The Wrap: OMB’s AI Buying Rules; Why CRs Hurt Fed IT; ODNI Preps new Reference Architecture

Welcome to The Wrap for Thursday, October 3!

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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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OMB’s AI Buying Rules

The Office of Management and Budget is out today with new guidance that sets direction for what Federal agencies should be doing as they purchase artificial intelligence capabilities. Top-line items in the?Advancing the Responsible Acquisition of AI in Government?guidance include new requirements for agencies on establishing meaningful cross-functional and interagency collaboration to reflect new AI responsibilities, managing AI risk and performance, and promoting a competitive AI market with innovative acquisition. Notable on the tech collaboration front: the policy is requiring agency-wide strategic planning and resourcing and directing each chief AI officer (CAIO) to submit a plan ensuring coordination between the chief information officer (CIO), chief information security officer, chief financial officer, chief technology officer, and other relevant officials. Further on collaboration, the memo calls on the CAIO Council to partner with OMB, the CIO Council, the General Services Administration, and the AI Community of Practice to collect data on AI acquisition that can be made available to all agencies – including examples and lessons learned, templates, and best practices. Please do click through for all the details.

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Why CRs Hurt Fed IT

Short-term funding is better than none, but beyond that truism lies the reality of why three-month chunks of appropriations at year-old levels do not advance improvements to Federal IT, and even work to set them back. That's the consensus from MeriTalk’s roundup of comments from lawmakers, government officials, and industry sages following the three-month continuing resolution (CR) funding deal reached by Congress last week that will keep Federal operations running through Dec. 20. A few quick hits: Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va. – “Agencies cannot adequately utilize IT without the funding necessary to obtain and maintain it, and they can’t plan ahead without some measure of assurance that that funding will be available to them in the future”; Ross Nodurft, executive director of the?Alliance for Digital Innovation?(ADI) – CRs make it “even harder” for emerging commercial technology solutions to enter the government market and “add uncertainty and risk around any budgeting decision an agency makes”; Partnership for Public Service?VP of Government Affairs?Jenny Mattingley – stop-gap measures hinder innovations in technology, operations, and staffing that the government needs to deliver services more effectively, “forcing agencies to live with a fiscal uncertainty that prevents them from making long-term, strategic decisions.” Read through for all the rest…

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ODNI Dropping new Reference Architecture

Be on the lookout over the next week or two for the public release of a new data reference architecture for the intelligence community (IC). That was the news today from Lori Wade, who is chief data officer for the IC comprising 18 different agencies, and who talked about the coming release today at an event organized by Cloudera and AWS. “We’re about to sign it out, hopefully in the next week or two … we have a data reference architecture that we have developed with the 18 elements. It’s a CDO and a [chief information officer (CIO)] document and architecture that I’ll be signing out with the intelligence community CIO,” Wade said. “That will show how we’re going to automate all of this and look at how we break down data silos. It’s based on data mesh principles across a distributed ecosystem,” said Wade, who added that the IC’s public sector partners are already taking a look at the new specs.

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GSA’s COMET II

The General Services Administration (GSA) has shared with industry the first draft of its CIO Modernization and Enterprise Transformation II (COMET II) Performance Work Statement (PWS) after posting a request for quotes (RFQ) to the agency’s eBuy program.?COMET II is a continuation of the $1 billion COMET, launched in 2019, which was a recompete of GSA’s CIO Application Maintenance, Enhancements, and Operations (CAMEO) system.?COMET II is sizing up as a multiple-award blanket purchase agreement (BPA) to support the purchase of IT products and agile delivery services, including user-centered design, emerging architecture and design, agile application development and configuration, analytics, monitoring, integration, and DevSecOps, GSA said.

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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].