Tag Archives: Department of Defense

Agile Becomes a Core Competency of Government

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Agile is not a technology but rather an approach. As such, the barriers to adoption are not technical, they are cultural. Moving to Agile requires a complete shift in thinking from waterfall development. No longer is it feasible to set requirements at the beginning of the project and then design to those specifications, not launching until the whole system is complete. Rather, Agile works more in line with the pace of today, emphasizing constant communication to introduce change into the development process and encouraging small elements of the end solution to be released throughout the project lifecycle. Use of Agile in government has come a long way, but there is still room for improvement in how agencies meet digital goals and expectations. Continue reading →

AI Reporting for Duty

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming a key tool in the arsenal of the U.S. military. In 2022, the Department of Defense (DoD) launched the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) to become the "go-to place for talent and technical expertise." It was formed by merging several DoD offices to create a single, coordinated effort to advance AI technology and policy. Specifically, the CDAO is charged to:

  • Lead the Department's strategy and policy on data, analytics, and AI adoption, as well as govern and oversee efforts across the Department.
  • Empower the development of digital and AI-enabled solutions across the Department, while also selectively scaling proven solutions for enterprise and joint use cases.
  • Provide a sophisticated cadre of technical experts that serve as a de facto data and digital response force able to address urgent crises and emerging challenges with state-of-the-art digital solutions.

A key focus of the CDAO will be how to use AI to better coordinate forces in support of the DoD's Joint All-Domain Command Control (JADC2) efforts. Initial tactical goals include:

  • Review the Department's policy, strategy, data governance, analytics, and AI to create an integrated Data, Analytics, and AI strategy.
  • Provide the enterprise-level infrastructure and services that enable efforts to advance adoption of data, analytics, and AI.
  • Solve and scale enterprise and joint use cases in support of the National Defense Strategy and the Advancing Data and AI (ADA) initiative.

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Schools Have to Learn the ABCs of Ransomware

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Ransomware has traditionally been a practice where cybercriminals encrypt data and demand ransom in exchange for a decryption key. More recently, a growing number of these bad actors threaten to make this information public if they do not get paid. This shift in the practice of ransomware has increased the "attractiveness" of K-12 schools for cyber criminals. Information about children is among the most highly protected data there is, making it more likely ransoms will be paid to keep it private. For this and other reasons, K-12 schools are seeing an increase in ransomware activity. In 2021, there were at least 62 reported ransomware cases as compared to only 11 in 2018. 2021 also saw ransomware as the most common cyber incident for K-12 schools for the first time ever.

What Gets Compromised in a Ransomware Attack?

An incident in 2020 involving Fairfax County, VA Public Schools resulted in employee social security numbers being posted online. Hackers targeting a school district in Allen, Texas emailed parents with threats to expose their childs' personal information if educators did not pay a ransom. Showing the full swing of ransomware impacts from the serious to the mundane, a 2022 attack on the Griggsville-Perry School District in Indiana had many records compromised and leaked including a detention slip from December 2014 for a student who would not stop interrupting his health class. This shows the breadth of access that hackers had to documents and has led many schools to reexamine their file retention policy to reduce the amount of data accessible to bad actors. Continue reading →

Are We There Yet? The Future of Modernization

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There's no shortage of mandates and guidance related to modernization-PMA, Technology Modernization Fund, FITARA, Cyber EO, CX EO-pushing the government to update how they deliver services online, but what does it really mean, and what is involved?

Modernization in government began with transforming data centers and integrating cloud computing into government IT architectures and moved on to improving customer experience. Agencies have made inroads in all areas. The recent FITARA scorecard showed that data center consolidation goals have been completed. Cloud efforts have moved from Cloud First to Cloud Smart in an effort to ensure cloud was just not a checkbox but was being used to transform how the government consumes and distributes IT services. Citizen Experience (CX) has been a priority across three administrations with the next generation of CX efforts outlined in an executive order. These modernization efforts have resulted in billions of dollars in cost savings and increased efficiency for a government workforce that is now telework friendly, but the work is not done. Continue reading →

Tanks, Planes, Ships, and Data: Activating the DOD’s Data Strategy

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The battles of tomorrow will likely not be fought on the ground, they will take place in cyberspace as nation-states and rogue actors alike look to interrupt the everyday functions of a country via high-tech attacks. Recently we saw the Russian hack of software, designed (ironically) to help organizations monitor network problems and anomalies, which has the government and private companies scrambling to determine what data was compromised. With cyberspace being the new battlefield, data and data management have quickly become a strategic asset in the DoD arsenal.

Last fall, the DOD released the Department's Data Strategy. An overarching guidance on how they will manage, secure, and use data. This document supports the DOD's transition to "a data-centric organization that uses data at speed and scale for operational advantage and increased efficiency." The Data Strategy includes 7 goals, nicknamed VAULTIS, to becoming data-centric:

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