innOvation Newsletter

Innovation is Both the Medium and the Message for ELC 2020

Planning for Imagine Nation ELC 2020, to be held in Philadelphia on October 25-28, 2020, is underway. With a focus on Mission Resiliency: Technology, Culture, & Agility ELC will bring together government and industry leaders to leverage technology and innovation to improve government.

The Institute for Innovation is working with the ELC Leadership Team to highlight innovation throughout the themes of Mission Modernization, Cybersecurity, Emerging Technologies and Lab-to-Market. Contributions will come from the Institute’s initiatives, as well as from its Igniting Innovation 2020 conference and awardees.

ELC 2020 will have digital and virtual components; this was the plan for ELC prior to the current pandemic. ELC is currently being planned as a largely “in person” conference but given today’s environment, the Leadership Team is taking a look at both hybrid and entirely digital options.

The Leadership Team for this year’s event are the Chairs, Bill Zielinski, GSA and Tim Smith, OnPoint; the Vice Chairs, Ron Thompson, NASA and Jeff Shen, Red Team Consulting and the Enterprise Content Leads, Laura Stanton, GSA and Jonathan Bennet, Adobe.

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Should Chief Data Officers be Insiders or Outsiders? Perspectives from an “Outsider” CDO

Michael Conlin has a strong opinion. In the last InnOvation, Ed Kearns, then an “insider” CDO for the Commerce Department, Introduced us to an article by Innovators Circle members Diana Zavala, Judy Douglas, et al, that examines, Should Chief Data Officers be Insiders or Outsiders? How the Answer Can Boost Organizations’ Effectiveness and Innovation. Ed asserted that the CDO should be a peer of the CFO, CIO, and Business Unit Leaders to ensure that all decisions are fully informed from a variety of balanced perspectives .,, and that insider CDOs have a distinct advantage in this. Conlin shares a different perspective.

“As Robert Heinlein said, “We don’t know who discovered water, but we know it wasn’t a fish.” Vanishingly few government employees will have a grasp of the art-of-the-possible in data management, data analytics, data science, etc. Government organizations simply aren’t doing innovative enough work for existing government employees to lead the way into this ‘brave new world’”.

The relentless competitive pressures of industry, especially the consumer-oriented sub-sector, are where data innovations are developed every day. Government needs to attract data leaders from industry. Those data leaders need to attract additional talent from industry. Both the leaders and the talent need to develop professional networks that enable them to tap into best practices from the commercial sector.

There are two primary considerations: data maturity and commercial sector parity. The lower the organization’s level of data maturity, the higher the need to source data talent from outside, in particular from organizations with a high level of data maturity. Similarly, the further the organization is from parity with commercial sector best practices (where the art-of-the-possible is advancing aggressively), the greater the need to attract a leader from outside. This reflects the expectations from the President’s Management agenda and the Federal Data Strategy.

End of rant.

Michael Conlin, Chief Data Officer, US Department of Defense (and veteran of industry)

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Should Chief Data Officers be Insiders or Outsiders?

How the Answer Can Boost Organizations’ Effectiveness and Innovation

Are the most innovative CDOs insiders or outsiders? In our last blog, “Enriching the Soil for Data Innovation”, we described how Chief Data Officers in the Federal government were planting seeds for success by harnessing their organization’s culture, fostering data experimentation, engaging in collaborative activities and sharing data-focused experiences.  The leaders we spoke with were successful by understanding and adapting to the needs of the organization in order to advance data innovation and maturity. The Evidence-Based Policy Implementation Act legislates the hiring of CDOs at all agencies. With a significant number of new data leaders being appointed, let’s consider whether some organizational characteristics may affect the selection and plans of the CDO.  

Why Consider an Insider?

A popular discussion point is whether it is better for a CDO to come from inside the organization or be brought in from outside.  It seems the most likely answer is “it depends” on what the organization needs from the CDO. With recent appointments, we see both tactics being used.  What might lead to consideration of an internal appointment? For an agency whose charter is to share data, such as NOAA, an internally appointed CDO who understands the strategy, the operations, and culture, has an advantage.  These include insights about: 

• key sponsors, supporters,  stakeholders, and change agents


• organizational and data systems’ strengths and weaknesses, and


• opportunities that are ripe for innovation and rapid progress

An internal candidate understands how to navigate within the organization, knowing how to tap into the right resources and structures.  However, the internal candidate must also guard against falling back to organizational norms and “business as usual”. The objectives laid out in the Federal Data Strategy Action Plan and the Evidence-based Policy Act may need new approaches to drive significant change.  What would make an internal candidate successful? Their willingness to experiment, challenge norms, set clear goals, and inject alternative approaches to build momentum and deliver results. 

Why Consider an Outsider?

An external-to-the-organization hire (from industry, academia, non-profits, or elsewhere in government) signals a desired focus on fresh perspectives or new skills. It may reinforce the elevation of the role of the CDO as a key leader in the organization.  An advantage of hiring a CDO from outside the organization is that they provide an independent voice and are not encumbered with history.  However, this CDO must build internal credibility to influence and motivate early adopters to drive change.  The caution, however, is to not cause more disruption than the organization can handle. Benefits of bringing in a CDO from outside the organization include:

• candidates are vetted and qualified for their specific, validated expertise


• an external hire can fill an identified strategic or functional hole in the organization’s leadership team


• external best practices knowledge can be a significant part of what they bring to the table


• candidates can bring insights from previous organizations practices, goals, challenges, successes, as well as  failures


• they are not being typecast within the organization by their previous role(s)

What would make an external candidate successful? The same willingness to drive change, but an understanding that not all organizational experiences and assumptions translate equally effectively.  The net effect should be greater, more constructive change. The leader must have the willingness to take the time to understand the current organization, its goals, and challenges.

Where Should the CDO Report?

On the heels of whether the CDO is an internal or external hire comes the question of where they should report within the organization.  Should the CDO report to the agency director, to the finance function or IT function, or possibly somewhere else? Definitively, the appropriate answer here again is, “it depends”. It relies on how best to assure that the CDO has the needed influence to champion change. To do so, the CDO must be positioned as a peer to those decision makers responsible for budget, workforce, and IT as well as mission stakeholders.  . CDOs must be able to make and influence important decisions. Driving change requires a clear voice at the table.

The mission and responsibilities of the CDO will dictate where they should land. It helps to understand the specific parameters that the organization is dealing with to determine the best positioning within the organization. These parameters may include the data-sharing charter, regulatory and compliance requirements, operational challenges, organizational size, and overall agency strategy.   Don’t obsess about the details; rather, understand the levers the CDO has available to drive the desired positive change.

CDO Selection Gives Agency Leaders a Chance to Innovate

With the objectives outlined by OMB for elevating the importance of data use and sharing, the CDO needs to be in the “right seat” with the ability for a strong, effective voice in management.   The CDO must be empowered to drive positive change through a value-based approach, addressing key data issues affecting their organization and have adequate resources at their disposal to achieve them.  With the focus on evidence-based policy and data action plans, CDOs already have a broad mandate to be responsible for data governance and lifecycle data management. They also need to regularly engage with other agency leaders, including the head of the agency, who are entrusted with the resources to execute the mission.  CDOs need to be responsive to those leaders’ needs while driving an innovation agenda to demonstrate the power of data.  Whatever the organizational factors, agency leaders have the ability to strengthen mission outcomes and impact through the selection of a “right-fit” CDO.  Take advantage of the opportunity presented in selecting the right CDO. Seize the data! Empower the CDO!

Authors:

Judy Douglas, Client Industry Executive, Perspecta; ACT-IAC Institute for Innovation Innovators Circle

Dan Gilbert, Strategist, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

David Park, Director, Digital Services, Perspecta

Diana Zavala, Director, Analytics and Data Services, Perspecta; ACT-IAC Institute for Innovation Innovators Circle

Special Thanks to:

 Ed Kearns, CDO, Department of Commerce

Michael Conlin, CDO, Department of Defense

Nancy Potok, former Statistician of the US, Office of Management and Budget

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SBA’s Maria Roat Proves Strategy and Speed Work Together

Many CIOs enter their role with an all-too common mindset that they must first draw up a perfect strategic plan before taking any steps. That doing anything less might label them as “tactical” rather “strategic. And all too often, they spend their first year and more creating elegant, complicated plans that invariably require greater budgets—and never come fully to fruition.

Ms. Maria Roat, chief information officer of the Small Business Administration (SBA), has proven a CIO can both fight fires and make transformational changes. In just three years, she moved the CIO office from a reactive, technical support organization into a proactive innovative services organization that’s responsive to SBA’s programs

Ms. Roat has 30 years of professional experience in information technology for the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Department of Homeland Security, the private sector, and in the Navy. Clearly, she learned important leadership as well as technology skills in these demanding environments—and SBA is now stronger for it. (To learn more about Ms. Roat’s background, please check out her bio.)

Recently, we talked with her to find out more about her work at the SBA and asked her to share some lessons learned with her ACT-IAC colleagues. Within a short piece like this, the following are just a few of the key steps Ms. Roat took: 

• Made leadership and workforce changes, including building a strong leadership team with her Deputy, CTO, and CISO, and bolstering their IT workforce. From October 2016 to January 2017, the IT workforce vacancy rate dropped from 30% to 15%, proving that it’s possible to hire good people quickly in the federal government. In April 2018, she developed in partnership with their Chief Human Capital Office, an IT Workforce Strategic plan to continue to strengthen their workforce.


• Focused on IT infrastructure. This included stabilizing and modernizing the network and desktops, and shutting down major components on their primary data center. She tackled these immediate needs, built credibility internally in the near-term, while still initiating broader strategic efforts.


• Made strong cybersecurity gains. SBA was the first federal agency to deploy continuous diagnostic monitoring in a Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program-compliant cloud, saving approximately $250,000. In addition, SBA was one of three agencies chosen by the Office of Budget and Management (OMB) to participate in a trusted internet connection 90-day modernization pilot—and the only one to accomplish this within the timeline. And cyber improvements continue at SBA – a Cybersecurity Strategy was completed in January 2018, an enterprise cyber contract was awarded around that time, and Maria’s team continues to work closely with the Financial Sector on cyber threats and to upgrade their security tools.


• Focused on modernizing SBA’s IT. This included stabilizing and updating the network, including a full inventory; upgraded to an Ethernet backbone; converged all voice and data circuits; deployed Windows 10/Office 2016 to over 1,200 laptops; and reviewed and evaluated all software and license agreements for reduction or to move to the cloud.


• Launched a Cloud Initiative. In only 57 working days, the design, migration plan, and authority to operate (ATO) SBA’s cloud environment was completed! What’s more the move was self-funded through modernization savings, no new money was requested to complete this initial migration. And by the summer of 2018, her team was able to move the SBA.gov website to the cloud, making it a more reliable, resilient, web-based collaborative platform that is integrated with their desktop modernization effort.  

Ms. Roat and her team are now working more closely with the programs on mission modernization acquisitions, include providing a cloud platform for the Office of Investment and Innovation to create a funds-to-funds program that will involve tens of billions of dollars. They are also assisting the Office of Entrepreneurial Development on an acquisition to replace its main legacy system. These efforts include using customer relationship management tools to provide an end-to-end customer view as well as business intelligence tools to provide analytics as a service.

Lessons Learned

Ms. Roat shared some lessons learned, which are paraphrased below: 

• Gain Credibility with Fast Tactical Wins - Having clear comprehensive strategic direction is important, but so are quick tactical wins that build credibility quickly with the agency’s leadership and workforce.  


• Build the Right Team and Stay for Awhile - CIO tenure is important. Prior to Ms. Roat, there were eight CIOs in the preceding ten years. Ms. Roat has made a difference by staying at the helm for more than three years, building the right leadership team, and bolstering her workforce.  


• Work Within Existing Budgets and Reinvest Savings - One of the pleasant surprises in talking with Ms. Roat is that she and her team made their early achievements without asking for additional funding. She delivered her results using existing funding and reinvested savings from other initiatives. Her budget was increased after her accomplishments became evident. 


• Look to Cloud Migration for Significant Savings – Ms. Roat achieved savings from numerous initiatives, including improved governance and the elimination of software contracts. But turning to the cloud was particularly effective, including for SBA.gov and the data center modernization, in deploying virtual desktops rather than traditional hardware (this occurred during hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria), and by creating a Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program.

Ms. Roat offered a final piece of advice that I cannot overemphasize. And it’s not so much technology advice as it is a mindset. Too often, CIOs view the Office of Management and Budget policy and legislation as onerous rules they must comply with, rather than opportunities to improve IT management. The SBA team embraced Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, the Megabyte Act, and the President's Management Agenda. They used components of each to further support many of their IT modernization strategic initiatives like data center consolidation, software licensing, cloud migration, and cybersecurity improvements. In fact, Federal CIO Suzette Kent told us that she can always count on Maria to volunteer for OMB pilots and lead on key PMA initiatives. Ms. Roat and her team’s achievements over the past three years prove the value of that kind of thinking.

