Ask The Cio

Amy Haseltine, the deputy assistant commissioner for acquisitions in the Office of the IT Category in the Federal Acquisition Service, said GSA is offering a neutral environment to address EIS transition challenges.

From futuristic telephones with screens on desks in the 1990s, to punch card mainframes using FORTRAN, Janet Vogel, the former acting chief information officer and chief information security officer at the Department of Health and Human Services, has seen significant change in the federal technology sector. Vogel recently retired after 40 years of federal service and said her experiences, her political science background and learning technology taught her several things about how to be successful in the federal sector. She spoke more to Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller on Ask the CIO.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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