The Department of Health and Human Services’ first chief artificial intelligence officer no longer works in the federal government. But he says more agencies and health organizations are following his example and naming their own chief AI officers.

“That’s a good sign we are moving in the right direction,” Oki Mek, the former Chief AI Officer at HHS, now the chief information security officer at Equideum Health, said on the latest episode of All About Data.

In an exit interview looking back on his tenure at HHS, Mek said his former position came into focus after agency officials inventoried more than 100 AI use cases across the department, but weren’t sure how to proceed on many of those projects.

Mek said the department wasn’t sure whether those use cases followed federal mandates, recommendations and executive orders.

Former President Donald Trump signed two executive orders promoting the use of trustworthy AI in the federal government and maintaining American leadership in AI.

“There was no clarity, in terms of, are they following that policy. Is there any governance and compliance? So there was little oversight,” Mek said.

Recent Gartner research estimates about 85% of AI projects will fail, and provide inaccurate outcomes because of bias in the data, algorithms or the teams managing them.

“They’re kind of stuck in proof of concept. That creates a lot of risks, not only from costs and reputation, but because we work a lot in AI and machine learning,” Mek said.

“We wanted to solve those issues and dive into it. That’s why we started looking at the department, and how do we come up with a strategy on AI,” he added.

Mek said data issues stood out as a persistent challenge for AI use cases at HHS — especially trying to understand where the data resides.

“Most of the work in AI and machine learning is run on data, and most of it is really processing the data, getting the data way from either hard copy or scanned documents to make that machine-readable. I think that’s the biggest challenge,” he said.

Mek said his goal was to work with the HHS chief information security officer to develop a policy in which any system that goes through the authority to operate (ATO) process includes a data dictionary.

“My goal was that I wouldn’t want to be in the business of negotiating for data. I would leave that up to the business owner, the process owner, but I would provide a mechanism for them to know where the data resides, where they could search for data and know who to contact to get those data sets. The data thing is definitely a major hurdle to overcome,” he said.

Among the agency’s 100 AI use cases, Mek said using AI for cybersecurity stood out as a particularly promising development.

“Integrating AI into cyber makes sense to me because the process is quite antiquated at the moment to fight the bad actors who are using advanced technology, AI and machine learning against us,” Mek said.

Mek said the Food and Drug Administration has also looked into using AI and machine learning to assist in reviewing and approving food, drugs and medical devices.

HHS named Mek to the CAIO position in March 2021, and he left the position less than a year later.

But during his tenure, Mek oversaw the next steps under the agency’s AI strategy, developed a Trustworthy AI playbook and launched an AI Community of Practice and AI Council.

Mek said the HHS AI strategy served as a valuable roadmap for other organizations just getting started with AI.

“A lot of people are starting from scratch in terms of AI strategy, and how do we align with all the executive orders that are coming down from OMB? I would highly recommend people, even if you’re not in the health industry, to look at the AI strategy, as well as the trustworthy playbook. We’ve been getting a lot of feedback on the materials that we have created,” he said.

Mek said the HHS community of practice helped members share best practices and create awareness around projects. The AI Council, he added, ensured that every HHS division “had a voice in how we carried out the strategy.”

“We didn’t want to do it in silos. We can’t preach that we want to break down silos, but making decisions sitting in headquarters without involving the division leads on AI,” Mek said.

Mek said HHS also held a series of lunch-and-learn programs and invited guests who won the Turing Award, the Nobel Prize equivalent for AI research and computer science.

The intelligence community is drafting a new data strategy for the first time since 2017, with a big focus on training a data savvy workforce well equipped to take advantage of an increasing deluge of information that intelligence agencies are both collecting and producing.

Intelligence agencies have made “great strides” since the first data strategy was published in 2017, according to Nancy Morgan, who just retired as chief data officer of the intelligence community. Her last day was April 29, and the office of the director of national intelligence has yet to select her replacement.

