Page 60 - Federal Computer Week, March/April 2019

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Rep. Ro Khanna
Congressman
U.S. House of Representatives
UX advocate. Khanna (D-Calif.) represents a big slice of Silicon Val- ley, so it’s no surprise that he took
the lead on a bill designed to apply commercial usability standards to the government. The 21st Century Inte- grated Digital Experience Act requires agencies to offer digital experiences to customers and accept e-signatures for transactions. The law also directs CIOs to collect customer experience data. “For the first time, we’ll have those metrics” to help agencies under- stand how to improve the customer experience, Khanna said. He plans to follow up on implementation of his bill through his role on the Oversight and Reform Committee.
Niki Lane
CDM Program Office Acquisition Lead
Department of Homeland Security
CDM’s procurement guru. Large- scale acquisitions are nothing new
to Lane; her previous experience includes helping to manage the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program (where she secured $26 million in savings
in a single year). At the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation Program Office, Lane has tackled new levels of governmentwide complexity. In 2018, she led CDM’s successful shift to the Dynamic and Evolving Federal Enter- prise Network Defense task orders,
a dedicated special item number on Schedule 70 and the wind-down of the CDM blanket purchase agreement.
She also ran the CDM Approved Prod- ucts List, which now includes some 163,000 vetted products for agency purchase.
Jeff Lau
Regional Commissioner, Northeast and Caribbean, Federal Acquisition Service General Services Administration
The Truman show. A bot named Truman is helping new vendors
work through GSA’s detailed review process. Truman is the product of Lau’s use of robotic process automa- tion to take over tedious but critical tasks from GSA employees. Truman helps vendors pull together data from multiple sources into a central report. The bot has increased customer and employee satisfaction while mini- mizing errors and backlogs. Thanks to Lau’s efforts, GSA’s contracting specialists can now spend more time helping vendors with their applica- tions and learning about new prod- ucts and services.
John L. Lockwood
IT Program Manager, Defense Logistics Agency
Defense Department
The bot baron. DLA was in need
of operational efficiency, so Lock- wood turned to bots for enhanced automation in areas such as financial recording and auditing. He was able to fully integrate deployed bots across the enterprise in less than 100 days. Those efforts — which include five teams and six attended bots, with
more unattended bots on the way — already have saved DLA nearly 2,000 staff hours. Beyond his day job, Lock- wood mentors others in DOD and across government in robotics and automation, all while ensuring DLA is primed to incorporate artificial intel- ligence as the technology continues to evolve.
William Mallison
Republican Staff Director, Subcommittee on Technology Modernization, House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs
U.S. House of Representatives
Focused oversight. The 10-year, $16 billion replacement for the electronic health record system at the Depart- ment of Veterans Affairs is one of the biggest IT projects in the history of government. Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.), then-chairman of the House Veter- ans’ Affairs Committee, decided that a focused approach to oversight was required. Mallison was charged with creating a new subcommittee devoted to the project. The effort is “more involved and deeper than Congress tends to go,” he said, adding that he reads contracts, consults stakehold- ers, meets with VA officials and briefs lawmakers on new developments. “The oversight occurs before we
get into the committee room” for hearings.
Rep. Ro Khanna Niki Lane John L. William Lockwood Mallison
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