By Dave Powner, director of strategic engagement and partnerships at MITRE. This CIO SUCCESS STORY is the first in a series of brief case studies ACT-IAC contributors will write to share Federal IT lessons learned.

In 2020, ACT-IAC will be highlighting additional success story case studies that were prioritized from input from ACT-IAC members and the Federal CIO. These case studies include successes associated with working capital funds, IT metrics, EIS, GSA’s Centers of Excellence, and HHS emerging technologies. We are seeking volunteers to contribute to these case studies. Please contact Mike Howell at mhowell@actiac.org or Dave Powner at dpowner@mitre.org if you are interested.

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The 100 greatest innovations of 2019

From Popular Science

Every year, the staff of Popular Science barricades itself in a room to fight. No, this is not some nerdy fight club; it’s where we select our Innovation of the Year, the breakthrough that we agree is the most important from the previous 12 months. This year, that honor goes to the first one-dose drug to treat a long-neglected problem: postpartum depression.

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Trends in Zero Trust cybersecurity
From Government Matters

Steven Hernandez, chief information security officer at the Department of Education and Darren Death, vice president of information security and CISO at ASRC Federal, detail their work researching the implementation of zero trust strategies in government, and measuring their impact.

Zero Trust cybersecurity strategies are quickly becoming a must for organizations looking to be as secure as possible. A new report from ACT-IAC goes into how government can utilize zero trust systems. Steven Hernandez, Chief Information Security Officer, Department of Education, says that the conversation around trust is changing.

“Zero trust is not a technology, it’s not a solution you go buy off a shelf. It’s really a lifestyle, in many ways for an agency. It is really a strategy in the agency,” Hernandez said. “We started looking at zero trust at the network perspective. And our network community of interest was absolutely foundational in helping us get our arms around that. But quickly we discovered to do this right, it has to be bigger, and we have to start talking about architecture.”

Darren Death, Vice President of Information Security and CISO, ASRC Federal, says that their work is seeing results.

“One of the things that was very happy for us was that we saw that the report was referenced in NIST’s work 800207. We can see that we got some usefulness out of that report. Really what that report was set up to do was be a 10,000 foot view of, ‘This is what the zero trust area looks like; what the space looks like,’” Death said. “We are in the process of planning through a phase two of that project, where we’ll dive deeper and actually work at what the industry looks like, what the vendors are looking like, how are they map against things…”

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GSA Announces new Presidential Innovation Fellows

From MeriTalk

Today the General Services Administration (GSA) announced its new Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) class – beginning its seventh cohort with 20 new fellows.

“Over the last seven years, fellows have worked to accelerate the adoption of novel technology within the federal government and save taxpayer dollars. Our new cohort of fellows will continue to build upon this work to help agencies create better products, services, and experiences for the American public,” Josh DiFrances, said in a release.

The new PIF class will collaborate with nine Federal agencies on 13 different projects while serving as entrepreneurs-in-residence. Among other agencies, the cohort will work on projects with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, Millennium Challenge Corporation, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on modernization, AI, data capabilities, and other areas.

The new fellows are Irtaza Barlas, Devin Brande, Minh H. Chau, George Chewning, Dennis Chornenky, Christopher Corpuel, Ariele Faber, Angelo Frigo, Joshua Farrar, C.C. Gong, Michelle Holko, Ken Kato, Melissa Keene, Johnny Martin, Wanmei Ou, Likhitha Patha, Gina Valo, Nina Walia, Scott Weiss, and Kaeli Yuen.

Since 2012, PIF has recruited 159 fellows to work on projects in more than 35 agencies.

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Category Management as a Business Innovation for the Army

The Institute for Innovation sponsored a Defense Comptrollership capstone project exploring US Army implementation of Category Management, under the auspices of this Syracuse University program.

Why this project...A strategic initiative of ACT-IAC’s Institute for Innovation is to engage with academic institutions to promote innovation in government. This spring, under the guidance of Institute chair, Judy Douglas, the Institute engaged with Syracuse University Maxwell School of Public Administration’s Dean, David VanSlyke, to explore a President’s Management Agenda Cross-Agency Priority Goal as a prospective student capstone project. Tim Cooke, who is leading the Institute’s initiative on Acquisition Innovation Supporting the PMA under the sponsorship of OMB’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP), proposed a capstone project on CAP Goal 7, Category Management. Dean VanSlyke accepted the proposal to engage students in learning the application of the commercial category management best practices and in developing recommendations for their application in the government and their own organizations.

What the Institute did ...Under Tim’s guidance and mentorship, four students teamed up and dug into the topic. The Army kicked off its Category Management initiative in February and initial Army-wide management roll out was in May, fortuitously just in time for the students’ capstone experience. The Institute facilitated a key meeting for the students with Ms. Lesley Field, leader of the government-wide Category Management program and her OFPP team. The students were introduced to “best practice” leaders in DoD Category Management from the US Air Force. Maj Gen Cameron Holt, champion of the well-regarded Air Force approach, had been directed by the highest level of OSD to assist the Army with its implementation of CM. Tim worked with the Air Force team and others to provide a reading list to the students and actively guided their research with Army, Air Force, OFPP and other experts.

The results are in .... Through the Institute’s sponsorship of this capstone project, select Army students gained insight into the possibilities from implementing Category Management, its roots in both the commercial sector and government, and crafted a research paper to satisfy the School’s requirements. The project - all in a little more than a month of dedicated effort - enabled them to recommend how  the Army could tap into the resource efficiencies, cost savings, and mission performance improvements that may result from the Army’s implementation of the disruptive acquisition innovation of Category Management.

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Keeping off the Grass

From The Strategy Bridge

There’s this concrete pathway on the joint installation where I work, built to serve as a route across the grass from a parking lot to a cluster of office buildings. I remember a time, maybe ten years ago, when setting foot off the edge of that sidewalk might trigger a sharp bark from an eagle-eyed Navy Chief. True to form for senior non-commissioned officers of any branch, many of them were deadly serious about that grass being not for walking on.

These days, that particular stretch of sidewalk is bordered by something far removed from the well-manicured grass that once denoted unflinching control over contained, singular samples of mother nature. Instead, for twenty feet or more, the sidewalk is flanked by footpaths thick with mud. The once pristine stretch of sidewalk is now broken and sunken concrete that sometimes collects pools of water, draining only when it hasn't rained for at least a week. In the fall and spring, the route is a semi-permanent water feature, with the gathered precipitation getting as much as four inches deep at times. The surrounding grass has lost soil structure after repeatedly being under water and walked over by those circumventing the natural hazard that now stands in the way.

The Chiefs, who would once have bellowed  gleefully at a young airman like me to keep off the grass, are now right there alongside us picking out the less muddy trails that detour from the established route. At spots, we daintily make each step on our toes, trying not to get our boots or dress-shoes too wet or muddy. I often think back to earlier times in this very same place, and I marvel at the stark contrast in the culture of a singular space, precipitated by a prolonged losing battle with predictable geological forces.

THE EVER-SHIFTING SHAPE OF THINGS

The deterioration of systems and the environments in which they operate is a phenomenon so reliable that its basis in physics, entropy, was described by theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli as the originating mechanism for the direction of time. It is inevitable that the straight paths we lay today will bend, as over time the earth beneath them flows like an impossibly slow liquid; and they will break if the paths we laid were too brittle. 

IT IS INEVITABLE THAT THE STRAIGHT PATHS WE LAY TODAY WILL BEND, AS OVER TIME THE EARTH BENEATH THEM FLOWS LIKE AN IMPOSSIBLY SLOW LIQUID…

Similarly, the processes and systems organizations establish will succumb to the pull of a different type of gravity. They lose structure and integrity with the passage of time, as distance grows from the original context and intent. Even when well maintained, they lose their tailored fit as their environment invisibly morphs around them and unanticipated users and contexts emerge. As the substrate crawls like a liquid underneath, they can also break if their structure is too brittle.

Failing to take these principles into account doesn’t just result in our systems losing effectiveness. Their degraded status often becomes the new normal. Future stewards can lack the imagination to envision more functional systems. The prospect of repair or re-calibration seems increasingly unreasonable as repair cost approaches that of replacement. At a certain point, these aging, neglected systems will begin to cause damage to the surrounding environment. They can be the impetus for habituation of negative behaviors, and can ultimately undermine the value they were designed to create. The concrete path did not simply stop providing a dry walkway—it now does a stellar job of retaining a pool of water for those who stay on the path to walk through. Neglected, our creations will turn against us. This type of maturation into obstruction is part of the natural life-cycle of systems and structures designed and executed without consideration for the inevitable effects of time. It is as predictable as the fact that an aircraft without continuous lift will plummet to the earth.

These immutable laws of nature have implications for how organizations across the Department of Defense should plan, organize, and deploy the systems and structures we expect to rely on in the future. Just as the designers of an aircraft account for the fact that gravity is going to have influence over their vehicle staying in the air, we need to consider the effect the passage of time will have on the policies and processes we employ.

Throughout my career in the Air Force, I have seen many demonstrations of these destructive dynamics. I will focus on one example to illustrate.

POLICIES DON’T VALUE PEOPLE—PEOPLE DO

I have struggled with the Air Force's Exceptional Family Member Program for my entire career. One thing the program does is ensure families with special medical needs are assigned to installations where necessary services are available. Though I believe the program does significant good, there have been several times when Exceptional Family Member Program policies failed to protect my medically fragile daughter, and even threatened to cause my family greater hardship. Additionally, I have seen families suffer the hardship of separation because of the strictness of the program. In a few cases, my family's well-being was put in serious jeopardy. Senior leaders eventually intervened, because the program’s policies were doing quite the opposite of their intended purpose, not unlike a pathway holding water for pedestrians to wade through.

No policy or process, regardless of  how well designed or extensively amended, can avoid the challenge of unanticipated contexts and users, which inevitably emerge in waves of variance, increasing in frequency and amplitude with the passage of time. This requires interdiction, because systems left untended eventually violate their original intent. Our experience with the Exceptional Family Member Program is an example of what I call “the changing shape of things” in that our circumstances were simply the appearance of contextual variance that was increasingly likely to emerge with the passage of time. We were idiosyncratic pegs to the standardized holes of policy; and being forced through those rigid openings was bound to take off some flesh.

NO POLICY OR PROCESS, REGARDLESS OF HOW WELL DESIGNED OR EXTENSIVELY AMENDED, CAN AVOID THE CHALLENGE OF UNANTICIPATED CONTEXTS AND USERS…

When execution is overly-limited by design, a system will violate its founding values at some point. Frequently, as has been the case with Exceptional Family Member Program, severe design flaws are fixed only with the addition of policy language that addresses the new context. But, with time, unforeseen contexts emerge, and we should all know that policies themselves won’t ever be capable of distinguishing when they are humane and when they are harmful. Adding additional rigid guidance seems the default solution to this challenge. We make changes to what we execute, but seldom how we execute it.

INNOCULATING AGAINST THE RAVAGES OF TIME

Achieving lasting efficacy in the face of the natural forces and tendencies described here requires adherence to three conceptually simple principles radically difficult to implement. 

Design from a basis of value

Modern design and development methods teach that good design starts with empathy for primary users, gaining clarity about what problem we are solving. Good design is about discovering the value we want to create. To find a solution without letting unvalidated assumptions dictate design, we eliminate solution-oriented language (e.g., "I need a car") and substitute problem-oriented language (e.g., "I need to be at work every day" or, even more simplified, "I need to accomplish work"). This is how we discover the value-basis for what we’re designing. 

Employ and Execute on Behalf of Values 

When we change the way we design, but not the way we execute what we've designed, the resultant systems might work well for all users and contexts initially anticipated, but it is simply not realistic to expect those to be the only conditions for our systems' employment. To account for this, execution itself must also be imbued with the values of the system, so every discrete employment is another test of the design of the system.

A good example of execution on behalf of values is the principle of non-maleficence in the medical professions, apocryphally attributed to the Hippocratic Oath as the precept to “first do no harm.” Medical professionals have simple, foundational guidance for how they should execute their practice, regardless of context or contingency. The value of non-maleficence draws a clear line that helps practitioners to navigate unfamiliar territory and avoid actions that might violate the ethical underpinning of their profession. Values-based guidance reduces uncertainty in unfamiliar contexts, because values drive execution.