“We’ve made some significant improvements to what we’ve been doing with data lifecycle management since the first IC data strategy was published in 2017,” Morgan said in an April 28 interview on All About Data and Inside the IC. “We feel we’ve done a lot of work to enhance sharing and safeguarding, but there’s still more to do.”

Chief data officers across the 18 intelligence agencies are focused on using automation to do more data preparation, Morgan said. The goal is to give analysts more time to “do higher order tasks” rather than rudimentary jobs like data tagging.

“We’re collecting and producing more information than ever before, the IC is launching more collection capabilities than ever before at astounding volumes, certainly since I began my career 30-plus years ago,” Morgan said. “It’s just astounding how much information we’re gathering. So it creates a data volume challenge.”

ODNI is also updating the IC IT Enterprise, or “ICITE,” strategy, a major guiding document for how intelligence agencies will use computing in the years ahead. The work is being led by Adele Merritt, the chief information officer for the intelligence community.

The new IT strategy will be pivotal to “enhance the critical data management capabilities to achieve our goals,” Morgan said.

CDOs in the intelligence community are also looking to create more interoperability across intel agencies and the broader Defense Department. Morgan said leaders want to share successful approaches across organizations.

“How do we integrate and involve multidisciplinary approaches that solve the IC’s most challenging and emerging data issues?” she said. “We find new data challenges  every day in every domain area.”

But beyond technology, a major piece of the forthcoming data strategy is the workforce. Morgan said spy agencies aren’t just focused on bringing in highly sought-after data scientists, but also training the existing workforce to be more data savvy.

“How do we increase the data acumen and tradecraft, by not only attracting but developing, growing and resourcing the data savvy workforce?” she said. “So not just the talent we recruit, but the workforce we already have. How do we give people a chance to develop new skills and make them even more powerful and valuable to the community?”

Career pivots

IC data leaders are looking to create opportunities for intelligence professionals to start learning new skills related to digital technologies, data and cybersecurity, according to Morgan.

“It’s really very powerful when our domain experts learn some of the foundational skills for working with technology, working with automation, working with artificial intelligence, machine learning, being paired up with data scientists and data engineers,” she said.

The focus isn’t just on developing data professionals, but on building data aptitude across mission, business and policy areas, including acquisition, contracting, privacy and civil liberties, legal divisions and finance, according to Morgan.

“Frankly, it’s about supervisors, managers, leaders, senior executives at all levels of the organization,” she said. “Are we asking the right questions about data when it’s presented to us? Do we understand the data that’s driving our decision making and we say the words data driven decision making but how are we actually putting that into practice?”

Morgan noted the Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act requires the Office of Personnel Management to establish new occupational series for not just “data science,” but “data management” as well.

“I was really proud of helping influence some of the wording on that, because while I absolutely want to have a strong data science cadre, you need the full data management realm,” she said. “You need data managers, data policy experts, in addition to those data scientists and those data engineers.”

ODNI is also preparing to conduct the pilot phase of a new public-private talent exchange. It will allow intelligence officers to work temporarily in the private sector, and vice versa. The pilot phase will allow for six-month details, according to Morgan.

The pilot phase will include specific focus areas, including professionals working in data, as well as a category for artificial intelligence and machine learning, according to Morgan.

“Launching the pilot is a bit complicated, working through some of the security issues working through some of the acquisition and legal issues,” she said. “But our goal is really to help intelligence officers and private sector colleagues better understand each other’s mission, landscape, inject diverse thinking and gain new insights and really, hopefully create a more two way flow of talent skills and ideas.”

She also said it could help inculcate a culture where there’s more back-and-forth between the government and private sector.

“I don’t know that people will have the same sort of trajectory of a career that’s more only in the government or only in the private sector,” Morgan said. “I hope we’ll see more two-way movement and more continuous movement over the time of someone’s career. And again, selfishly, for me, this helps us grow our digital data and cyber savvy workforce with real world experiences.”

