AI Strategies & Applications Workshop

Two years after the White House issued an executive order creating a national strategy for artificial intelligence, agencies are moving past pilot projects and are looking for the next level of AI in government. Although some of the most visible projects are at NASA, DOD and IRS, many agencies are working on developing AI projects that support services, improve mission effectiveness and decision making and automate repetitive tasks.

There is also a renewed effort to share knowledge and lessons learned through organizations such as GSA’s AI Center of Excellence and DOD’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. Investing in research and educating the workforce were other pillars of the strategy that are getting focus and funds.

This FCW Workshop featured government and industry experts who shared lessons they have learned and the results they have achieved.

Attendees who joined the virtual event came away with an improved ability to:

  • Understand how and why government services are being redesigning
  • Use new contracting vehicles specifically for AI services to speed projects
  • Learn from the lessons of success stories at active programs
  • Learn about collaboration efforts at DOD and DOD-wide data availability
  • Apply proven methods of educating and training the workforce

Speakers

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Ted Kaouk

Chief Data Officer

USDA

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Ted Kaouk

Chief Data Officer

USDA

Ted Kaouk serves as the Chief Data Officer at the United States Department of Agriculture. In this role, he is responsible for developing strategies that enable USDA to fully leverage its data as a strategic asset, improving organizational decision-making and outcomes for citizens. He was also selected as the first Chair for the newly formed Federal Chief Data Officer Council due to his expertise and leadership in data analytics.

Ted started his career as a Surface Warfare Officer in the U.S. Navy. He served as a communications officer, where he oversaw a guided missile destroyer's computer network, satellite communications suite, and cryptographic program, and as damage control officer, managing all crew readiness programs for conventional, bio-chemical, and environmental threats to normal shipboard operations and stability.

Ted began Federal service in 2011 as a project manager for the Chief Information Officer at USDA Rural Development (RD). Before joining OCIO, he served in the RD Office of the Under Secretary as special assistant and program manager for strategic projects in a mission area with a $2.4 billion budget and a portfolio of $38 billion in loans, grants and other assistance spanning rural housing, broadband, utilities, and community facilities. Ted also served as Chief of Staff in the USDA Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO), where he provided broad leadership, strategy, communications, and administrative support for the USDA Chief Information Officer in the management of a $3 Billion IT portfolio.

Ted graduated from the United States Naval Academy with a Bachelor of Science degree, earned a master’s from the University of Virginia, and a PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park. He is a Senior Fellow in the Excellence in Government Fellows Program and was recently selected as a candidate for the federal government Chief Information Officer (CIO)/Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Senior Executive Candidate Development Program (CDP).

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Joe Becker

VP Customer Success

Uptake

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Joe Becker

VP Customer Success

Uptake

Joe Becker is the VP of Customer success at Uptake, focused on the company’s transportation and federal business. He serves as the conduit between Uptake’s internal teams and stakeholders at both the U.S. Army and UCMC, ensuring that each customer and user is achieving the desired outcomes while using Uptake products. Joe has been with Uptake since 2015, serving various leadership roles within the company, from product development to pre-sales engineering. Regardless of his role at Uptake, Joe is committed to developing products that meet technical requirements, exceed partner expectations, delight users, and ultimately deliver tremendous value. A passionate entrepreneur and trained mechanical engineer, Joe leverages deep technical expertise gained by spending over a decade managing the people, process, and outcomes of large-scale infrastructure projects around the globe.

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Timur Nersesov

Sr. Manager Professional Services Strategy

Cloudera Government Solutions

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Mark Hornick

Sr. Director, Data Science and Machine Learning

Oracle

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Mark Hornick

Sr. Director, Data Science and Machine Learning

Oracle

Mark Hornick is the Senior Director of Product Management for the Oracle Machine Learning (OML) family of products. He leads the OML PM team and works closely with Product Development on product strategy, positioning, and evangelization, Mark has over 20 years of experience with integrating and leveraging machine learning with Oracle technologies. He works with internal and external customers to apply Oracle’s machine learning technologies for scalable and deployable data science projects. Mark is Oracle’s representative on the R Consortium’s Board of Directors, a founding member and advisor of the Analytics and Data Oracle User Community.

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Dr. Steve Chien

Commissioner, National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence and Engineering Fellow

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

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Dr. Steve Chien

Commissioner, National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence and Engineering Fellow

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

Dr. Steve Chien is Technical Group Supervisor of the Artificial Intelligence Group and Senior Research Scientist in the Mission Planning and Execution Section at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology where he leads efforts in automated planning and scheduling for space exploration. Dr. Chien is also Adjunct Faculty with the Department of Computer Science of the University of Southern California and previously was a Visiting Scholar with the Department of Computer Science of the University of California at Los Angeles. He holds a B.S. with Highest Honors in Computer Science, with minors in Mathematics and Economics, M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science, all from the University of Illinois.

