Weekly Roundup: January 28 – February 1, 2019
Submitted by JKamensky on Fri, 02/01/2019 - 13:52
Friday, February 1, 2019
John Kamensky
Automation’s Effects. RouteFifty reports on a new Brookings study on the impact of artificial intelligence on jobs: “Jobs most at risk, the report says, are the ones that involve “predictable” and “routine” tasks, in fields ranging from office administration, to manufacturing, to food preparation.”
Open Data Opens Up. NextGov reports: “Ninety-seven percent of government data experts said they’ve seen their organizations’ use of open data improve over the past year, according to the Data Foundation’s annual State of the Union of Open Data report. They attributed the progress largely to measures like the DATA Act”
Reconstructing Government. Don Kettl and Paul Verkiel coauthored an op-ed for Government Executive reflecting on the recent partial government shutdown: “This craziness has to stop—and it should never be repeated.” They then offer a checklist of five solutions, with a focus on the people in government.
Customer Sat Scores Drop. NextGov reports: “The federal government’s 11-year high in customer satisfaction—achieved last year following two years of progress—was short-lived. . . . Federal agencies collectively dropped 1.1 percent to 68.9 in the American Customer Satisfaction Index, which rates government and businesses performance on a 0 to 100 scale.” NextGov notes that this survey was conducted before the partial government shutdown.
Michael J. Keegan
Opening bids on DHS funding include more border tech. House and Senate appropriators are trying to hash out a deal for Homeland Security funding that the president will sign –and tech will likely play a big part.
IG says VA is falling short on data center optimization. The Department of Veterans Affairs is failing to meet key data center optimization requirements under the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act, a new government audit finds.
Feds lead industry in DMARC adoption. A report finds that the federal government is far and away the leading adopter of tools designed to snuff out email spoofing compared to other sectors and industries. According to new research conducted by cybersecurity company VailMail, which sells online authentication tools, 80 percent of 1,300-plus U.S. federal domains now publish Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance records, considered a crucial first step in identifying false or impersonated email addresses.
DOD mulls using AI to check contractor cyber hygiene. To ensure its contractors are following cybersecurity standards, the Defense Department is considering a model in which a company certified by the organization would use artificial intelligence to check a subcontractors' security posture against the National Institute of Standards and Technology cybersecurity standards.
Speaking at a Jan. 29 Senate Armed Services Cybersecurity Subcommittee hearing on Department of Defense policies and threats, DOD CIO Dana Deasy said that "a lot of the problems that have occurred …come back many times to basic hygiene." And because contractors were "an extension of what we do," they must be treated as a part of the department’s own networks.
Scaling Leadership. The world is moving faster than ever before, and this world is filled with much volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. In their book, Scaling Leadership: Building Organizational Capability and Capacity to Create Outcomes that Matter Most, leadership experts Bob Anderson and Bill Adams argue that in these fast-changing times, no single leader—no matter how skilled or how experienced—can know everything that needs to be known about their organization, nor consistently make the best decisions. The solution to this dilemma is to scale leadership.
Next Week on The Business of Government Hour: Conversations with Peter K. Levine, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Defense Analyses on Auditing the U.S. Department of Defense. Why does U.S. Department of Defense lack of an auditable financial statement? What has DoD done to get to auditability? What challenges are faced in getting audited financial statement and how can DoD do better? Join host Michael Keegan as he explores these questions and more with Peter K. Levine of the Institute for Defense Analyses. That’s next week on The Business of Government Hour.
Broadcast Schedule: The show airs Monday at 11 a.m., and Friday at 1 p.m. on Federal News Network 1500AM WFED
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