives everyone awareness of what is up in the sky,&rdquo; and likened it to an air traffic control system for space. She added the Slingshot Beacon software allows users, which include satellite operators, to communicate through a chat function &mdash; especially critical when satellites are passing close to each other. This bidirectional communication capability has become increasingly important as more countries launch more satellites in space, with over 10,000 satellites operational today and more than 10 times that number expected in orbit by 2030. Slingshot will work closely with systems integrator<a href="https://www.noaa.gov/office-of-space-commerce/news-release/noaa-selects-system-integrator-for-traffic-coordination-system-for-space"> Parsons Corporation</a>, which will develop the software backbone and integrate commercial components for TraCSS. NOAA&rsquo;s Office of Space Command took over space traffic coordination responsibilities from the Defense Department in 2018<a href="https://www.space.commerce.gov/president-signs-space-traffic-management-policy/"> after the signing</a> of Space Policy Directive-3. &ldquo;Slingshot&rsquo;s role in developing this groundbreaking space traffic coordination platform requires intentionality as well as close mission alignment with OSC,&rdquo; said Tim Solms, CEO of Slingshot Aerospace. &ldquo;NOAA&rsquo;s TraCSS initiative offers the opportunity for enhanced space safety and sustainability, fostering growth across the commercial, civil, and academic space sectors for the foreseeable future.&rdquo; </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/27/GettyImages_2035571068-1/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:credit> greenbutterfly/Getty</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/27/GettyImages_2035571068-1/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>How software reuse and extension can accelerate digital transformation for agencies</title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/ideas/2024/11/how-software-reuse-and-extension-can-accelerate-digital-transformation-agencies/401310/</link><description>Practical tips for improving digital transformation.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Matt Beran</dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 27 Nov 2024 09:00:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/ideas/2024/11/how-software-reuse-and-extension-can-accelerate-digital-transformation-agencies/401310/</guid><category>Ideas</category><body><div> Software reuse is a decades-old concept that&rsquo;s finding new relevance today for public sector organizations pursuing digital transformation (DX). While the notion of re-purposing existing software in use by other agencies is an enduring best practice in government, many IT teams still overlook that option even though such opportunities are becoming more plentiful and promising. Let&rsquo;s examine how software reuse is increasingly valuable in building robust applications that extend new capabilities to some of the government&rsquo;s most complex and mission-critical use cases. New Relevance for a Longstanding Principle The idea of software reuse is nothing new. The mandate to re-purpose technology solutions successfully deployed elsewhere in government is enshrined in the <a href="https://dodcio.defense.gov/portals/0/documents/ciodesrefvolone.pdf">Clinger-Cohen Act</a> of 1996, also known as the Information Technology Management Reform Act (ITMRA). What is new, however, is a confluence of modern factors that are increasing both the pressure and the potential for agencies to reuse software. Today&rsquo;s public sector IT ecosystem is such that advanced technologies, like edge computing and new combinations of traditional and generative AI, are already being adopted at some agencies. At the same time, many legacy software systems are becoming obsolete and reaching the end of life. This means IT teams who find themselves in the latter scenario and under pressure to modernize have unprecedented options for software reuse, provided they know how and where to look for those options. More often than not, software reuse is an alternative to reinventing the wheel and starting a software development project from scratch. By prioritizing and pursuing software reuse wherever possible, agency CIOs and their teams &mdash; and the mission owners they support &mdash; can deploy their digital transformation efforts much more rapidly. In the process, they also reap maximum ROI from taxpayer dollars by ensuring the government can fully reutilize software and intellectual property bought and paid for. From Software Reuse to Software Extension Across many of today&rsquo;s public sector DX efforts, agencies can significantly reduce costs and deployment time while remaining compliant with regulations like the Clinger-Cohen Act by reusing existing software solutions. Application reuse is well established in Federal acquisition, particularly across branches of the military, as well as grants management and increasingly at agencies with missions focused on various case management types, including investigation, law enforcement, judicial and compliance. The level of sophistication and value generation today is such that government transformation teams are now doing far more than just reusing software. A more accurate term today might be software extension. By creatively adapting software solutions at one agency to take on new functionality for a broader range of related use cases at other agencies, teams can extend the software&rsquo;s capabilities, and therefore its value, well beyond its original intent or capability specifications. Achieving the right mindset for software reuse requires government technologists to look beyond inter-agency variations in workforce culture or processes to uncover the underlying functionality common to what is likely a wide range of public sector service domains and use cases.&nbsp; This mindset must be backed up by practical skills to successfully benchmark requirements, conduct market research and understand the scope of the existing IP available for the government to reuse. Stronger Benefits and More Mission-Critical Use Cases As software reuse and extension catch on and government IT teams become more adept at evaluating options and asking the right questions as they consider redeployment scenarios between agencies, they&rsquo;re achieving stronger results and building more confidence around more demanding and mission-critical use cases. One technique that helps facilitate this is incorporating a data fabric architecture that accesses data where it resides and virtualizes it through an abstraction layer for an enterprise-wide view of data. Data fabric architectures wrap what&rsquo;s often termed an agility layer around perhaps dozens of previously siloed or unconnected software systems. This creates a unified software ecosystem that is more than the sum of its parts and essentially acts as a service life extension of IP investments. Such capabilities are fueling success stories like the U.S. Army&rsquo;s Global Force Information Management (GFIM) program, which will use a data fabric agility layer to unify and render data from more than a dozen legacy applications into a holistic view of global force structure to equip, train, ready and resource Army forces better.&nbsp; Similarly, there will be an agility layer supporting the Army&rsquo;s massive Enterprise Business Systems - Convergence (EBS-C) project, which will combine enterprise business systems into a common, modernized platform that will more effectively enable multi-domain operations in large-scale combat operations by seamlessly integrating 24 major Army capabilities across the finance and logistics enterprise. Conclusion Software reuse may be an established concept, but it is gaining renewed significance for government agencies today. As many legacy software applications reach the end of their life cycles while other agencies embrace innovations like AI and edge computing, now is an opportune moment for government IT leaders and their teams, as well as the mission owners they support, to identify common requirements and use cases across agencies. By collaborating to repurpose and extend the software to more agencies and more complex use cases, government technologists can better serve their various agency needs and mission requirements. </div> </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/26/GettyImages_1560536837/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:credit> MR.Cole_Photographer/Getty</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/26/GettyImages_1560536837/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>‘Team Human’ vs. AI: MIT expert issues warning on artificial general intelligence risks</title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/11/team-human-vs-ai-mit-expert-issues-warning-artificial-general-intelligence-risks/401331/</link><description>Artificial general intelligence — smarter-than-human AI capable of performing virtually all tasks — risks spiraling out of human control, MIT professor and Future of Life Institute President Max Tegmark said.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Camille Tuutti</dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 27 Nov 2024 09:00:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/11/team-human-vs-ai-mit-expert-issues-warning-artificial-general-intelligence-risks/401331/</guid><category>Artificial Intelligence</category><body>Artificial intelligence could cure diseases, prevent accidents and transform industries &mdash; but at what cost? As tech giants race to create AI that rivals or eclipses human intelligence, one expert warns this path could leave humanity behind. Speaking on Nov. 12 at Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, MIT professor and Future of Life Institute President Max Tegmark presented a stark choice: Use AI responsibly to solve real-world problems, or risk creating a technology we can&rsquo;t control. The future of humanity, Tegmark suggested, may hinge on this decision. In his talk, Tegmark argued against developing artificial general intelligence &mdash; smarter-than-human AI capable of performing virtually all tasks &mdash; and instead advocated for the responsible use of &quot;tool AI&quot; to achieve societal benefits. &ldquo;I am an optimist, and I&#39;m going to argue that we can create an amazingly inspiring future with tool AI as long as we don&#39;t build AGI, which is unnecessary, undesirable and preventable,&rdquo; he said. Tegmark, named among TIME magazine&rsquo;s <a href="https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/6310651/max-tegmark/">100 Most Influential People in AI</a> in 2023, described tool AI as a powerful technology for tackling specific problems like curing diseases, improving safety and addressing climate change, and even helping with United Nations&rsquo; <a href="https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/">Sustainable Development Goals.</a> By contrast, AGI &mdash; smarter-than-human AI &mdash; could become uncontrollable, self-replicating and evolve into a &quot;digital species&quot; that displaces humanity. Tegmark asked the crowd to raise their hands if they wanted AI to help cure diseases and solve problems. &ldquo;That is a lot of hands,&rdquo; he observed. Then, he asked if anyone wanted AI that would make humanity economically obsolete and replace us. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t see a single hand,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp; Critics may argue it&#39;s impossible to separate beneficial AI from harmful AI, but Tegmark disagrees. &ldquo;I&#39;m going to argue that yes, we can,&rdquo; he said. Why AGI is a threat Tegmark compared the dangers of unregulated AGI to unregulated biotech, like human cloning or risky genetic engineering. Safety standards in biotech have allowed life-saving breakthroughs while minimizing risks, and he said AI needs similar safeguards. Imagine if someone claimed biotech must stay completely unregulated &mdash; allowing dangerous practices like human cloning &mdash; or society would lose access to life-saving innovations like vaccines, he said. &ldquo;You would call bullshit on this because you know that if we have legally mandated safety standards, then companies will innovate and meet them and give you safe medicines. In the same way, if someone tells you, &lsquo;Hey, we need to have completely unregulated AGI, otherwise you can&#39;t have any of the exciting tool AI that you&#39;re excited about here at Web Summit,&rsquo; you would call BS on that, too,&rdquo; Tegmark said.&nbsp; AGI: No longer Sci-Fi Think AGI is still decades away? Think again, Tegmark said. He pointed out how quickly AI capabilities have advanced, collapsing previous predictions about AGI timelines. In 2024, robots <a href="https://bostondynamics.com/blog/all-together-now/">not only dance</a> but <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/15/elons-tesla-robot-is-sort-of-ok-at-folding-laundry-in-pre-scripted-demo/">fold laundry</a>, and just six years ago, most AI experts believed mastering language and knowledge, as shown by tools like ChatGPT-4, was decades away.&nbsp; &ldquo;Arguably, we&#39;ve already <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/17/google-ai-lamda-turing-test/">passed the Turing test,</a>&rdquo; Tegmark said, referring to a check if a machine can hold a conversation so naturally you can&rsquo;t tell it&rsquo;s not human.&nbsp; Massive investments in AI, exceeding the inflation-adjusted budget of the Manhattan Project, have accelerated progress and &ldquo;we have to stop being confident that AGI is some kind of long-term thing, or we might get accused of being dinosaurs stuck in 2021,&rdquo; Tegmark said.&nbsp; The stakes Optimists may claim AGI is controllable, but Tegmark said there is no evidence to support this. &ldquo;Once these artificial intelligences get smarter than we are, they will take control, they&#39;ll make us irrelevant,&rdquo; he said. Tegmark highlighted how a small minority supports AGI development, even if it risks replacing humanity. He referenced Richard Sutton, a Canadian professor and computer scientist, who sees it as the next step in evolution, and investor Marc Andreessen, who has tweeted that AGI is <a href="https://x.com/pmarca/status/1747534187597586615">&ldquo;gloriously inherently uncontrollable.&rdquo;&nbsp;</a> &ldquo;I&#39;m on Team human,&rdquo; Tegmark said. &ldquo;I&#39;m going to fight for the right of my 1-year-old son to have a meaningful future even if some digital eugenics dude feels that his robots are somehow more worthy.&rdquo; He argued that AI should be regulated like other banned technologies, such as human cloning and bioweapons.&nbsp; Tegmark called the race to develop AGI a &quot;Hopium War,&quot; driven by false hope that it can be controlled.&nbsp; &ldquo;This AGI race isn&#39;t an arms race; it&#39;s a suicide race,&rdquo; he said. Referencing the 1983 movie &ldquo;WarGames,&rdquo; Tegmark drew a parallel to its famous lesson: &ldquo;The only winning move is not to play.&rdquo; &ldquo;There&#39;s no incentive for any government, including the Chinese government, to play this game and build AGI that takes away all their power as they lose control over it,&rdquo; he said. The solution So, what&rsquo;s the path forward? Tegmark proposed the U.S. and China create enforceable safety standards for AI, much like those in other major industries. Once these are in place domestically, he urged the two nations to lead a global push to stop AGI development in unregulated areas like North Korea. In his technical vision, humans would define the specifications for a tool AI, and a powerful &mdash; but untrusted &mdash; AI would create the tool, write its code and produce a proof that it meets the requirements. &ldquo;You don&#39;t need to understand any of that because, just like it&#39;s much harder to find a needle in a haystack than to verify that it&#39;s a needle after you&#39;ve found it, it&#39;s much harder to find a proof than to verify the proof after you found it,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp; This approach, he said, could lead to a flourishing future powered by tool AI &mdash; provided humanity avoids the arrogance of building AGI. Concluding his talk, Tegmark drew on a lesson from ancient Greece.&nbsp; &ldquo;Don&#39;t get hubris like Icarus,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;AI is giving us humans amazing intellectual wings with which we can do things beyond the wildest dreams of our ancestors as long as we don&#39;t squander at all by just obsessively trying to fly into the sun and build AGI.&rdquo; </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/26/112724humanvAING/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:credit>imaginima/Getty Images</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/26/112724humanvAING/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>Trump teams to deploy throughout government after reaching agreement with the Biden administration </title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2024/11/trump-teams-deploy-throughout-government-after-reaching-agreement-biden-administration/401335/</link><description>The president-elect had previously refused to sign the agreement and is still sidestepping many of the steps typically required for presidential transitions.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Eric Katz</dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 26 Nov 2024 18:24:48 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2024/11/trump-teams-deploy-throughout-government-after-reaching-agreement-biden-administration/401335/</guid><category>Digital Government</category><body>President-elect Trump has reached an agreement with the Biden administration that will allow his teams to deploy throughout federal government, ending a standoff that had blocked official presidential transition efforts taking place.