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today on government matters nine billion dollars may be on the way to turbo charge government i.t one of the leaders of the tech modernization fund tells you what it'll take to get the cash the fifth anniversary of the defense innovation unit its executive director recaps the first five years and previews what's coming in the next five and the number one story of the week the race to fill in the blanks in the biden administration two human capital leaders tell you what's coming next government matters starts right now from washington d.c and around the world this is government matters with francis rose thanks for watching the weekend edition of government matters the only show covering the latest news trends and topics that matter to the business of government i'm your host francis rose the technology modernization fund could get as much as nine billion dollars according to a plan two leaders of the house oversight and reform committee will push that compares to about 80 million in active award amounts right now david shive is the chief information officer at the general services administration he's a member of the technology modernization fund board and the fedramp joint authorization board david welcome it's great to see you again how is the volume the tf tmf board is handling working right now how are you able to consider applications in a timely manner what are the kinds of discussions revolving around the money that's available and so on thanks francis and thanks for having me on i'm looking forward to the conversation today um yeah so we're able to manage the the existing 10 awarded projects right now and we are indeed actually ready to consider new proposals right now so if agencies have proposals that meet the criteria for the tmf funding send them our way we are actively seeking new engagements and for the mechanics of the board you know we we're fully staffed we have all the people that we need uh regarding voting members and um and support to help us analyze the value of uh programs and we are open for business so uh send your stuff our way what's the sense that you have of the scale that you would be able to maintain is it a factor of the money as i mentioned or is it a factor of the agencies putting together the pitches that they need to send in order to uh for you all to qualify them you know it's it's kind of all of the above you know we have the capacity right now to fully manage and run the existing money in the bank that we can give out and if agencies want to just continue to send us their proposals we have the capacity to properly manage that our hope is that agencies will continue to do that and we have the ability to scale up pretty readily if we need to as well when you get a proposal how do you evaluate those proposals has the evaluation process changed since the board stood up david you know in classic um gsa in federal government fashion we started doing it away and then we've iterated to better outcomes we've streamlined the process the value proposition remains the same we we do roi analysis but that it's not just focused on financial roi it's true value are the programs geared towards mission enablement are they doing i.t and modern delivery methods and stepping away from legacy delivery methods that had dubious results is the thing that an aegis agency wants to do is able to scale across government or if agencies delivering something specifically for the agency can they generate a playbook that the rest of government can follow to get the good outcomes they're hoping to achieve through the fun all of those value proposition criteria the same how has that uh has have they evolved over time at all do you ex and do you expect them to evolve over time if you say had a lot more money that was available to agencies you started getting a lot more proposals you know that's one thing about the way that uh analysis goes it is agile and iterative as the way we deliver modern tech in the federal government i suspect that if some of the main mechanics of how the tmf operates and the expectations from the larger community change that the process will be able to change right along with that you're also a member of the joint authorization board uh for fedramp same thing there what do you see as far as operations go and and getting companies through the authorization process for fedramp david you know uh the fedramp uh program it's something that we're eminently proud of and i don't just mean at gsa i mean across the larger federal i.t community they've taken authorizations that used to take 12 to 18 months for jab authorization the average is now down to 4.8 months to do that so you get value in not only increasing the velocity of programs being authorized through fedramp but also you get the primary value of fedramp which is you're doing an authorization once um that the entire government can leverage instead of individual agencies having to do this the the value of the program is revealing itself again and again that said the team is looking for ways to become even more efficient to make that authorization process increasingly lightweight increasingly automated so that we can increase the velocity and yield even greater gains that the program has analyzed is there possibly a point of diminishing returns either we in fedramp or with the tmf where it's possible that you might be pushing things not suggesting that you are but that you might push things too quickly and that there is a point where you're going to say you just mentioned 4.8 i'm throwing a number out there three months is really the sweet spot and to do it any faster than that doesn't give you a good outcome on the other end absolutely you know you could be a project management professional with that comment francis the fact is if you increase velocity too very much you start to increase quality concerns into the dynamic but good delivery teams um account for that and so we'll continue to push for increased velocity taking a very close look at quality as we do so and then there becomes a happy medium we don't know where that is but we'll continue to push the speed um until we start to see uh some of those issues and that will back off just a little bit that's that's how iterative modern i.t is supposed to work and we'll follow that process you've used that word velocity a couple of times what's the significance of that word instead of using the word capacity or using the word some other word so great question so the fact is that modern 21st century business is delivered at just incredible rates and the government how it