Critical Update

An electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, capable of knocking out all electronics in its area could come in the wake of an atomic blast or, if TV and movies are to be believed, from a small non-nuclear device. But are EMPs a real threat? Experts join Critical Update to weigh in.

The Defense Department has a well-documented interest in bringing artificial intelligence to fruition so human operators can focus on high-level decisions while the tech takes care of the rest. But there’s a significant hurdle: If people don’t trust AI, the technology won’t be useful. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Air Combat Evolution program is not only bringing AI to the cockpit, it’s also figuring out how to measure trust so that AI can be tailor-made for pilots to create a symbiotic human-machine team.

Artificial intelligence is already transforming the way government works. But federal agencies face an urgent need to invigorate their workforces with AI-capable talent in order to realize the true promise of this technology, experts say. Dr. José-Marie Griffiths, president of Dakota State University, is a member of the National Security Commission on AI in charge of the workforce line of effort. She also had words of advice for federal workers: read up.

The COVID-19 pandemic moved a lot of federal employees from agency offices to home offices this year, requiring remote, cloud services so they could keep doing their jobs. But the federal cloud journey has been slow and uneven—so, did COVID-19 actually push more cloud adoption across government? The answer is complicated.

America’s space agency is undergoing a drastic digital transformation set to impact its Earth-based day-to-day operations—and next-level moves beyond the home planet. And, one day, there could even be a “data center on the moon,” according to Ron Thompson, the agency’s chief data officer and digital transformation officer. Steering the unfolding modernization, he offers a front-seat view into what’s to come.

For more than a decade, federal agencies have been told to adopt cloud computing for a variety of reasons, including improved security. But in a cloud model, vendors and customers share responsibility for protecting data. Federal officials looking to instill more clarity around the roles of cloud-based providers and their government customers could help chip away at one factor that might be affecting adoption of the technology: security officials’ fear of losing control.

Inside the Fiscal Service Bureau’s Office of Financial Innovation and Transformation, almost two dozen Treasury Department officials explore emerging and evolving technologies that could be scaled across the federal government in the not-so-distant future. Adam Goldberg, the acting assistant commissioner of FIT, shared insights on the agency’s blockchain and artificial intelligence projects, how to get buy-in from colleagues, and why co-creation has become a top priority across the office’s pursuits.

NASA’s iconic Apollo program was about landing humans safely on the moon and returning them back to Earth. The agency’s contemporary missions—like Artemis, which aims to land the first woman and next man on the moon—are focused on one thing: going beyond. The final episode of Nextgov’s Critical Update, Season 6 explores what those forthcoming missions will entail, the evolution of commercial companies’ roles in NASA’s missions, what water ice on the moon could mean for the future of our journeys deeper into the solar system—and more.

Can federal agencies and hackers work together to improve security? Vulnerability disclosure programs—a path for security researchers, a.k.a hackers, to report bugs and issues—are old hat to the tech industry but would be new ground for most of the U.S. federal government. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has been working on a directive for such a program, though public comments show an uneasiness from some federal officials. Nextgov spoke to some seasoned vulnerability disclosure coordinators, and Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., to get a deeper understanding of what’s behind the pending policy and give implementers a glimpse of what lies in store.

How does an agency know where to start modernizing its outdated systems? That’s one of the things that the Centers of Excellence program can help agencies figure out. The CoE, which operates out of the General Services Administration and is backed by Jared Kushner and the Office of American Innovation, works with customer agencies on their needs and matches them with vendors. The program started out working with agencies one at a time, but in less than three years, it sped up, staffed up and spread out across government.