A value like "first do no harm" could be appropriate in more contexts than just medicine. In our history of struggles with the Exceptional Family Member Program, there were times when policy as written could have been cruel and hurtful to the very people it was designed to protect. In these instances, a core value like "first do no harm" might have significant impact, giving the unempowered airmen at the Air Force Personnel Center a basis from which to interdict or cancel the assignment and help my family stay together. But it was rigid policy, untempered by contextual consideration, that all too often informed such decisions. It took someone at a higher level to feel empowered to consider values in execution and interdict. Acting in service of our Air Force values to take care of airmen and families, my unit and wing leadership ultimately intervened. They saw the design and execution of policy as conditional—in service of values. When policy failed to support those values as written, they knew interdiction was warranted. Because they prioritized and executed their tasks this way, they were able to identify the impending failure of this policy.

Execution on behalf of values makes every execution of a system another test, ensuring the design doesn't remain static after deployment. This consideration addresses inevitable points where other systems and structures often fail to stay functional. Those who execute blindly stop paying attention and asking questions; what follows is that norm-enforcement takes priority over sustaining values.

Interdict on Behalf of Values 

The most crucial step in all this is ensuring we are capable of course-correction when we observe—through values-based execution—design failing to support our values. Values-based execution and interdiction is a way we can ensure the design process never stops, and it requires those at the level of execution be granted three things:

Purpose: Those executing or implementing policy or process need to know why they are doing what they are doing. They need to know and support the underlying values that processes and products are in service of. Without that, they have no basis to recognize when interdiction is required.

Relevance: Executors need to feel their perspective holds value; to know at the point of execution they are not just there to pull a lever, but rather to facilitate a value. All those at the point of execution are consequential, the last line of defense against design-context misalignment and value atrophy; and they must feel interdiction in service of values is worth the friction they will face from norm-enforcers. To speak truth to power, all airmen, sailors, soldiers, and marines need to feel they personally have a stake in the outcome of the policy or program they execute.

Empowerment: At the level of execution, individuals need to be capable of bringing processes to a halt and being heard, in the same way operators in the Toyota Production System are enabled to stop the production line when errors are detected. Hierarchy must flatten completely when it comes to the enforcement of values, because a leadership structure that prevents interdiction when values are being undermined is itself poorly designed. Solutions can emerge from any level of the organization, and the fresh observations of newcomers should be elevated, because their perspectives have not yet been shaped by prolonged exposure to dysfunctional systems. 

FINISH 

Occasionally, when it hasn't rained for long enough and the pool of water has had a chance to dry up, the concrete pathway doesn't look that bad. It even passes for functional, and we have time to recover from the outrage we felt when we found our boots covered in mud sliding through the grass, or felt that unnerving twinge of water wicking into our socks. We in the military are a resilient bunch, perhaps to a fault, and we relish the chance to let our frustration subside as we push the memory of a problem that feels so irrelevant to us into the back of our minds. I occasionally pass by groundskeepers on other parts of campus and I choose to simply offer a greeting without mentioning the sidewalk.

At the end of the day, I cut across the dry grass on my way to my car.

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How to Establish Innovation Metrics

From Business Innovation Brief

The right innovation metrics and indicators are often difficult to find and apply. Not many CEOs would be able to show innovation dashboards with 3-5 simple KPIs.

The past 20 or more years of research in innovation management has brought up of metrics. In practical terms most of them are either unspecific, superficial, not relevant enough for your business or simply not available.

Still, research plenty gives a hint what metrics are used frequently and how they are structured.

Looking at past research there is no shortage of metrics and KPIs (key performance indicators) though. In a recent survey(1) over 200 metrics and indicators were mentioned in more than 400 instances of literature. They can be classified by the

1. process phase: comparing input, throughput and output metrics, often called leading or lagging indicators


2. area of measurement: related to product development, strategy, organisation etc.


3. expression in qualitative or quantitative terms.

Drawing up the last decades of academic articles and their interest in KPIs looks as follows:

Qualitative metrics leading the innovation process dominate academic research (2).

It is interesting to observe that leading indicators are much more abundant than lagging indicators, which means measuring output and outcome. Leading metrics on their own typically measure strategy-related things, for example, how much is invested in R&D or certain new product lines. As resource allocation is crucial it often makes sense to track such metrics. Unfortunately, they disconnect at later stages.

Here, the combined metrics come to rescue, because they carry the strategic intent forward and allow to measure throughput as well as output and outcome. For instance, instead of measuring R&D spend, the allocation of overall investments from development to marketing segmented by strategic product groups is more helpful. It allows to track early investments as well as outcomes in the same categories. Instead of product groups we can also think of adoption cycles (percentage of new launches) or customer segments.

Innovation Metrics in Detail

Let us also look at which metrics are most popular in academia:

Those top-10 KPI covered by more than 5 peer-reviewed research articles show a good mix across classifications, however, they should also be assessed whether they provide a good baseline for continuous measurements (e.g. alongside an innovation board portfolio, such as innovation portfolio and balance).

Many of them also support the idea of continuous KPIs. While patents are very specific and certainly do not reflect overall innovation, the metric supports many stages from ideation to commercialisation. For an R&I-oriented (Research & Innovation) organization this could be a good fit.

Important top-30 metrics include further measures such as:

• Portfolio alignment


• Rate of product ideas approved for stage


• Collaboration with customers, suppliers, competitors, universities


• Portfolio balance


• Average innovation project development time


• R&D intensity (absolute & relative)


• Commitment of resources


• Average number of innovation projects working hours


• Formal post-launch evaluation procedures


• Adherence to a commercialisation schedule


• Technology novelty


• Organisational climate


• Commitment to risky projects (senior management)


• Customer satisfaction indicators for new products


• Recognition of key problems that must be solved with skills that reside outside the organization


• Product planning horizon (years, product generations)

Recommendations for Using Innovation Metrics: Throughput Matters

In practice, measuring all kinds of leading parameters with only a superficial measurement is creating more confusion than clarity.

We recommend using only a few simple metrics but use them across the stages of the process. For example, if you go for patent value then you should look at the conversions of that value over time. This could be patents submitted in ideation, patents filed, granted and finally used in products (or licensed out). The latter stage is well suited if you prefer value over numbers.

Here’s an example table to give you some inspiration on how to get started:

Remember to think of metrics that connect the investment to the outcome. Or start at the end and find your way back to the source of the impact and outcome. Also spend some time to assess which metrics are captured along the product life cycle.

The typical process to work on this is a structured collection and workshop with a resulting metrics “cloud” that can be assessed in a 2×2-matrix of relevance and effort.

If you struggle to focus you should pick higher-level metrics and just go for throughput. Throughput of ideas converting into a paid service gives an ideal value metric. If it is not a paid for product another measure of consumption is needed such as click-through, usage time or selection preference.

Second, the maturity of an innovation organisation should be assessed first to see which drivers are most important. For instance, a “beginner” organisation having just introduced an innovation process might want to add learning metrics (e.g. trainings performed as input and methods applied in projects as throughput metric). A more mature organisation may shift focus on steering, setting challenges and incentives on the input side while diving deeper in outcome metrics such as sales of certain product and service categories.

Finally, some metrics are typical marketing or R&D KPI (e.g. budget/actuals of projects and time to market) that can be easily enriched with innovation metrics.

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EIGHT REASONS WHY INNOVATION BEATS EFFICIENCY

From Business Innovation Brief

If you are running an organization of any kind then making it more efficient is a key priority. It is important to speed up processes, eliminate waste, improve quality, reduce costs and generally please customers. And if you work hard at it you can do all of these things. But it is also important to prioritise innovation – finding new products and services and new ways to do things. The trouble is that if you focus too hard on efficiency then you can easily neglect innovation.

Sorting out today’s operational wrinkles has an immediate payback but experimenting with new products and methods takes time and effort. It has an uncertain future payback.  So we tend to spend most of our time solving today’s efficiency issues.  The temptation is always to work on improving current products and systems rather than finding new ones.  After all, we know that the current process works so if we can make it work better we will get better outcomes.  We can have no similar certainty about the results of innovation efforts.  Also innovation involves trying things that don’t work.  That looks wasteful – and we all hate waste.

So here are eight reasons why you should prioritise innovation over efficiency.

1. Survival.   It did not matter how much Encyclopaedia Britannica improved quality and efficiency.  Wikipedia was still going to kill it.  If you are running a taxi firm then tinkering with operations might help in the short term but it will not protect you from Uber.  Ultimately innovation wins.  It beats quality and it beats efficiency.  Newer systems start off shakily but in the end they come out on top – not all of them but some.  So sitting back and making the current business work better and better is like making better gaslights  – even when you have already heard about new-fangled electric ones.


2.  Competitive Advantage.  Extinction or survival is a drastic and extreme example of the power of competitive advantage.  Innovative products and services give companies an edge.  Older products and services become routine amd eventually commodities.  Novel products can command higher prices – until everyone else catches up.


3. Your People.  Some people like to do the same kind of work every day but the most talented people generally relish new challenges.  They like to express their creative ideas and experiment with them.  It is easier to attract and retain top talent if you empower people to innovate.  Google and Apple have no problems recruiting the top graduates – people queue up to work there.


4. Satisfaction.  Finding a new way to do things; solving the related problems, making it work; these are all intellectually satisfying.   We know that trying something new which does not work is frustrating (but educational).  Finding and successfully delivering an entirely new thing is very rewarding.  It just makes you feel good.


5. 
   

   Fun. Doing the same old stuff and fixing the same old problems becomes routine.  Experimenting is difficult but it can be fun.  The innovative leader makes innovation a game to be enjoyed.

   
   


6. Fame and Respect.  People revere innovative companies.  They remember great inventors and innovators – Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, James Dyson.  They do not remember all the faithful executives who toiled long and hard to make their companies more efficient.


7. Learning.  Innovation means trials, experiments, pilots with minimum viable products and prototypes.  You show them to customers and gauge reactions.  It is a learning process.  All the experiments that do not work are educational.  You have to be out in the marketplace trying to solve real problems.  You learn more there than back in the office.


8. Leadership vs Management.  A manager is a steward who makes the organization work better.  A leader changes the organization and moves it to a different place.  Innovation and leadership live in the same house.  We need good managers – for sure.  But we also need good leaders.  If you want to be a leader you have to lead people somewhere new; you have to lead innovation.
   
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Enriching the Soil for Data Innovation-

Chief Data Officers Plant Seeds for Success

Recently, Jason Miller of Federal News Network moderated a panel discussion at the ACT-IAC Institute for Innovation conference and awards event, Igniting Innovation.  He counseled innovators against using empty words in their remarks. Rightly, Jason noted that “culture” is among several terms often used without enough specificity to convey insight. We also have heard Chief Data Officers speak at a high level about the importance of culture from the podium and in the press. With Jason’s counsel in mind, we wanted to understand the criticality of culture beyond the empty words and explore the impact of practices, processes, goals, and behaviors on Chief Data Officers’ transformative work.

In the interests of “knocking the dirt off” of culture’s impact on data innovation, we sought out the real experiences of several Federal data executives. We found that culture had concrete meaning and impact for them which translated into specific actions addressing cultural challenges that have real mission consequences.  Unanimously, they agreed a real, actionable understanding of culture is key to the work of the Chief Data Officer. They noted that culture is a reflection of past practices and priorities. It defines the current state – a context-specific initiating point from which an organization can innovate and transform data usage in order to ensure solutions are fit-for-purpose. The existing behaviors and practices that make up the current data culture are the “soil” in which new behaviors “seeds” can be planted and thrive.

HARNESSING CULTURE

is key to advancing a data-driven organization

One of the longest serving federal CDOs, NOAA’s Ed Kearns, noted that culture exists for good reasons. If understood and respected, it can help accelerate improvements. NOAA has a long-standing data culture and many external organizations rely on NOAA for the provision of timely, accurate data. Despite deep commitment to its mission, NOAA’s systems, practices, and processes couldn’t keep up. Traditional practices dictated that NOAA’s data scientists and stewards owned both quality and delivery of data. Demand for NOAA’s data out-paced the capacity to deliver.  They launched a big data project- a four year experiment, to deliver NOAA data through a consortium of commercial partners at almost no incremental cost to the government. The external partners offered industry expertise, scalable and tested platforms, and value-added services.

EXPERIMENTATION

drives positive changes in data sharing

This new way to deliver data served more customers, overcame capacity limitations, and enabled NOAA data scientists to focus principally on quality.   Concerns about this approach evaporated when stakeholders were given the opportunity to learn about the new tools and systems, and opened new possibilities for data use. The results of the “experiment” had a direct impact on fostering the culture of information sharing. Leveraging external, commercial partners provided the opportunity to serve the public and gain more value from the data, at a lower cost. Experimentation with new tools, platforms, and learning drove improvement.

