The Wrap: House Clears NDAA; Welcome the AI Tsunami; Stop Fretting, Start Moving

Welcome to The Wrap for Thursday, December 14!

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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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House Clears NDAA With 5.2% pay Raise ?

With surprisingly little partisan rancor, the House today voted to approve the fiscal year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which features a 5.2 percent pay raise for military personnel, and a three percent overall boost in defense spending. The House approved?the bill?– which authorizes $866 billion of national defense spending for the current fiscal year – by a vote of 310-118. The Senate voted to approve the same legislation on Dec. 13 by a vote of 87-13. The measure now heads to the White House for President Biden’s signature, which is all but assured. The Office of Management and Budget signaled earlier this week that the Biden administration strongly supports the bill as passed by both houses of Congress this week.

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Welcome the AI Tsunami

The rapid onset and adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technology has brought nothing less than an "AI tsunami" to the Federal government. That’s the bottom-line thinking from Trang Tran, Deputy Chief Data Officer and Director of AI within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ’s U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) component, who sized up the way forward for her agency’s AI use at ATARC’s CIO Summit event on Dec. 13. “We’re in a world of what I’m going to call an AI tsunami. It’s AI everywhere,” Tran said. Going forward, she said the emphasis needs to be on workforce training to put the technology to its optimal uses. “How many of them understand their role in data, how they use data? How does AI impact that? AI is only a tool, it is not something that will replace any human,” Tran said. “It won’t replace our officers and agents out in the field; it won’t replace what they’re doing; it won’t replace any intuition that they may have, but it’s a tool to help them leverage and make their work a little bit more efficient, effective and they have to understand that.”

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OPM CIO: Time to Move on AI

Also talking AI at the same event this week, Federal CIOs agreed that more training of the government workforce needs to be in the cards. And at least one of them said it’s time to stop fretting and time to start moving on the new technology. U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) CIO Guy Cavallo put it this way: “What I hear from people is we’re not ready for it, we don’t have staff or we need skills,” he said. “Too bad, it’s here … you have to move. We’ve never had a technology hit us as fast and be available worldwide in a short period of time,” Cavallo said. What to tackle first? “You should be using AI for cybersecurity protections because our adversaries are using AI to attack you, and humans will lose in that battle over cybersecurity,” Cavallo said. “So, at a minimum, we want to make sure you’re already using AI,” he said.

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Who’s Leading the Fed AI Race?

In terms of putting AI tech to use, Federal government agencies were reporting about 200 active deployments of the technology as of fiscal year 2022, said the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) in a report?out this week. But in terms of AI use cases under development – which numbered about 1,200 across the 23 largest Federal civilian agencies – both NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) were racking up use cases at double and triple the rate of other large agencies. GAO’s tally based on a count of use cases in fiscal year 2022: NASA had 390 AI use cases, and DoC reported 285. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) came in third on the agency list with 117 use cases. In its 103-page survey of the Fed AI landscape, GAO had plenty of recommendations to spread around – 35 of them to a total of 19 agencies. Hit the whole story here.

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Once again, let’s “call IT a day,” but we'll bring you more next week. 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].