delivers its ability to serve the citizens and for technology to serve the business of government has to operate as quickly and rapidly at increased velocity that not only the business of government demands but also the citizens of the united states expect of their government it's a key area that we've been focusing on that allows us to stay really really closely aligned with changing administration priorities changing business priorities in government our ability to rapidly change to accommodate those those requirement changes is a sign of a well functioning organization david thanks my conversation with david shive continues monday on government matters you can watch that program at 8 and 11 in the evening on wjla 24 7 news coming next groundbreaking innovations at the defense innovation unit straight ahead on government matters a review of its first few years and a preview of the coming years you're watching abc 7. [Music] welcome back a wearable device that detects when someone could be sick is one of the projects the defense innovation unit is working on it's one example of the kinds of projects the unit has taken on in its first five years of experi of existence mike matson is deputy director and director of strategic engagement at the defense innovation unit mike welcome it's good to see you again now that you're five years in what is going well and what are maybe some of the challenges that you still see uh great well uh thanks francis for having me back uh always exciting to uh be on and talk about getting technology to our men and women in uniform so uh thank you for that uh yeah as you pointed out uh so we're celebrating our fifth anniversary this year uh 2015 then secretary of defense ash carter started diu as a way to reinvigorate that connective tissue of the triangle of academia government and the commercial tech sector now we've learned a lot of lessons along the way to improve our performance such as we now start with a dod defense partner with a problem to solve uh and we don't really do the tech discovery uh like we did in the early days but we remain focused on uh working across the joint force to accelerate commercial technology and methodologies into the department of defense at the speed of relevance so a mark of some of the success that we have had is that we've been able to scale technologies and methodologies across the department one of our early successes is the tanker planning tool that's where we prototype industry best practices for software development to solve an air refueling planning challenge and the air force took that that methodology and they scaled that to now what is kessel run a software development organization within the air force more recently we were able to scale ai enabled predictive maintenance across multiple uh defense platforms and multiple defense services under 100 million dollar production contract and we did that uh relatively quickly uh currently we have about 35 projects uh in the works and seven of those are our priority uh projects that are intended to transform the capability and the capacity of the department by scaling uh much broadly across the department uh we've also been able to scale our commercial solutions opening and our other transaction authority across other dod entities to help those organizations with their rapid acquisition and one of the things that we specifically took a look at over the last couple years is an in-depth look at our transition rate because that's really uh the where the rubber meets the road really and we found that sometimes we had some successful prototypes that did not transition for a variety of obstacles and so what we did is we we've revamped a little bit and so now we start with the end transition in mind before we even take on projects and we also generated a two internal organizations a commercial engagement team and a defense engagement team and they're both charged with working with their commercial vendors or defense partners as it applies to help them march down that path from prototype to transition mike if one approaches this like a startup mentality as you did at the beginning strikes me that the transition rate shouldn't be expected to be a hundred percent do you have a transition rate that you're aiming for or that's acceptable or is it just something that you're trying to constantly improve uh well francis it's something that we're always trying to improve but you're exactly right if our transition rate was 100 that would tell me that we're not taking nearly enough risk and uh being agile and innovative uh if it was zero percent that would obviously be a problem on the other side so there's a certain amount of of learning that goes along with that uh you know there's a saying in the valley fail early fail off and fail fast because you know what doesn't work and then you move on to to find something uh that does work uh so we started at about uh 35 and some people say oh one third that's pretty good uh we didn't think so so we undertook that analysis i mentioned we're we're up to about 45 now and i think 50 or more is certainly uh very in our very near future just about any startup supporter any venture capitalist that i know would love a 50 success rate in the ventures that they undertook you mentioned kessel run a moment ago and i think that example is a good one because not only has the air force found success with that but the other branches have said we want some of that success also is that ultimately what the goal is here is to propagate the success all across the department does it matter who takes your ideas and runs with them or is it just a matter that is it more important that the ideas are out there uh that's one of our key tenets is uh we want to spread across the the entire department um we you know don't uh care who picks up those things i use the example of our commercial solutions opening those are used fairly widely now as well as other transaction authorities so we definitely uh look to work across the joint force uh working with all the services uh the the fourth estate so-called fourth estate uh with the defense agencies to leverage uh the commercial technology and get it into the department as quick as possible we have about 30 seconds left mike you mentioned the triad at the beginning of this conversation academia tech and defense is there at one of those legs of that that you would like to try to strengthen in the coming years well we'd just like to continue to build that connective tissue all the way around you mentioned the the wearables at the opening well we're working with the defense threat reduction agency at