Bureaus and offices across the State Department are looking for data scientists to join their ranks and lead several major projects under the agency’s new data strategy.

The State Department, as part of a hiring announcement issued Friday, is looking to hire at least 50 data scientists across its Civil Service workforce over the next year.

The agency is seeking to hire candidates at the GS-13 and GS-14 level. Some prospective hires may require a Secret security clearance or higher.

The State Department planned to move onto the next phase of the job announcement once it received 250 applications, but the agency already received that many on Friday.  The agency will now accept up to 400 applications, but will accept applications no later than April 28.

Joel Nantais, the agency’s chief data scientist, said the hiring effort reflects an increasing need for data scientists and builds off the success of other recent hiring pilots.

“It really comes out of the fact that there is an increasing demand for data scientists and data analytics here at the Department of State, so it really is based on a need for the department,” Nantais said on the latest episode of All About Data. 

The Office of Personnel Management led a governmentwide data scientist hiring effort last year. Participating agencies received more than 500 applications in less than 48 hours.

The State Department hired about 25-30 data scientists as part of the OPM pilot, more than any other agency that participated.

Much like the OPM-led pilot, the State Department is conducting this hiring effort through a Subject Matter Expert Qualification Assessment (SME-QA).

The U.S. Digital Service developed the SME-QA process to help agencies assess applicants’ qualifications for technical positions. The process has agencies bring in current employees who are experts in a given field to help the human capital office vet and hire candidates.

Once the agency gathers enough applications, subject matter experts will run applicants through a series of steps meant to vet their data science skills.

As part of the SME-QA process, Nantais said applicants go through a skills assessment, a “take-home test” of different data science skills and techniques, which Nantais said is more akin to what a data scientist would experience in the private sector.

“It’s an easier process for applicants, especially those unfamiliar with applying to federal government jobs typically, and we tend to get a higher number of candidates through the process that are actually good fits,” Nantais said.

Candidates who advance through these steps will be interviewed by hiring managers throughout the department.

At least 18 bureaus and offices at the State Department are participating in this initiative, and the work data scientists will tackle, if they get the job, varies depending on where they end up.

New hires will generally work on meeting the goals of the enterprise data strategy. Nantais said those include strategic competition with China, and providing workforce data analysis for the agency’s recently elevated Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer.

“Not everything within that discussion is a data analytics or data science project, but there’s a lot that can be supported through data analytics and data science. That really gets to the cultural aspect of making sure that we are data-informed and data-driven agency,” Nantais said.

Agencies looking to recruit data scientists have a clearer standard of what a qualified candidate should bring to the job. That’s because OPM late last year issues a new occupation series for data scientists in government.

Nantais said that job series will help the agency recruit and retain in-demand data talent.

“It’s really exciting to see federal hiring and career paths catching up with where the private sector is, and acknowledging that there is a lot of need and demand for these skill sets, and really trying to then build out not just what it looks like to get hired into a position, but what it looks like to have a career in the federal government as a data scientist,” said.

Nantais said the agency is looking for candidates with a variety of backgrounds and skill sets. The agency, he said, already employs many data scientists with backgrounds in social science, foreign policy, international relations and political science — but also have the quantitative and methodological skills needed for data science.

“The Department of State is not a statistical agency. We’re a foreign policy agency, and therefore when we’re looking not just at the data scientists we currently have — but also the data science skills and techniques that we are going to benefit the most from, as well as the data scientists out there that are most likely to be interested in working for the Department of State — it’s not necessarily data scientists who have, very hard statistical or mathematical degrees,” he said.

The agency is looking to make some immediate hires as part of this initiative. However, the agency will refer some applicants that didn’t get a job offer in the first round of hires to similar data scientist vacancies across the department for an extended period.

“We expect this pool of qualified, eligible candidates to be available for many months from now, so that even if a job is not, open now but maybe open three months from now, that hiring manager can easily reach into this pool of candidates, interview from folks that are still available, still interested in working with the Department of State and make a selection from that,” Nantais said.