&nbsp; Transition staff assigned to each agency, known as landing teams or agency review teams, will now physically enter headquarters offices throughout government. Once there, they will meet with assigned career senior executive staff, receive already drafted briefings on agency activities and begin the process of exchanging information about existing projects and future priorities. By statute, each presidential candidate is urged to sign agreements with the General Services Administration&mdash;the agency that manages transition efforts&mdash;by Sept. 1 and with the White House by Oct. 1. Trump opted out of both of those memoranda of understanding until Tuesday, when he announced he had reached an agreement with the White House. Trump is notably still refusing to sign an MOU with GSA, meaning his transition team will not have government office space in which it will be based and will not have access to IT services such as official .gov email addresses.&nbsp;&nbsp; &ldquo;After completing the selection process of his incoming cabinet, President-elect Trump is entering the next phase of his administration&rsquo;s transition by executing a memorandum of understanding with President Joe Biden&rsquo;s White House,&rdquo; Trump&rsquo;s White House Chief of Staff-designate Susie Wiles said. &ldquo;This engagement allows our intended Cabinet nominees to begin critical preparations, including the deployment of landing teams to every department and agency, and complete the orderly transition of power.&rdquo; Lawmakers and good government groups like the Partnership for Public Service&rsquo;s Center for Presidential Transition have maintained pressure on Trump to engage in official transition activities, warning of dire consequences of refusing to do so. Without establishing relationships at agencies and understanding what their offices were working on, they said, the Trump administration will not be ready to govern on day one upon taking office. This year now marks the third consecutive presidential election cycle in which transition activities were delayed: in 2016, Trump&rsquo;s efforts got off to a slow start because his team abandoned its pre-election transition planning efforts. In 2020, Biden&rsquo;s efforts were delayed because Trump refused to concede the election.&nbsp; Agencies throughout government are <a href="https://www.govexec.com/management/2024/11/whenever-theyre-interested-agencies-say-they-are-ready-and-waiting-bring-trumps-team-speed/401308/?oref=ge-home-top-story">prepared and waiting for Trump&rsquo;s teams</a>, having completed their briefing materials before the election and designated career staff to aid the landing teams.&nbsp;&nbsp; In his announcement, Trump&#39;s transition team noted it will not utilize the taxpayer funds set aside for transition activities. It is also skipping many steps embedded in transition law. His team will forgo an ethics agreement with GSA, instead relying on agreements it set up internally that will now be posted to GSA&rsquo;s website. The president-elect&rsquo;s team will utilize &ldquo;existing security and information protections,&rdquo; which it said would eliminate the need for &ldquo;additional government and bureaucratic oversight.&rdquo;&nbsp; Transition teams typically sign an additional MOU with the Justice Department so the FBI can conduct background checks on potential nominees. Trump has so far sidestepped that process as well. Wyn Hornbuckle, a DOJ spokesperson, said discussions are ongoing regarding that agreement. &ldquo;The transition landing teams will quickly integrate directly into federal agencies and departments with access to documents and policy sharing,&rdquo; the Trump-Vance transition said.&nbsp; It added it would disclose the landing teams to the Biden administration, but did not say whether it would announce those names publicly.&nbsp; <div class="related-articles-placeholder">[[Related Posts]]</div> </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/26/11262024Trump-1/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:description>By statute, each presidential candidate is urged to sign agreements with the General Services Administration—the agency that manages transition efforts—by Sept. 1 and with the White House by Oct. 1. President-elect Trump opted out of both of those memoranda of understanding until Nov. 26.</media:description><media:credit>Allison Robbert/Getty Images</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/26/11262024Trump-1/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>Don’t forget to submit your Fed 100 nominations</title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/people/2024/11/dont-forget-submit-your-fed-100-nominations/401324/</link><description>The deadline for submissions is Dec. 31.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Frank Konkel</dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 26 Nov 2024 15:19:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/people/2024/11/dont-forget-submit-your-fed-100-nominations/401324/</guid><category>People</category><body>The holidays are a great time to give the gift of recognition to those doers in the federal technology community who&rsquo;ve gone above and beyond in 2024. What better way to do so than to<a href="https://events.govexec.com/federal-100-nominations/"> nominate them for the 36th annual Federal 100 Awards</a>? Nominations for the awards are open and will remain so through Dec. 31, 2024. We&rsquo;re looking for people who&rsquo;ve had an outsized impact on the public sector in 2024 in technology and innovation &mdash; across the government ranks, industry and academia. Here are some general guidelines to consider regarding nominations. <ol> <li aria-level="1">Anyone in the federal IT community is eligible: career civil servants, political appointees, contractors, academics and members of Congress.</li> <li aria-level="1">The awards are for individual accomplishments in the 2024 calendar year. Be specific on accomplishments and go beyond platitudes.</li> <li aria-level="1">Winners go above and beyond, whatever their level or rank. A fancy job title is not required, and just doing one&rsquo;s job well is not enough.</li> <li aria-level="1">Impact matters. Tell us what a nominee did and what that work accomplished.</li> <li aria-level="1">Assemble a strong slate of supporting nominators. These additional voices help make the case for the nominee, often from a slightly different perspective.</li> <li aria-level="1">You can submit multiple nominations. Please do so early and often.</li> </ol> The Dec. 31 deadline for nominations will be here before you know it. Take time to submit your<a href="https://events.govexec.com/federal-100-nominations/home/?__hstc=7334573.f107b33bf225d9144f1082a1170dd80e.1716547553009.1732641137951.1732646577362.316&amp;__hssc=7334573.1.1732646577362&amp;__hsfp=3011104808"> nominations here</a>.&nbsp; </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/26/53692382339_5f4d36e8cb_o/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:credit>Kalorama Photography and David J. Claypool</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/26/53692382339_5f4d36e8cb_o/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>DOD reveals first draft of $15B artificial intelligence contract</title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/11/dod-reveals-first-draft-15b-artificial-intelligence-contract/401301/</link><description>The Defense Department wants more companies in the fold for Advana, a multi-domain analytics and AI platform that DOD wants to further scale out.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Ross Wilkers</dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 26 Nov 2024 09:11:01 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/11/dod-reveals-first-draft-15b-artificial-intelligence-contract/401301/</guid><category>Artificial Intelligence</category><body>The Defense Department has given industry a first glimpse at how it plans to compete a potential $15 billion program whose mission is in the name -- Advancing Artificial Intelligence Multiple Award Contract. A draft solicitation <a href="https://sam.gov/opp/e2f04289bea042cfa6c0a27dc413ae6a/view">released Wednesday outlines what DOD</a> is looking for in this contract that supports Advana, a multi-domain analytics and AI platform run by the Pentagon&rsquo;s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office. Advana is in the midst of an overhaul, which DOD is undertaking to ensure the platform can further scale out across the department. In June, our <a href="https://www.defenseone.com/defense-systems/2024/06/key-pentagon-data-analysis-tool-getting-ease-use-upgrades/397635/">Defense One colleagues reported that CDAO</a> is looking at data mesh principles as a way to simplify the authorization of what resides in Advana and make information sharing easier. The platform&rsquo;s original intent was to help the Pentagon&rsquo;s comptroller work with financial, program management and logistics data for approximately 100,000 users. Booz Allen Hamilton is the incumbent for Advana under a potential three-year, $3.2 billion task order awarded in 2021. DOD has obligated approximately 28% of the ceiling to-date against the order that expires on Aug. 15, <a href="https://govtribe.com/award/federal-contract-award/delivery-order-47qtck18d0004-47qfca21f0018">according to GovTribe data</a>. Given Advana&rsquo;s origin, AAMAC essentially represents DOD&rsquo;s push to open up the platform to multiple companies of all shapes and sizes. DOD&rsquo;s intent is also to stay in keeping with the new goal of onboarding more users. DOD is structuring AAMAC as a potential 10-year contract that would run to July 31, 2035 if all options are exercised. The department&rsquo;s current intent is for between 50 and 70 awards on the new contract. Responses to the draft request for proposals are due no later than 12 p.m. Eastern time on Dec. 20. </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/26/tech_bg_115/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:credit>Gettyimages.com / BeNeDak</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/26/tech_bg_115/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>Lawmaker wants FCC to create AI tool for identifying scams</title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/11/lawmaker-wants-fcc-create-ai-tool-identifying-scams/401296/</link><description>The measure from Rep. John Curtis, R-Utah., would direct the FCC to develop an online platform that can assess submitted communications and then rate the likelihood that they are scam attempts.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Edward Graham</dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 26 Nov 2024 08:00:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/11/lawmaker-wants-fcc-create-ai-tool-identifying-scams/401296/</guid><category>Artificial Intelligence</category><body>A new legislative proposal would require that the Federal Communications Commission create an artificial intelligence-powered platform to help Americans better identify likely scams. The <a href="https://curtis.house.gov/uploadedfiles/scam_platform_text.pdf">measure</a> &mdash; introduced by Rep. John Curtis, R-Utah., on Thursday &mdash; calls for the agency to develop an online tool that is capable of assessing submitted &ldquo;emails, text messages, website addresses and scans or photographs of physical material.&rdquo; The platform would then provide a rating &ldquo;on a scale to be determined by the commission&rdquo; that reflects the likelihood that the solicitations are scam attempts.&nbsp; &ldquo;This legislation harnesses the power of AI to address evolving scam tactics,&rdquo; Curtis said in a statement, adding that the online platform &ldquo;would provide a secure, user-friendly tool to help individuals quickly determine whether a communication they&rsquo;ve received could be fraudulent.&rdquo; Curtis is set to become the junior senator from Utah when the 119th Congress is sworn in early next year.&nbsp; Although the bill would seek to harness AI to better identify scams, the FCC has already taken some initial steps to crack down on the use of the emerging capabilities to target the U.S. public.&nbsp; The FCC unanimously <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/02/fcc-makes-ai-generated-voices-robocalls-illegal/394032/">issued</a> a declaratory ruling in February that made the use of AI-generated voices in unwanted robocalls illegal. That measure came after New Hampshire residents received a call ahead of the state&rsquo;s presidential primary in January that included an AI-generated voice of President Joe Biden urging residents not to vote. The agency&rsquo;s ruling targeted junk calls, however, and the FCC <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/07/fcc-consider-new-protections-against-ai-generated-robocalls-next-month/398077/">subsequently voted</a> in August to propose new rules around the use of AI-generated calls, texts and robocalls.&nbsp; The FCC similarly <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/07/fcc-proposes-requiring-advertisers-disclose-ai-political-ads-radio-tv/398341/">advanced</a> a proposal in July that would require broadcasters to include a disclaimer on all political advertisements that include artificial intelligence-generated content. Despite the proposed rulemakings, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr &mdash; who has been tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to serve as the agency&rsquo;s chair during the second Trump administration &mdash; has <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/10/fcc-commissioner-warns-heavy-handed-ai-regulation-political-ads/400105/">expressed concern</a> that the agency could potentially &ldquo;go way too far in terms of heavy-handed regulation before we&#39;ve seen how the technology can play out.&rdquo; </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/25/112624CurtisNG/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:description>U.S. Senator-elect John Curtis (R-UT) arrives for the Senate Republican leadership elections at the U.S. Capitol on November 13, 2024 in Washington, DC. Curtis introduced legislation Nov. 21 that would require the FCC to create an AI tool for identifying scams.</media:description><media:credit>Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/25/112624CurtisNG/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>Chinese hackers used a ‘range of sophisticated methods’ to breach US telecom providers, insider says</title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2024/11/chinese-hackers-used-range-sophisticated-methods-breach-us-telecom-providers-insider-says/401293/</link><description>Salt Typhoon deployed various methods to break into telecommunications firms that went far beyond a singular run-of-the-mill credential-stealing attempt, according to a person familiar.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">David DiMolfetta</dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 25 Nov 2024 16:22:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2024/11/chinese-hackers-used-range-sophisticated-methods-breach-us-telecom-providers-insider-says/401293/</guid><category>Cybersecurity</category><body>A Chinese state-backed espionage group that penetrated the systems of America&rsquo;s major telecommunications providers and infrastructure that facilitates court-authorized wiretap requests used a variety of techniques and procedures to achieve their infiltration, according to a person with knowledge of the hack. The group, dubbed Salt Typhoon by the cybersecurity community, deployed a &ldquo;range of sophisticated methods&rdquo; to break into the telecom companies&rsquo; systems and conduct a prolonged espionage campaign that&rsquo;s ensnared dozens of telecommunications and internet providers inside and outside the U.S., said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to publicly relay their understanding of the events. The person declined to elaborate on the specific techniques used by the group that allowed them to obtain credentials needed for accessing the communications networks because the investigation into the matter is still ongoing. Verizon, AT&amp;T, Lumen, T-Mobile and several others are believed to have been ensnared in the intrusions. The White House on Friday hosted telecommunications sector executives to brief them on the incident. Some 80 providers are believed to have been targeted, Politico <a href="https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2024/11/up-to-80-telcos-likely-hit-by-sweeping-chinese-hack-00191304">reported</a> Friday. &ldquo;While there were some commonalities and some common threads, they were not locked into a single playbook here,&rdquo; the person said. &ldquo;This is not some fly-by-night phishing campaign that was wildly successful.&rdquo; The details of the breach underscore Salt Typhoon&rsquo;s huge scale of cyber activities and helps explain how the group, as part of its espionage operation, surreptitiously obtained sensitive call and text records from select but high-impact targets, among them individuals <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/07/politics/trump-attorney-phone-tapped-chinese-hackers/index.html">associated with</a> President-elect Donald Trump. The intrusions, which are thought to have been carried out for months, have made Salt Typhoon a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/22/us/politics/chinese-hack-telecom-white-house.html">well-storied</a> cybersecurity topic since the Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/cybersecurity/u-s-wiretap-systems-targeted-in-china-linked-hack-327fc63b?mod=article_inline">first brought</a> the hacking group to light in October.