GovCIO Media & Research Podcasts GovCIO Media & Research

The National Cancer Institute’s partnership with St. Jude is helping researchers to better understand how cancer accelerates the aging process of survivors who were diagnosed as children. The team is also developing therapies that can decrease risks of frailty and dying at an early age.
NCI’s Jennifer Guida and St. Jude’s Kirsten Ness say the Behavioral Research Program as well as the Human Performance Laboratory have been instrumental in helping determine which survivors are more likely to experience physical and cognitive decline. These programs have also assisted researchers with identifying interventions that can possibly prevent premature death and other complications caused by cancer and cancer treatments.
Guida and Ness discuss how technology like artificial intelligence is playing a critical role in improving care for childhood cancer especially in conducting screenings, tracking a person's risk for heart failure as well as creating a patient's survivorship plan.

NIST’s new Cybersecurity Framework published earlier this year gives organizations a new set of harmonized cybersecurity guidelines and best practices. It’s the first major update in 10 years and broadens its scope beyond critical infrastructure entities.
Cherilyn Pascoe, director of NIST’s Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, had a large role in developing the new framework. She said the plan emphasizes the importance of cybersecurity in an evolving technological environment and discusses how others can tailor it to their organizations across missions.
Pascoe also highlights a growing focus in broader cybersecurity priorities around post-quantum cryptography and AI, and explains how NIST’s Center of Excellence is developing additional guidance for the community.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) aims to recruit a more diverse pool of candidates to work in public health care.
ONC Deputy National Coordinator for Operations and Chief Operating Officer Lisa Lewis Person helped create the Diversity Equity Inclusion and Accessibility Council back in 2020. An employee-led committee, the council develops policies and programs that ensure all Americans are represented in ONC's workforce.
Person also sponsors the Public Health Informatics and Technology (PHIT) Workforce Program, which gives minority serving institutions the ability to provide certifications as well as degrees in public health. She discusses why diversity in health care matters and how it impacts health IT.

The U.S. Postal Service is in the middle of a three-year modernization plan to update its massive infrastructure, data centers and expansive telecom network. The service wants to prioritize technology innovation and leverage partnerships to transform its operations and business model for evolving mail and deliver services, relying on no taxpayer dollars to do so.
CIO Pritha Mehra is focused on maintaining a highly resilient telecom network, securing data transfer and embracing new technology.
Mehra shares how the agency is using emerging technology like generative AI in its operations, the service’s plan for integrating zero trust architecture amid new policy directives, and also how the service is evolving upskilling and recruiting initiatives to attract and retain its workforce.

Cybercrime spans borders and agencies, so governments across the world have to work together to foment cybersecurity. Spain’s INCIBE is the Spanish National Institute of Cybersecurity and its version of what the U.S. knows to be CISA.
Plus, NATO wants to work more closely with private and academic sectors in cybersecurity matters. The alliance recently chose INCIBE to be the only accelerator of cybersecurity startups of the Atlantic Alliance in Spain through the Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) project to boost transatlantic cooperation in critical technologies.
INCIBE Secretary General Carla Redondo Galbarriatu discusses cybersecurity collaboration across borders, women in the technology sector and Spain’s emergence as a cybersecurity global leader.

The White House’s National Cybersecurity Strategy tasks government agencies, industry and other organizations with guarding against cyber crime across the online environment. For the FBI, the strategy amplified and clarified the Bureau’s role across law enforcement efforts.
FBI Cyber Deputy Assistant Director Cynthia Kaiser discussed at the RSA Conference in San Francisco how the strategy’s agile approach to cybersecurity and how it strengthens defenses. She also discusses how the good guys stay ahead of the bad guys and how partnerships help law enforcement find malicious cyber actors.