COLLABORATIVE ANALYSIS

of live, trusted data enriches decision-making

At DoD, CDO Michael Conlin finds that culture and talent are his two biggest challenges. His CDO strategy is to be a central “force multiplier”. By providing useful capabilities, it is easier for people to comply and do what is needed.  At DoD he observed that their current behaviors and tools presented special challenges to data sharing.  Analysis is often constrained by dependence on 30-year old technology. People bring the results of their own data analysis to decision-making rather than the source data. Data sources, quality and analysis are held closely and therefore, are different from organization to organization. As a result, this discouraged shared accountability for results across organizations. The accepted decision-making processes pressed for consensus and “perfect data” which slowed decision-making.

So where does he apply effort that will change unproductive behavior and yield results?  CDO-led meetings now require visible, authoritative data sources... and no slide presentations. This allows people to make decisions based on live data and persuasive discussion.

Similar to the NOAA experimentation above, centrally available training in new practices, data sharing, and tools improves data delivery and quality. Useful, speedy results without the need for procurement is quite an incentive for adoption of new behaviors and practices. This kind of centralized support also untethers data talent from organization-specific practices, limited tools, data, and perspectives. A central utility opens up data sharing to new, diverse disciplines that may provide great insight to solving problems.

Like NOAA, DoD needs people to be able to experiment, and sometimes fail, in order to get better results. So, Mr. Conlin urges celebrating both the outcome and the learning along the way to grow engagement and foster a “data-driven, test-and-learn culture” that “lets the data speak to the situation”. Encouraging openness and experimentation is doubtless new to many government organizations. To drive change, experiment with new tools and processes, support tools and training to encourage adoption, measure results, and implement what works. Mr. Conlin shares a wealth of perspective on the key aspects to attend to in elevating an organization’s culture. To dive deeper, please enjoy his recent LinkedIn article, Data Science 101-A CDO’s Viewpoint.

SHARED DATA EXPERIENCES

 - successes and failures - accelerate progress

From her government-wide vantage point as the Chief Statistician of the US, Nancy Potok sees multiple opportunities for improving the information available to make decisions, inform policy, and support mission success across government, and she plans to facilitate changes in data culture to advance these activities.  The Federal Data Strategy and Annual Action Plan seed the development of a data-driven and learning culture by launching cross-agency collaboration as a “force multiplier”. The first year of the Action Plan “establishes a firm basis of tools, processes, and capacities to leverage data as a strategic asset and align existing efforts”.

The plan calls for creation and sharing of “government-wide resources related to ethical data management and workforce training, and specific agencies will improve the use of specific data asset portfolios…. Agencies will also begin collaborating across silos to optimize the use of data to support Federal missions”.  Dr. Potok advocates OMB’s catalyst role in formalizing standards setting and in collaborative governance that focuses on answering high priority questions and problem solving. Not surprisingly, then, the first item in the Action Plan is OMB’s coordination “across statutory offices on information policy development/implementation activities.  OMB also will provide guidance on government-wide data standards/improvements required by statute”.

She believes that shared experiences and successes in using data will help organizations improve. But how best to encourage and institutionalize the experimentation behavior that underpins these possibilities, especially in risk-averse organizations?  Dr. Potok emphasizes the need to incentivize and reward behaviors that encourage research, experimentation, testing, risk management, and even failure. With the Federal Data Strategy as a roadmap, strong, visionary leaders can achieve some early successes, sow the seeds of a stronger data culture, and influence the organization while the formal structures catch up.

Authors:

Judy Douglas, Client Industry Executive, Perspecta;

ACT-IAC Institute for Innovation Innovators Circle

Dan Gilbert, Strategist, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

David Park, Director, Digital Services, Perspecta

Diana Zavala, Director, Analytics and Data Services, Perspecta;

ACT-IAC Institute for Innovation Innovators Circle

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GSA and OMB Announce Government Effectiveness Advanced Research Center Challenge Winners

From GSA

September 10, 2019

Three groups received $300,000 each for innovative solutions to government challenges outlined in the President’s Management Agenda

WASHINGTON — The U.S. General Services Administration and the Office of Management and Budget today announced three grand prize winners of the Government Effectiveness Advanced Research (GEAR) Center challenge. Each winner received an award of $300,000 each. Five honorable mentions were also selected from the pool of highly competitive applicants.

“The GEAR Center was conceived as a way to promote innovation in support of the President‘s Management Agenda,” said OMB’s Deputy Director for Management Margaret Weichert. “GEAR Center Challenge submissions are promising examples of how innovative public-private partnerships can transform government mission delivery, service to citizens and stewardship. The GEAR Center is already creating incentives for cross-sector collaborations that will better serve the American people.”

“The GEAR Center challenge is a creative approach that engages the U.S. research and development system to help government adapt and improve in a rapidly changing world,” said GSA Administrator Emily Murphy. “It also helped form new partnerships between different industries. These impressive winners will bring innovation led by our world class universities and enterprises to influence how the federal government performs.”

The GEAR Center competition challenges problem solvers from the public, academia, and industry to build cross-sector, multidisciplinary teams to demonstrate the potential of the GEAR Center. These teams will describe how this model would tackle one or more of the major challenges facing government outlined in the President's 2019 Management Agenda. The goal is to test the feasibility of the model before further investment and will inform how the GEAR Center could work to deliver these solutions.

GEAR Center Challenge Grand-Prize Winners

Cybersecurity Workforce Collaboration - George Mason University, Mercyhurst University, Rochester Institute of Technology, University of Maryland, Drexel University, SAP, Specialisterne, DXC Dandelion Program, and the MITRE Corporation

Today’s profound shortage of cybersecurity (cyber) talent puts our nation at risk. Neurodiverse individuals, which include those with autism, are a potential, untapped source of talent to fill federal cyber positions, and can be more likely to be retained by federal agencies given their strong fit with cyber work. This project will leverage leading practices, methodologies, and tools that have been used successfully in the private sector and non-U.S. government agencies. This team aims to create a Federal Neurodiversity Cyber Workforce program leveraging the guidance of its advisory collaborators, and then pilot this with a U.S. federal agency. The pilot will focus on training a participating federal agency to identify, hire, onboard, train, support, and retain neurodiverse individuals for cyber positions.

Data for Impact - A collaboration to improve government use of administrative data to measure impact between SkillSource Group and Third Sector Capital Partners, Inc.

Currently, data on federally funded workforce, education, and human services programs are too often held in siloes that prevent local, state, and federal agencies from assessing the true impact of their joint service delivery. This team will collaborate to pilot an approach to integrate currently disparate data that builds on existing state data integration efforts. The team will leverage multiple administrative data sources to measure the impact of Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) services for Virginia Opportunity Youth with past involvement with the child welfare and/or criminal justice systems.

Data and Evidence for Government and Academic Impact - A collaboration focused on improving the use of evidence and data by the public sector workforce between the Johns Hopkins University Centers for Civic Impact, the Volcker Alliance’s Government-to-University Initiative, and the Mid-America Regional Council

When trying to smartly deploy scarce government resources, using data to drive decision-making is imperative. It is critical that federal practitioners improve how they use data for decision-making and accountability, including for policy development, innovation, oversight, and learning. Better use of data is the key to help them solve problems and achieve mission goals. This project, a collaboration between Johns Hopkins University Centers for Civic Impact, the Volcker Alliance, and the Mid-America Regional Council, aims to help 250 federal practitioners in Kansas City by customizing an existing training curriculum and developing recommendations on how to replicate and scale it in other regions.

Honorable Mentions

Unlocking the Value of Government Data - Deloitte, Google, University of Maryland and Datawheel collaborate to create “pop-up” data marketplaces

This team envisioned creating AI-driven ‘pop-up’ data marketplaces for topics of national interest. Focusing each marketplace on a single topic shifts the paradigm from pushing bulk federal data via static portals to the general public, to establishing vibrant online communities of users. A pilot marketplace was proposed to assess how access to relevant curated data, advanced analytic tools, and mechanisms for collaborating and sharing data-driven insights, could attract and retain active users from public, private, and academic sectors.

Delivering the Workforce of the 21st Century - An initiative to reskill individuals for high-needs jobs by Launchcode

This team proposes integrating a nationally-recognized hybrid learning model into the federal government’s current reskilling efforts. LaunchCode’s model identifies individuals with the capacity to build hard skills in software development regardless of education or background and rapidly trains them to be able to perform in-demand tech roles within an organization.

Secure, Modern, and Mission Capable Credentialing - A collaboration aiming to improve the customer experience and efficiency of the credentialing process between the Institute for Defense Analyses, West Virginia Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, West Virginia National Guard, WVReady, University of Maryland-Center for Public Policy and Private Enterprise, and Marshall University College of Information Technology and Engineering.

The team proposes developing an innovative, secure, modern, mission-capable information technology solution hosted by the United States Postal Service to improve the customer experience of navigating the “background check” process and utilizing post offices as local, readily accessible fingerprinting and credentialing service hubs.

Using Data to Put People at the Center and Improve Outcomes - A collaboration hoping to enable the real-time use of administrative data between New America Public Interest Technology and Community Solutions

The team proposes developing and piloting a Homelessness Data hub to collect critical data from communities in the U.S. to benchmark and improve on efforts to end homelessness. The hub would advance the work of dozens of communities working with data to improve the tools of ending homelessness.

Improving Grants Management Using Blockchain Technology - The MITRE Corporation

Approximately $700 billion is invested annually through more than 1,800 diverse federal grant programs. However, grant managers—including those that administer funds from inside the federal government and those from external organizations that receive federal funds—report spending 40% of their time using antiquated processes to monitor compliance instead of data and analytics to monitor results. This team proposes demonstrating the benefits and challenges of a proposed grants management business operating model and blockchain-based Distributed Grants Ledger that addresses this problem using the joint efforts of private sector technology vendors, state government agencies, universities, and community-based service organizations.

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NIST publishes final green paper on ‘Unleashing American Innovation’

From: fedscoop

The National Institute of Standards and Technology published the final version of its “green paper” on maximizing the return on investment of federal research and development funds Wednesday.

The document, titled “Unleashing American Innovation,” details “options for enhancing how federally funded inventions move from the laboratory to the marketplace.” These options include streamlining federal regulations, encouraging public-private partnerships, engaging with private-sector investors, building a more entrepreneurial workforce and more.

“The accelerating pace of technology innovation and intense competition in the global marketplace demand new solutions,” NIST Director Walter G. Copan said in a statement. “Removing roadblocks, enabling entrepreneurs, attracting private investment and getting inventions from the laboratory into the marketplace faster are essential to unleash American innovation and to strengthen U.S. economic competitiveness and national security.”

The green paper does not prescribe policy, but it does offer suggestions for how future policy might be crafted.

For example, a number of NIST’s findings in the paper focus on the lack of clarity that stakeholders feel surrounds government tech transfer policies like licensing, royalties and more. Improving the consistency and clarity of these policies would help the government attract partners and investors, the report suggests.

The paper is in line with NIST’s responsibilities under cross-agency priority (CAP) goal number 14 of the President’s Management Agenda, which seeks to “improve the transfer of technology from federally funded research and development to the private sector to promote U.S. economic growth and national security.” The government, NIST notes, invests about $150 billion annually across 300 federal laboratories as well as U.S. universities and private sector R&D institutions. The Lab-to-Market CAP goal aims to get more of the innovations created out of federal funding into the hands of private companies where they can see commercial success — both for the sake of the private sector and for the needs of the government.

NIST and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy are in charge of leading this initiative.

The report was created through consultation with agency working groups, private sector comment and collaboration with OSTP. In April 2018, NIST held a summit on “unleashing American innovation” at which both agency and White House officials spoke. In May 2018, NIST posted a request for information pertaining to the coming green paper in the federal registry.

“The U.S. must continue to lead the world in technology, and that means maximizing both the taxpayers’ investment into American R&D and the potential of our nation’s brightest minds across academia, industry and government,” Deputy Assistant to the President for Technology Policy Michael Kratsios said in a statement.

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Chinese Cash That Powered Silicon Valley Is Suddenly Toxic

As U.S. startups reject their money, Chinese venture-capital firms in U.S. are dialing back investments, structuring deals to avoid regulators or shutting down

From: Wall Street Journal

Silicon Valley startup Pilot AI Labs Inc. signed a Chinese-backed venturecapital firm as its first big investor in 2015. By last summer, Pilot AI wanted it gone.

The U.S. startup hoped to sell more of its artificial-intelligence software to the U.S. government after working with the Pentagon, according to people familiar with its operations, and worried its effort could be hurt by the investor’s ties to China’s government. The chairman of the Chinese-backed investor, Digital Horizon Capital, was asked to sell back its stake, said one of the people. He angrily refused.

