GovCast GovCIO Media & Research

This episode we're diving into some defense technology perspectives, specifically for the Indo-Pacific region.
We recently had the opportunity to connect with leaders at the AFCEA TechNet Indo-Pacific conference in Honolulu where they shared how they're thinking about the quickly changing landscape and what it means for defense programs, software factories, cloud modernization and data centricity.
Featured interviews include:
Rob Vietmeyer, Chief Software Officer at DOD. https://governmentciomedia.com/dod-software-chief-breaks-down-tech-shifts-pacific-region
Sharon Woods, Director of DISA's Hosting and Compute Center. https://governmentciomedia.com/disa-hac-director-shares-commercial-cloud-capability-progress-indo-pacific
Andrew Hong, Deputy Director of Cyber Portfolio, Defense Innovation Unit. https://governmentciomedia.com/diu-brings-new-mindset-defense-technology
Indopacom CIO Gen. Mark Miles. https://governmentciomedia.com/indopacom-cio-looks-data-centricity-assured-command-and-control

Part of tackling defense and national security challenges requires engaging academia, developing the workforce, and bringing in the next commercial technical capability or process. That’s the aim of the Technology Advancement Center, a nonprofit innovating around some of the Pentagon’s toughest cybersecurity and technology challenges.
CEO Gregg Smith, a longstanding technology leader, discusses how the organization fits into some of the Defense Department’s newest strategies such as those around artificial intelligence and zero trust. He also discusses his goals for TAC as it works with smaller organizations working at every angle of innovation to teach them how to do business with the government and bring new solutions into agencies like the U.S. Cyber Command, National Security Agency, DISA and more.

Every agency and every office is in a different place in their modernization journey. At the Office of Personnel Management, this path has been full of challenges that Deputy CIO Melvin Brown has worked to solve through a four pillar approach in people, process, technology and learning.
Around its workforce challenges, Brown has reinvigorated an intern program to get more early-career technologists into the office and also deployed hybrid-work environment to widen the hiring net.
Brown discusses the ways the agency is modernizing with its people, tech and leadership.

President Joe Biden’s executive order on artificial intelligence tasks agencies with driving the safe, secure and trustworthy development of AI. The order notes that the technology, if harnessed properly, has the potential to transform privacy, cybersecurity and health care. Biden said that the order is "the most significant action any government anywhere in the world has ever taken on AI safety, security and trust."
GovCIO Media & Research Managing Editor Ross Gianfortune, Staff Writer/Researcher Jayla Whitfield and Staff Writer/Researcher Anastasia Obis break down the executive order's pillars, how agencies are going to follow the White House guidance and how AI regulatory policy has evolved.

Good ideas can come from anywhere, including the millions of public servants in the federal workforce.
The General Services Administration's 10x program invests in ideas from civil servants to improve government technology and better serve the public. Sites and projects like code.gov, login.gov and the U.S. Web Design System started from ideas funded through 10x.
Unique to 10x is its venture capitalist-style funding model to steward these ideas, including applying lean development principles and funneling projects as the process moves forward.
As funding for 2024 opens up, 10x Program Communications Lead Will Cahoe discusses the ways such a funding model can spur innovative change needed in government right now, the successes of the program and what other agencies can learn from it.

Behind large agencies like NASA is a backbone of technologists and shared services that enable the organization to seamlessly conduct its numerous missions that include those such as the high-profile Artemis and Moon to Mars.
Shenandoah Speers, associate CIO of applications at NASA, has been on a mission of his own over the past five years to bring in scaled Agile frameworks that speed up its software development cycles and bridge the data among NASA’s systems.
We caught up with Speers at the recent Gartner IT Symposium in Orlando, Florida, to discuss the progress and lessons learned behind this effort, which led to efficiencies like speeding up the delivery cycle from 170 to 90 days. He also discusses the opportunities for innovative technology like artificial intelligence and automation and how they can enable NASA to create efficiencies and reduce costs.