The Wrap: DHS Likes AI, Pans Garbage Data; PQC Ready for 2030?; Join us at Tech Tonic Dec. 19

Welcome to The Wrap for Wednesday, November 20!

From the newsroom at MeriTalk, it’s the quickest read in Federal tech news. Here’s what you need to know today:

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DHS Likes AI, Pans Garbage Data

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been learning a lot about generative AI (GenAI) through ongoing pilot projects to implement the technology, including overcoming problems posed by "garbage data." That was the takeaway from David Larrimore, executive director of the Chief Technology Officer Directorate in DHS’s Office of the Chief Information Officer, who talked about the pilots – and their pitfalls – today at IBM ’s?Think Leadership Exchange?event in Washington, D.C., produced by MeriTalk . He said one of the pilots – which involves improving investigative summaries and training immigration officers to interview asylum seekers – “created technical infrastructure and knowledge” that will enable DHS agencies to “test out these technologies.” But Larrimore also emphasized the pilots showed that data quality needs to be substantially improved to enhance the performance of GenAI models before DHS can fully integrate the technology. “The hardest part we had was recognizing that our data was – not to use the term garbage but it was garbage,” he said. “We had to work really, really hard to make sure that the LLMs (large language models) could use it in a performance way.” Once the data problems is solved, Larrimore said, “we’re immediately going to see a huge cliff that we’re going to be able to jump over in leveraging generative AI to support these cases.”

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PQC Ready for 2030?

The Federal government is under orders to prepare for the advent of quantum computing capabilities sufficient to break most current data encryption methods, with a projected deadline of 2035 for completing the migration to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) across Federal agencies. An official with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said today, however, that planning to bump up that date closer to 2030 may not be a bad idea. Gary Jones, the associate chief of strategic technology at CISA, said at today’s IBM Think Leadership Exchange event that while 2035 is the White House’s target, CISA is setting its internal target for 2030. “Everything is going towards 2035. We at CISA … we know how fast the government works, so we said 2030 was our date, and then we were going to give some slack time of five years to give some implementation,” Jones said. “So, 2030, was pretty much our cut-off.” Please do click through and read the whole story.

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FCC on Speed Dial for Salt Typhoon Response

This week’s Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law hearing on the Salt Typhoon hack of U.S. telecom service providers drew bipartisan dismay from subcommittee leadership, with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who chairs the subcommittee, calling on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to immediately start a rulemaking process and investigation into the China-sponsored hacks. “It can be started under this administration [and] carried forward under the next,” Sen. Blumenthal said, adding, “there should be bipartisan unity on the urgency of that action.”

“The scope of the Salt Typhoon hack as we understand it now is truly breathtaking,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. at the Tuesday hearing. “If there’s ever an advertisement for bringing our critical supply chains home, if there’s ever an advertisement for bringing back core American manufacturing, if there’s ever an advertisement for safeguarding American jobs in every sector – particularly these critical sectors that have to do with telecom and communications – this is it,” he said.

Join us at Tech Tonic Dec. 19

With only about a month to go before work winds down for the holiday season, it’s time to circle Dec. 19 on the calendar to swing by MeriTalk ’s Tech Tonic?celebration from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Morton's The Steakhouse in Washington, D.C., to toast the hardworking Federal IT leaders who broke records for superior performance on the latest ?FITARA Scorecard, and to look forward to what the new year may bring. Who are we inviting? Count on top techies from 美国国务院 , U.S. Department of Homeland Security , U.S. Department of the Treasury , National Science Foundation (NSF) , U.S. Department of Labor , U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) , U.S. Department of Transportation , NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration , U.S. Department of the Interior , U.S. Department of Education , U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) , U.S. Department of Commerce , Social Security Administration , US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) , U.S. Department of Justice , USDA , and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) . But our most important invite is to you, so hit the Go Button?to join in on Dec. 19.

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Once again, let’s “call IT a day,” but we'll bring you more tomorrow. Until then please check the MeriTalk breaking news website throughout the day for the latest on government IT people, process, and policy. And finally, please hit the news tip jar [with leads, breaking news, or simply your two cents] at [email protected].