Weekly Roundup: November 18-22, 2024

Efficiency

DOGE Gains a Powerful Foothold on Capitol Hill. President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort – which has a mission to find ways to reduce government spending and potentially do away with any number of government operations – went from a mostly aspirational advisory exercise to a potentially powerful political force on this week. That’s because Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee – said he plans to create a new subcommittee of House Oversight to work with DOGE  and act as a conduit to turn its ideas into legislation.

AI and Quantum

ONCD Must Lead National Quantum Cyber Strategy, Watchdog Says. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned  that the federal government’s shift to post-quantum cryptography will fail due to the lack of one singular entity overseeing and implementing a national strategy addressing the threat. According to GAO, the White House’s Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) is best poised to lead federal agencies in a U.S. National Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Strategy. “Federal agencies and our nation’s critical infrastructure – such as energy, transportation systems, communications, and financial services – rely on cryptography to protect sensitive data and systems,” the Nov. 21 report reads.

IBM Official Charts Accelerating Pace of AI Deployment. Adam Lawrence, general manager of IBM Americas, tracked the rapid acceleration of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology deployment over the past few years, and predicted “tremendous” gains in innovation and business productivity that will result from that trend.

CBP Using AI to Streamline Border Ops, Boost Efficiency. The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Customs and Border Protection (CBP) component is looking to adopt and scale generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technologies for use cases including expediting border crossings, said Sunil Madhugiri, chief technology officer at CBP.  CBP is using a variety of GenAI approaches – such as text-to-text, text-to-image, and text-to-video models – to determine whether someone seeking to enter the United States is eligible to do that.  He discussed use cases at the IBM Think Leadership Exchange and said they also include technology product management and edge computing. Some of the edge computing cases, he said, already are familiar to many people. 

How to Be Systematic About Adopting AI at Your Organization. Leaders and companies everywhere recognize the transformative potential that AI holds for their business — but very few of them have a systematic plan for how to experiment with and adopt AI at scale. In this article, John Winsor offers one, based on the successful work that he and Jin Paik have done in recent years helping companies experiment with and adopt digital-talent platforms at scale. Winsor lays out a simple five-step plan — assess, learn, experiment, build, scale — that can help companies get serious about adopting AI.

Palo Alto Networks’ Nikesh Arora on Managing Risk in the Age of AI. A conversation with Palo Alto Networks CEO about his approach to innovation as new technologies and risks emerge.

Cybersecurity

CISA Touts Red Team Probe That Infiltrated CI Target. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said on Thursday that it recently conducted a red team assessment (RTA) at the request of an unnamed critical infrastructure organization, with mixed results.The bad news: CISA was able to compromise the target’s business systems; the good news: everyone learned some security lessons that the agency is publicly sharing to help others minimize cyber risk.

House Bill Looks to Expand CyberCorps Scholarship for Service Program. Reps. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., and Dale Strong, R-Ala., introduced a new bipartisan bill on Thursday that aims to improve and expand the CyberCorps Scholarship for Service (SFS) Program

Innovation

It’s Time to Reimagine Scale. It’s conventional wisdom in business that bigger is better, and that being able to scale is an essential element of an organization’s success. But there is a flaw at the heart of the concept of scaling, though it can be hard to articulate. Many of our ideas about scaling rest on foundational economic ideas eloquently espoused by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations. In light of this, it’s worth also considering other kinds of scale: scaling a model, scaling impact, and scaling humanity, rather than growing individual companies.

Data

Army CDAO Targeting Mission Command Data for ‘C2 Next’The U.S. Army’s Chief Data and Analytics Officer (CDAO), David Markowitz, is zeroing in on mission command data as part of the Army’s broader effort to refine data stewardship practices and establish clear lines of responsibility across the service.

GAO Wants Congress to Designate Agency to Oversee Data Security. The GAO is suggesting in a new report that Congress designate an agency to issue government-wide guidance or regulations to help protect Americans’ civil rights and civil liberties while using personal data. The Nov. 19 GAO Q&A report notes that there are no government-wide laws or guidance regarding data security. However, emerging technologies such as AI or facial recognition have rapidly increased the amount of personally identifiable information (PII) that Federal agencies collect, share, and use.

Workforce

2024 Presidential Rank Award winners announced. 236 federal employees across 30 agencies have been recognized for their exceptional leadership and accomplishments. The Office of Personnel Management announced the winners of the 2024 Presidential Rank Awards this week. A Presidential Rank Award is widely considered the most prestigious honor for career civil servants. Each year, just about 5% of career federal executives receive a Meritorious Rank Award. Only 1% earn a Distinguished Rank Award. Honorees receive a cash salary bonus for winning a PRA.

Overhaul of security clearance and personnel vetting process enters new phase.  The White House-led initiative to overhaul the security clearance and personnel vetting process has entered a new phase. The Performance Accountability Council in its latest report on “Trusted Workforce 2.0 said agencies have updated all major policies related to personnel vetting. The PAC is now entering phase three of Trusted Workforce implementation.

Leadership

4 ChatGPT Prompts To Improve Your Storytelling - And Your Leadership. Storytelling is the key to career success. In the job interview process, the stories you tell will teach people how to treat you, how to hire you, and how to follow your ideas. When working with teams, as a leader or a player, storytelling is what connects us. Everyone knows that stories can instruct, of course. But expert storytelling can inspire. Storytelling makes your leadership relatable, injecting empathy and vulnerability, so that common ground can create uncommon results. That connection is central to your career success, whether interviewing for a job or leading an organization. Fortunately, ChatGPT can help you to refine your message in powerful ways, so that you stop rambling and become better at storytelling.

THIS WEEK @ THE CENTER 

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ICYMI – Experts in Government.  This week Michael Keegan welcomed Professor Don Kettl to discuss insights from his monograph Experts in Government: The Deep State from Caligula to Trump and Beyond. The explored how best to balance the age-old battles between expertise and accountability in government, the role of experts in governance, and how the challenges of bureaucratic capacity and control become far greater in the twenty-first century.