A major reform bill signed last week by President Joe Biden is expected to save the Postal Service $107 billion, a major step in addressing the agency’s long-term financial challenges.

In return, USPS is now required under the Postal Service Reform Act to create a dashboard that tracks on-time delivery data nationwide.

The agency has seen this coming. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told mailing industry partners last year that USPS was planning to create such a dashboard, which would give its biggest customers regular status updates on conditions at its facilities and on-time metrics for different types of mail.

The dashboard would also help USPS flag service delays by region, and help the agency pinpoint the root cause of those challenges.

DeJoy, in a recent interview, said the agency and its partners have troves of performance data to feed into the dashboard, once it’s up and running.

“We are the most measured service in the United States government. Always have been, in terms of, ‘you did this, you didn’t do that,’” DeJoy said.

Whether it’s for mail or packages, DeJoy said customer demand for delivery data is growing. Having this data available to the public, he added, holds the agency accountable to a high standard of service.

“People look at this stuff, especially as we move into the package business. We’re moving more and more into the competitive environment, which is something we need to recognize. More of our revenue is going to be on the competitive side, and so we’re going to have to be really, really good,” DeJoy said.

USPS, however, won’t have to start from scratch. The agency’s inspector general and its regulator, the Postal Regulatory Commission, each have their dashboards tracking USPS performance.

The USPS dashboard, however, doesn’t have to be more of the same. It might actually be a major piece of a bigger picture of the agency’s performance.

Russ Rappel Schmid, the chief data officer for the Postal Regulatory Commission, said the three dashboards have the potential to offer greater insight than any of them could separately.

“I’m really hopeful for a partnership between the Postal Service, the Office of the Inspector General and ourselves, to look at our efforts, to look at the requirements that the Postal Service now has, and try to come together to create probably three different tools that give different levels of information, maybe different components of information. And as a whole, we get as much service performance information out to the public as possible,” Rappel Schmid said on the latest episode of All About Data.

The commission already launched the beta version of its data dashboard prior to Schmid’s arrival at the agency. He joined the agency in February.

The PRC dashboard pulls data that’s already available to the public, but in the form of annual compliance determination reports, which are based on annual reports USPS submits to the agency.

“Previously, to get that kind of information, a user would have to wade through about a 300-page PDF report,” Rappel Schmid said. “So this dashboard provides a real-time shortcut to that information.”

The dashboard currently contains nationwide service performance scores across all USPS product categories, but the latest information it currently has comes from 2019 and 2020.

The dashboard tracks the number of USPS products that are not meeting their service performance targets. A majority of the 27 products and component products are not meeting their targets.

The commission, in a recent request for comments, asked users for public feedback on the beta version of the dashboard, as well as suggestions for new features.

Rappel Schmid said many commenters wanted the dashboard to include more local and regional information about USPS service performance, rather than just a nationwide snapshot.

“The most granular we could probably ever get would be down to the ZIP code level. I don’t know if we’ll go that far, when we decide how to incorporate updates, but that’s an example of the different [levels of] granularity we could go, depending on the data that’s available to us,” he said.

Commenters also wanted to know whether the commission would continue with its plans to launch a dashboard, after Congress passed the Postal Service Reform Act, requiring USPS to create its own service performance dashboard.

Others asked how the commission’s dashboard might complement the USPS dashboard, or serve as a model.

“At the time the comments were coming in, postal reform hadn’t been passed yet, but people were aware that was in the works, and was on the path and looking positive. People were already asking, ‘What will you do? Will you continue moving forward with your dashboard, or work with the Postal Service?’ Those are all things that we’re still working out, but all things that are on our minds as we decide what to do moving forward with the dashboard,” Rappel Schmid said.

Since joining the commission, Rappel Schmid said he’s looking at feeding current data into the dashboard more quickly, and on a more regular schedule. One possibility is refreshing the dashboard’s data once every quarter.

