Page 3 - Federal Computer Week, July 2019

Trending 31 security recommendations for contractors are part of NIST’s latest
Why USDS is changing its funding model
The White House team that was formed to save HealthCare.gov in 2014 is returning to its roots as a 911 squad for government technology. That’s the message behind a planned cut of about $6.8 million to the funding level for the U.S. Digital Service in fiscal 2020. It is part of an overall $13.5 million reduc- tion to the Information Technology Oversight and Reform budget sought by the Trump administration.
A congressional report explains the USDS funding shift as “the partial transition...to a reimbursable model,” but that doesn’t tell the full story, said Margaret Weichert, deputy director for management at the Office of Manage- ment and Budget.
“We’re not trying to sell services. We are not a consulting model,” she told FCW. “We are a capability that should catalyze new behaviors that ultimately need to take root in the agencies themselves.”
USDS, home to a cadre of short-term hires from the private sector, will still help agencies with pressing problems, but now agencies are being encouraged to hire their own long-term digital ser- vices specialists.
draft of Special Publication 800-171B
“We are a capability that
should catalyze new
behaviors that ultimately
need to take root in the
agencies themselves.”
— MARGARET WEICHERT, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
have coming out of the White House are already deployed in places where USDS already knows how this works, we’re not able to spread that knowl- edge and that richness around other agencies who might really benefit from that first exposure,” Weichert said.
She added that agencies can grow organically in ways that USDS can’t. “The Executive Office of the President can’t scale the same way an agency can scale,” she said. “By definition a model that is utterly reliant on the White House funding pool is going to be limited. Rather than ignore that real- ity, we’re actually refocusing on what is the core set of capabilities that come from the White House.”
— Adam Mazmanian
“What we’re trying to build out is that rapid-response capability that’s highly technical and very agile and can be deployed literally overnight,” Weichert said. “That is something that will always be needed, and we [want] to make sure we have the resources to do that [in] as many places as is stra- tegically necessary.”
USDS was funded at $17 million in 2018, and that is set to dip to about $13 million in 2019 under a mix of con- tinuing resolutions and appropriations, according to budget documents.
By encouraging agencies to devel- op their own digital service teams, administration officials hope to free up capacity so that USDS can help more agencies. “If all the resources that we
FCW CALENDAR
7/17 Emerging tech
HHS’ Lori Ruderman, OFPP’s Joanie Newhart, CDC’s
Sachiko Kuwabara and GSA’s Keith Nakasone are among the speakers at FCW’s 2019 Emerging Tech Summit. Washington, D.C. FCW.com/emergingtech
8/7 Cybersecurity
Speakers at FCW’s 2019 Cybersecurity Summit include NSF CIO
Dorothy Aronson, Education CISO Steven Hernandez and National Risk Management Center Director Bob Kolasky.
Washington, D.C FCW.com/Cybersecurity
8/14 Cloud
This FCW workshop on “Smart Cloud, Smart Government” will
feature DHS’ Kshemendra Paul, the State Department’s Brian Merrick and the U.S. Marshals Service’s Karl Mathias. Washington, D.C. FCW.com/CloudWorkshop
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