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CIO Council Innovation Committee on Gaining Profit Through Community Collaboration

Earlier this year, Federal Chief Information Officer Claire Martorana called on the government community to think differently about this technology moment. She urged the federal community to think about the entire ecosystem and the big bets the public and private sectors are making on next-generation technology.

Martorana asked: “How can agencies harness that energy to think differently, make the most of opportunities, be safe, responsible and creative?”

While she may have slammed government agencies and industry alike, the Federal CIO Council’s Innovation Committee is leading the response. We spoke with three committee leaders—Ann Dunkin of the Department of Energy, Shez Sivagnanam of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Dave Larimore of the Department of Homeland Security—to hear about their work during the Federal News Network Cloud Exchange 2024.

When people talk about innovation, they often associate it easily with emerging technologies. But that's not the case. It doesn't have to be emerging technology, and it doesn't have to be just new ideas, says Sivagnanam, the FDIC's chief architect. “To me, innovation is about taking great ideas from people, experimenting with them, and figuring out how to scale them and make sure they're applicable at enterprise scale. That's really what it's all about.” [innovation] ecosystem.

The Innovation Committee will bring together not only the CIO but also the chief technology officer, chief data officer, chief artificial intelligence officer and other technology managers across government to build that ecosystem.

DHS CTO Larrimore said that because each leader has different roles and responsibilities, the committee serves as a forum for members to discuss overall challenges and opportunities.

Given the many laws, regulations and policies that collectively and individually impact the agency’s technology efforts and mission, Larimore described the Innovation Board as the connective tissue between numerous teams, councils, committees, organizations and groups.

“We have representatives with a wide range of backgrounds from different departments and agencies, including cyber equity, data, IP operations and more. In fact, our group is designed around the intersection of different committees, and taking an integrated approach helps us advance efforts where it makes sense,” he said.

Federal innovation ideas that could deliver tangible results

An upcoming example is a project that will be applied for funding from the Technology Modernization Fund. Dunkin, the Energy CIO, said he couldn't share many details other than to say the project will be about AI.

But this is just one example of how the committee is thinking differently about the Martorana challenge.

We're really looking for opportunities to create tangible outcomes, not just talk. Even when we do these symposiums, our goal is to make sure there's follow-up after the symposium, says Dunkin. For example, we did a fraud symposium, and then the CFO Council took over and built its next activities around that. Our goal is that whatever we do, it sticks and has some kind of outcome and result, and it's not enough to just say, “We had a fun conversation today.”

Sivagnanam added that the ways in which the committee forms its community are manifold. Sometimes it takes the form of a symposium, like the one it hosted in March on AI and quantum computing. Other times, the committee develops deliverables such as roadmaps and journey maps focused on emerging technologies, data-driven innovation, cybersecurity and customer experience.

“We want to be the bridge that connects different people. If there's something great happening on one side and the other side needs help, we'll create the deliverables and push that journey,” Sivagnanam said. “This year, our focus is mostly on data-driven innovation and customer experience. We're also helping our group with cybersecurity innovation.”

When it comes to innovation, the committee looks at ideas from two perspectives. The first is operational innovation. Sivagnanam explained that this is about taking a hard look at the processes that are run iteratively and doing it with an agile mindset, trying to improve on them with new contributions. This is something that's always been done.

The second innovation category looks at a process or technology from a fundamentally different perspective, based on new technology, new talent, new data, or something that changes the user’s life.

“For us, our metric for innovation is really our ability to continually modernize,” said Larimore. “The ability to look at big problems and solve them in a way that allows us to continually innovate is ultimately our measure of success. That's what cloud, agile, and DevSecOps all give us, so as we start applying commercial AI to those three foundational principles of modernization, we have an opportunity to start achieving that goal.”

Examples of AI-driven innovation at DHS

Dunkin added that the committee is looking for opportunities that meet several criteria, starting with those that will be of most value to the government as a whole.

“What can the Innovation Commission do to bring the most value to its colleagues, to the government, and to the public who are paying for all of this?” she said. The second is, what can the Commission be passionate about doing? We can come up with a great agenda that will be a great value for taxpayers, but at the end of the day this is volunteer work, and people are doing it because they want to. We have to create something that people are passionate about doing.

Larimore highlighted two current innovation efforts at DHS that are all about technology, but at the same time have nothing to do with technology per se.

“DHS recognized that there were serious gaps in knowledge, skills and capabilities around AI and the federal workplace. We established a unique DHS AI Corps to bring in 50 AI experts. As of today, we already have seven on board. We expect to have nearly 15 by the end of this fiscal year,” he said.

We're already starting to prepare to roll out projects that support the Executive Order and other administration priorities across the Department. We've received over 5,500 resumes and completed hundreds of interviews, so it's really exciting. The caliber of people is incredible. I've never seen in my career the caliber of people coming from the private sector, raising their hand and saying they really want to support the mission.

The second example also focuses on AI: Larimore said DHS has spent the past few months finalizing its first-ever policy on the use of commercially generated AI tools, and has also signed training contracts with several companies on government-friendly terms of use, oversight guidebooks and other tools.

We've made this publicly available. We've had several conversations at the state and federal levels, and any federal agency can use this, Larimore said. A lot of the companies that we have these contracts with have asked us to share this as much as we can. We want to make it available to other potential customers. We're getting privacy protections that you don't get by just using something that's on the market. We're getting protections around indemnification that a lot of companies don't get. And this fills a big gap that we had in the cloud space, and agencies are really starting to realize that it's a big benefit to not just DHS, but to a lot of other people.

Dunkin, Larimore and Sivagnanam also warned that while innovation and government may seem like a strange combination, government agencies have good reason to be more cautious than the private sector.

Dunkin said it's widely acknowledged that the procurement process can be frustrating and slow innovative efforts.

But at the same time, Larimore said he's seeing an increasing desire from both government and industry to explore new and different ways to modernize technology and processes, and to that end, he encourages people to get involved in the committee's work.

The best way to prevent errors is to ask questions and learn, and have a culture of learning. This is a big central point of why the Innovation Committee exists. We want to promote a culture of learning and a culture of sharing, he said. I tell everyone to come and be an active participant. You don't have to have a CIO on the Innovation Committee. You can send someone who is really interested in innovation and learning about technologies that your department or institution doesn't have access to yet, asking questions about how something works, and participating in the community. I guarantee you and your department will be better off.

Check out more articles and videos on the Federal News Networks Cloud Exchange 2024 event page now.

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