“Of course, for any of these dashboards — any receipt of data to be effective — the more timely we can get the information, the better we can understand what’s going on and act on it … A lot of that is going to depend on partnering with the Postal Service and seeing how we can acquire data on a more frequent basis,” Rappel Schmid said.

Prior to joining the PRC, Rappel Schmid served as a former data analyst with the USPS Inspector General’s Office and the state of Alaska’s first chief data officer. He said he’s now working with some of his former colleagues at USPS OIG to compare notes about the dashboards.

“I’ve already had some great discussion about just data in general with folks since I’ve been back over there, and I’m working on building a partnership with colleagues that I used to work with at the Postal Service when I was in that role. So I feel real positive about moving forward. I don’t think three, in this case, is a crowd. I like to go back to one of my favorite shows from the early ‘80s, Three’s Company. I think that’s where we’re headed,” Rappel Schmid said.

The commission doesn’t yet have definitive plans on when its dashboard might move beyond its beta version.

“I would love to see it happen before the end of this calendar year — sooner if we can, but we’re not going to rush anything. I want to make sure that we’re doing it right first,” Rappel Schmid said.

The commission also created its first data governance board and recently held its first meeting. Rappel Schmid leads the board and also serves as a technology resource for the board, along with the PRC’s chief information officer and chief information security officer.

The board also includes the top executives across the commission’s four departments, as well as additional employees from each department that serve as data stewards.

“We’re looking at providing more insight into not only the Postal Service, but the PRC as an organization, so that the public can be more aware of who we are and what we do. And to that end, we’re looking at information or data that we can make available to the public. Data stewards, in particular, will be key in working together to identify data that we should make available,” he said.

Rappel Schmid has already attended a few full meetings of the federal CDO Council, as well as several small-agency committee meetings.

Rappel Schmid, in his previous role as the first CDO for the state of Alaska, joined a state CDO network early in his tenure.

“I found a lot of colleagues there to be a tremendous resource. They helped me understand issues important to states. And here on the federal side, I am experiencing exactly the same thing,” he said.

While many agency CDOs say they’re pressed for resources, the PRC is putting some of the $2.6 million received from the Technology Modernization Fund toward some of its data initiatives.

Rappel Schmid said the funding will help the commission hire more data analysts, who will work on improving the service performance dashboard.

A significant amount of the TMF funds are dedicated to updating the commission’s public-facing website, as well as modernizing the e-docket system it uses to collect and file data and comments from USPS and the public.

Rappel Schmid will serve as a technical adviser for both of those projects, but will also use a portion of the TMF award to conduct a data skills and data tools inventory.

Rappel Schmid said the commission came to the realization that it needed to better understand how proficient its workforce is with data tools, after one of its employees volunteered to help set up the dashboard.

“One of the members of our groups that put that dashboard together basically came forward and said, ‘I have an interest in creating something like this. I have a skill set that will allow me to do that. Can I do it?’ And that’s great when somebody comes forward and says, ‘Hey, I have the skills.’ But what about, from a managerial perspective, when we need something done? Sometimes we jump to, ‘Maybe we’ll need to hire someone,’ or maybe we’ll need to find a contractor or put out an RFP and get somebody in to do that. Creating this environment with these inventories will allow us to identify that we already may have those skills or those tools available to us,” he said.

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The Biden administration is calling on agency chief data officers to collectively tackle some major projects under the Federal Data Strategy.

Goals for CDOs in the strategy’s latest action plan include accelerating the government’s use of artificial intelligence and mitigating the impact of wildfires.

CDOs are also focused on improving the overall data literacy of the federal workforce, and giving federal employees an opportunity to develop new data skills.

For all this work, CDOs are still a new addition for many agencies, but are coming together to share best practices.

The Chief Data Officers Council now includes nearly 90 members across the federal government and spent much of last year developing a community of practice for its members.

Ted Kaouk, the CDO Council’s chairman, as well as the Office of Personnel Management’s CDO and deputy director for human capital data management and modernization, said the council also issued a CDO playbook to help standardize some elements of the job across government.