&nbsp; Hacking groups can obtain login credentials through a variety of ways. Operatives may spin up fabricated, plausible-sounding emails that can trick recipients into handing over sensitive account information. Other data may be obtained through sales on dark web forums and similar unpatrolled areas of the internet that often serve as marketplaces for stolen credentials, personal information and other illicit materials. Many of the breached systems were <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2024/11/white-house-convened-telecom-leaders-details-chinese-espionage-hack-unfold/401277/?oref=ng-homepage-river#:~:text=Many%20of%20the%20breached%20systems%20were%20not%20properly%20equipped%20with%20logging%20mechanisms%20to%20monitor%20device%20activity%2C%20delaying%20investigators%E2%80%99%20attempts%20to%20piece%20together%20the%20digital%20sequencing%20that%20allowed%20the%20campaign%20to%20be%20carried%20out%2C%20the%20person%20added.">not properly equipped</a> with logging mechanisms to monitor device activity, Nextgov/FCW previously reported, slowing investigators&rsquo; attempts to piece together the digital sequencing that allowed the campaign to be carried out. It remains unclear&nbsp;whether other surveillance systems, such as those governed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, were penetrated in the hacks. Data from those networks could provide Beijing with insights into U.S. overseas intelligence targets. An influential government-backed cybersecurity review board is poised to formally probe the intrusions at some point in the future, the Department of Homeland Security <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2024/10/dhs-cyber-review-board-investigate-chinese-hack-us-telecom-victim-net-widens/400597/">confirmed</a> in late October. </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/25/112524telecomNG/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:credit>Andrew Brookes/Getty Images</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/25/112524telecomNG/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>Trump’s first White House debated the role of USDS. What will Trump 2.0 do?</title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2024/11/trumps-first-white-house-debated-role-usds-what-will-trump-20-do/401288/</link><description>The Office of Management and Budget led an effort to assess USDS — even whether it should exist — during the twilight days of the Trump administration. With another Trump White House incoming, the question of what’s next for the government’s digital SWAT team looms.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Natalie Alms</dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 25 Nov 2024 16:12:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2024/11/trumps-first-white-house-debated-role-usds-what-will-trump-20-do/401288/</guid><category>Digital Government</category><body>It&rsquo;s been a decade since the Obama White House founded the United States Digital Service in the wake of the bungled HealthCare.gov rollout as a &ldquo;startup&rdquo; meant to bring top tech talent into the government for limited tours of duty. USDS survived the first Trump White House &mdash; a moment when one administration&rsquo;s pet project may be at risk of being abandoned &mdash; but it&rsquo;s not clear what will happen after President Joe Biden leaves in January.&nbsp; There were efforts within the Office of Management and Budget during the dusk of the first Trump administration to appraise USDS&rsquo; size and model, and even whether it should be consolidated elsewhere in government. Whether those discussions are resurrected again is an open question.&nbsp; At the same time, the second Trump White House may also want to wield USDS to implement its agenda, potentially for the sake of tech-enabled efficiency in government &mdash; a priority for the advisory Department of Government Efficiency being run by billionaire Elon Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Nextgov/FCW spoke with more than ten people who have been in the organization across its tenure, as well some with broader government experience, many of whom spoke on background both because they were not authorized to speak to the press and to allow them to speak freely. Original intent Jennifer Pahlka helped start USDS during the Obama administration when she was deputy chief technology officer.&nbsp; &ldquo;The original intent was to create core capacity for digital expertise within the center of government,&rdquo; said Pahlka, adding that USDS is helpful not only because it rescues government projects, but also seeds more transformational changes to how the government does its work. USDS was framed as a sort of &ldquo;SWAT team&rdquo; to serve as an emergency service to help buoy struggling tech projects across federal agencies, in much the same way several of its founders were deployed to save HealthCare.gov.&nbsp; Since then, the USDS team has <a href="https://www.usds.gov/impact-report/2024/ssa/">helped</a> save the Social Security Administration over $280 million in infrastructure costs on their website, for example. It&rsquo;s also helped the agency reduce their call center wait time from 42 minutes to under 12 over the last quarter, an OMB spokesperson told Nextgov/FCW.&nbsp; In recent years, the office has worked on <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2024/05/irs-makes-direct-file-permanent/396989/">Direct File</a> at the IRS, helped with <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/modernization/2024/11/education-launches-2025-26-fafsa-following-weeks-testing/401263/?oref=ng-home-top-story">FAFSA</a> redesigns at the Education Department, <a href="https://www.usds.gov/impact-report/2024/life-experience/">collaborated</a> with cross-government teams on the Biden administration&rsquo;s customer experience work and more. &ldquo;For over 10 years, USDS has focused on solving the hardest technology problems that prevent government from best serving the American people &mdash; modernizing deteriorating and confusing systems, bringing in skilled technologists from the private sector into the federal government, making systems more efficient and cost-effective and improving the delivery of critical services,&rdquo; USDS Administrator Mina Hsiang told Nextgov/FCW in a statement.&nbsp; USDS during the first Trump term The White House tech team <a href="https://www.usds.gov/report-to-congress/2017/07/">collaborated</a> with Jared Kushner&rsquo;s Office of American Innovation during Donald Trump&#39;s first go-round in the White House.&nbsp; But towards the end of the first Trump administration, there was an effort to define the right size and operational model for USDS, according to a former Trump administration official. OMB led the effort, according to another former government official who worked in the White House during the Trump administration.&nbsp; USDS &mdash; which doesn&rsquo;t have official statutory backing from Congress &mdash; shares funding with the Office of the Federal Chief Information Officer, which is charged with providing direction for and oversight of the federal government&rsquo;s use of technology and cybersecurity.&nbsp; But it&rsquo;s not the only tech assistance team in government. Federal agencies can also look to other tech teams within the General Services Administration and contractors for help. How USDS fits into that broader ecosystem and the potential for a more defined organizational model was under discussion during the end of the first Trump White House, said the first former Trump official, noting that USDS had evolved into a larger organization over the years and expanded its focus beyond emergencies alone.&nbsp; The reporting structure for USDS also changed in 2016. It had been housed in OFCIO, but later moved to report to the deputy director of management at OMB, per its 2016 impact <a href="https://www.usds.gov/report-to-congress/2016/">report</a>.&nbsp; Those leading this deep dive into USDS during the first Trump administration also discussed the team&rsquo;s funding model, they said. Also on the table was the question of whether the organization was aligning its work with the president&rsquo;s agenda or picking the projects it wanted to work on, said the second former government official who worked in the White House during the Trump years.&nbsp; Whether USDS should exist at all or be consolidated elsewhere in government was also under consideration, they said. Some thought that the team&rsquo;s work could be done by tech talent housed within agencies themselves or by government contractors. There was also pressure against the tech unit coming from some of those vendors outside the government who feared that their work would be taken away by USDS during the Trump years, said a former USDS-er who worked there during the Trump administration.&nbsp; The tech team&rsquo;s administrator during the Trump administration, Matt Cutts, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-us-digital-service-technology-government/">described</a> the organization as nonpartisan.&nbsp; Dozens of USDS posts, including its administrator and deputy administrator roles, were <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/people/2021/05/few-agencies-sought-schedule-f-conversions/258882/">tagged</a> to be converted to Schedule F at the tail end of the administration &mdash; including them in an effort to remove merit-based civil-service protections as part of the implementation of a controversial executive order issued late in 2020.&nbsp; Although that order was repealed by the Biden administration, President-elect Trump has since <a href="https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2024/11/trump-tap-schedule-f-architect-promising-widespread-federal-layoffs-head-omb/401228/?oref=ge-topic-lander-featured-river">named</a> a chief architect of Schedule F, Russ Vought, to lead OMB again in the next administration. USDS under Biden Some worry that decisions made under the Biden administration have put the organization more at risk &mdash; to be eliminated, irrelevant or used for political whims &mdash; for Trump 2.0. When the Biden administration took over at the start of 2021, they switched the USDS leadership position to a presidential appointee role, as it was during the Obama administration. The White House also added some new political roles to USDS &mdash; dubbed senior advisors for delivery &mdash; to <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/people/2023/03/usds-alum-lynn-overmann-talks-priorities-new-role-beeck-centers-director/383995/">detail</a> to White House policy councils, such as the Domestic Policy Council.&nbsp; To some, these decisions are evidence that the Biden administration abandoned a more nonpartisan approach cultivated during the Trump years to the potential detriment of USDS.&nbsp; &ldquo;Why wouldn&rsquo;t USDS help separate families and lock down the border? Why wouldn&rsquo;t it be used for that purpose since Biden <a href="https://www.usds.gov/projects/n-400#:~:text=The%20Solution,and%20track%20their%20cases%20online.">used</a> <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/FY-2023-EOP-Budget-Submission.pdf">USDS</a> for its border policies?&rdquo; asked a former USDS-er who now works elsewhere in government, noting that such an ask could set up a culture clash between USDS as it exists now and the new White House.&nbsp; A political focus for the White House tech team has disconnected USDS from the real needs of agencies and from its work fixing less &ldquo;sexy&rdquo; problems with the guts of government, like hiring and procurement, said another former member of USDS, now on the other side of the equation as a USDS agency customer.&nbsp; They&rsquo;re also worried that a focus on political priorities means the team is losing its culture of bucking the thoughts and expectations of others that made it special. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the point of USDS 10 years in?&rdquo; asked a third former member of USDS, also still in government, saying that it&rsquo;s unclear why and how the organization decides what projects to work on. Some who formerly worked in USDS are frustrated with the team&rsquo;s leadership and the fact that USDS is in this position at all.&nbsp; The team&rsquo;s leadership under this administration has also suffered from some controversy about <a href="https://docs.pogo.org/letter/2022/POGO-Asks-OMB-To-Rescind-Ethics-Waivers-That-Put-a-Top-Official-Above-the-Law-2-10-22.pdf">alleged ethics problems</a> for Hsiang and <a href="https://news.bloomberglaw.com/health-law-and-business/hhs-senate-probe-for-ethical-conflicts-in-organ-groups-hire">probes</a> into potential ethics problems around its former chief delivery officer, Ankit Mathur,&nbsp;after he left government. A former Biden administration official called the idea that USDS is nonpartisan a strategic &ldquo;mythology&rdquo; meant to give the team more autonomy in picking its work. Like other parts of the government that aren&rsquo;t explicitly independent agencies, part of the job of USDS is to implement the priorities of the president.&nbsp; A former USDS official who worked there during the Biden administration pointed to the team&rsquo;s website when asked about critiques of a lack of transparency around the team&rsquo;s work, and said that why certain decisions are made can be confusing in any part of government if you&rsquo;re not in a decision-making role. The mission is flexible by design, they said.&nbsp; USDS has also released an <a href="https://www.usds.gov/impact-report/2024/">impact report</a>. To some, USDS&rsquo; problems actually stretch beyond the office itself to a broader lack of clear strategies and specific priorities on government technology over the last four years. There aren&rsquo;t enough incentives for teams to work across siloes and funding streams, said one of the former employees, and no single leader is empowered to corral others.&nbsp; USDS regularly collaborated with OFCIO and teams across GSA, said the former USDS-er who was there during the Biden administration. Clare Martorana, federal CIO, also released a federal IT <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Federal-IT-Operating-Plan_June-2022.pdf">operating plan</a> in 2022 looking across OMB, GSA and USDS money and teams at the request of Congress.&nbsp; A move to cost recovery&nbsp; All this is happening as USDS is adjusting to the end of about $200 million from the American Rescue Plan Act, which it <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/EOP-FY2022-Congressional-Budget-Submission.pdf">used</a> to offer more work to agencies without requiring reimbursements and to ratchet up its employee headcount to over 200. Now, the organization is asking agencies for reimbursement agreements, a strategy deployed in the Trump administration to cover costs in tight budget circumstances, another former USDS team member who was there during the Trump administration confirmed with Nextgov/FCW. Embedding USDS members into federal agencies was another strategy.&nbsp; Asking for reimbursement moves USDS closer to the model of other tech teams within GSA that have a mandate of cost-recoverability. &ldquo;Our recent move to a cost-reimbursable model with agency partners, as a result of congressional budget constraints, significantly hampers our ability to respond to urgent crises,&rdquo; an OMB spokesperson told Nextgov/FCW, before saying that it also &ldquo;has demonstrated just how critical USDS teams are to agency technology transformations.&rdquo; &ldquo;Dozens of agencies have continued to request USDS engagement, even in a resource constrained environment, valuing our teams&#39; work and expertise,&rdquo; they said. The requirement to pay for services could close access to some agencies that lack resources, making the team&rsquo;s decisions about money, not impact, said one current government official who works on digital services at an agency.&nbsp; The White House&rsquo;s fiscal 2025 budget request <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2024/03/biden-seeks-more-500m-cx-2025-budget/394995/">included</a> a $55 million ask across 11 agencies for digital experience work via USDS, which caused tension for some agencies already juggling their own tight budgets and trying to build their own digital services teams, two people told Nextgov/FCW. USDS also asked for a reimbursement authority for agencies to transfer funding to the USDS-OFCIO account &mdash; up to $30 million. That ask would give the agency the ability to cover overhead costs with that money and fund cross-agency work, said the former official who was there in the Trump years. USDS hasn&rsquo;t been good at communicating its value in recent years, the former official who worked in the agency during the Biden years said. USDS works with Capitol Hill through the OMB Office of Legislative Affairs, and leadership hasn&rsquo;t been directly briefing those on the Hill regularly, they said. At the same time, many who spoke with Nextgov/FCW still see a value for the White House tech team.&nbsp; &ldquo;We continue to have robust interest from private sector technologists in joining government, and more requests from agencies for our help than we are able to support,&rdquo; Hsiang told Nextgov/FCW in a statement.&nbsp; For now, USDS is a valuable resource even for agencies trying to build their own capacity internally, said the current government official working on digital services in an agency.&nbsp; &ldquo;It&rsquo;s going to take a long time for folks to build that capability in-house,&rdquo; they said. &ldquo;And probably time that they probably don&rsquo;t have &hellip; with a lot of legacy systems that are going to break down before that.&rdquo; </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/25/112524USDSNG/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:credit>smartboy10</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/25/112524USDSNG/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>White House convened telecom leaders as details of Chinese espionage hack unfold</title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2024/11/white-house-convened-telecom-leaders-details-chinese-espionage-hack-unfold/401277/</link><description>Many of the breached systems were not properly equipped with tools that recorded network activity, making it harder to quickly trace the origins of the hack, a person familiar said.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">David DiMolfetta</dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 25 Nov 2024 11:18:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2024/11/white-house-convened-telecom-leaders-details-chinese-espionage-hack-unfold/401277/</guid><category>Cybersecurity</category><body>The White House on Friday hosted telecommunications sector executives to brief them on a pervasive Chinese cyberespionage campaign that has penetrated the networks of what&rsquo;s now believed to be dozens of telecom and internet providers. The hacking collective, dubbed Salt Typhoon, has compromised AT&amp;T, Verizon, Lumen, T-Mobile and others in what Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/11/21/salt-typhoon-china-hack-telecom/">called</a> the &ldquo;worst telecom hack in our nation&rsquo;s history.