Chinese investors were once embraced in Silicon Valley both for their pocketbooks and their access to one of the world’s largest and trickiest markets. Today, they are suddenly less welcome.


Since late last year, amid rising U.S.-China tensions, venture firms with China ties have been dialing back their U.S. investments, structuring deals in novel ways to avoid regulators or shutting their U.S. offices. Some American venture firms are dumping their Chinese limited partners or walling them off with special structures. And some U.S. startups that have taken significant Chinese money are keeping the investments quiet or trying to push their Chinese investors out to avoid scrutiny.


After hitting record levels early last year, Chinese funding for U.S. startups slowed beginning in May 2018, according to research firm Rhodium Group. And state-backed Chinese investors all but disappeared by year-end, Rhodium said. Meanwhile, foreign direct investment from China, which includes acquisitions of U.S. companies, plunged 90% to $5 billion in 2018 from $46 billion in 2016.


Behind the shift in sentiment is an effort by the U.S. government to stem a talent and technology outflow it fears could threaten American economic and military superiority. Some Chinese investors hoped a trade deal would be struck in April, easing tensions and reopening the path to investments, but instead the trade fight has spiraled into higher tariffs. Some American venture investors say Washington is overreacting and threatening the benefits that come from open trade with China, cutting off startups’ access to a lucrative market and source of capital. Two venture firms with China operations have complained to a Defense Department unit of being unfairly singled out, a sign of the gap in how the two sides assess the threat.


Many Washington policy makers don’t understand technology, and many technology executives don’t understand great power politics, said Amy Zegart, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank.


The U.S. government’s pressure campaign gained momentum last fall when a new law increased the power of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or Cfius, to require international investors to get approval for technology deals. The change restricts investments in companies working with more sensitive technologies and adds red tape that makes foreign investment less attractive to U.S. startups.


Around the same time, a group of senators and Trump administration officials began holding private meetings with Silicon Valley companies and investors to warn of the risks of doing business with China.


The administration criticized China’s efforts to obtain U.S. technology in a November report describing how Chinese venture firms with state ties could gain access to intellectual property from U.S. startups. The report from the U.S. Trade Representative called out Digital Horizon—the Chinalinked investor in Pilot AI—saying it aimed to help guide U.S. technologies back to Beijing.

Digital Horizon, formerly called Danhua Capital, is backed by multiple Chinese investors, among them the investment arm of state-owned Zhongguancun Development Group.


Digital Horizon has been one of the most active Chinese-funded venture firms in Silicon Valley, raising roughly $500 million in capital and investing in scores of U.S. startups, alongside major U.S. venture firms. In 2015, at a time when American startups gladly took Chinese capital, Digital Horizon led a roughly $500,000 investment in Pilot AI, becoming its first institutional investor, according to research firm Pitchbook.


By the middle of last year, the mood had changed dramatically, with President Trump implementing tariffs on Chinese-made products and Congress moving to beef up Cfius’s power to review more deals. With hopes of securing more government business, Palo Alto, Calif.,-based Pilot AI last summer decided it would be prudent for Digital Horizon to unload its stake. That was when Digital Horizon’s chairman was asked to sell it back, according to the person familiar with the incident, who said the chairman, Shoucheng Zhang, was angered at what he felt was pressure to sell.


Dr. Zhang, who was also a physics professor at Stanford University, died on Dec. 1, in what the San Francisco medical examiner’s office called an apparent suicide. It cited “an apparent note of intent” that referenced depression.


A spokesman for Digital Horizon said it had no knowledge of a request that the firm unload its stake in Pilot AI, which it still holds.


One Digital Horizon backer, the Beijing tech hub Zhongguancun, removed Chinese-language signs from its outpost in Santa Clara, Calif., and took down a Chinese flag out front.

Asked about the signage, Ella Li, head of investment in Santa Clara for Zhongguancun Capital, said it wanted to keep a low profile after a U.S. government report. The U.S. Trade Representative’s November report described Zhongguancun, which is commonly known as ZGC, as a Chinese government-backed entity aiming to divert U.S. technology and talent.


A ZGC spokeswoman wrote in a statement: “We believe that there exist some gaps for business transactions across the Pacific, and we hope to bridge the gaps through our efforts in operating the incubator space in the Bay Area.”


Another Beijing-based investor, Sinovation Ventures, has shut its office in Palo Alto and stopped investing from the U.S., said people familiar with the firm, whose chairman, Kai-Fu Lee, is a leading AI expert and former Google and Microsoft executive. Sinovation had made 46 investments in the U.S., according to its website.


A Sinovation spokeswoman said the firm is “re-evaluating its U.S. strategy” after key personnel departures led to reduced U.S. investments. Its change of investing plans was earlier reported by Vox.


David Cao, who helped build a networking and events business introducing Chinese investors to U.S. startups, has found the number of Chinese firms actively investing in U.S. startups significantly decreased. Few Chinese investors attended a conference Mr. Cao held in April. “It’s harder to connect people,” he said.

Making things harder is the point, say U.S. policy makers.


Since October, Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia and Republican colleagues on the Senate Intelligence Committee have been holding briefings for U.S. venture capitalists, tech executives, other business leaders and university administrators, urging them to take the threat of Chinese intellectual-property theft more seriously and to reduce dealings with their Chinese counterparts.

The meetings, featuring presentations from top officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security and National Counterintelligence and Security Center, are closed to the public so classified material can be shared. Some attendees—people who have come to rely on China for business and funding—have pressed the government for hard evidence of the threat, according to U.S. officials familiar with the meetings.


Mr. Warner, a former venture capitalist, says he historically supported expanding economic ties with China. “But a few years and many, many classified briefings later, my views have changed, as the government in China has,” Mr. Warner said in a written statement. “While many people in Washington understand the gravity of the threat, that’s not true across the country.”


The FBI has also beefed up efforts to warn companies about the threat of Chinese intellectual-property theft, building up a squad of about a dozen agents and analysts in its San Francisco office—more than other FBI offices have—to work with companies. It recently published a report titled “Protect Your Startup" with tops for acoiding intellectural property theft.

The FBI office has conducted hundreds of briefings for companies on cybersecurity threats and economic espionage. It discourages people from using their regular smartphones and laptops when traveling in China and warns male U.S. executives to avoid “honeypot” espionage attempts by attractive women. “If you’re not a 10 in the U.S., you’re not a 10 in China,” officials say they’ve told the executives.


One venture capitalist who received such a briefing said his firm is excluding its sole Chinese investor from future fundraising to avoid holding up any deals that could require approval from Cfius.

Baidu Ventures, a venture-capital firm mostly funded by the prominent Chinese search-engine company Baidu Inc., has altered the structure of some of its investments to avoid Cfius scrutiny, said Saman Farid, a partner at the firm.


When Baidu Ventures sees a company it likes, it sometimes recruits another investor to lead the deal and signs over its voting rights to that other investor, while not taking a board seat or asking to see company information, Mr. Farid said.


Chinese conglomerate Fosun International now is avoiding U.S. investments in sensitive industries because of a “less-friendly environment,” said Mike Xu, managing director of its Fosun Capital unit.


The venture arm of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is shifting to investments outside the U.S., according to two people familiar with its operations.


Alibaba was already taking care to avoid regulators’ gaze. When it invested last summer in DeepMap Inc., a Palo Alto startup working on advanced mapping technology for self-driving cars, Alibaba bought around 7% of the company, a percentage that would have helped avoid a Cfius review of the deal.


After DeepMap raised a new funding round last summer, it disclosed some of its new investors, though not Alibaba, even though Alibaba had invested the most. A DeepMap spokeswoman said Alibaba had asked not to be cited.


An Alibaba spokesman declined to comment.


DeepMap co-founder and CEO James Wu said his company doesn’t disclose some of its Chinese investors. “We don’t want to make a big noise,” he said.


Part of the fall-off in Chinese investment is due to China’s efforts to restrict capital outflows in order to protect the value of the yuan. Naval Ravikant, co-founder of the AngelList funding network, said Chinese investment firm CSC Venture Capital agreed in 2015 to invest $400 million in startups listed on AngelList and discussed raising the amount to $1 billion. It had invested only about $100 million before Chinese capital controls effectively ended the deal in 2017, said Mr. Ravikant.


Some Chinese investors and ethnically Chinese U.S. citizens say they are confused by the aggressive approach of the U.S. government, contending that making connections in other countries is often a way venture capitalists help startups.


A January 2018 report by a Defense Department unit warned that China’s government could gain access to “the crown jewels of U.S. innovation” through investments in U.S. startups. The report listed seven “Chinese venture firms” without making specific accusations that any of them engaged in problematic diversion of U.S. technology.


Richard Lim, a managing director with GSR Ventures, said his firm wasn’t contacted before its name was included in the report from the Defense Innovation Unit, or DIU. He said it was wrong to call his firm a Chinese fund because most of its capital comes from U.S.-based limited partners and less than 10% from Chinese investors.


The DIU report didn’t mention some U.S. venture firms that have significant operations in China, notably Sequoia Capital. Neil Shen, who is the head of Sequoia’s China operation—and one of the most prominent venture capitalists globally—is part of a body called the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference that advises China’s legislature.


A Sequoia spokeswoman declined to comment.


Another firm DIU listed, GGV Capital, protested its inclusion in a March letter to DIU reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. A spokeswoman said DIU hasn’t replied to the letter from her firm, which has offices in Silicon Valley, China and Singapore. DIU didn’t respond to a question about GGV’s complaint.

 

Sinovation was also mentioned in the report and complained to DIU last June. A person familiar with the report said that after the complaint, DIU consulted with researchers that found additional ties between Sinovation and the Chinese government. This person said firms named in the report weren’t contacted ahead of time.


Michael Brown, director of DIU and one of the report’s authors, said it was written to raise awareness among U.S. government and industry officials about the extent of Chinese investments in early-stage firms “and how these investments fit into a long-running and broader technology transfer strategy that benefits from both legal and illegal means.”

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Syracuse University Accepts ACT-IAC Institute for Innovation Capstone Project

Syracuse University's Department of Defense Comptroller Program accepted a project proposal from ACT-IAC’s Institute for Innovation. The project, one of several in the university’s masters-level program, is entitled “Application of Commercial Category Management to Enhance Mission Effectiveness in the Department of the Army and Other Government Agencies”.

The Army spends billions of dollars buying common goods and services within its operations and maintenance budget. If the Army could adapt the proven practices of commercial category management, it could unlock efficiencies from that spending. Billions of dollars could be redirected to higher priorities while realizing improved performance. ACT‐IAC’s Institute for Innovation is interested in engaging students in learning the application of the commercial category management best practices and in developing recommendations for their application in the government and their own organizations. The deliverable will be an applied policy/implementation paper showing how the Army could implement category management and achieve the desired outcomes. The project will begin in April and finish in June.

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James Cook is vice president for Strategic Engagement and Partnerships at The MITRE Corporation. In this role, he leads strategic corporate partnership interactions with the executive agencies and Congress and promotes development of new strategic partnerships with the private sector, academia, and other non-profit, associations and foundations to address public interest challenges at the federal, state, and municipal levels.

Previously, Cook was vice president and director of the Center for Enterprise Modernization (CEM). CEM is the federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Department of the Treasury and co-sponsored by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Social Security Administration (SSA). In that capacity, Cook led MITRE's support of modernization efforts for civilian government agencies. He has established and actively contributed to partnerships with government and private sector organizations focused on Innovation; government effectiveness; and the Presidential Transition. He also serves on the Innovators Circle of the Institute for Innovation at ACT-IAC.

With MITRE since 2004, Cook served for four years as CEM’s executive director for public sector revenue and finance. He partnered with the IRS to develop a strategy to modernize IT and business functions and applied those lessons to other federal agencies.

As an advocate for better government, he has spent much of his career helping to advance improvements in civilian agency performance and acquisition reform. He was previously a partner and executive with IBM Business Consulting and a consulting partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he provided thought leadership through the PwC Endowment for the Business of Government. In 1997, Cook became one of a handful of people from industry to receive the IRS Commissioner's Award for his leadership in helping modernize the agency’s tax administration business processes and systems.

In 2007, he received Federal Computer Week’s FED 100 award, given to the top 100 executives in government IT, for his leadership role assisting the IRS in setting a new IT direction. He also received FED 100 awards in 2014 and 2019 for his efforts to harness innovation to help federal agencies transform their missions. He received his bachelor’s degree in marketing from the University of Maryland.

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Exclusive: TTS Director Wants GSA’s Innovation Shop To Punch Above Its Weight

From NextGov

Anil Cheriyan, a former bank chief information officer and chair of the Technology Business Management Council, has been director of the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Service, or TTS, for a little more than 100 days. In that time, he’s been listening and observing and says he believes the relatively small teams at GSA’s innovation hub can punch above their weight class if given the opportunity.

