The Wrap: Fed Diversity Climbs; DoD ‘Informational’ Power; OPM Locality Pay

Welcome to The Wrap for Monday, November 20!??

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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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Fed Diversity Inches Higher??

All improvements are good ones, but sometimes they take a long time to happen. The Federal government is having success at improving workforce diversity totals, according to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that offers metrics from fiscal years 2011 to 2021, but it’s slow going. Over that ten-year period, the government has only managed to squeeze out low-single-digit bumps for most categories including Black or African American, Asian, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, American Indian or Alaska Native, and persons of more than one race.?Jumping out of those figures for a major success story: the number of people with disabilities in the Federal workforce doubled over the ten-year measurement period, and was about three times that of the representation in the FY2021 civilian labor force.??

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DoD and the Information Environment??

For the first time since 2016, the Defense Department (DoD) has updated its strategic guidance for?operations in the "information environment." What’s that? According to the updated guidance released?on Nov. 17, it involves how the Pentagon approaches the integration of “informational and physical power.” More precisely, DoD defines the environment as the “aggregate of social, cultural, linguistic, psychological, technical, and physical factors that affect how humans and automated systems derive meaning from, act upon, and are impacted by information.”?Operations in that realm include “military actions involving the integrated employment of multiple information forces to affect drivers of behavior by informing audiences; influencing foreign relevant actors; attacking and exploiting relevant actor information … systems and protecting friendly information … systems,” DoD said. The strategy outlines that the DoD must evolve from the “legacy” view of the information environment – referred to in the past as an “afterthought” – to the future of integrating informational and physical power.?The updated policy, the Pentagon said, “will improve the Department’s ability to plan, resource, and apply informational power toward integrated deterrence, campaigning, and building enduring advantage” and “deter challenges to U.S. vital national interests in any arena or domain.”??

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OPM Locality Pay??

If you’re a Fed in four locality pay areas of California, Nevada, New York, and Washington/Idaho, congrats on the coming pay raise. That extra dough will flow courtesy of Office of Personnel Management (OPM) action to finalize four new locality pay areas, ensuring that approximately 33,000 Federal employees will receive a pay raise in fiscal year (FY) 2024. According to a?final rule?published to the Federal Register on Nov. 16, the four new locality pay areas established by the final regulations are Fresno-Madera-Hanford, Calif; Reno-Fernley, Nev.; Rochester-Batavia-Seneca Falls, N.Y.; and Spokane-Spokane Valley-Coeur d’Alene, Wash.-Idaho. The regs take effect on Dec. 18, and employees will see a pay raise on the first day of the first applicable pay period beginning on or after Jan. 1, 2024.?

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CISA Shared Services to Critical Infrastructure?

Attention critical infrastructure providers: if you’re in need of a lift on your cybersecurity posture, the folks at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have a new?Cybersecurity Shared Services Pilot Program ready to help you out on a voluntary basis. Eric Goldstein, CISA’s executive assistant director for cybersecurity, discussed the program’s focus on leveraging new authorities from Congress to support 100 non-Federal organizations’ cybersecurity needs as part of the pilot’s first phase this year. “Scaling CISA-managed cybersecurity services for the segments of our critical infrastructure community that need it most is a cost-effective way to gain greater insight into our evolving threat environment, establish a common baseline of cyber protection, and, most importantly, reduce the frequency and impact of damaging cyber events,” Goldstein said. What’s being offered? One item on the CISA menu is the Protective Domain Name System (DNS) Resolver pilot that has already rolled out to Federal agencies, and will now be extended to critical infrastructure providers.?

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AI Regs – FTC Weighs In??

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is dipping its toes into the regulatory waters of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies with a new?exploratory challenge?aimed at encouraging the development of “breakthrough ideas” to evaluate, monitor, and prevent malicious uses of “voice cloning” technologies enabled by AI. While the FTC allowed that voice cloning may have some good uses, it also said the AI-driven tech poses “significant risk: families and small businesses can be targeted with fraudulent extortion scams; creative professionals, such as voice artists, can have their voices appropriated in ways that threaten their livelihoods and deceive the public.” Bottom line: the FTC is interested in fighting voice cloning harms, and wants to hear from you in early January with ideas that can range from products to policies. Kicker: the best idea stands to win $25,000.??

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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 news@meritalk.com.