“We recognize and feel that we have a unique opportunity to build up what’s essentially a new profession in the federal government,” Kaouk said on the latest episode of All About Data. “We feel that the federal CDO position is a pivotal and really transformational role that can significantly benefit the collection, organization, analysis and use of data at agencies, as well as improve its overall value to society.”

The council took several foundational steps last year, including launching a website, holding its first public meeting and issuing a request for information seeking feedback on how to deal with common management challenges

At the agency level, many CDOs have been busy standing up data dashboards, creating data inventories and training the agency workforce on data skills.

“We feel like CDOs really have to seize on that opportunity to leverage data as a strategic asset. They need to do things like build critical relationships to show value in the near term. Things like quick wins are going to help them build that momentum,” Kaouk said.

Agencies, however, are at different points in terms of data maturity. Kaouk said some agency CDOs work with large data science teams and already have advanced analytic capabilities, while other CDOs are still working to obtain budget and staffing to carry out their work.

“Many CDOs have been in their roles for less than a year, and many are coming into the role, finding data siloes that have been in place for decades throughout their agency,” Kaouk said.

The CDO Council has also taken several steps to bring in-demand data skills into the federal workforce.

The council partnered with OPM and the U.S. Digital Service last year to launch a governmentwide hiring effort to bring data scientists into government. The team received more than 500 applications in less than two days, and has hired more than 50 data scientists across 10 agencies.

The CDO Council has also stood up a data skills working group focused on ensuring agencies have a workforce with the necessary data skills. As part of this work, the council published a collection of data skills training programs across the government.

“We’re trying to build a community where we can leverage the best practices that are happening across government so we can accelerate that work,” Kaouk said.

Agencies, meanwhile, have a clearer standard of what a qualified data scientists candidate should bring to the job.

OPM late last year released its new occupational series for data scientists in government, a project that had been in development for more than two years.

Kaouk said the occupational series will help agencies help attract data experts to government service.

“That helps to send the signal that this is an area of need in government, and it’s an area of focus. It’s really going to help federal agencies better recruit those professional data scientists. It’s going to provide some common language around what the requirements are. It’s going to create some consistency around the expectations for the work,” he said.

OPM as ‘hub for human capital data analysis’

As deputy director for human capital data management and modernization, Kaouk helps oversee OPM’s data trove on federal employees and retirees.

Working with David Padrino, OPM’s executive director for human capital data management and modernization, Kaouk helps manage the agency’s Enterprise Human Resources Integration Data Warehouse (EHRI DW) which serves as the focal point for providing statistical data about the federal civilian workforce.

That data warehouse is the basis for public-facing tools like FedScope, which allows users to pull data on elements of the federal workforce.

OPM holds data on 2.1 million current federal employees, 8.2 million enrollees in the Federal Employee Health Benefits program and 2.7 federal retirees and annuitants.

Kaouk also oversees the human resources line of business, which develops common human capital data standards that can increase data quality and interoperability between agencies and shared service providers.

“We really feel like we have a historic opportunity to become a premier hub for human capital data analysis by delivering things like advanced and self-service analytics, data standards, digital solutions, and data that, when aligned appropriately, enables strategic human capital management acorns the federal government,” he said.

CDO Council supports equity, evaluation missions

CDOs, and the CDO Council more broadly, have a key role in many of the Biden administration’s top priorities, such as promoting diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in government.

As part of that mission, the council has provided input to the Biden administration’s Equitable Data Working Group.

At the agency level, Kaouk, previously as the Agriculture Department’s CDO, said he helped lead an equity data assessment at USDA.

“This provides a real major opportunity for those chief data officers and their teams to contribute to helping agency leadership better understand how they’re doing. Do agencies have the right recruitment and outreach strategies in place across all key demographic groups, across all mission-critical occupations?” he said.

The council is also working with the Evaluation Officers Council and its members who are tasked with creating agency learning agendas.