GovCast GovCIO Media & Research

The U.S Mint is the primary manufacturer of coinage in America. In 2019, the Mint produced more than 12 billion coins. As the sole producer of coinage, the Mint also creates additional markets to improve profitability. Chief Information Officer Francis O’Hearn overseas an IT budget of nearly $60 million and breaks down how his previous leadership roles have prepared him to succeed at the Mint. While O’Hearn understands the importance of emerging technology like artificial intelligence, he says keeping a human in the loop is critical.

The U.S. Navy has a keen interest on the space domain. This is where key technologies like spacecraft and ground-and-control stations play an integral part in passing on intelligence and other information about the world to U.S. military services globally.
The Naval Research Laboratory’s Naval Center for Space Technology is one of four research directorates, and the focal point and integrator for the lab’s technology development used in space systems. Director Steven Meier breaks down some of the history in spacecraft development and how the center is prioritizing emerging areas like artificial intelligence and hypersonics that will advance the defense mission across all domains.

The leader behind Defense Department programs like “Hacking for Defense” returns to GovCast to break down the principles behind how large organizations can innovate at speed. This speed is often cited as being the critical pace needed at the Pentagon to stay ahead of the adversary across key issues in cybersecurity, IT modernization, data sharing and more.
Steve Blank co-founded the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford University, which teaches the next generation of national security innovators. He also consults on innovation methods, processes, policies and doctrine across the national security sector.
Blank discusses the ways government can learn from key partners in the private and academic sectors, and highlights the ways that a whole-of-government approach can help the Pentagon adapt to an ever-changing world.

GovCast turns 5! The first episode published Aug. 29, 2018, featured a wide-ranging discussion with Jose Arrieta, who at the time served as the Department of Health and Human Services assistant deputy secretary.
In the five years since, GovCast has hosted many leaders across the federal government, academia and industry to discuss everything from modernization to health IT to artificial intelligence in government.
To mark the podcast’s five-year anniversary, GovCIO Media & Research’s Alexander Bulova, Anastasia Obis, Jayla Whitfield, Ross Gianfortune and Amy Kluber discussed their favorite episodes of the podcast over the years. Featured interviews include IRS, GSA, NASA, FBI, Navy and more!

Government IT has so many specific words and phrases that it can seem like its own language. In a special GovCast, Production Lead Alexander Bulova acts as a quiz show host to test Staff Writer/Researcher Anastasia Obis and Managing Editor Ross Gianfortune on government IT jargon on the different phrases and words everyone needs to know to keep current on government IT news.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Assistant Commissioner and CIO Sonny Bhagowalia is a longstanding leader in federal government and industry. By trade, his roots are in engineering — which has largely shaped how he views technology’s and especially artificial intelligence’s impact across various government missions.
With technology being pervasive in “everything we do,” Bhagowalia breaks down where he sees AI helping the agency counter cyber threats, tag video and image data automatically, detect patterns and even reduce human exposure to dangerous situations.
He describes how his office’s “cloud first” and “mobile first” mentality is driving initiatives like digitalization, streamlining public-facing services and processing the 172 petabytes of data it handles every day. Plus, he discusses where industry partnerships are going to make a difference. In the future, he’s excited about the potential for quantum safe and quantum processing, as well as a number of cybersecurity tools he’s exploring to keep ahead of the changing tech landscape.