He is a founder of the International Workshops on Planning and Scheduling for Space held every other year from 1997-2013 and was the Chair of the 1997 workshop and Co-chair of the 2013 Workshop. He is former chair of the AIPS Executive Council (2000-2002), was a founding member of the ICAPS Executive Council (2002-2006), and was founding President of the ICAPS Executive Council 2002-2004. He was also a Counselor for the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (2003-2006)

Dr. Chien was a recipient of the 1995 Lew Allen Award for Excellence, JPLs highest award recognizing outstanding technical achievements by JPL personnel in the early years of their careers. In 1997, he received the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal for his work in research and development of planning and scheduling systems for NASA. He is the Team Lead for the ASPEN Planning System, which received Honorable Mention in the 1999 Software of the Year Competition and was a contributor to the Remote Agent System which was a co-winner in the same 1999 competition. In 2000, he received the NASA Exceptional Service Medal for service and leadership in research and deployment of planning and scheduling systems for NASA. He is the Principal Investigator for the Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment which is a co-winner of the 2005 NASA Software of the Year Award. In 2007, he received the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal for outstanding technical accomplishments in the development of the Autonomous Sciencecraft deployed on the Earth Observing One Mission and the development of the Earth Observing Sensorweb. In 2011 He was awarded the inaugural AIAA Intelligent Systems Award, for his contributions to Spacecraft Autonomy. In 2011, he was the team co-lead for the SensorWeb Toolbox team, which was awarded Honorable mention in the 2011 NASA Software of the Year Competition. In 2015 He was awarded a JPL Magellan Award as well as the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal for his contributions to automated science scheduling for ESA’s Rosetta mission.

Dr. Chien has presented invited seminars on planning, scheduling, and resource allocation as well as on spacecraft autonomy and autonomous systems. He has authored numerous publications in these areas, and serves as a consultant to several related multinational corporations. His current research interests lie in the areas of: planning and scheduling, machine learning, operations research, and decision theory.

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Andy MacIsaac

Marketing Director, Public Sector

Alteryx

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Chris Kang

Staff Solutions Architect

Red Hat Public Sector

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Chris Kang

Staff Solutions Architect

Red Hat Public Sector

Chris Kang is a Staff Solutions Architect at Red Hat Public Sector. His focus is helping government agencies adopt cloud native development and AI/ML best practices using emerging technologies. Prior to Red Hat, Chris worked with Fortune 500 companies to migrate workloads to Kubernetes and piloted projects in cloud computing and data analytics. Chris is a passionate learner and driven by customer success. He has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Northwestern University and a M.S. in Computer Science from The University of Chicago.

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Elham Tabassi

Chief of Staff, Information Technology Laboratory

NIST

[Pending Agency Approval]

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Elham Tabassi

Chief of Staff, Information Technology Laboratory

NIST

[Pending Agency Approval]

Elham Tabassi is the Chief of Staff in the Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). ITL, one of six research Laboratories within NIST, supports NIST’s mission, to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life. She has been working on various machine learning and computer vision research projects with applications in biometrics evaluation and standards since 1999. She is the principal architect of NIST Fingerprint Image Quality (NFIQ) which is now an international standard for measuring fingerprint image quality and has been deployed in many large scale biometric applications worldwide. She is a senior member of IEEE, and member of AAAI.

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Jonathan “Dustr” Hudgins, Major, USAFR

Defense Engagement Team, AI/ML Portfolio

Defense Innovation Unit

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Jonathan “Dustr” Hudgins, Major, USAFR

Defense Engagement Team, AI/ML Portfolio

Defense Innovation Unit

Jonathan leads defense engagement for the artificial intelligence and machine learning portfolio within DIU’s Defense Engagement Team (DET) and is based in Boston, Massachusetts. DIU’s mission is to accelerate the adoption of dual-use commercial technology into the Department of Defense. Jonathan is a part-time reservist with the Air Force / MIT AI Accelerator where he works with a team of innovative Active Duty and Reserve Airmen in partnership with MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) to improve Air Force and global humanitarian initiatives.

Prior to joining DIU, Jonathan was a graduate student at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government where he focused his studies on emerging technologies and geopolitics. At Harvard, Jonathan was a Research Assistant to former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and the Technology and Public Purpose Project. Prior to his graduate studies, Jonathan served on active duty for 12 years, most recently as a Staff Officer and Strategist at the 607th Air Operations Center, Osan Air Base, South Korea. Before serving in the Republic of Korea, Jonathan was an F-15E Instructor Pilot and Mission Commander with deployments to Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirates. Jonathan is a graduate of the United States Air Force’s Air Command and Staff College, Electronic Warfare Coordinator Course, Contingency Wartime Planning Course, Squadron Officer School, and the Air and Space Basic Course.