&rdquo; Some 80 providers &mdash; some of which lie outside the U.S. &mdash; are believed to have been ensnared in the infiltrations, Politico <a href="https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2024/11/up-to-80-telcos-likely-hit-by-sweeping-chinese-hack-00191304">reported</a> Friday. The Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/cybersecurity/u-s-wiretap-systems-targeted-in-china-linked-hack-327fc63b?mod=article_inline">first reported</a> the hacks in early October, depicting an espionage operation that ballooned to levels unseen from past Chinese spying campaigns. The White House meeting was hosted by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology Anne Neuberger, according to a readout from the White House. &ldquo;The meeting was an opportunity to hear from telecommunications sector executives on how the U.S. government can partner with and support the private sector on hardening against sophisticated nation state attacks,&rdquo; it said. It&rsquo;s possible the campaign had been in the works for around a year, the New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/22/us/politics/chinese-hack-telecom-white-house.html">reported</a> Friday. Microsoft began warning the firms of the breaches over the summer, added the report, which cited U.S. officials and industry executives.&nbsp; Nearly all phone numbers tracked by the Justice Department as part of the government&rsquo;s lawful intercept wiretapping systems were accessed, providing China with broad insight into America&rsquo;s government surveillance targets, the NYT report added. The U.S. internet and telecommunications backbone mainly comprises a small number of <a href="https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/big-4-wireless-carriers-spent-100b-on-5g-spectrum-was-it-worth-it-68488095">major providers</a> that sell network access, infrastructure and services to businesses and consumers, forming the foundation for the country&rsquo;s digital connectivity.&nbsp; But what lies below that are a slew of smaller providers &mdash; dubbed Mobile Virtual Network Operators &mdash; that sell wireless services under their own brand name while piggybacking off the networks of the larger mobile firms. Infiltrating the core systems of these major providers could create a cascading effect, enabling cyberspies to quietly navigate America&rsquo;s telecom infrastructure for months. Some 150 people are thought to be targeted and were notified by the FBI, Warner told the Washington Post Thursday. But the number of calls and texts sent by all of those people run into the millions, potentially allowing the Chinese government to map out the identity of others in the communications stream. Various elements of the compromised networks were not secured with basic multifactor authentication, a commonplace verification technique that double checks whether a user is masquerading as someone else when logging into a system, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly relay their knowledge of the infiltration. Many of the breached systems were not properly equipped with logging mechanisms to monitor device activity, delaying investigators&rsquo; attempts to piece together the digital sequencing that allowed the campaign to be carried out, the person added. The dynamic is another chapter in the back and forth spying salvos that the U.S. and China have launched against each other over the years. Communications data has always been prime intelligence for foreign adversaries because it allows them to know what victims are thinking, Kevin Mandia, who founded the eponymously named threat intelligence firm Mandiant, told Nextgov/FCW in October. Documents revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden a decade ago showed that the U.S. undertook extensive efforts to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/world/asia/nsa-breached-chinese-servers-seen-as-spy-peril.html?hp">spy on</a> Huawei, a now dominant Chinese telecom provider that&rsquo;s been put in the <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/supplychain/reimbursement">crosshairs</a> of federal regulators concerned that its equipment &mdash; when embedded in or near American infrastructure &mdash; opens doors for spying and sabotage.&nbsp; Lawmakers have called on the Federal Communications Commission to reform the measure that manages wiretapping procedures, known as the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. But the FCC does not appear poised just yet to do so. Top officials on Thursday <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2024/11/fcc-leaders-skirt-call-wiretap-security-reform-hope-go-deeper-telecom-breach-briefings/401222/?oref=ng-home-top-story">skirted around</a> questions about whether they plan to initiate a CALEA procedure. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t have a thought on that one at this point,&rdquo; incoming FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said Thursday when asked about potential CALEA reform, adding that he plans to view inquiries from Capitol Hill. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll continue to get more in-depth briefings. I think I&rsquo;ve had a pretty good level [of understanding], but I think there&rsquo;s more that I need to dig down on there.&rdquo; </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/25/112524WhiteHouseNG/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:credit>Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/25/112524WhiteHouseNG/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>Agencies credit telework with recruiting, retention gains, GAO finds</title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2024/11/some-agencies-credit-telework-recruiting-gains-gao-finds/401275/</link><description>A watchdog report examining telework use at four agencies found best practices still need implementation, but the presence, or absence, of telework as an option has affected their ability to attract talent.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Carten Cordell</dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 25 Nov 2024 10:00:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2024/11/some-agencies-credit-telework-recruiting-gains-gao-finds/401275/</guid><category>Digital Government</category><body>Federal telework continues to be in the political crosshairs &mdash; especially as the incoming second Trump administration has signaled&nbsp;<a href="https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2024/11/trumps-doge-commission-promises-mass-federal-layoffs-ending-telework/401111/?oref=ge-homepage-river">plans to end it</a>&nbsp;through its proposed Department of Government Efficiency &mdash; but a Nov. 22&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-25-106316.pdf">Government Accountability Office report</a>&nbsp;found that at four agencies, the practice has had an effect on the ability to recruit and provide customer service.&nbsp; The report; which examines telework postures at the IRS, Farm Service Agency, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Veterans Benefits Administration between July 2019 and December 2023; found that the practice impacted the agencies&rsquo; ability to recruit and retain talent, regardless of how much they utilized it in their workforces.&nbsp; The report, part of a series the watchdog is conducting on federal telework, looked at the telework policies and use at the four agencies, each deemed a High Impact Service Provider by the Office of Management and Budget for their customer-facing services, as well as their implementation of best practices for their respective programs.&nbsp; While each agency&rsquo;s ability to evaluate its own telework program&rsquo;s effects varied, so did its overall use of the program. For instance, while a February 2024 pay period showed that 49% of IRS employees were considered frequent teleworks, 28% worked in the office, the FSA recorded 81% of its staff working in-office in a March 2024 pay period, with only 3% teleworking for five days or more.&nbsp; The differences in telework use often depended on each agency&rsquo;s work portability &mdash; FSA officials often have to be on-site to receive acreage reports and assess farm operations, while IRS customer service representatives can field calls and answer taxpayer questions at any location &mdash; or separate collective bargaining agreements, but within agencies, telework use could vary from office to office in some cases.&nbsp; But what commonality the four agencies did share was the impact telework, even as an option, had on their ability to recruit, hire and retain employees.&nbsp; &ldquo;FSA officials at state and county offices told us the agency&rsquo;s relative lack of telework use following reentry compared to the private sector or other federal agencies likely posed a challenge to recruitment, hiring and retention,&rdquo; the report said about the Agriculture Department component. &ldquo;FSA officials at one county office said that they have had applicants take themselves out of consideration after learning that the position required them to be in the office most of the time.&rdquo; IRS officials noted that telework was &ldquo;an important tool in helping the agency hire over 5,000 new CSRs in fiscal year 2023&rdquo; and expanded the talent pool from which the agency could hire. Conversely, officials noted that some in-person requirements, such as a 12-week training period for CSRs, led to higher attrition, with one IRS location reporting that 30% of new staff quit during the training period.&nbsp; At the USCIS &mdash; where 39% worked in-person, 38% worked remotely and 15% teleworked five days or more in a February 2024 pay period &mdash; telework-eligible positions drew more applicants than in-person positions between 2019 and 2023.&nbsp; Applicants for remote positions, where an employee operates from an alternate worksite and isn&rsquo;t expected to come to the office, drew three times as much interest as telework-eligible or in-person positions in 2023, USCIS officials told GAO. An agency analysis of its 2023 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey data &ldquo;found that frequent teleworkers scored higher on performance dimensions of accountability and customer responsiveness than employees who teleworked less frequently or not at all.&rdquo; The VBA, which saw 66% of its employees telework five or more days in a February 2024 pay period, said that telework as an option &ldquo;likely contributed to engagement and retention improvements&rdquo; and has received more applicant interest for telework-eligible positions. &ldquo;Our analysis of [VA All Employee Survey] data found that in 2023, more employees intended to leave VBA for work-life balance reasons, including greater telework flexibility (around 5 percent of total respondents) than in 2019 (around 3 percent),&rdquo; the report said.&nbsp; Where agencies did see customer service or performance changes, the report said officials did not attribute it to telework, but other anomalies, such as delays for the VBA caused by the closure of federal records centers during the pandemic or improvements in IRS customer service aided by technology modernization and additional hiring.&nbsp; The GAO did note that all four agencies still had work to do&nbsp;to complete best practices designed to successfully implement their telework programs. The IRS, FSA and USCIS have not yet fully evaluated the effects of their telework use, while the VBA has partially completed efforts to collect telework data. The report comes as the Trump administration has proposed to use its non-government panel, known as DOGE, to use telework reductions as a tool to help draw large-scale layoffs to slice the federal workforce. The GAO recommended that the IRS, FSA and USCIS evaluate their telework programs to identify problems or issues and make appropriate adjustments, while the VBA should complete its telework system update to collect more data on its use.&nbsp; VA and Homeland Security officials agreed with the recommendations, while the IRS partially agreed and the USDA did not agree or disagree. </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/25/112224_Getty_GovExec_GAOTelework/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:description>A new report examining telework policies at four federal agencies found that applicant pool frequently increased for telework or remote positions. </media:description><media:credit>Catherine Falls Commercial / Getty Images</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/25/112224_Getty_GovExec_GAOTelework/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>Education launches 2025-26 FAFSA following weeks of testing</title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/modernization/2024/11/education-launches-2025-26-fafsa-following-weeks-testing/401263/</link><description>The public release of the online form follows a delayed and glitchy version released last year.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Natalie Alms</dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 22 Nov 2024 15:54:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/modernization/2024/11/education-launches-2025-26-fafsa-following-weeks-testing/401263/</guid><category>Modernization</category><body>The online Free Application for Federal Student Aid, more commonly known as the FAFSA, is live following weeks of beta testing, the Education Department announced Thursday.&nbsp; After delays and glitches plagued what was meant to be an overhauled FAFSA form last year, the department said&nbsp;that results of ongoing testing so far are encouraging for the application that helps determine the eligibility of students for federal aid like student loans and grants. &ldquo;The FAFSA form is live, and the department is actively processing online submissions and sending them to schools so they can get financial aid into the hands of students,&rdquo; Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told reporters Thursday.&nbsp; As of yesterday, over 167,000 FAFSAs have been submitted through the beta tests. Education was opening up the form to more and more people during each round of beta testing.&nbsp; Traditionally, the form comes out on Oct. 1, a deadline both chambers of Congress have now <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2024/11/22/senate-passes-bill-mandate-oct-1-fafsa-deadline">opted</a> to mandate via law. Last year, Education opened it in late December, setting off a series of delays for colleges and universities sending out financial aid offers to students. FAFSA was supposed to be simpler last year after Congress passed laws meant to streamline it, and in <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2024/01/education-dept-debuts-simpler-online-financial-aid-form-users-face-restricted-rollout/393120/">some ways</a>, it was. The number of questions went down for applicants, and data sharing with the IRS that was enabled by one of those laws meant less work for those filling out forms.&nbsp; But delays and tech issues &mdash; like being blocked from starting an application at all, or getting an incorrect student aid estimate &mdash; dogged the process for many.&nbsp; Education counted over 40 separate technical issues with the initial rollout, according to the <a href="https://www.gao.gov/blog/botched-fafsa-rollout-leaves-uncertainty-students-seeking-financial-aid-college">Government Accountability Office</a>. Students couldn&rsquo;t always reach the call center for help at Education, and those that did often didn&rsquo;t get good information on how to navigate tech issues.&nbsp; This year, the department started four rounds of beta testing in October to find bugs and improve the user experience of the form. The department did not do beta testing before the rollout last year, a department official confirmed with Nextgov/FCW.&nbsp; &ldquo;Guided by data on where applicants were struggling, we have steadily improved the form,&rdquo; said Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal of the process this year. &ldquo;For example, we&#39;ve helped students and parents avoid submitting forms before signing them, [and] cut missing signatures by more than 80% to a level that is now in line or lower than past years.&rdquo;&nbsp; The department also added new accountability to Federal Student Aid and increased outside technical expertise, said Cardona, in addition to pursuing listening sessions and accepting more feedback from partners and stakeholders. The U.S. Digital Service helped with the rollout this year.&nbsp; Education is also touting increased call center staff and new resources for stakeholders like schools and counselors. So far, Education has gotten 95% satisfaction ratings with the experience, and over 90% said that the form took a reasonable amount of time to complete, said Jeremy Singer, who came on as a FAFSA executive advisor to lead the application&rsquo;s strategy in June. &ldquo;We invested heavily in testing and the investment was well worth it,&rdquo; he said, noting that the department didn&rsquo;t find any new &ldquo;critical&rdquo; bugs, but did fix some latent issues from last year, like where students would be stuck on certain pages of the application. Another change from last year is meant to help with the identity verification requirements for those without Social Security numbers. Both students and contributors like parents have to fill out the form. Last year, many families of mixed immigration status struggled because issues prevented those without Social Security numbers from doing so. There were <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/07/19/fafsa-mess-leaves-mixed-status-families-limbo-school-year-looms/">problems</a> with new identity verification processes through FSA ID and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/13/us/politics/fafsa-college-admissions.html">backlogs</a> at the department for processing the data of those using manual workarounds to verify themselves.&nbsp; This year, the department is allowing contributors to finish the form while their identity is still being verified, a senior department official told reporters.&nbsp; &ldquo;Students will receive full access to the aid they are entitled to, and contributors will not be required to complete the manual identity validation process prior to aid being disbursed to a student,&rdquo; a department official told Nextgov/FCW. &ldquo;The department will continue to make improvements to the identity validation process for those without SSNs.