Federal departments and agencies are making headway in meeting the requirements of Executive Order 14028, issued in May 2021, to strengthen their cybersecurity by implementing a zero trust architecture. To date, many agencies have made progress in areas like identity management and secure access. But the journey toward achieving a zero trust environment is different for every department. The challenges that civilian agencies must overcome are...

It has become clear over the past several years that maintaining U.S. election integrity is not just a single agency’s responsibility. Conducting fair and accurate elections is the responsibility of each state and territory. Meanwhile, nation-states, partisans, and scammers can interfere with voter information, try to cast doubt on election outcomes, and spread disinformation across social media, to name just a few. The Office of the Dir...

Adopting a zero trust policy has become imperative for agencies aiming to safeguard their digital assets against increasingly sophisticated threats. It represents a true paradigm shift, away from traditional perimeter-based security models to a more dynamic, trust-never always-verify approach. One critical part of implementing zero trust is managing digital identity – ensuring that access to resources is securely managed and continuously...

Federal agencies collect vast amounts of data that often goes untapped because unlocking its full value is complex. But as agencies move to comply with the White House Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence, harnessing the potential in their own data can help meet the EO’s objectives. Agencies can facilitate the use of AI by using their data to train custom large language model...

With a growing number of dams approaching their design service life, dam safety engineers are looking for ways to mitigate the risks related to public safety, aging infrastructure and rising maintenance costs. Modernizing dam monitoring and maintenance practices with digital advancements, including the latest automated condition monitoring solutions, drone-captured reality modeling and digital twins, are giving public sector dam operators tool...

Educational institutions and state and local agencies historically have been challenged to keep up with technological advancements – their budgets are tight, their users are increasingly distributed post-pandemic, and they face significant operating expenses from maintaining legacy architectures and equipment. Digital transformation is appealing, but for many organizations the challenge is where to start. As the generation of data has ex...

The whirlwind of artificial intelligence tools in 2023 proved the government is eager to embrace the technology as soon as possible. An overwhelming 99% of agency leaders agree investing in safe and effective AI is essential to fulfilling their mission, according to a recent survey conducted by Wakefield Research on behalf of ICF. Despite being rich in data, many agencies are lagging in the data modernization needed to support AI – and c...

It is hard to think of a technology that has taken over the IT ecosystem faster than artificial intelligence. OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022, and yet it already has evolved so much that it bears little resemblance to v .0. The federal government has been moving quickly by its standards to address AI’s challenges and capabilities, including a Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, an AI Risk Management Framework from the National I...

Florida is the third-largest state in the U.S. by population, and it continues to grow rapidly – from 2010 to 2020, its population grew by 14.5%. That kind of growth rate might be the envy of other states, but it also means increased pressure on the state government to deliver internet-based, user-friendly services for everything from child support services to renewing business licenses. To accomplish this transformation in state governm...

State and local governments had to adapt quickly to the effects of the pandemic, as workers and residents alike were encouraged to shelter in their homes. This created major challenges for agencies’ IT systems and technical support staff. Rather than using a “hub-and-spoke” method of connecting employees to servers, data, applications, and each other – where cybersecurity focused on firewalls around the perimeter ...