In a wide-ranging, exclusive interview with Nextgov, Cheriyan talks about his experience moving from the private to public sector, what it will take to ensure TTS has a broad impact across government, whether it should exist as an independent business line or be tied to acquisition, the significant evolution for the future of the Centers of Excellence and how to improve longstanding programs like 18F and FedRAMP.

Nextgov: Did you ever think you would be a federal employee?

Cheriyan: No, I didn’t. I had retired from SunTrust back in early 2018 and I was just spending my time on boards and doing some advisory work. Sometime toward the latter part of last year I got a phone call from someone in the White House saying, “Hey, do you want to do this thing called TTS?” At which point I said, “I have no idea what TTS is and I’ve never worked in the federal government and it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense for me to do it.” And the individual said, “No, no. You should think about it and consider it.” I said, “Send me some material,” which they did. I started reading about it and talked to a few people and slowly got more and more interested in the mission and what it was all about and I felt the mission of TTS is really something that’s as big as you want to make it. It’s a huge opportunity. What I call “big canvas” that we can create.

So, I got hooked. And if you think about it, I spent 35 to 40 years in the private sector and a lot of that in this country and this was an opportunity to give back and do something.

I’m not naïve. I don’t think I can come in here and change the world in a few years. It’s more helping the journey move forward. Helping the things move ahead. And if I move things forward a little bit, the good thing about doing it in the federal space is it’s a large canvass, so you can move things for 360 million people and move it for 3.5 million federal employees. So, a little change is worth a lot.

That’s what I’m hoping for: Get some momentum going in that direction.

What’s your impression 100 days into being a federal employee? How does the experience differ from in the private sector?

There are a lot of similarities, in the sense that you’re doing things with a fair degree of change. What I wasn’t aware of is the level of intensity of focus on change from the administration and, not just the administration, but everyone in the government in terms of IT modernization. The case for change seems to be reasonably well-made, and I didn’t believe that would be the case, having not done anything in government. That was an exciting, good thing to hear and see.

The organization TTS, as well, is full of high-energy, capable individuals. Some are term employees, coming here and spending time with a sense of mission, doing something for government. I didn’t think I would find that. The traditional view when you’re outside of government is everyone moves slowly and no one’s interested in changing. So, when I found that I was pretty excited because there’s a team that’s really driving toward making things happen.

There are perceptions out there about the people who make up the government, but there are also perceptions about the system being resistant to change. You manage a shop focused on innovation and say you have people who want to make change happen. What kind of barriers are you running into from the system itself?

Even in private industry, when I ran technology and operations for the bank—at SunTrust—there were a lot of barriers to change. There’s cultural barriers: individuals who really don’t want to make the change happen. There are individuals who, even at the bank, who say, “This too shall pass. We will watch another person come in and want to make the change." That’s human nature and it’s there. So, there are those cultural barriers that I’ve found working at Sun Trust over the years.

here’s a lot of opportunity to say, “This is what the law says we have to do,” and, "This is legislated this way and we can only operate in this manner." So, there are those types of barriers that exists that, frankly, have not been challenged. I’d say the same thing if you’d interviewed me at SunTrust. There are lot of people who’d say, “Well, audit wants us to do this,” and, “Legal wants us to do that,” and “You know we can’t make these changes.”

So, there are those barriers that people put up. Not that there’re all fictional. There are some of them that are true and need to be dealt with.

I think the ability to drive the transformation is not to come in and say, “I have a smarter way to do things and I will therefore teach you how to make the change.” I think that’s a no-win situation. The approach that I’m taking is more a: Let me listen, let me learn, let me bring the right ideas, let me bring the right team and put the right people together. And I have a firm belief that if you do that, you’re going to drive the change.

And it’s driven by more of a fact-based approach; it’s driven by more of a buy-in from individuals, who then really buy in to you, as well. Coming in with the right approach, I think you can get over most barriers.

Now, there’s always things that are bigger than you and things that are bigger than, frankly, GSA, and things that are bigger that need to be addressed. And hopefully those are all things people are working toward. This is not a sprint; this is a multiyear journey that will take time.

If you try to tilt yourself against the biggest and hardest thing, you’ll never get anything done. But if you start making the right decisions, start making the right changes, start building momentum, before you know it you have that flywheel effect of really driving change and some of the bigger [barriers] will start coming down at that point.

Does TTS have all the resources it needs? Do you need more people, more funding, more top-cover?

Resources are not a real obstacle. There’s always a battle for talent. That would be the case across the board: Whether you’re at TTS or anywhere, there’s always a need for talent. I think that we have done a reasonably good job at TTS so far in using innovative approaches to bring the right people. Whether that’s the right mix and so on is something that we can address.

I think the funding issue: We’re very much cost-recoverable in the main; very much a cost-recoverable group. Agencies will pay for value and if you deliver value and you demonstrate that value, I don’t think there’s a real funding issue from that standpoint.

What issues have you found? What have you learned and are there any immediate changes that need to take place?

Let’s talk about the good. The good is a really innovative team, a really high-energy team, a real culture for wanting to do the right thing from a mission standpoint. So, a really good base to work from. And a good momentum: A lot of the CoE work being done, there’s a fair degree of momentum there; the 18F team has really driven a lot of change and now are more cost-recoverable and driving real value.

But there are areas that need to be addressed. I believe that while we have good, strong subbrands like 18F and the PIFs [Presidential Innovation Fellows] and the CoE brand, we are not punching above our weight, really delivering impact at a level at which I believe we can. There’s a lot of good work. But is it really being done with the impact that is meaningful when you think about the overall mission of what TTS is and what they’re trying to do?

What level of program or impact do you think would be reaching for the stars but still within reach?

Take the CoE approach. We have an approach which is more top-down, transformational, agencywide.

Take the USDA transformation that’s going on. It’s a close partnership with [Agriculture Secretary] Sonny Purdue; with Steve Censky, the deputy secretary; with Gary Washington, the CIO. Really top-down driving changes that are connected to what the secretary of USDA wants to have happen: Consolidating to one call center, really driving the client experience, building the dashboards.

So, that’s the kind of a top-down approach that is working, where you can really say, “Here’s the impact. This is the real value and here are the millions of dollars we’re going to be saving on data centers,” for example.

Whereas, when you’re doing a lot of smaller projects that are at the individual program level, showing that impact is harder. Especially if it’s deep down in the bowels of an agency with an individual who might be three levels down from the CIO.

Not that they’re not important. They’re good projects. But translating them into real impact—what is the real outcome, what does it mean for our citizens, what does it mean for our federal employees—those are things that we need to punch above our weight, as it were, to really show that impact.

It doesn’t have to be big programs. It can be smaller, targeted projects. Small doesn’t have to mean small impact. You can do small projects that really have a significant impact.

From an impact standpoint, you just have to bring the right things together. If you bring in the CoE team and 18F team and the PIF team and maybe even leveraged some of OPP, you’d probably have a significant impact with one or two members of each of those teams actively participating together with a joint outcome in mind.

Which leads me to the second point. The groups have been put together over the years and it’s evolved over time—from OPP and 18F and the PIFS and more recently the CoEs—and they still operate in their siloes. There’s an opportunity to look across. And we’re actively doing things like that.

Take cloud, for example. OPP has a lot of cloud impact with FedRAMP and all of the—some of which actually come out of 18F—Cloud.gov. 18F does a lot of cloud work and cloud acquisition work. The CoEs have a lot of cloud playbooks. And, frankly, if you take that one step further, the rest of FAS has a lot of cloud schedules: ITC [the Information Technology Category] within FAS has got a pretty large cloud portfolio. There’s an opportunity to bring all those together and bring all of them to bear for an agency, rather than the individual siloes.

And the agency would benefit. They’d say, “Well, this is pretty good. You’re bringing the whole thing,” from solutioning to definition to migration through acquisition. There’s a whole game here that we can be playing that’s a lot bigger than the individual parts.

What is the future of TTS? Briefly, before this administration took office, TTS was raised up as a third line of business at GSA, beside FAS and the Public Buildings Service. Then, it was relegated back under FAS. Can or should TTS be its own delivery line or is technological transformation intrinsically linked to acquisition?

It’s funny. We were in a FAS leadership council meeting and—I don’t want to get into the historic reasons as to why they were not as integrated as they should have been. But the more and more I sit down in FAS conversations, the more and more I think of them as a machine that’s very large and very effective in doing acquisitions, especially in the space of technology. For the TTS organization to not leverage that, you’re not really driving the full value. You can make transformation happen at a small scale and you’ll never really be at the impact that you want to be unless you pull in the broad machine of FAS.

Now, is that the only channel for transformation: acquisitions? No. You can do transformation, and acquisition is a piece of it. You also could be partnering better with industry partners. You could be bringing in industry further ahead in the game—I think the CoE teams do that to some extent.

But I think there’s an opportunity to leverage industry a lot more—both the services as well as on the software side. There are a lot of players out there, especially new, innovative players that, frankly, government can benefit from spending a lot more effort on.

FAS is a major channel for TTS to be effective and drive change. But so is having industry partners on the services side and on the software side.

Organizationally should it belong or not? I don’t want to get into it. That really doesn’t matter. It’s really how you operate that’s more important.

Being separate and not being connected to FAS is wrong. Being part of FAS and still not being connected is not right either.

Technology and acquisition certainly seem to be linked. There have been a number of large IT contract vehicles being planned by agencies that are now moving through GSA. We’re seeing this a lot more with tech than buying other things, like air conditioners. What is it about buying technology that is pushing agencies in this direction and why are they coming to GSA?

I think it’s a combination of things. And I would say that GSA does a really good job of buying fleet and should be doing more, as well as in the buildings area, it does a really phenomenal job. Those are two areas where GSA is doing really well.

The evolution of technology, now, from being one where you buy widgets—you buy a server or you buy a network or you buy a piece of hardware—all of that is changing very quickly. Everything is now software-defined and becoming software-defined. If you’re familiar with the Wall Street Journal article “Why Software Is Eating the World” back in 2011. That’s pretty much what’s going on.

If you look at the telecom industry—why EIS [Enterprise Infrastructure Services] at GSA going to become such a big success, especially with 5G, is because it’s software defined. It makes it much more easily controlled and there’s a convergence of software and hardware that’s going on.

What is a cloud? It’s a software-defined infrastructure.

Everything is going toward that, where people are not going to buy individual components but they’re going to buy solutions. And there’re going to buy combined solutions. It’s going to be harder and harder for CIOs in each of the organizations to become familiar with all of those areas. And I think the solutioning around that, either they’re doing that on their own or they’re using GSA or they’re using third parties—integrators.

That’s one piece of it. Technology is changing so much that it makes the buy more complex and you need the assistance to do that.

That’s where the TTS role can become even more. We do some assisted acquisition but I think there’s a significant amount of work in really driving—what I call “moving left” in an organization—driving the change to be more business focused, outcome focused, solution focused, rather than, “I need 23 widgets and 44 servers”—that’s the extreme right of the acquisition.

Sounds a lot like the principles in the Technology Business Management framework, which is now a mandate for agencies to incorporate. Before coming to TTS, you chaired the TBM Council, which created a taxonomy for linking IT investments to specific business outcomes. But TBM is not the only framework out there. What makes it special? Why should this one framework be mandated across government?

I’m kind of biased. Having run the TBM Council—which I don’t anymore, having joined the government. But when I was looking at this as a problem to be solved in my prior career, I did a lot of research into all the different frameworks that are out there and, frankly, found nothing that really translated—from a taxonomy perspective—these component parts to a business solution. That’s fundamentally what TBM does, it pulls it all together in a taxonomy that’s clear, that’s manageable and needs a fair amount of work to do that translation.

But it really didn’t exist anywhere. And TBM was one—I was one of the founding members of the TBM Council back in 2011—to really drive that. There were six or seven of us as CIOs and now it’s grown to 7,500 members and it’s international and everybody’s following it, etc., etc.

There’s no one that’s really caught up with that real framework. There are lots of players that get involved with it. But they’re catching little pieces of it. That’s not to say that others won’t catch up. But I think at this stage, I would recommend it at any point in time.

But, frankly, I’m not involved in those discussions. I was on the other side of the equation when the government said, “Hey, we want to go, by 2020, have all budgets go to OMB using the TBM taxonomy.”

There might come a point in time that we build that competence as a CoE. But there are lots of other interesting things for us to do. But I think it’s a worthwhile thing to do that transformation.

Back, for a minute, to the consolidation of contracts at GSA. Based on your experience in the private sector, is there a tipping point where that becomes problematic?