&rdquo; Moving forward, the department is on track to launch next year by Oct. 1, a senior department official told reporters.&nbsp; &ldquo;Fixing a process and a system that is nearly as old as me &mdash;&nbsp;it wasn&rsquo;t an easy task,&rdquo; Cardona said of the work. &ldquo;Just because there was a new policy in place from Congress, it didn&rsquo;t mean that the operations system that had to implement the changes was prepared for the changes. Now it is because of the work that we&rsquo;ve done over the last 6 months.&rdquo; The FAFSA simplification effort has meant modernizing or replacing over 20 old computer systems, said Kvaal.&nbsp; Contract requirements for the update to the FAFSA processing system were pushed back &mdash; some not even met when the new system launched &mdash; and some planned testing steps were skipped before last year&rsquo;s launch, according to GAO, meaning that Education didn&rsquo;t even find some of the defects last year until the new FAFSA was live. GAO also pinned problems last year on a lack of disciplined systems acquisition practices and the absence of a long-term chief information officer at Education in recent years.&nbsp; Last year, the FAFSA problems led to a 9% decline in submitted applications among first-time applicants, according to GAO, and an overall decline of about 432,000 applications as of the end of August.&nbsp; Now, more students are receiving Pell Grants this year as compared to last, said Cardona.&nbsp; He noted he is a first generation college graduate, but never filled out the FAFSA himself. &ldquo;I felt it was too complex and didn&rsquo;t want to put that burden on my parents,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp; Moving forward, &ldquo;there are still opportunities to improve the user experience &hellip; which is what we will turn to next,&rdquo; said Singer. The work is about &ldquo;continually iterating to build a better system.&rdquo; </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/22/GettyImages_1447820734/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:credit>Ekahardiwito Subagio Purwito/Getty Images</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/22/GettyImages_1447820734/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>Lawmakers propose electronic tracking system for federal grant applications</title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2024/11/lawmakers-propose-electronic-tracking-system-federal-grant-applications/401261/</link><description>The legislation from Rep. Stephanie Bice, R-Okla., would also explore the use of artificial intelligence “to rapidly identify” duplicative or fraudulent grant applications.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Edward Graham</dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 22 Nov 2024 15:14:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2024/11/lawmakers-propose-electronic-tracking-system-federal-grant-applications/401261/</guid><category>Digital Government</category><body>A trio of House Republicans proposed legislation this week that would create a new electronic tracking system &mdash; and look into leveraging artificial intelligence capabilities &mdash; to review federal grant applications for identical or fraudulent submissions. The bill &mdash; the Decreasing Overlapping Grants Efficiently, or DOGE, Act &mdash; is a nod to President-elect Donald Trump&rsquo;s <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/policy/2024/11/trumps-doge-commission-promises-mass-federal-layoffs-ending-telework/401126/?oref=ng-homepage-river">announced</a> commission for reducing federal waste, known as the Department of Government Efficiency.&nbsp; The proposal was <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/10177/text">introduced</a> on Wednesday by Rep. Stephanie Bice, R-Okla., and is co-sponsored by Reps. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., and Blake Moore, R-Utah. The measure&rsquo;s main focus is to limit grant awards to recipients who have already received a grant from another agency for similar or identical purposes, or who have submitted a fraudulent application. &ldquo;Taxpayers deserve responsible stewardship over their dollars, and one of the ways this can be accomplished is through minimizing waste through mitigating essentially equivalent work,&rdquo; Bice&rsquo;s office said in a one-pager of the bill that was provided to Nextgov/FCW. Within one year of the bill&rsquo;s enactment, the Office of Management and Budget would have to establish a tracking and deconfliction system for federal grant applications that can be accessed by the heads of executive agencies or inspectors general before any grants are awarded.&nbsp; The legislation would also require OMB &mdash; in consultation with the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology &mdash; to submit a report to relevant congressional committees &ldquo;on the feasibility of leveraging artificial intelligence to rapidly identify&rdquo; similar or identical grant applications.&nbsp; In an <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/efficient-accountable-gop-led-doge-bill-aims-slash-outflow-federal-dollars">interview</a> with Fox News on Thursday, Bice said her bill &ldquo;would create a deconfliction and tracking system for federal grants that not only reduces waste but also builds confidence in how public funds are distributed and managed.&quot; </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/22/112224BiceNG/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:description>Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-OK) speaks during a markup meeting with the House Budget Committee on Capitol Hill on September 20, 2023 in Washington, D.C. Bice introduced legislation Nov. 20 that would create a tracking system for federal grants to reduce duplication and fraud.</media:description><media:credit>Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/22/112224BiceNG/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>Four Ways to Accommodate the Massive Growth in Space Launches</title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2024/11/four-ways-accommodate-massive-growth-space-launches/401256/</link><description>One suggestion: expand the number of launch sites.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Scott Altman, Space Project</dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 22 Nov 2024 12:00:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2024/11/four-ways-accommodate-massive-growth-space-launches/401256/</guid><category>Emerging Tech</category><body>NASA again was propelled into global headlines on October 14 when the agency successfully launched its Europa Clipper spacecraft aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center. This mission will investigate whether Europa, a moon of Jupiter with an enormous subsurface ocean, might have conditions to support life. With this exciting news, NASA, the U.S. Space Force and commercial companies racked up 119 successful orbital U.S. launches so far in 2024, with more expected by the end of the year. Thanks to the boost provided by commercial companies like SpaceX, ULA and Blue Origin, we can expect to continue to see more record-setting numbers of launches in the future. While these successful launches present great opportunities for scientists and researchers, the accelerating pace of launches also presents challenges. Congested launch dates are testing the government&rsquo;s resources in terms of the limited facilities, personnel and funding available to support these missions. While Congress and the White House explore policy and program changes, &nbsp;agencies like NASA and the Space Force have made progress in developing new approaches to addressing those challenges. However, there are specific opportunities to sustain successful space operations while ramping up the country&rsquo;s ability to accommodate the growing demand for space launches. <ul> <li>Expand the number of launch sites. Most of the country&rsquo;s launch activity to date has taken place at Cape Canaveral, which houses the Kennedy Space Center, testing the limits of the infrastructure there. The government should continue to consider expanding the number of launches from other locations, including Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, Wallops Island in Virginia and the Kodiak Spaceport Complex in Alaska. Besides the obvious benefit of providing accommodations for a greater number of launches, more sites also would alleviate issues that arise from the current &ldquo;first come, first served&rdquo; approach to scheduling launches that can result in delays for those who aren&rsquo;t able to reserve their spots early.</li> <li>Determine U.S. space launch prioritization guidelines. The government could consider creating a U.S. launch priority framework. This would include current criteria such as advancing payloads related to national security as well guidance for prioritizing launch schedules for other missions, i.e. those that have immediate benefit to the Nation, such as GPS communications satellites, vs. less urgent research programs.</li> <li>Build up existing infrastructure at Canaveral, with help from the private sector. Increasing the number of launch sites won&rsquo;t be sufficient on its own unless we also ensure that all sites, including existing ones, have sufficient infrastructure in place to support the explosive growth we expect. Infrastructure at Cape Canaveral has been taxed to the point that NASA sometimes prohibits companies like SpaceX from launching due to conflicts with other range customers or other limiting factors such as shortages of propellants or ground support. The government should consider upgrading infrastructure related to commodities to handle the expected volume of future payloads. The private sector is helping by building facilities, both onsite at Canaveral and offsite, to help boost the infrastructure needed to process payloads and hardware. For example, Blue Origin now provides its own power lines coming into Canaveral. Fortunately, the government has recognized this challenge and is already making progress in addressing it. In a prominent example, the Space Force&rsquo;s &ldquo;Range of the Future&rdquo; initiative was established in 2022 to increase launch capabilities by enhancing infrastructure and streamlining processes. The program is moving support contractors from the middle section of Cape Canaveral to the south end to eliminate costly and time-consuming evacuations of personnel in the area when launches take place &ndash; an issue which will be exacerbated as more powerful rockets like the SpaceX Starliner are deployed. (This issue can also be addressed by expanding the number of launch sites, as suggested above.)</li> </ul> <ul> <li>Use the Federal Aviation Administration&rsquo;s National Airspace System program as a model. Spaceports could operate under similar cost sharing models as airports, where airlines lease space and are billed for commodities such as oil, fuel and water. Such a pricing model would forecast what it will cost to maintain capabilities and spread that cost among the various &ldquo;tenants&rdquo; at the spaceport. This approach could ensure that resources are available to support the explosive growth in the number of launches.</li> </ul> This approach would also help the U.S. maintain its leadership in the world of commercial space missions and as a future leader in space tourism. And by integrating space missions into traditional airports, space programs will be able to leverage the established success we&rsquo;ve achieved in air travel in terms of security and customer experience. The systems and technology used to ensure safe and secure air travel can serve as models for what we do in space. Again, we have examples of government agencies doing just that. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration&rsquo;s Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS) may be viewed as an air traffic control system in space providing situational awareness for private sector and civil space operatives. TraCSS delivers the added benefit of relieving the Defense Department&rsquo;s overburdened Joint Space Operations Center which currently provides these services, while allowing non-Defense space operations to transition to a more commercial approach for traffic coordination. This is a momentous time for space missions, from both scientific and commercial perspectives. Through a combination of redirected resources, updated processes and collaboration with the private sector, the U.S. government can ensure that our nation remains at the forefront. By doing so, we can continue to push the boundaries of science while making our country safer and more productive. </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/22/GettyImages_2177693695-1/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:description>CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA, UNITED STATES - OCTOBER 14: A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carrying the Europa Clipper spacecraft lifts off from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on October 14, 2024 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The four-year mission will study Europa, one of Jupiter's four largest moons which is believed to have a saltwater ocean beneath its surface, hoping to discover an environment where life could exist beyond Earth</media:description><media:credit> Anadolu/Getty</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/22/GettyImages_2177693695-1/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>How much did AI really impact the election?</title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/11/how-much-did-ai-really-impact-election/401185/</link><description>AI tools can produce realistic deepfakes and synthetic audio that influence public opinion.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Camille Tuutti</dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 22 Nov 2024 09:00:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/11/how-much-did-ai-really-impact-election/401185/</guid><category>Artificial Intelligence</category><body>A fake Joe Biden robocall during the primaries may have tricked thousands of New Hampshire voters, raising questions about how artificial intelligence is reshaping democracy. At last week&rsquo;s Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, experts warned that AI-driven misinformation threatens public trust and called for action to counter the risks. The Nov. 14 &quot;Democracy Manifest&quot; panel featured Ben Colman, co-founder and CEO of Reality Defender; Kalev Leetaru, founder of the GDELT Project; and Sabrina Palme, CEO of Palqee Technologies Ltd. Moderated by Ed Fraser of Channel 4 News, the discussion explored AI&rsquo;s role in misinformation, regulatory challenges and media dynamics. Fraser opened by asking whether AI had a measurable impact on the recent U.S. election. Earlier this year, robocalls using <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/05/mastermind-behind-biden-ai-robocalls-faces-potential-6m-fine-fcc/396839/">an AI-generated version</a> of President Joe Biden&#39;s voice urged New Hampshire voters to skip the state&#39;s Democratic primary. On Sept. 26, the Federal Communications Commission proposed a <a href="https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-405811A1.pdf">$6 million fine</a> against political consultant Steven Kramer for masterminding the ruse. Colman explained how easily AI tools can produce realistic deepfakes and synthetic audio that influence public opinion. To illustrate, he played an audio clip mimicking Biden&rsquo;s voice, noting how &ldquo;something that was made in seconds in a taxi ride sounds just like Joe Biden.&rdquo; &ldquo;So unlike a computer virus, any of you guys can create a perfect deepfake either for entertainment or to sway an election, or even worse,&rdquo; he told the audience.&nbsp; Echoing Colman&rsquo;s concerns, Palme noted that AI not only makes misinformation harder to detect but also accelerates its spread. She cited <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/link-between-media-consumption-and-public-opinion">Ipsos data</a> linking Americans&rsquo; media consumption to misinformation about crime and inflation. This, she said, shows how AI can amplify false narratives. &ldquo;Am I really getting the information from the president, the celebrity or a media individual person, or is it actually a deepfake?&rdquo; she said. Palme shared a recent example of how easily the public can be fooled. During Halloween, a fake AI news website spread a story about a <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dublin-halloween-parade-hoax-ireland-prank-ai-fake-news/">Halloween parade</a> in Dublin. The story went viral on social media, drawing hundreds of people to the streets for a parade that didn&rsquo;t exist. &ldquo;Many people laughed about this, but that just shows how easy it is to manipulate in the case of AI and especially spreading information on social media,&rdquo; she said.&nbsp; Leetaru, who examines the news and big data patterns, said large-scale deepfake use wasn&rsquo;t evident in the election, but real images and videos taken out of context did mislead voters. He compared this tactic to meme culture, adding that it&rsquo;s even harder to debunk.&nbsp; &ldquo;I think as these tools get more and more built into my phone, I pull it out, I type in a fake image of Biden falling, click OK and post &mdash; we&#39;re getting there now,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp; The challenges of regulation Palme highlighted the difficulty of regulating AI, comparing the industry-led approach in the U.S. to Europe&rsquo;s stricter frameworks, such as the <a href="https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-services-act_en">Digital Services Act</a>. While she supports regulation, she cautioned that Europe&rsquo;s model might hamstring innovation. &ldquo;It&#39;s first and foremost going to impact&nbsp; . . . European companies wanting to innovate in the AI space, whereas in the U.S., businesses can start an AI company, they can grow, they can scale, get the credibility and then look into regulatory compliance,&rdquo; she said. Emerging U.S. state laws, such as Colorado&rsquo;s <a href="https://leg.colorado.gov/sites/default/files/2024a_205_signed.pdf">Artificial Intelligence Act,</a> could indicate a move toward state-level governance similar to data protection laws, Palme noted. Colman argued that tools to detect AI-generated content already exist but aren&rsquo;t widely adopted by tech platforms. &ldquo;We just need our government to force technology platforms to protect the average consumer who cannot tell the difference,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp; President-elect Donald Trump has expressed skepticism toward strict AI regulations. What can be expected from his administration on this front?