texas a m university on those wearables we have about 8 000 participants and we've been able to uh detect covid prior to symptoms or testing so again that's another great example of increasing that connective tissue in that triangle is going to absolutely pay dividends across the department mike thanks very much for joining me congratulations on the first five and good luck in the next five thank you friend up next the number one story of the week straight ahead on government matters filling in the blanks in the biden administration as soon as possible you're watching abc 7. [Music] now the number one story of the week just about every agency has a long list now of appointees and nominees from president joe biden many of them are appointees that the senate doesn't need to confirm janice lachance is executive vice president at the american geophysical union former director of the office of personnel management jerry buckholz is former chief human capital officer at nasa ladies welcome thanks for joining me janice we talked about this last time you were on the program are you seeing this happening in the way that you expected with these political appointees don't need confirmation coming in and really getting rolling at these agencies i think the biden transition and now the biden administration may be writing the how-to manual for transitions for administrations of the future i think this is exemplary it's a great way to handle this interim period while people are waiting to be confirmed it continues to work the biden administration recognized that the country was in crisis to a great extent between the pandemic and the economic repercussions of that and some of the other priorities they've set forth like climate and diversity the reality is we couldn't afford a two three four month gap that's not to let the senate off the hook they still have to vet and confirm some 1200 appointees so hopefully that will keep moving but this partnership between political appointees and the career civil service who have stepped up and taken on a lot of these acting roles is going to ensure that the citizens get what they need from this government without a gap jerry it's great to see you again welcome back what is the value both from your experience as an hr professional but also a career executive at a very important agency like nasa is what's the value in having these folks coming in right away and being able to give some guidance to the career people about where things are going to go oh you can't even measure it it is so important and um clearly the president understands that he needs the power of two million plus uh public servants of the u.s federal government behind him in order to accomplish his very important agenda additionally it's not just that they've hired these people fast they've done it efficiently and effectively they've used cultured interviews in a staged process structured interviews are the best way to select a high quality workforce so what they've done is not just exemplary in terms of planning it's also exemplary in terms of hr what does that term mean structured interview jerry what how does that how is that something that could work uh in other parts of the government too not just for political appointees it is used across the federal government perhaps not as much as it could be so a structured interview is a series of questions designed to ease out the skills and competencies that you are looking for with a scoring mechanism and then every interview as they interview each candidate scores each answers and then the scores are rolled up and you're able to rate and rank your candidates based on the skill sets that you need for the job and over and over again human resources research has proved that this is the most effective way to hire people for any job janice your point about the biden administration potentially rewriting kind of the guidebook on how to do this is there an appropriate role for opm or for congress to codify this so that whoever the next administration is whenever they come in maybe not force them to do it because it's their choice to to choose the people they want for these jobs but to at least kind of harden the process or mature the process i'm not even sure what the right word is so that this does continue to happen in administration after administration i think documenting best practices makes sense across the board and certainly in a time of of uncertainty and uh squishiness in the government where people are on their way out others are on their way in to to have an organized and documented process to follow that you can choose to follow or modify um really would be a great help and i do think that it it takes a lot of parties it takes opm it takes the white house to make sure that they are giving advice to an incoming administration the congress plays an important role in all of this through oversight and through just informal advice from staff to staff and member to elected officials i think across the board not to mention that there are great groups supporting these processes there's aspa there's napa there's the partnership there are so many organizations who have studied this that really trying to track it and particularly this year i think will really help people maintain that continuity so that the american people don't have any kind of gap in service gap in leadership or delay in uh program program or policy implementation about 30 seconds left so a very quick thought from each of you janice you're first what would you watch well i'll watch how fast the senate takes on the other 1200 people that they have to they have to confirm once they're done with the cabinet those are critical roles they touch everything in this government everything in the country everything in the world and i think the senate owes it to the american people to move expeditiously on those jerry 15 seconds i will watch how fast the biden administration can build trust with federal workforce to get them to stand up and speak up and do the good work of the public servant jerry buchholz and janice lachance thanks both very much i appreciate your time today don't forget if you miss an episode of government matters you can find it on our website govmatters.tv and you get a preview of every one of our programs by getting our daily program guide you text gov matters to the number 58671 i'm back in two [Music] minutes that's the latest from washington join me weeknights at 8 and 11 on wjla 24 7 news and next sunday morning at 10 30 on abc 7 to stay plugged in on issues that matter to the business of government thanks for watching i'm francis rose you