Tag Archives: Health and Human Services

Securing Our Healthcare Infrastructure

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We don't typically think of healthcare as infrastructure, but the functioning of our healthcare facilities is just as essential as that of our roads and utilities. Because of this criticality, healthcare systems require 100% uptime, a necessity that is vulnerable to the reality of cyber threats.

According to the FBI's Internet Crime Report, the healthcare industry reported 444 cyber-related incidents in 2024, the most out of any critical infrastructure industry. Despite this reality, many hospitals and health systems feel unprepared to respond and recover from these threats. The Travelers Risk Index survey found that only 51% of healthcare respondents were confident their organizations have best practices in place to prevent or mitigate a cyber event. Key challenges driving this lack of confidence include: Continue reading →

Meet the Chief AI Officer

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The executive order (EO) on artificial intelligence, issued in October of 2023, calls on agencies to designate a chief artificial intelligence officer (CAIO) responsible for coordinating AI use, promoting AI innovation, and handling AI-related risk management within their agency. Efforts are underway to codify this mandate, with bills introduced in the House and Senate that would turn the EO recommendation into law.

In the year since the mandate and in advance of legislated requirements, agencies have worked to not only fill but define this new CAIO role. In some instances, CAIO duties have been added to the job description for an existing executive--typically the chief data officer or chief technology officer--but in others, a stand-alone position has been created to meet the agency's AI needs. Continue reading →

The Government Case for Generative AI

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Generative AI is a type of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that produces content. That could be a story, an image, or an audio file, and is a shift from traditional AI usage, which is focused on completing a task based on predefined rules. Generative AI utilizes existing data to produce this new content based on a prompt such as "write a blog post on government use of generative AI." Disclaimer: generative AI was not used in the creation of this blog post.

Balancing Act of Generative AI

Like traditional AI, generative AI holds great promise for automating highly manual tasks in many areas of government. A recent report found that three-fourths of agency leaders said their agencies have already begun establishing teams to assess the impact of generative AI and are planning to implement initial applications in the coming months. Continue reading →