Page 74 - Federal Computer Week, March/April 2019

FCWPerspectives
as a prime example of AI readiness, another said, “The only reason they can do that now is because for five years they were in the crux of their digital strategy and [then-CIO] Mark Schwartz put them on the right path. They can actually do something now that they’re in the cloud. It’s tied to your modernization strategy — the way you’re building applications and the way you’re treating the data.”
Other agencies are starting to fol- low suit. “Somewhere around 27 percent of our IT systems are now either in the planning process or in the migration process,” one execu- tive said. “Our goal for this year is 35
percent. The more we focus on how to get to the cloud and the security and the training, the more we can understand that getting the data to the cloud is probably the point.”
Finally, learn to trust the algorithms
The group also said the “black box” of how AI solutions reach their con- clusions must be better understood before broad buy-in is possible.
“There are biases in your data, and there will be biases in your
results,” one executive said. “I’m not sure we’re ready for maximum use of machine learning and AI until we persuade folks it’s safe.”
Agencies are looking for help in that area, another participant said, adding: “I think there are a lot of pockets of good work happening, but I don’t know that at the federal CIO level, the strategy and the President’s Management Agenda around data is going to meet the need of where we want to go with machine learning and AI.”
A third participant said: “I really think the next landing spot is the pri- vacy impact testing of the algorithms themselves — getting through that process of explaining what the algo- rithm is doing in a way that everyone, including the public, understands.” n
PERSPECTIVES
Participants Gil Alterovitz
Presidential Innovation Fellow
Department of Veterans Affairs
Jim Chen
Professor of Cybersecurity, College of Information and Cyberspace
National Defense University
Shelby Hritz
Federal Sales Leader Google Cloud
Robert Monroe Jr.
Computer Scientist Department of Defense
Jim Rahai
IT Specialist Environmental Protection Agency
Donna Roy
Executive Director, Information Sharing and Services Office Department of Homeland Security
Dave Shepherd
Program Manager Department of Homeland Security
James St. Pierre
Deputy Director, InformationTechnology Laboratory
National Institute of Standards andTechnology
Shannon Sullivan
Head of Federal Google Cloud
Pamela Wise-Martinez
Chief Enterprise Architect Energy Information Administration
Note: FCW Editor-in- ChiefTroy K. Schneider and 1105 Public Sector Media Group President and Chief Content Officer Anne A. Armstrong led the roundtable discussion. The Dec. 11 gathering was underwritten by Google Cloud, but the substance of the discussion and the recap on these pages are strictly editorial products. Neither Google Cloud
nor any of the roundtable participants had input beyond their Dec. 11 comments.
74
March/April 2019 FCW.COM