I don’t know enough, frankly. This is one of those where it would probably be wrong for me to comment about it. I’m not that steeped in the acquisition process as perhaps I should be. A little more than three months in and I’m learning it.

Should 100 percent of all contracts across government come through GSA? I don’t know. Maybe there’s a point where you get to value and then there’s a point you don’t want to go beyond. But I’m just guessing.

I ran acquisitions for the bank. But that’s a different story than running an acquisition arm of the government.

Getting into the programs, let’s start with the Centers of Excellence. There are plans to open two more centers—for seven total—and maybe in the future, you just mentioned, a TBM center. What will this program evolve into?

Let me back up a little bit and say that the term “CoE” is being used in two different ways right now. One is “center of competency,” of which there are five right now: client experience, call center, IT modernization, cloud and analytics. Those are centers of competency.

However, the term is also used as the approach being taken, coming top-down, agencywide transformation.

Agencywide transformation coming top-down, working with the secretary or deputy secretary on down is a good thing. We should continue to do that.

The competencies that we bring right now are five. We’ve got two agencywide transformations running: USDA and HUD [Housing and Urban Development]. And we’re pushing for another three this year. Will they all show up immediately? There’s a whole process I’m going through for determining where and how. And it’s not just me—it’s [GSA Administrator] Emily [Murphy], as well as OAI [the Office of American Innovation] and [Federal CIO] Suzette [Kent] and [White House Deputy] Chris Liddell—we’re all actively looking at evaluations of what the next agency should be.

Are you ready to break news on the third one?

No, not yet. You’ll hear about it when it happens. I’m hoping in April, but these things take time.

But going back to those five centers. We are actively looking at rationalizing those five and thinking about what additional ones we should be adding to it. Shortly, we should have a list of what those competency areas are. Client experience is clearly one; call centers kind of falls within client experience. Cloud and IT modernization are very tied together.

And we’re actively looking at new ones. RPA [robotic process automation] is one. We’re looking at identity security. Really, we’re looking at what do agencies in the government need. I think those are ones we’re familiar with—for security and identity we have Login.gov, a lot of security work gets done at FedRAMP.

When you say rationalizing, you mean looking at whether they should exist on their own or combining some?

Think of taking the word CoE and using it to define solution areas. The approach that’s being used for agencywide innovation is really the right approach. Do we need to bring all of these solution areas, some of these solution areas, one of these solution areas to an agency to drive transformation from the top down?

One major change from the first two rounds: Phase I contractors couldn’t compete in Phase II. That’s changing going forward. Is that safeguard no longer necessary?

It’s still there. What we’ve done is to say that if you’re in Phase I in one domain area, you still can’t do Phase II in that same domain area. But there’s no reason you can’t do Phase II in another domain.

If you’re doing Phase I call center, you won’t be doing it for Phase II. But you could still do Phase II cloud, or something else.

Fundamentally, what we’re saying is don’t give the full henhouse to the fox—or however you want to call it.

Let’s go to 18F, which was part of the genesis of TTS becoming its own thing. There have been a number of GAO and inspector general reports on that team in the past. What issues have you found in the first 100 days and how are they being addressed?

Frankly, the team has done a really good job before my joining to fix a lot of the IG and GAO issues. I think it’s commendable their taking that and really driving that. Their leader, Angela Colter, has done a really good job of making that happen.

18F is doing really well and thriving. It’s doing its thing—path analysis work and user-centered design—and doing it for probably about 18—it’s in the teens—agencies that they’re actively engaged with. One of the issues was if they’re cost-recoverable and are their consultants busy enough—fully utilized. That’s what’s really changed. We’ve really got that up and running in a real way. All of that is really now cleaned up in a significant way, in partnership with our general counsel and their team, there’s been a lot of good work in fixing that.

Where I want to take it moving forward is really that impact conversation that we had earlier. How do we drive bigger impact, pick and choose the right projects, connect it to the rest of the family—bring in PIF when we need them or the centers of competency when we need them—build platforms, if appropriate, which is really what 18F has done with Login.gov and Cloud.gov—there could be lots of other platforms we could be looking at.

There are many more programs, too: PIF, FedRAMP and some of the other groups under the umbrella of TTS. Can you talk about the rest of the family?

The PIFs: We just had another 19 or 20 PIFs join in January. They’re working at 15 or 16 agencies. We’re actively recruiting, looking for the new wave. April 22 is the timeframe for when we need all the applications in. We’re looking at late summer to have another wave of PIFs come in.

There’s a high demand for them. All the agencies love the PIFs and they work with them, particularly on the CTO [chief technology officer] side of the conversation, there’s a lot of good connectivity there. So, that’s going to continue to grow.

Where does the demand for PIFs come from? At 18F the demand comes from tackling a specific problem. For the CoEs, agencies come to you. When people come to you and say, “We need a PIF,” what are they asking for?

They’re typically looking for assistance in a technology area that’s very specific. For example, we’re doing a fair amount of work with the Marine Corps. Their CTO [Jennifer Edgin] really wanted some technology assistance in what they were trying to get done. VA [Veterans Affairs] is another one, where, actually, the CTO [Charles Worthington] used to be a PIF. So, he knows our capabilities and he’s already laid out some critical areas.

They could be in artificial intelligence, machine learning. They could be in use of visual recognition tools. There’s a whole list of specific needs they come to us with.

On the CoE side, I do want to say that they don’t all come to us. We work with several individuals to jointly define where the opportunity is.

On the OPP side, which is the Office of Platforms and Products, FedRAMP is probably the most well-known. I’m getting a lot of good input from lots of players on the good, bad and the ugly on FedRAMP. If I were to say, “Here are the opportunities,” on FedRAMP, people want it to be faster, cheaper and more reused across government. That’s at the heart of the complaints.

The team’s done a phenomenal job of getting it done faster. They’ve certainly improved on the cycle times. We have an opportunity to get the voice of the customer better into FedRAMP.

FedRAMP has been dealing with these same issues since its inception. When you say getting more of the “voice of the customer,” is that a novel idea? What can be done to get over those hurdles?

Some of the noise that I hear right now is very anecdotal. What I’d like it to be is much more compliant driven and much more curated, as it were, so that we have a forum and an approach.

The FedRAMP team does do a lot of clientsat [client satisfaction reviews] and actually their clientsat is very high. But I want to get the broader picture and we have to figure out how best to do that.

We can continue to speed it up, leverage technologies available out there. It’s fundamentally a risk management framework—there are lots of players who do those things. The scoring mechanism to make that happen, in terms of what level you have—there are lots of opportunities to automate those further. And then, work very closely with [Federal CIO] Suzette [Kent] and the CIOs to drive adoption.

There are three issues: the cost, the time and the reusability—the portability of security accreditations from one agency to another. Sounds like you’re working on the first two, but what can TTS and FedRAMP do about the third?

There’s a lot of outreach that we could be doing. There’s a lot of communication leveraging the CIO-wide network [the Federal CIO Council] that already exists that Suzette runs. We don’t need to recreate a lot of these. I think this is more of a drive by influence.

Making it a law is probably not the easiest thing to do. But making it a needed activity with the right buy-in from everyone. ATOs [authorities to operate] are done often by the CISO [chief information security officers] in the organization, getting them to buy in—getting them to have a say, getting to understand what their issues are—I think that’s part of that whole change that needs to occur.

What is the future of TTS? What new programs need to be launched? What areas of technology transformation does TTS not cover now but should?

Let me put it another way. We’re actively looking at how do we do three things: one is build momentum. Building momentum is really about how do you get more agencies to leverage TTS and build it in such a way that we are doing what they need us to do. If they want us to do blockchain in the next year, maybe that’s a competency we need to build. I’m not sure that’s real. But meeting the demand and understanding the demand and building the momentum to drive that is one area that we are really focused on.

That means having the different players at TTS play together in an integrated fashion and really playing above our weight and having more impact.

The second piece is about establishing a sustainability. It’s a very small organization. I don’t think it should be a humongous organization. But I do think it should be a sustainable organization, in the sense that, when you have competencies, is there reusability, is there a community of partnership there, are you leveraging the right external sources, do have a method by which you are doing something sustainable—even the demand process has to be sustainable.

Building momentum, establishing sustainability, and the third piece is really driving for excellence. I think there’s an opportunity here to not make money but to be excellent in what we do, and be financially independent—or cost-recoverable—which I believe if you do the right things in the right places we will get to.

Those are the three things we’re looking at. And if it generates new opportunities—RPA is one that is a good opportunity, maybe that’s one where we spend more time and effort building. All of that will come based on those three main strategic goals.

Part of that sustainability, by the way, is leveraging GSA more, leveraging the FAS organization, leveraging our partners more. There’s a lot to be done. But I think we can be the tip of the spear on a lot of transformation that’s going to take place.

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How public-sector leaders can foster innovation now

From GCN

Looking back at many of the government IT systems developed over the last 50 years reveals some of the leading innovations of that era. The Social Security and Medicare systems that helped millions of Americans determine eligibility and receive benefits were the among most complex and leading-edge IT systems of the times. Yet while these solutions performed well in the past, maintenance and updates have been deferred for too long and many systems now urgently need modernization.

While private-sector companies have leapt ahead in innovation by adopting agile models to smaller scoped sprints and modules, public sector organizations are often using legacy software systems that no longer serve their constituents effectively.  Additionally, government is still trying to do "big bang" large-scale IT projects.  Among these massive projects, failure is very common and often is a source of hesitation for agencies considering an IT investment. In a recent CHAOS Report, the Standish Group noted that many larger-scale projects never return value to an organization. Only 6% of such projects were successful, compared to 61% of small projects.

A number of pressures are converging to bring the issue of modernization to the forefront.

• Increasing expectations from citizens: In today’s digital society, citizens have come to expect the same high levels of service and responsiveness from the government that they do from Amazon or Uber without paying a premium.


• Shorter technology lifespans: Where agencies once expected systems to last decades, today a five-year-old mobile phone seems antique.


• More security threats: Security threats to government systems are accelerating as well, and agencies must harden legacy systems that provide vital services like water and power and election monitoring. A cybersecurity project becomes another opportunity to modernize with more resilient technology and platforms.

Government simply must become more efficient. Leveraging modern technology and innovation is the most effective way to get there and will ensure government systems can drive efficiencies to meet the needs of the people they serve. Public-sector leaders can accelerate their innovation initiatives by adopting the following four strategies:

1. Design systems from the outside facing in. Modernize based on the way citizens engage with government, rather than how changes have always been made. For example, someone starting a new business may need to deal with multiple agencies: one for federal tax purposes, another for state taxes, a different agency to register a business name and another agency to apply for permits. Instead of simply updating the technology around this cumbersome process and expecting citizens to figure it out, reimagine the system to make it easier and faster for business owners. Of course, this means agencies must coordinate with each other better.

2. Engage citizens the way they want to be engaged. Americans are accustomed to shopping online, banking via secure mobile apps and enjoying retail experiences personalized by machine learning. We should be applying the same expectations to government services.

3. Innovate the procurement and budget models to accommodate agile. Large-scale IT projects should be broken down into much smaller phases incorporating concepts like minimal viable product. This approach will deliver more immediate business value as agencies build toward the bigger systems. Find ways to leverage agile in a fixed-budget model in which agencies must live. In the triple constraints of project management (budget, schedule and scope), flex on scope.

4. Adopt market solutions instead of custom solutions. Where possible, agencies should adopt enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, financial and HR solutions from the market leaders instead of reinventing the wheel. This approach frees agencies from the trap of maintaining costly custom solutions or dealing with potential interoperability issues.

Agencies should start with an overall assessment of their systems based on the constituents they serve. Modernization not as just a replacement initiative, but an opportunity to transform an agency to enhance the service it provides to constituents. With that vision in mind, they should deliver solutions in smaller increments and continuously improve to add value, taking advantage of innovations and practices from the private sector. That approach will ensure they are developing the solutions and processes to serve constituents effectively.

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5 Paradoxes of an Innovation Culture


From: NextGov

A recent trend has been to set up an innovation office to serve as a catalyst for new ideas. These offices can be helpful starting points and an inspiration to employees across an organization. However, most leaders want to create a culture of innovation across their entire workforce, not just in an elite subset of employees.