&nbsp; &ldquo;I would say probably that Trump was quite open about his vision in terms of AI regulation, and I think probably we were not going to see a lot or not a strong push for implementing regulations or frameworks to implement trustworthy AI,&rdquo; Palme said. &ldquo;I think it&#39;s more going to be on the industry-is-going-to-regulate-itself basis.&rdquo; Media and democracy The panel concluded with a discussion on how platforms can combat AI misinformation while safeguarding democracy. Historically, news outlets focused on presenting objective facts for public interpretation; now, the media is moving back to a &ldquo;party paper&rdquo; model, where reporting often reflects partisan viewpoints, Leetaru said. He questioned whether debunking false information by outlets like The New York Times matters when much of the audience turns to influencers or podcasts for news. &ldquo;If you have very strong influencer personalities, do they even need to play a fake video of Biden saying something? They can just say, &lsquo;Hey, Biden did this today.&rsquo; That&#39;s really all that matters,&rdquo; he said. The Web Summit drew over 71,500 attendees from around the world, according to a LinkedIn post by organizers, with insights from industry leaders, policymakers and innovators on myriad tech topics.&nbsp; </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/20/PXL_20241114_141245481/large.mpo" width="618" height="284"><media:description>Ben Colman, co-founder and CEO of Reality Defender; Sabrina Palme, CEO of Palqee Technologies Ltd; Kalev Leetaru, founder of the GDELT Project; and moderator Ed Fraser from Channel 4 News speak during a panel at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal.</media:description><media:credit>Camille Tuutti</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/20/PXL_20241114_141245481/thumb.mpo" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>Senators call for watchdog to investigate TSA’s use of facial recognition</title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2024/11/senators-call-watchdog-investigate-tsas-use-facial-recognition/401233/</link><description>In a letter to the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General, 12 senators warned that the deployment of facial biometrics at every U.S. airport could create “one of the largest federal surveillance databases overnight without authorization from Congress.”</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Edward Graham</dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 21 Nov 2024 17:34:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2024/11/senators-call-watchdog-investigate-tsas-use-facial-recognition/401233/</guid><category>Digital Government</category><body>A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers is asking the Department of Homeland Security&rsquo;s internal watchdog to investigate the Transportation Security Administration&rsquo;s use of facial recognition technology over concerns about the agency&rsquo;s collection of biometric data.&nbsp; In a Wednesday <a href="https://www.merkley.senate.gov/ahead-of-busy-holiday-travel-season-merkley-urges-oversight-of-tsas-unchecked-use-of-facial-recognition-technology-at-airports-nationwide/">letter</a> to DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, 12 senators &mdash; seven Democrats and five Republicans &mdash; called for a thorough review of how TSA uses facial recognition to verify travelers&rsquo; identities &ldquo;from both an authorities and privacy perspective.&rdquo; &ldquo;This technology will soon be in use at hundreds of major and mid-size airports without an independent evaluation of the technology&rsquo;s precision or an audit of whether there are sufficient safeguards in place to protect passenger privacy,&rdquo; the senators wrote. TSA has already deployed facial recognition technology at more than 80 airports that compares real-time photos of travelers with their government-issued identifications. The agency plans to expand the use of facial biometrics to more than 400 airports in the coming years, although some lawmakers and privacy rights groups have expressed alarm about the widespread rollout of the technology.&nbsp; TSA and DHS officials <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2024/01/tsa-uses-minimum-data-fine-tune-its-facial-recognition-some-experts-still-worry/393672/">told Nextgov/FCW</a> earlier this year that the agency has signage around the airport alerting travelers to the use of facial recognition and disclosing their right to opt out of the screenings if they choose to do so. The officials also stressed that travelers&rsquo; personal information is not stored by the screening machines, except in &ldquo;limited testing environments.&rdquo;&nbsp; The lawmakers&rsquo; letter said that, although facial recognition screenings are optional for travelers, the transportation security officers are &ldquo;inconsistently trained on how to respond to passengers who request to opt out and have told passengers they will face delays for opting out.&rdquo; If facial biometrics are rolled out to every U.S. airport, the lawmakers also warned that the program &ldquo;could become one of the largest federal surveillance databases overnight without authorization from Congress.&rdquo; The letter asked the DHS IG to specifically investigate the effectiveness of TSA&rsquo;s facial recognition technology, including its &ldquo;collection and storage of travelers&rsquo; biometric data and determine when and whether TSA deletes this information following passenger verification.&rdquo; TSA Administrator David Pekoske said during a House hearing in May that it could take the agency <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2024/05/tsas-biometrics-deployment-will-take-25-years-unless-lawmakers-end-fee-diversion-agency-head-tells-congress/396637/">approximately 25 years</a> to fully deploy the facial recognition technology if lawmakers did not end the diversion of 9/11 security fees away from the agency.&nbsp; If the agency receives its full allocated funding, Pekoske said the rollout of the new tools could be completed by the end of this decade, since TSA already &ldquo;has the vendors and processes in place&rdquo; to fully deploy the facial recognition technology. Several of the letters&rsquo; signatories &mdash; including Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., John Kennedy, R-La., and Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan. &mdash; previously <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2024/05/senate-passes-faa-reauthorization-without-tsa-biometrics-amendment/396486/">proposed</a> a measure in May that would have paused TSA&rsquo;s rollout of facial recognition technology at additional airports until Congress had a chance to review the initiative.&nbsp; The lawmakers were hoping to attach their amendment to legislation reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration, although their provision was ultimately stripped from the final package. </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/21/GettyImages_2166907411/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:credit>Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/21/GettyImages_2166907411/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>FCC leaders skirt call for wiretap security reform, hope to ‘go deeper’ on telecom breach briefings</title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2024/11/fcc-leaders-skirt-call-wiretap-security-reform-hope-go-deeper-telecom-breach-briefings/401222/</link><description>Lawmakers have called on the agency to take up a rulemaking to rethink wiretapping laws amid the hacks that have ensnared several telecom companies, but top FCC officials have not signaled any forthcoming action yet.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">David DiMolfetta</dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 21 Nov 2024 14:01:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2024/11/fcc-leaders-skirt-call-wiretap-security-reform-hope-go-deeper-telecom-breach-briefings/401222/</guid><category>Cybersecurity</category><body>An unprecedented Chinese intrusion into U.S. telecommunications firms and the infrastructure that facilitates legal access requests has grabbed the attention of several lawmakers who have asked the Federal Communications Commission to launch a formal proceeding to reform the key law that governs wiretapping procedures. But the agency doesn&rsquo;t appear poised to proceed just yet. The breaches carried out by the operatives, dubbed Salt Typhoon, were first reported in October, and have <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2024/10/its-time-rethink-how-wiretaps-work-after-chinese-hack-experts-say/400220/">called into question</a> the security frameworks governed by the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. CALEA requires carriers to engineer their systems to allow for law enforcement authorities and the FBI to wiretap them for surveillance purposes. &ldquo;The FCC has the legal authority &mdash; right now it has the power &mdash; to set and enforce security standards,&rdquo; Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in a Wednesday hearing on Chinese cyber threats. Previously, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., <a href="https://cyberscoop.com/congress-salt-typhoon-hack-telecoms-att-lumen-verizon/#:~:text=He%20urged%20Rosenworcel,their%20cybersecurity%20obligations.">wrote a letter</a> to agency chief Jessica Rosenworcel&nbsp;asking the commission to update CALEA law to mandate baseline cybersecurity standards. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s an area where we are coordinating with many other authorities across government. Our coordination is close and ongoing,&rdquo; Rosenworcel told reporters at a Thursday news conference following the commission&rsquo;s November open meeting. She declined to provide a timeline on whether a CALEA proceeding will launch before she plans to <a href="https://x.com/JonathanUriarte/status/1859570956965908849">step down</a> in January. Under current rules, the FCC says that telecommunications providers can develop their own wiretap solutions tailored to their networks, purchase solutions from their equipment manufacturers or rely on a third party to determine whether they are CALEA-compliant. The hackers have reportedly ensnared the systems of AT&amp;T, Verizon, Lumen and <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/t-mobile-hacked-in-massive-chinese-breach-of-telecom-networks-4b2d7f92">most recently T-Mobile</a>. The cyberspies have targeted people affiliated with president-elect Donald Trump, among several other officials, and have accessed audio and other sensitive communications. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve gotten some briefings on Salt Typhoon. And there&rsquo;s additional multi-layers of briefings on this, and I hope to be continuing to go deeper and deeper on that,&rdquo; incoming FCC Chairman Brendan Carr told reporters Thursday on the sidelines of the open meeting. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t have a thought on that one at this point,&rdquo; he said when asked about potential CALEA reform, adding that he plans to view the inquiries from Capitol Hill. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll continue to get more in-depth briefings. I think I&rsquo;ve had a pretty good level [of understanding], but I think there&rsquo;s more that I need to dig down on there.&rdquo; Representatives from the U.S. intelligence community <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2024/11/intelligence-community-briefed-congress-chinese-telecom-intrusions/400935/?oref=ng-homepage-river">recently briefed</a> congressional committees about the hack, according to a Capitol Hill aide familiar with the matter. Earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security&rsquo;s chief information officer <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2024/11/dhs-issues-internal-comms-guidance-amid-telecom-breach-investigation/400956/">issued internal guidance</a> to agency staff reminding employees to only use DHS-assigned devices for official business, according to email text obtained by Nextgov/FCW. The email did not specifically mention the Salt Typhoon hackers. It remains unclear whether other surveillance systems, such as those governed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, were penetrated in the hacks. Data from those FISA systems could provide Beijing with insights into U.S. overseas intelligence targets. &ldquo;If you want to know what diplomats are thinking, it&rsquo;s in their email, it&rsquo;s in their texts. And that&rsquo;s the kind of stuff that I think people have always targeted,&rdquo; Kevin Mandia, who founded the eponymously named threat intelligence firm Mandiant, told Nextgov/FCW in October. The infiltrations are &ldquo;really concerning,&rdquo; former NSA director Gen. Paul Nakasone said in a recent interview. &ldquo;The scope and the scale of allegedly being in American telecommunications companies &mdash; that&rsquo;s a different ballgame,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I think the follow on question now is, okay, what are we doing about it?&rdquo; </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/21/112124RosenworcelCarrNG/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:description>Jessica Rosenworcel (L), Chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr arrive to testify during a House Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee hearing on March 31, 2022. Both Rosenworcel and Carr skirted the question of whether the FCC would take up CALEA reform in the face of the recent Salt Typhoon hack.</media:description><media:credit>Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/21/112124RosenworcelCarrNG/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>NIST sets up new task force on AI and national security</title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/11/nist-sets-new-task-force-ai-and-national-security/401214/</link><description>The Testing Risks of AI for National Security Taskforce will bring federal expertise to test artificial intelligence models in critical use cases.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Alexandra Kelley</dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 21 Nov 2024 11:25:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/11/nist-sets-new-task-force-ai-and-national-security/401214/</guid><category>Artificial Intelligence</category><body>The National Institute of Standards and Technology set up a new task force within its existing Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute on Wednesday focusing on evaluating the myriad security implications of artificial intelligence models with inter-agency participation. Dubbed the Testing Risks of AI for National Security Taskforce, or <a href="https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2024/11/us-ai-safety-institute-establishes-new-us-government-taskforce-collaborate">TRAINS</a>, the group consists of members from the Department of Defense &mdash; including its Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office and the National Security Agency &mdash; the Department of Energy and its national labs; the Department of Homeland Security and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; and the National Institutes of Health within the Department of Health and Human Services.&nbsp; Members from these entities will assist in measuring and evaluating AI models based on their areas of expertise, including national security, radiological and nuclear security, cybersecurity, critical infrastructure and more. &ldquo;Enabling safe, secure&nbsp;and trustworthy AI innovation is not just an economic priority &mdash; it&#39;s a public safety and national security imperative,&rdquo; U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said in a press release. &ldquo;The U.S. AI Safety Institute will continue to lead by centralizing the top-notch national security and AI expertise that exists across government in order to harness the benefits of AI for the betterment of the American people and American business.&rdquo; The establishment of the new task force follows <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/11/trump-promised-repeal-bidens-ai-executive-order-heres-what-expect-next/400934/">uncertainty</a> ahead of the incoming Trump administration and its plans for AI policy. The <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/05/nist-unveils-strategic-vision-ai-safety-work/396755/">AISI was stood up</a> as part of President Joe Biden&rsquo;s landmark executive order on AI&nbsp;and established a consortium of academic, industry&nbsp;and civic partners to encourage responsible AI policy development and usage. With incoming President Donald Trump&rsquo;s aim to repeal Biden&rsquo;s executive order, doubt surrounds the future of the AISI and other federal AI policy initiatives.&nbsp; </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/21/112124AING/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:credit>BlackJack3D/Getty Images</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/21/112124AING/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>Good luck, Department of Government Efficiency </title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/ideas/2024/11/good-luck-department-government-efficiency/401211/</link><description>COMMENTARY | It sounds like a federal agency, but its job is to get rid of them.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Tom Shoop</dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 21 Nov 2024 10:54:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/ideas/2024/11/good-luck-department-government-efficiency/401211/</guid><category>Ideas</category><body>What did Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy do to deserve this?