Jonathan has a Master in Public Administration (MPA) from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, a Master of Arts (MA) in International Relations from American Military University and a Bachelor of Arts in Geography from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

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Anil Chaudhry

Director of Federal AI Implementations,

Artificial Intelligence, GSA Centers of Excellence

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Anil Chaudhry

Director of Federal AI Implementations,

Artificial Intelligence, GSA Centers of Excellence

Anil Chaudhry has over 20 years of progressive leadership experience in technology delivery, operations, and program management in the defense, intelligence, and national security sectors. At the Artificial Intelligence CoE, Chaudhry advises federal agencies on establishing mature data governance and management practices, developing innovative approaches for leveraging data as a strategic asset, and laying the foundation for advancing data discovery, access, and use through artificial intelligence and machine learning. Prior to joining the CoE, Chaudhry served in critical leadership positions within US Customs and Border Protection and as a Presidential Management Fellow (PMF) at the Defense Business Transformation Agency. Chaudhry served as an enlisted soldier in the U.S. Army Chemical Corps and as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army Transportation Corps. Chaudhry was one of three DHS employees selected to attend the National War College in 2016 as part of the DHS Senior Succession Management Program.

Agenda

8:30 AM

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Welcome & Opening Remarks

8:35 AM

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Opening Keynote: Federal Data Strategy and AI Readiness

Ted Kaouk, Chief Data Officer, USDA

Joe Becker, VP Customer Success, Uptake

Description


Sponsored by:

 

9:05 AM

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

MLOps - Why It Matters and How To Do It Right

Chris Kang, Staff Solutions Architect, Red Hat Public Sector

Description

 

Sponsored By:

9:25 AM

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

A Look at NIST’s Trustworthy AI Program

Elham Tabassi, Chief of Staff, Information Technology Laboratory, NIST

[Pending Agency Approval]

Description


With AI already changing the way in which society addresses economic and national security challenges and opportunities, AI technologies must be developed and used in a trustworthy and responsible manner and ensure that any bias is mitigated. Trustworthy data, standards, and integration of ML/AI in applications are all critical for the successful deployment of new technologies for climate research, genomics, materials, and more. This session will describe NIST’s efforts in measurements, standards, and other tools. 

9:50 AM

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

The AI Technology Challege

Timur Nersesov, Sr. Manager Professional Services Strategy, Cloudera Government Solutions

Description

 

Sponsored By:

10:10 AM

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Coffee Break

10:15 AM

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

AI for National Security: Recommendations from the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence and Lessons Learned from Deployments in Space

Dr. Steve Chien, Commissioner, National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence and Engineering Fellow, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

Description

10:40 AM

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Driving Transformational Outcomes with Alteryx Analytics

Andy MacIsaac, Marketing Director, Public Sector, Alteryx

Description

Sponsored by:

11:00 AM

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

AI Best Practices from GSA

Anil Chaudhry, Director of Federal AI Implementations,, Artificial Intelligence, GSA Centers of Excellence

Description

For organizations looking for “what works” in procuring AI services, hiring trained staff. preparing a program justification or capturing program accomplishment, Anil Chaudry will offer some tips and best practices from GSA’s AI Center of Excellence.

11:25 AM

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Artificial Intelligence for Mission Success

Mark Hornick, Sr. Director, Data Science and Machine Learning, Oracle

Description

Government organizations are looking to Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to work smarter and achieve better outcomes for constituents. AI is not so much a product, but a capability or feature that imbues products such as applications or machines with human-like intelligence. That "intelligence" can enhance human abilities or scalability. Oracle has integrated AI into our cloud services and enterprise applications, and customers leverage machine learning-based AI to solve mission critical problems. Such examples highlight how AI and Oracle technology - incorporated into government-focused applications - can similarly achieve mission success. Delivering AI-based solutions requires data, technical resources, and reliable infrastructure. In this session, we'll look at common pain points in AI/ML projects and how Oracle technology alleviates those for mission success. 


Sponsored by:

11:45 AM

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Accessing Innovation Expertise

Jonathan “Dustr” Hudgins, Major, USAFR, Defense Engagement Team, AI/ML Portfolio, Defense Innovation Unit

Description


This discussion will describe the Defense Innovation Unit’s purpose and place in the broader world of government innovators, how other government organizations can work with them and offer a brief case study of a recent project that illustrates how DIU works.

12:10 PM

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Closing Remarks

Underwriters

Oracle
Red Hat
Cloudera
Uptake
Alteryx