Page 45 - FCW, November, December 2018

money in processing appeals that result from potential subjective inequities in assessments by identifying and eliminating possible bias before it occurs,” Kinrade said. “Working thousands of appeals is a tremendous expense,” and reducing it would yield a monetary benefit to taxpayers and increase public trust in the department’s work.
PROJECT: Roadway Monitoring with AI and IoT
Department of Public Works, City of South Bend, Ind.
Getting smart about road
inspections
From small towns to major cities, road inspections are a big challenge in terms of dollars and distance. South Bend, Ind., turned to RoadBotics as an alternative
to sending Department of Public Works employees down every road for visual inspections.
The company’s solution still relies on people to drive the vehicles, but the road inspection itself is performed via images taken by a smartphone mounted to the car’s windshield. Those images are uploaded to the cloud, where the company uses machine learning to identify where roads are in need of repair.
“This is similar to what we do,” said Jitin Kain, the city’s deputy director of public works, during an interview with a local TV station. “It just creates more efficiency in how the analysis of road conditions is done.”
The system has evolved significantly since North Huntingdon, Pa., first piloted it in 2016. “The level of detail and specificity used to diagnose a problem has dramatically increased,” said Mark DeSantis, CEO and co-founder of RoadBotics. “It can see objects [and] patterns in things and make the same kind of judgment that a human can make.”
South Bend and other cities could soon see even greater efficiencies, with the monitoring being performed by street sweepers and other vehicles that are “already driving the roads,” DeSantis said.
Kain added that such continuous improvements fit well with South Bend’s plan “to be a beta-test city for...new technology.”
PROJECT: Transforming SBA Cybersecurity via the Cloud Small Business Administration
Reinventing the TIC
The decade-old Trusted Internet Connections initiative has significantly complicated agencies’ embrace of cloud technology. So when the Office of Management and Budget started to focus on TIC modernization, the Small Business Administration jumped at the chance to find new ways to meet the intent of the TIC requirements without being bound to the standard architecture.
SBA was one of three agencies chosen in February to conduct a 90-day TIC modernization pilot project. It used cloud-
based security tools that were part of existing Microsoft Azure and Office 365 license agreements. For a few tools, SBA officials worked with the company to push preview versions into service to gain access to key functionalities, but no new purchases were required.
The resulting solution creates a comprehensive view of all SBA IT assets so they can be monitored and protected regardless of whether they are on-premises or in any of the agency’s three commercial clouds.
The pilot project was such a success that SBA officials are now sharing their ideas across the government, and more than 30 other agencies have attended demonstrations of the alternative TIC approach.
“This is revolutionary for the federal environment and [could] fundamentally change the way cybersecurity is managed for on-premises and cloud-based IT assets,” SBA CTO Sanjay Gupta said.
PROJECT: Wireless Vital Signs Monitor Office of Naval Research, U.S. Navy
Better medicine for the battlefield and the disaster zone
The battlefield is a chaotic place, and casualties can overwhelm the ability of a medic to monitor them. So the Office of Naval Research developed a device to serve as a medical force multiplier.
The sensor-laden Wireless Vital Signs Monitor (WVSM) tracks heart rate, pulse, blood pressure and other key data. When strapped to a patient’s arm, it transmits that information to the attending medic’s tablet or smartphone, where a dedicated app can track up to 15 patients at once.
WVSM is more than a vital-signs monitor, however — algorithms can tell if a patient is stable or likely to worsen and predict the need for lifesaving interventions.
Developed in collaboration with the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research and industry partner Athena GTX, WVSM also has value for civilian first responders. It recently received approval from the Food and Drug Administration, and agencies in a half-dozen states have bought more than 200 units.
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