&nbsp; They campaigned diligently for Donald Trump, defended his most controversial ideas, and even, in Musk&rsquo;s case, tried to promote Trump-supported policies via a $1 million voter sweepstakes.&nbsp; Their reward? Being put in charge of the new <a href="https://www.govexec.com/management/2024/11/trump-vows-dismantle-federal-bureaucracy-and-restructure-agencies-new-musk-led-commission/400998/">Department of Government Efficiency</a>. It only sounds like a Cabinet department. In reality, it&rsquo;s a fancy name for yet another blue-ribbon commission to examine how to make government smaller, better and less expensive. Presumably unintentionally, it also calls to mind the fake government agencies like the <a href="https://business.defense.gov/Resources/Scam-Alerts/">United States Business Regulations Department</a> that scammers invoke to try to fleece consumers and businesses. Ramaswamy does not think small when it comes to cutting government. During his brief run for the Republican nomination, he <a href="https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2023/09/gop-presidential-candidate-promises-large-scale-mass-layoffs-across-government/390256/">vowed to slash 75%</a> of the federal workforce, relying on a novel interpretation of personnel laws and regulations that he says enables the president to act swiftly and with minimal oversight to lay off employees by the thousands. &ldquo;We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright,&rdquo; <a href="https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2024/11/trumps-doge-commission-promises-mass-federal-layoffs-ending-telework/401111/?oref=ge-featured-river-secondary">said Ramaswamy</a> after DOGE was unveiled. &ldquo;We expect mass reductions-in-force in areas of the federal government that are bloated.&rdquo;&nbsp; Musk is no stranger to such an approach, having <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/16/technology/elon-musk-cost-cuts.html">slashed three-quarters of the workforce at Twitter</a> after he bought the company. But when it comes to cutting government spending, Musk has a rather large conflict of interest. Two of his companies, SpaceX and Tesla, are major government contractors.&nbsp; Now Musk and Ramaswamy are supposed to turn their attention to improving a government whose sheer size and diverse missions makes it difficult to change. Also, its legal and regulatory framework is organized around the principles of fairness and effectiveness, not efficiency. Nevertheless, Trump has promised DOGE will complete a thorough overhaul of the federal colossus by July 4, 2026, as a 250th birthday present to the country. The effort could be the &ldquo;<a href="https://www.govexec.com/management/2024/11/trump-vows-dismantle-federal-bureaucracy-and-restructure-agencies-new-musk-led-commission/400998/">Manhattan Project of our time</a>,&rdquo; Trump says&mdash;but he rather pointedly doesn&rsquo;t promise that it will be. And the irony, of course, is that the Manhattan Project was an effort to spend money in pursuit of a governmental goal, not cut it. At its inception, DOGE seems an awful lot like myriad other efforts over the years to highlight allegedly wasteful government spending&mdash;almost all of which ends up being in the category of domestic discretionary funding that doesn&rsquo;t add up to much in the broader scheme of things. <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1856520760656797801">Musk says DOGE</a> will &ldquo;have a leaderboard for most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars. This will be both extremely tragic and extremely entertaining.&rdquo; (He also added, cheerily, &ldquo;Anytime the public thinks we are cutting something important or not cutting something wasteful, just let us know!&rdquo;) A list of wasteful programs sounds less like a revolution and more like the latest in a long line of government efficiency commissions and reports. Musk and Ramaswamy could save themselves some time and just compile the studies of the Clinton administration&rsquo;s Reinventing Government crusade, George W. Bush&rsquo;s President&rsquo;s Management Agenda, and dozens of Government Accountability Office reports. (They could even simply cut, paste and change the fonts on the <a href="https://www.govexec.com/oversight/2011/11/omb-touts-176-billion-in-savings-from-campaign-to-cut-waste/35419/">report of cost savings generated by Joe Biden&rsquo;s Campaign to Cut Waste</a> during the Obama administration, and see if anyone noticed.)&nbsp; True government reform efforts require <a href="https://www.govexec.com/management/2021/03/lessons-30-years-government-reform-efforts/172926/">hard, sustained effort and commitment from the top</a>. And second presidential terms is where they go to die. Lame duck presidents&mdash;and Trump will be one the day he takes his second oath of office&mdash;usually lose interest in management improvement and reorganization initiatives. There&rsquo;s little political payoff from them in the short term, and they require expending substantial political capital. Musk and Ramaswamy may be in for this for the long haul, and Trump may be willing to push the envelope on unilaterally slashing government. But what&rsquo;s more likely to emerge is a strongly worded report and reliance on tried-and-true methods&mdash;attrition-based workforce reductions, employee buyouts and limited budget freezes&mdash;to bolster the claim of reducing government. <div class="related-articles-placeholder">[[Related Posts]]</div> </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/21/11192024VivekElon_10/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:description>Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk have been tapped to lead the proposed non-government panel.</media:description><media:credit>Chip Somodevilla, Samuel Corum/Getty Images</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/21/11192024VivekElon_10/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>More than a decade later, NIST’s home of the future is still ahead of its time</title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2024/11/more-decade-later-nists-home-future-still-ahead-its-time/401188/</link><description>NIST wanted to show that energy efficiency did not have to make a residence look like a spaceship, or be uncomfortable to live in.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">John Breeden II</dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 21 Nov 2024 09:00:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2024/11/more-decade-later-nists-home-future-still-ahead-its-time/401188/</guid><category>Emerging Tech</category><body>Back in 2011, the shift to green energy technologies was just starting to gain momentum in the United States. Homeowners were looking into those technologies not just to potentially help with the emerging threat of climate change, but also as a way to cut costs and high energy bills. NIST took advantage of government investments in green energy, specifically using The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 &mdash; which provided $747 billion in funding to alleviate the so-called Great Recession of 2008 &mdash; to help build the home of the future. Technically, the two story home, which is 2,700-square-feet with four bedrooms and three bathrooms, was designated as the NIST <a href="https://www.nist.gov/el/net-zero-energy-residential-test-facility">Net-Zero Energy Residential Test Facility</a>. But because it looks just like a normal home which would easily fit in with any of the neighborhoods surrounding the agency&rsquo;s tree-lined Gaithersburg campus, most people took to simply calling it the net-zero house. And the design was no accident. NIST wanted to show that energy efficiency did not have to make a residence look like a spaceship, or be uncomfortable to live in. Bill Healy, a mechanical engineer at NIST who worked on the house explained that the goal was to show that &ldquo;you can live in an energy-efficient home, and it doesn&rsquo;t have to feel like a science project.&rdquo; At the time it was being built, the house gained <a href="https://cdnapisec.kaltura.com/index.php/extwidget/preview/partner_id/684682/uiconf_id/31013851/entry_id/1_c9m1bl9v/embed/dynamic">a huge following online</a> as people watched it be slowly constructed for over a year. Other than 32 solar panels mounted to the roof, the house looked just like a normal home. It was loaded up with all the amenities that one would expect to find inside a modern home, like televisions, central air conditioning and heat. It even had high-quality cabinets built into the living room and nice tiles installed in the kitchen. The construction was completed in September of 2012 after a 16-month build. Once complete, its first mission was a year-long experiment to see if the home could generate <a href="https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2012/09/home-sweet-lab-computerized-house-generate-much-energy-it-uses">more power than it needed</a>, with the house pulling from the normal electrical grid when its solar panels couldn&rsquo;t generate enough power to drive everything inside. But because conducting such an experiment with an empty house would not be very useful, a four-person family had to be simulated. This was done in the days before generative artificial intelligence could be tapped to run such a simulation, so many of the activities conducted by the four virtual residents were manually programmed, although they followed normal patterns for a typical family, and one that was not too energy efficient. For example, meals were cooked every day and dishes were cleaned. The showers ran at different times throughout the day and evening, and the virtual human residents even watched TV and played video games late into the night. Resistance heaters and humidifiers were used to simulate the body heat and moisture that four actual humans would give off if they were living there. The net zero home proved itself in its first year. Despite having a very cold winter where the solar panels were blocked by snow for several weeks, it was still able to generate 7% more energy than it needed. The following year, which was much more mild, showed even better performance. The house of the future, today Even with the original experiment complete, the house has not been abandoned. In fact, it&rsquo;s still a very active laboratory for NIST scientists and others. In 2022, two dozen scientists from 12 universities worked at the facility. They installed new, modern sensors inside and around the home and turned the two-car garage into a makeshift computer lab packed with advanced technology. It was all part of a new effort to measure how chemicals drifted around and lingered inside a home. Everything was measured, from the steam emitted from instant popcorn bags when cooked to the gasses given off by cleaning supplies. Even rare chemicals like the smoke from wildfires that might drift inside a home had their properties recorded. The goal with the new experiment is to record how those chemicals might affect residents. Since no other facility like the net zero house exists anywhere in the world, it has become a cornerstone of the <a href="https://indoorchem.org/projects/casa/">Chemical Assessment of Surface and Air</a> experimental efforts. The home is also being used to help improve computer models, like the Department of Energy&rsquo;s <a href="https://www.energy.gov/eere/buildings/articles/energyplus">EnergyPlus standard</a>, which is used to estimate the energy efficiency of buildings being constructed across the United States. And it&rsquo;s currently helping to verify the findings of NIST&rsquo;s <a href="https://www.nist.gov/el/energy-and-environment-division-73200/nist-multizone-modeling/software/contam">CONTAN</a> computer model, which is widely accepted as one of the best in the world at predicting how contaminants and pollutants flow inside multi-level buildings. And so, the little home that was built to be ahead of its time continues to do so over a decade later, albeit with quite a few upgrades and improvements from the original design. It certainly seems like the little net zero house still has <a href="https://www.nist.gov/feature-stories/house-ahead-its-time">a bright future</a> as one of the most unique laboratories in the world, and one of the most useful for conducting experiments involving residential buildings and modern living.&nbsp;&nbsp; John Breeden II is an award-winning journalist and reviewer with over 20 years of experience covering technology. He is the CEO of the <a href="http://www.techwritersbureau.com/">Tech Writers Bureau</a>, a group that creates technological thought leadership content for organizations of all sizes. Twitter: @LabGuys </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/20/112024NZERTFNG/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:description>NIST's Net Zero Energy Residential Test Facility in Gaithersburg, Maryland, provided measurements for a NIST analysis of the environmental impacts of gas and electric HVAC systems in energy-efficient Maryland homes.</media:description><media:credit>Beamie Young/NIST</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/20/112024NZERTFNG/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>FCC to propose first undersea cable security overhaul since 2001</title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/policy/2024/11/fcc-propose-first-undersea-cable-security-overhaul-2001/401198/</link><description>FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel cited rising national security risks in conflict zones as a catalyst for the proposed updates to submarine cable regulations.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">David DiMolfetta</dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 20 Nov 2024 17:10:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/policy/2024/11/fcc-propose-first-undersea-cable-security-overhaul-2001/401198/</guid><category>Policy</category><body>The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday is expected to approve a proposal that would seek public feedback on ways to tighten national security standards and streamline oversight of undersea internet cable systems that route nearly all of the world&rsquo;s internet traffic. The move, a first for the agency since it last reviewed underwater internet cable rules in 2001, comes as officials and lawmakers around the world have called for <a href="https://thereadable.co/western-powers-face-greater-challenges-than-expected-in-protecting-undersea-cables-from-espionage-analysts-warn/">comprehensive reviews</a> of the cables&rsquo; security posture. At least 600 undersea cables stretch across the globe. Suspended thousands of kilometers underwater, they enable near-instantaneous global communications and data access across national borders. Even this article, published on a news website in the United States, has likely reached overseas readers via an undersea cable. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re really important for modern life,&rdquo; FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in an interview with Nextgov/FCW. &ldquo;95% of global internet traffic, at some point, travels over these facilities. That&rsquo;s trillions of dollars of financial transactions and all kinds of data associated with the rise of cloud computing and the expansion of data centers.&rdquo; Global maritime &ldquo;hot spots&rdquo; that have been getting attention &mdash; namely the Red Sea, South China Sea and Baltic Sea &mdash; motivated interest around the proposed rulemaking, which has been in the works for some time, she added. Officials have been <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/06/politics/us-sees-increasing-risk-of-russian-sabotage-undersea-cables/index.html">monitoring</a> Russian naval movements near key undersea cable locations. In the Singapore Strait and the East China Sea &mdash; which links China, South Korea, Japan&nbsp;and Taiwan &mdash; Chinese-affiliated cable repair ships have reportedly <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/china-internet-cables-repair-ships-93fd6320?mg=prod/com-wsj">turned off their transponders</a> during routine maintenance, raising suspicions of potential espionage or sabotage. Just this week, U.S. and European officials said they are <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/20/world/accident-or-sabotage-undersea-cables-intl/index.html">examining</a> potential sabotage attempts against a pair of undersea cables crossing the Baltic Sea that link Lithuania, Sweden and Germany. &ldquo;In a lot of places, you&rsquo;re seeing a growing consensus that these facilities are very important and vulnerable. We need to reassess what our framework is for overseeing them and make sure that we improve security and reliability of our processes that are associated with them,&rdquo; Rosenworcel said. The FCC&rsquo;s authority over cables predates the landmark Communications Act of 1934 that created the agency itself. The federal telecom regulator manages the internet cables via the Cable Landing License Act of 1921, which, in essence, requires anyone seeking to land or operate submarine cables connecting the U.S. to foreign countries or within U.S. territories to obtain a government-issued license. The proposal would notably require reviews of cable licensees every three years, a major time reduction compared to the current 25-year review period that asks owners and operators to provide the FCC with their cables&rsquo; technical data and outage history, as well as who invests in them. Of the 600 or so cables crisscrossing the ocean, 84 of those are licensed by the FCC, Rosenworcel said.