Weekly Roundup: September 23-27 2024

DoD Cutting Improper Payments; Legacy IT Financial Systems Still Need Work. The Department of Defense (DoD) is making progress in reducing costs related to improper payments through its Advana centralized data and analytics platform, but the agency continues to struggle with some of its financial IT systems. Asif Khan, GAO’s director of Financial Management and Assurance, highlighted some of the challenges DoD continues to face with legacy IT systems while also crediting the benefits achieved through the Advana system. DoD remains the only major Federal agency without an unmodified or “clean” audit opinion on its financial statements.

Air Force CTO Teases Second API Architecture Coming This Fall. The Department of the Air Force plans on releasing the second version of a reference architecture and roadmap for a new ecosystem that streamlines software convergence and data access across the service branch. Jason Bonci, chief technology officer (CTO) at Air Force explained that the service branch is continuing to gather feedback on its initial rollout of reference architecture and roadmap for an application programming interface (API) platform and is now working to incorporate those insights into the second version of the reference architecture this fall.

Navy CNO Unveils ‘Project 33’ for Autonomous Systems. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchett unveiled a new initiative – dubbed ‘Project 33’ – which is aimed at scaling robotic and autonomous systems across the fleet by 2027 and aims to ensure readiness for evolving technologies and their use in potential conflicts. She highlighted that the evolving nature of warfare and the need to adopt robotic and autonomous technologies are guiding principles for the strategy, focusing on enhancing the fleet’s reach and lethality. Under this effort, the Navy aims to deploy significantly more robotic systems in operational settings over the next three years.

VA Claims ‘80 Percent’ Confidence in Digital GI Program Budget. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) told members of Congress that it has “80 percent” confidence that the agency will meet its goals and newly updated budget under the Digital GI Bill (DGIB) program – an IT modernization project that aims to improve the education benefits processing system. Ronald Burke, the under secretary for policy and oversight at the VBA, acknowledged that the complexity and scope of the IT modernization contract were not apparent when the original contract was drafted in 2020. However, Burke said the “VA has made the course corrections necessary to meet modernization objectives.”

VA offers veterans nationwide access to emergency telehealth care. The department said the new tele-emergency care resource will allow veterans to connect with clinical triage nurses for timely medical evaluations. Veterans can access the tele-EC service by contacting VA Health Connect — which provides veterans 24/7 access to medical personnel for a variety of healthcare needs — or through the department’s VA Health Chat app. 

CFPB CISO Stresses Iterative Approach to Cybersecurity. Holistic and continuous approaches to cybersecurity are important for safeguarding data and applications which depend on secure data, noted the chief information security officer of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) CISO Tiina Rodrigue. She emphasized the dynamic nature of cybersecurity and described it as an iterative process that requires constant vigilance. “Data security is not a destination, it is the way,” said Rodrigue, who called for security to be embedded at every phase of product development and maintenance. 

GAO: FAA ‘Urgently’ Needs to Modernize Over Half of Its Aging Systems. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) report revealed that over 100 of the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) 138 systems are unsustainable or potentially unsustainable – more than half of which have “critical” impacts on airspace operations.  The report found that 51 of the administration’s legacy systems are unsustainable and 54 are potentially unsustainable. GAO stressed that the FAA must “urgently” update these systems – 58 of which have “critical impacts on the safety and efficiency of the national airspace.”  

36% of new IRS hires faced delays due to technical and security clearance jams. Despite hiring 64% of its new employees in fiscal 2022 and 2023 within its 80-day goal, it took the IRS an average of 124 days to employ roughly 19,000 personnel due, in part, to system limitations.

A Self-Care Checklist for Leaders. Research has long shown the importance of self-care — yet many leaders still struggle to put self-care into practice in their own work lives. Before a leader can sustainably practice self-care, several important mindset shifts are necessary to ensure leaders set themselves up for success. This five-part checklist can help leaders make self-care a reality, including strategies such as making a body budget, managing emotional health, identifying choice points, and prioritizing growth and nourishment. Leaders are encouraged to personalize their plan and practice regularly for optimal health and effectiveness as a leader.

How to Learn from Your Mistakes and Make Better Decisions. We all have scores of decisions to make every day, and we often want to move quickly, telling ourselves that speed equals efficiency. But true efficiency sometimes requires slowing down, being mindful, and especially looking back at the decisions we’ve made that didn’t go as we’d hoped. Too often we don’t want to spend time and mental energy revisiting the past, especially if it contains uncomfortable missteps. But stopping and looking carefully at those mistakes is exactly what can help us make better decisions moving forward. Think of your past decisions as a dataset that you can mine for insights. A series of six questions can help you apply lessons from your past decisions to your current situation.

THIS WEEK @ THE CENTER 

ICYMI – Exploring the IT Strategy of the U.S. DOJ. This week host Michael Keegan welcomed Melinda Rogers, chief information officer, at the U.S. Department of Justice to discuss DOJ’s IT strategy, how it is working to improving data governance and data sharing across the department and what the department is doing to change the way it does IT.