I recently had the opportunity to go to the PSC Tech Trends conference on Sep 11, 2018 which featured speakers from industry and the Federal Government.
The Federal Goverment CIO who also leads the CIO Council talked about accelerating government innovation and steps being taken across the Federal Government in terms of re-skilling Federal staff. The CIOs of the Department of Energy and Department of Justice spoke about the challenges they face in the next few years from a resourcing and technology perspective, and how they are meeting the challenges of an aging and retiring workforce. Two VCs described what they look for in new companies that are currently making innovations, specifically in the areas of Robotic Process automation and augmenting the mundane work that Federal staff do with tools and systems to help them.
We also had a chance to view a demo of the new Beta sam.gov website, which every Federal contractor will use in two years once it is ready to be migrated from ten (10) legacy systems including fbo.gov and fpds.gov. The domains support two distinct types of federal awards: acquisitions and assistance.
Conversations about the trends that are shaping the Federal space were some of the most noteworthy parts of the conference. The IC Deputy CIO explained the use of AI in many modern systems. The Government is still poised to continue using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine learning (ML) along with the broader use of Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Discussions also centered around the 21st century workforce and the challenges government agencies and businesses currently face, as well as what the expectations of future work will be.
In all, it was a good half day conference that provided insights into current trends in Government.