&nbsp; The proposal also seeks that any equipment listed on the agency&rsquo;s Covered List &mdash; a catalog of foreign internet and telecom providers deemed dangerous to U.S. national security that are barred from getting government support &mdash; should not be integrated into cable facilities. Underwater cables have been in use since the 1850s, originally for relaying long-distance telegraph messages in Morse code. In the 1980s, fiber optics entered the global market, enhancing the transmission capabilities of transatlantic telephone networks. That advancement prompted a consortium of communications firms to invest billions in strengthening transcontinental communication lines, leading into the contemporary global nexus that underpins digital data transfers. The vast amount of data transferred via these cables &mdash; notably among the U.S. and allied powers that find themselves pitted against an array of cyber adversaries out of Asia and the Middle East &mdash; makes them prime targets for espionage and sabotage, officials said in a recent <a href="https://www.state.gov/joint-statement-on-the-security-and-resilience-of-undersea-cables-in-a-globally-digitalized-world/">joint statement</a>. Cable security has also drawn recent scrutiny from a group of senators who <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/senators-want-biden-administration-review-undersea-cable-vulnerabilities-2024-10-21/">asked the White House</a> to outline ways to better protect the cables from being tampered with or falling victim to other threats. Security experts, as well as cable providers and major telecommunications firms, are expected to provide comments on the proposal, Rosenworcel said.&nbsp; &ldquo;I think it is incumbent on this agency to make sure that we take steps to prevent security problems. And I think that this agency has to think about public safety front and center in everything we do,&rdquo; she said. </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/20/112024underseacableNG/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:description>An undersea fiber optic cable is attached to a rope at Arrietara beach near the Spanish Basque village of Sopelana on June 13, 2017.</media:description><media:credit>ANDER GILLENEA/AFP via Getty Images</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/20/112024underseacableNG/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>Intelligence IGs head for the exit before Trump’s return </title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/people/2024/11/intelligence-igs-head-exit-trumps-return/401193/</link><description>Trump fired five inspectors general during his first administration.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Sean Michael Newhouse</dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 20 Nov 2024 17:00:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/people/2024/11/intelligence-igs-head-exit-trumps-return/401193/</guid><category>People</category><body>Two intelligence watchdogs are leaving their positions ahead of President-elect Donald Trump&rsquo;s second term.&nbsp; Inspector General of the Intelligence Community Thomas Monheim and CIA IG Robin Ashton are set to depart around the start of the new year.&nbsp; The <a href="https://www.pogo.org/investigations/ic-and-cia-ig-investigation">news was first reported</a> by the Project on Government Oversight.&nbsp; Monheim has been serving in the position since 2020 when <a href="https://www.govexec.com/oversight/2020/04/trump-fires-intel-ig-taps-white-house-confidant-pandemic-oversight-role/164370/">Trump fired his predecessor</a>, Michael Atkinson, who drew White House condemnation after he alerted Congress in September 2019 &mdash; as required by law &mdash; to the whistleblower complaint that led to Trump&rsquo;s first impeachment.&nbsp; &ldquo;On Nov. 13, I informed the president of my intent to resign as the inspector general of the intelligence community, effective Jan. 3, 2025. Serving as the IC IG has been a tremendous privilege and the pinnacle of my more than 30 years of military and civilian service spanning seven different presidents,&rdquo; Monheim said in a statement to Government Executive. &ldquo;I am incredibly proud of the IC IG team&rsquo;s tireless and selfless efforts to conduct independent, objective and nonpartisan oversight of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and across the IC. As a result, the ODNI and the IC are better and the nation is safer.&rdquo; Over a span of six weeks in 2020, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-inspectors-general-internal-watchdogs-fired-list/">Trump fired five inspectors general</a>, including Atkinson.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Ashton said that, after more than 38 years of public service, she would retire from the federal government at the end of the year.&nbsp; &ldquo;It has been the pinnacle of my rewarding career to serve alongside the dedicated officers at CIA for the last three and a half years as the CIA inspector general,&rdquo; she said in a statement to Government Executive. &ldquo;I have every confidence that the exceptional work of the Office of the Inspector General will continue to have a positive impact on behalf of the American people.&rdquo; Trump has nominated his former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe as CIA director and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, as DNI in his new administration. Some current and former intelligence officials have criticized Gabbard for her <a href="https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2024/11/extraordinarily-dangerous-intelligence-community-insiders-warn-against-trumps-dni-pick/401092/?__hstc=121679188.e86b1ad4f4024fb662656905ad12df84.1731424855729.1732045531965.1732051917371.29&amp;__hssc=121679188.19.1732051917371&amp;__hsfp=3317113319">record of Russia-aligned public statements</a>. </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/20/112024_Getty_GovExec_CIA-1/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:description>The agency seal on the floor of the lobby at the CIA in McLean, Va. CIA's inspector general, Robin Ashton, announced she would retire at the end of the year.</media:description><media:credit>Bill O'Leary / The Washington Post / Getty Images</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/20/112024_Getty_GovExec_CIA-1/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>What Trump 2.0 means for tech and AI regulation</title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/policy/2024/11/what-trump-20-means-tech-and-ai-regulation/401161/</link><description>Tech CEO Elon Musk’s growing influence in the Trump transition was at the forefront of discussions.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Camille Tuutti</dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 20 Nov 2024 09:00:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/policy/2024/11/what-trump-20-means-tech-and-ai-regulation/401161/</guid><category>Policy</category><body>A second Trump administration could reshape U.S. and global tech industries, with deregulation, artificial intelligence safety and Elon Musk&rsquo;s growing influence at the forefront. These potential shifts were discussed at Lisbon&rsquo;s Web Summit during the Nov. 12 session &ldquo;A New Trump Era,&rdquo; moderated by NPR CEO Katherine Maher. &ldquo;Pod Save the People&rdquo; host DeRay Mckesson and &ldquo;West Wing&rdquo; actor Richard Schiff explored how Trump&rsquo;s second presidency might impact the tech world. Schiff began the session by comparing tech&rsquo;s growing influence to that of the oil industry, highlighting its ability to drive policy and accumulate wealth. &ldquo;I think Elon Musk has already doubled his wealth since last Tuesday,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And tech to me . . . might very likely be the new oil in that it&#39;s going to affect policy because the money is there and the power is there.&rdquo;&nbsp; Schiff said he doubted the Trump administration would regulate tech or address monopolies, a stance he said benefits the industry but raises equity concerns. &ldquo;The most important tech person in the world has now become the shadow vice president&nbsp;and, if not more, so&nbsp;I think the tech industry is going to get whatever they want,&rdquo; he said, referring to Musk. &ldquo;Are we going to stop monopolies? Probably not. Are we going to regulate? Probably not. Maybe that&#39;s great for tech, I don&#39;t know. I don&#39;t know how good it is for the world, the country.&rdquo; Mckesson turned the conversation to Musk&rsquo;s leadership, criticizing his tenure at X for making the platform more ideological, despite Musk&rsquo;s claims to oppose such tendencies. He compared Musk&rsquo;s polarizing approach to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg&rsquo;s growing reputation as a more moderate leader. &ldquo;[Zuckerberg] was a villain for so long in Silicon Valley,&rdquo; Mckesson said. &ldquo;Now, he&#39;s sort of the sane person left standing, it seems. So it&#39;ll be interesting to see what he does with WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook &mdash; these places that are in the ecosystem that is not Twitter.&rdquo; Maher then shifted the discussion to AI, asking whether a stronger AI sector could bolster national security. Schiff offered a cultural perspective, suggesting that tough times often ignite creativity. &ldquo;The silver lining, for me, might be that in authoritarian societies, the best art comes out of the more compressed artists feel, the more expression they end up having,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There&#39;s that darkness that there&#39;s light somewhere.&rdquo;&nbsp; Musk&rsquo;s role in the Trump administration At a Nov. 13 panel titled &ldquo;Did Elon Musk Destroy Twitter?&rdquo; panelists examined Musk&rsquo;s leadership style and its implications as the proposed head of the <a href="https://www.govexec.com/management/2024/11/trump-vows-dismantle-federal-bureaucracy-and-restructure-agencies-new-musk-led-commission/400998/">Department of Government Efficiency.</a> Kate Conger, a New York Times tech reporter, argued Musk&rsquo;s drastic cost-cutting measures at X could serve as a blueprint for how he might address federal bureaucracy. &ldquo;Musk&#39;s campaign to downsize Twitter is really a model for what he wants to do for the federal government, and in a lot of ways, it&#39;s empowered him to pursue this role,&rdquo; she said.&nbsp; She pointed to Musk&rsquo;s perceived success in maintaining X operations after massive layoffs that gutted 75% of the workforce. &ldquo;Despite some small outages, it still has continued to run, and so he must feel very empowered by that and feels that he can make these deep cuts to the government and bureaucracy,&rdquo; she said Ryan Mac, another New York Times tech reporter, brought up Musk&rsquo;s potential conflicts of interest leading DOGE. Tesla and SpaceX, both of which rely on federal contracts, are under at least 20 federal investigations, according to NYT reporting, he said. As DOGE head, Musk could wield significant influence over the agencies regulating his companies, Mac added. &ldquo;If there is a situation at the [Federal Aviation Administration], which oversees Tesla and SpaceX, could [Musk] have his finger on the scale to change what the FAA does?&rdquo; Mac asked. &ldquo;We just don&#39;t know. I think that potential is pretty scary.&rdquo; AI policy and power concentration Trump has suggested <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/11/trump-promised-repeal-bidens-ai-executive-order-heres-what-expect-next/400934/">rolling back</a> President Joe Biden&#39;s 2023 executive order on AI, a move that could shutter the U.S. AI Safety Institute. Part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the institute addresses risks to national security, public safety and individual rights. During the panel &ldquo;Is AI the Answer or the Problem?&rdquo; Bloomberg tech columnist Parmy Olson explored whether Musk&rsquo;s outspoken concerns about AI risks might influence Trump to adopt stricter AI policies instead of loosening regulations to compete with China. She asked MIT professor Max Tegmark if Musk&rsquo;s views could shape Trump&rsquo;s approach to AI governance. &ldquo;I hope so,&rdquo; Tegmark said, stressing the need to educate leaders about AI&rsquo;s dangers. &ldquo;You don&#39;t actually need to persuade them that they shouldn&#39;t want to be replaced by and dominated by some new weird machine species. They are already against that. It&#39;s just a matter of education.&rdquo;&nbsp; Tegmark expressed optimism that Musk could help Trump grasp the national security risks posed by uncontrolled AI and the economic importance of building safe, manageable AI. &ldquo;I&#39;m definitely hoping that Elon can help Donald Trump understand that this is just not in America&#39;s national security interests that American companies build something that we lose control over in two years, and that the real path to prosperity in America and even strength is to build AI tools that can be controlled,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp; Olson also highlighted the growing concentration of AI power, pointing out how companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google are snapping up smaller startups. Tegmark identified two major risks: the dominance of a few companies and humanity losing control over powerful AI systems. Despite these concerns, Tegmark ended on a hopeful note, highlighting AI&rsquo;s potential to solve global challenges if developed responsibly. &ldquo;With AI, there&#39;s so many things we would love to do but just haven&#39;t figured out how to do &mdash; prevent our loved ones from dying of diseases and safeguard our climate and so on and so forth,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And if we can get this right with tool AI, we can have a more amazing future than we ever dreamt of.&rdquo; This year&rsquo;s Web Summit attracted over 71,500 attendees from around the globe, according to a LinkedIn post by the event&#39;s organizers, including industry leaders, policymakers and innovators. </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/19/112024Trump2.0NG/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:description>MIT professor Max Tegmark and Bloomberg tech columnist Parmy Olson discuss what AI policy might look like under the next Trump Administration at the 2024 Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal.</media:description><media:credit>Camille Tuutti</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/19/112024Trump2.0NG/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item><item><title>O'Malley to step down as SSA chief this month, seeks political role</title><link>https://www.nextgov.com/people/2024/11/omalley-step-down-ssa-chief-month-seeks-political-role/401159/</link><description>Martin O'Malley won plaudits for reinvigorating a resource-starved SSA, but will leave his post early.</description><dc:creator xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">Eric Katz</dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 20 Nov 2024 08:00:00 -0500</pubDate><guid>https://www.nextgov.com/people/2024/11/omalley-step-down-ssa-chief-month-seeks-political-role/401159/</guid><category>People</category><body>Social Security Administration Commissioner Martin O&rsquo;Malley is stepping down from his post as he seeks to lead the Democratic National Committee. The former Maryland governor <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/18/us/politics/martin-omalley-dnc-chair-race.html">told</a> The New York Times his resignation would take effect Nov. 29. His time heading the agency was always meant to be temporary: while SSA commissioners serve six-year terms, O&rsquo;Malley took over the tenure of his predecessor and was therefore slated for replacement under President-elect Trump.&nbsp; <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> It has been a great honor to serve alongside the people of the <a href="https://twitter.com/SocialSecurity?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SocialSecurity</a> Administration, who have turned around this agency and put it on a better path forward. For the dignity of every individual, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SocialSecurity?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SocialSecurity</a> works. &mdash; Martin O&#39;Malley (@OMalleySSA) <a href="https://twitter.com/OMalleySSA/status/1858590795713962471?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 18, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> O&rsquo;Malley brought his government data evangelism to the post, establishing new systems to measure the agency&rsquo;s customer service performance, benefits processing, over and underpayments and other matters. The commissioner took over the job during what he called a customer service and staffing crisis and has sought to address both issues. He <a href="https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2024/06/omalleys-one-year-sprint-save-social-security/397450/">told Government Executive</a> earlier this year that the &ldquo;context of everything we do is against the backdrop of the highest number of customers ever and the lowest staffing in 25 years.&rdquo;&nbsp; <div class="related-articles-placeholder">[[Related Posts]]</div> O&rsquo;Malley quickly embarked on a listening tour after taking office, soliciting input on the root causes of SSA&rsquo;s high attrition rates and low morale. He has improved relations with the agency&rsquo;s labor leaders, who have praised his leadership as a breath of fresh air.&nbsp; As commissioner, O&rsquo;Malley has pushed lawmakers to restore his agency&rsquo;s funding to levels it enjoyed before it became subject to discretionary appropriations. He recently unsuccessfully sought <a href="https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2024/09/omalley-makes-last-ditch-effort-secure-bidens-budget-proposal-social-security/399457/">boosted funding</a> to be included in a stopgap funding bill, saying SSA would have to trim staff and walk back some customer service improvements without additional spending.&nbsp; O&rsquo;Malley, who served as mayor of Baltimore before becoming Maryland governor and unsuccessfully running for president in 2016, is now seeking the backing of DNC committee members to lead the Democratic Party&rsquo;s operations.&nbsp; </body><media:content url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/19/11182024OMalleySSA/large.jpg" width="618" height="284"><media:description>Social Security Administration Commissioner Martin O’Malley took the position when he was confirmed last December.</media:description><media:credit>Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images</media:credit><media:thumbnail url="https://cdn.nextgov.com/media/img/cd/2024/11/19/11182024OMalleySSA/thumb.jpg" width="138" height="83"></media:thumbnail></media:content></item></channel></rss>