nextgov
Here’s a New Playbook for Municipal Civic Tech Projects
Next Century Cities released a playbook on tech-powered civic engagement detailing lessons learned over the past year among its three Benton Next Generation Engagement Award winners: Austin (TX), Louisville (KY) and Raleigh (NC). The Washington, D.C.-based broadband advocacy group wants the guide to serve as a checklist for cities’ future projects. Communities are encouraged to engage all stakeholders in a civic tech project area, collaborate across sectors and have their approach match project function.
House Passes IT Modernization Bill
Next stop for Rep. Will Hurd’s Modernizing Government Technology Act: the Senate. The bill passed the House in a floor vote, highlighting the bipartisan concern lawmakers share regarding the nation’s aging federal technology, which includes at least 10 critical systems more than four decades old.
The MGT Act’s journey through the House was swift, sailing through the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee only days after its April 28 introduction. Companion legislation in the Senate, however, is moving slower. The bill, a bipartisan effort that included input from the White House, the Government Accountability Office and top Democrats, would create two new ways for agencies to modernize their IT systems. First, it would allow CFO Act agencies to create working IT capital funds. Hurd has referred to these funds as “the meat” of the bill, and it would allow agencies to recoup savings from existing modernization efforts rather than give cash back to the Treasury Department. Hypothetically, an agency that realizes savings from moving to the cloud could hold on to the savings for up to three years, so long as it uses those savings for further modernization efforts. In addition to agency-specific working capital funds, the MGT Act creates a central modernization fund and authorized appropriators to fund it up to $250 million per year for two years. Agencies strapped for cash could then make their cases to borrow against the fund to modernize certain systems. The final say for what agencies get money will come down to the commissioner of the Technology Transformation Service, an office within the General Services Administration.
Is President Trump Eliminating the White House Science and Tech Office?
President Donald Trump has yet to fill many key science and technology positions at the White House, and it's not clear when he will. Under President Barack Obama, the White House chief technology officer's staff included about 24 people. As of the week of March 27, President Trump has named only one person to that office—Michael Kratios, formerly chief of staff to Trump's tech adviser and tech investor Peter Thiel.
The CTO's office is housed within the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, which also doesn't have a director yet. “The impression this leaves is that Trump isn’t interested in science and that scientific matters are a low priority at the White House,” said Vint Cerf, the Google technologist known as the "father of the internet". President Trump's budget blueprint, released earlier this month, proposed slashing federal research funding at agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and, at the Energy Department, eliminating a research and development unit altogether. Some of President Trump's advisers have recommended eliminating OSTP, which the administration is free to do. White House structure isn't set in law, said Martha Joynt Kumar, director of the White House Transition Project.
President Trump has a new innovation office. It's unclear what that means for 18F and USDS
President Donald Trump has created a new White House office dedicated to bringing private sector tech practices to the government.
Initial projects may include revamping the Veterans Affairs Department, modernizing federal IT and re-designing government workforce training. The office could also tackle opioid abuse, among other issues. Right now, it’s unclear what the new group will mean for the federal tech and innovation groups created in the Obama administration, including the White House’s US Digital Service—itself described as a tech troubleshooting SWAT team—and 18F, the digital consultancy housed within the General Services Administration. Those groups also recruit tech talent heavily from the private sector, often for 1- or 2-year stints, and emphasize shaking up Washington’s bureaucracy with concepts from tech hubs such as Silicon Valley, Austin (TX) and Boston (MA).
It's Possible to Cut Legacy Spending. Here's How the FCC Did It.
In recent years, legacy IT has shaped up to be one of the government’s biggest tech challenges. There’s a reason the legacy tech challenge is so widespread across government: Modernizing is hard and can be expensive. Yet, some agencies, including the Federal Communications Commission, have done just that. In 2013, the year CIO David Bray took over as the agency’s top tech official, FCC was spending 85 percent of its $64 million IT budget on legacy systems. Less than four years later, FCC has reduced its legacy spend by 35 percent on the back of an ambitious modernization plan heavy on achieving small wins, moving to cloud computing and ultimately reducing contracted personnel.
What President Trump's Skinny Budget Says About Cybersecurity
President Donald Trump’s 2018 budget blueprint touts major investments in cybersecurity, including a $61 million hike to help the FBI and the Justice Department combat criminals and terrorists’ use of encrypted communication tools. The document is light on specifics, however, and does not include a top line figure for cyber investments.
The budget proposal would give the Defense Department a boost of more than $50 billion, largely by ending the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration, for a total request of $639 billion. That money would be aimed at building a “more capable, and more lethal joint force” and at ensuring US superiority in major domains including cyberspace. That Pentagon budget would include $7.2 billion for operations and maintenance, including improving cyber capabilities, according to a White House memo. The blueprint lacks a specific figure, however, for all DOD cyber priorities at US Cyber Command and elsewhere.
US Digital Service Co-Founder to Stay On
A senior tech leader under the Obama administration is staying on under President Donald Trump. Haley Van Dyck helped create the US Digital Service, a White House tech trouble-shooting team that tackles large-scale federal IT projects. It was founded as a continuation of the team that helped salvage the HealthCare.gov rollout.
Though Van Dyck resigned toward the end of the Obama administration, she is reportedly re-joining USDS. Until recently, it was unclear whether Trump's administration planned to maintain tech efforts including USDS. Trump's pick for White House chief digital officer, Gerrit Lansing, tweeted support for the group in January, stating: "FYI: USDS is here to stay with the new administration. Period." But less than a month later, Lansing left the White House because he was unable to pass an FBI screening.
WH Names Cyber Adviser to Economic Council
A former technology counsel for the House Commerce Committee will be heading up technology and cybersecurity policy for the National Economic Council, the White House announced. Grace Koh’s official title will be special assistant to the president for technology, telecom and cybersecurity policy. Koh was previously a policy counsel for the cable company Cox, where she focused on video, data and broadband issues and represented Cox before the Federal Communications Commission and other federal agencies. Koh was one of 13 National Economic Council officials named by Director Gary Cohn. Other officials will focus on energy, infrastructure, health care and other topics.
18F Wants to Change the Rules, Not Break Them
The tech group 18F took some heat when a General Administration Services inspector general audit found it skirting compliance rules and security procedures, but the department’s leader says the Obama-era tech unit is still committed to hacking bureaucracy. “Our job is transforming technology in government, and our job is to push against policies and regulations that are in the way of government being effective and delivering good services,” saidTechnology Transformation Service Commissioner Rob Cook. “We’ve realized we need to do that, and we’re emphasizing changing what the compliance is rather than going around it.”
Cook said 18F was alerted to the aforementioned IG report in the summer and has spent the past six months “addressing most everything” in it. Those issues included failing to get chief information officer approval on $24.8 million worth of contracts and foregoing approval on 100 of 116 software tools the tech unit used.