Harvard professor Gary Pisano has studied what it takes to create an innovation culture in dozens of companies across the world and in a recent Harvard Business Review article he observes that “innovative cultures are seen as desirable . . . [but] are hard to create and sustain.” He says five characteristics exemplify an “innovation culture” in organizations:

• A tolerance for failure


• A willingness to experiment


• Provides psychological safety


• Is highly collaborative


• Is nonhierarchical

Perhaps surprisingly, he found that creating a successful innovation culture actually requires embracing some seemingly paradoxical behaviors. “Unless the tensions created by this paradox are carefully managed, attempts to create an innovative culture will fail,” he writes. Leaders must embrace the paradoxes inherent in each of the five characteristics he identified, he writes:

Paradox 1: Allow tolerance for failure, but no tolerance for incompetence. Pisano cautions that “tolerance for failure requires having extremely competent people.” Failures provide valuable lessons for going forward: “But failure can also result from poorly thought-out designs,  flawed analyses, lack of transparency, and bad management. Google encourages risk taking and failure because it can be confident that most Google employees are very competent.” He says that leaders need to clearly articulate “the difference between productive and unproductive failures . . . we should be celebrating learning, not failure.”

Paradox 2: Be willing to experiment, but be highly disciplined about it. Pisano says that it is important to try many new things but equally critical to “establish clear criteria at the outset for deciding whether to move forward with, modify, or kill an idea.” He points to Flagship Pioneering, a Massachusetts company that creates science-based new ventures, which runs experiments to expose an idea’s flaws, not to validate initial ideas.  He says that for Flagship employees, “continuing to pursue a failed program means forgoing the opportunity join a winning one.” But he cautions that “demanding data to confirm or kill a hypothesis too quickly can squash the intellectual play that is necessary for creativity.”

Paradox 3: Create psychological safety, but be brutally candid. Traditional management texts point to the importance of creating a space where employees feel safe in proposing new ideas or challenging existing processes. But “psychological safety is a two-way street,” he notes. Each side must be safe to criticize the other using unvarnished candor. In effective innovation cultures, “people are expected to be able to defend their proposals with data or logic.” He also notes: “When it comes to innovation, the candid organization will outperform the nice one every time. The later confuses politeness and niceness with respect . . . Accepting a devastating critique of your idea is possible only if you respect the opinion of the person providing the feedback.”

Paradox 4: Foster collaboration, but demand individual accountability. “Too often, collaboration gets confused with consensus. And consensus is poison for rapid decision making and navigating the complex problems associated with transformational innovation,” he writes. Leaders encourage accountability by publicly holding themselves accountable. For example, he points to Johnson & Johnson executive Paul Stoffels, who told his employees: “You take the risk; I will take the blame.”

Paradox 5: Be flat, but provide strong leadership. Flat organizations have few layers, but cultural flatness is “how people behave and interact regardless of official position.” Pisano says:

“Deference is granted on the basis of competence, not title.” He notes that flat organizations require stronger leadership than hierarchical ones: “Flat organizations often devolve into chaos when leadership fails to set clear strategic priorities and directions.”

In concluding, Pisano say that building and sustaining an innovation culture that embraces these five paradoxes is hard because they require a combination of seemingly contradictory behaviors, which risks creating confusion. Staff will find that certain behaviors are easier to embrace than others, and some individuals will not be able to adapt at all. The hardest part may be that  “innovation cultures are systems of interdependent behaviors, they cannot be implemented in a piecemeal fashion.”

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Government Innovation. What to Do When You Know the Question, but Not the Answer

Innovation is a topic that continues to draw attention in public sector. How can innovation be effective in organizations that, by design and tradition, have low tolerance for both risk and change? The proposed Government Effectiveness Advanced Research Center (GEAR) is conceived to stimulate technology upgrade pilot programs for agencies. The end goal is to accelerate IT modernization, increase the skills of the government workforce and accelerate innovation. This also stimulates consideration of the question, “How does government best drive innovation?”

Some approaches subscribe to the need to separate business operations from innovation. Gartner’s notion of “Bimodal IT” is the practice of managing two different work styles: One is focused on what is well known, with predictable results. The other is aimed toward exploration. Gartner’s point is that bimodal IT is necessary to allow innovation to flourish in a fast-changing environment, while also adeptly managing the current operations. As with any organizational concept, it involves people, process and technology to be able to collaborate across the business, increase agility and drive innovation.

Government has been evolving the approach to innovation to include this concept of separation of styles of work. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently announced a program to fund a multi-year $2B investment of the next generation artificial intelligence called “AI Next”. This program has two facets. One focuses on automating critical DoD business processes, such as security clearance vetting or accrediting software systems for operational deployment; improving the robustness and reliability of AI systems. The other facet focuses on funding a series of innovative investments, the Artificial Intelligence Exploration (AIE) program. The AIE establishes a series of high-risk, high payoff projects where researchers will work to establish the feasibility of new AI concepts within 18 months of award. This program is bolstered by streamlined contracting procedures and rapid funding mechanisms to move research from proposal to project inception within three months of an opportunity announcement. This is an example of the bimodal approach in practice.

 Under what circumstances does this separation model make sense for government? We were inspired by the elements of Uncertainty and Directedness in a recent Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) article, “Innovation is a Many Splendored Thing” to consider the answer. (See diagram below.)

The DARPA approach reflects the type of lightly directed innovation with uncertain results. This can complement the tightly directed, requirements-driven certainty in most government programs. The more open approach suggests the notion that at least one type of public sector innovation thrives when unleashed from the low risk tolerance of most government organizations, and when offered safe cover to experiment, and even fail. Think of this as moving along the continuum toward “Uncertainty” where the element of “Directedness” is more about guiding than forcing. Outside-in direction is about providing that safe corral and accelerated processes, not necessarily about dictating, the methods and outcomes. In fact, in these examples, less directed experimentation may win the day by nurturing less fettered creativity and quick insights. The idea of setting innovation capabilities outside the operational organization has been adopted by a number of organizations and has some lineage of success to recommend it.

Not every innovation needs to be a moonshot, nor should it be. Not every innovation project is high-risk, resource intensive, mission critical, nor delivers immediate ROI. If your organization knows the question, but doesn’t know the answer, consider a bimodal approach by planting innovation initiatives outside the operational organization…and see what blooms.

Michael Donovan, Chief Technologist, Manufacturing, DXC Technology

Judy Douglas, Client Industry Executive, Perspecta

Dan Gilbert, Strategist, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

David Park, Director, Digital Services, Perspecta

Diana Zavala, Director, Analytics and Data Services, Perspecta

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Few Agencies Made Awards to Small Businesses Majority-Owned by Multiple Venture Capital Operating Companies, Hedge Funds, or Private Equity Firms

GAO-19-205R: Published: Dec 21, 2018. Publicly Released: Dec 21, 2018.

Among the 11 agencies participating in the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, from fiscal years 2015 through 2018, 3 agencies awarded contracts and grants to small businesses majority-owned by multiple venture capital operating companies, hedge funds, or private equity firms (investment companies and funds). Specifically, the Department of Health and Human Services' National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, and the Department of Education's Institute for Education Sciences made a total of 62 awards and obligated $43.6 million to such businesses during this period. This amount constituted between 0.1 percent and 2.7 percent of these agencies' obligations for the SBIR program each year.

NIH is the only agency that made awards to small businesses majority-owned by multiple investment companies and funds in all 4 fiscal years in GAO's review. Also during this period, the Department of Defense submitted a written determination to the Small Business Administration and certain Congressional committees as is required prior to making SBIR awards to such companies, but it did not make any such awards. The other seven agencies elected not to use the authority for various reasons. Officials from most of the agencies that elected not to use the authority told GAO they believe that opening their programs to small businesses with majority ownership by multiple investment companies and funds would not substantially contribute to the agencies' missions.

Why GAO Did This Study

To stimulate technological innovation, the Small Business Innovation Development Act of 1982 amended the Small Business Act to, among other things, call for the establishment of the SBIR program. Federal agencies with obligations of $100 million or more for extramural research or research and development--which is generally conducted by nonfederal employees outside of federal facilities--are required to establish an SBIR program. In fiscal year 2017, the 11 federal agencies that participate in the program awarded about 4,800 federal contracts and grants totaling nearly $2.3 billion to small businesses. The SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Act of 2011 amended the Small Business Act to authorize agencies to allow participation in their SBIR programs by small businesses that are owned in majority part by multiple investment companies and funds. Upon providing a written determination to the Administrator of the Small Business Administration (SBA)--the agency that oversees the SBIR program--and congressional committees specified in the act, agencies may make SBIR awards to such small businesses.

The Reauthorization Act also included a provision for GAO to conduct a study of the impact of requirements relating to involvement in the SBIR program by investment companies or funds and submit a report to Congress regarding the study every 3 years. This report updates GAO's previous work on this subject by examining, for fiscal years 2015 through 2018, agencies' use of the authority. GAO reviewed agencies' data on their use of the authority and found it reliable for its purposes. GAO also reviewed information in the SBIR program policy directive and conducted semi-structured interviews with program managers from the 11 participating agencies and SBA.

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DEVELOPING AN INNOVATION MINDSET IN GOVERNMENT

From: Booz Allen Hamilton

Today’s agency leaders are challenged to be faster, more efficient, and more sophisticated—potentially with fewer resources. With the recent release of the Administration’s overarching plan for government reform, the pressure continues to grow.

While this environment can be a source of frustration, it’s actually one ripe for innovation because with pressure comes possibility. It’s precisely in this moment of reorganization that leaders should seek opportunities to embed innovation into the employee culture.

Before we review our advice for how leaders can do this, let’s be clear about what innovation isn’t, because many people get stuck right there. Innovation is not:

• A program with set resources


• A time-bound activity with a deadline


• A single invention or change

Looking at our most successful clients, it’s clear that innovation is a cultural mindset—an embedded tolerance to push boundaries, experience setbacks, and apply lessons for the next uphill climb.

So if innovation is a fundamental willingness to evolve, where do you start?

Apply Advice from Top Government Innovators

This summer, we teamed with the Partnership for Public Service to host a roundtable session where 23 senior government executives unpacked this thorny concept of innovation. Participants representing 12 different departments and agencies engaged in dynamic problem-solving exercises on topics such as incentivizing innovation, piloting ideas, collaborating across government, and sustaining success.

Attendees sat in on a panel with government leaders who shared their own personal experiences when pushing for innovation, and who offered the following advice for others in the same situation:

• Break out of your four walls. While we’re seeing exciting pockets of innovation spring up throughout the government, there’s an increasing need for collaboration between organizations, especially now that we have clear cross-agency priority goals. Instead of innovating in a vacuum, seek partners to advance a common mission. Panelist Eddie Hartwig, deputy administrator for the U.S. Digital Service, shared an example of how one citizen engaged with multiple agencies in order to obtain a visa, as well as a marriage license. While there are multiple organizations involved in these processes, there is only one customer, which creates a need for agencies to innovate together.

• Don’t be constrained by the current reality. Panelist Thomas Debass, acting special representative for global partnerships at the U.S. Department of State, encouraged participants to consider how to get something done, not just whether there’s a past precedent to follow. There will always be bureaucratic barriers to innovation at any large organization, so persistence in communicating an idea is critical. Also, understanding that not every idea is equal, be conscious that constructive feedback towards employees—versus a green light—is sometimes the best way to encourage iterative improvement.

• Provide “top cover” to employees. Only 31 percent of 2017 Federal Viewpoint Surveyrespondents said that creativity and innovation are rewarded at their agencies. That’s among the 10 most negative responses in last year’s survey. Mariela Melero, associate director of customer service and public engagement at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, explained that innovators need to be given space to be creative and drive change. She suggested helping employees be creative by providing them with top cover should their ideas fail, serving as a sounding board for ideas, and helping to champion the most viable ones.

We know that risk taking does not come naturally to the Federal Government. But to drive meaningful change, agency leaders must make it clear that innovation at all levels—and even a healthy amount of failure—is strongly encouraged to better achieve the mission of serving citizens.

Allow Space for Controlled Failure

At Booz Allen, we've addressed similar challenges. A few years ago, we knew we needed to hire new and different skill sets, and take more risks to meet our mission. At the most basic level we developed our Innovation Center, a “safe” collaboration space designed to make day-to-day operations much different for employees tasked with some of our most forward-thinking projects.

As a reminder that failure is part of the journey to success, our first chief innovation officer gave out “get out of jail free” cards, encouraging employees to embrace mistakes during their time at the Innovation Center. This increased tolerance for trial and error helped transform our culture.

There’s no question that government employees want to innovate: 91 percent of employees who took the Federal Viewpoint Survey reported “I am constantly looking for ways to do my job better.” The trick is helping leaders recognize great ideas and find ways to act on the best ones. If you don’t experience failures as a government leader, it likely means you’re not taking the risks necessary to advance the mission that brought you here.

For more on this topic, watch Ben, Nyla Beth, and Meroe Park from the Partnership for Public Service, discuss innovation in government.

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Innovation in the News: Accelerating IT Modernization through Acquisition Innovation

Lesley Field, Deputy Administrator in OMB’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy, and Tim Cooke, President and CEO of ASI Government, leader of this Institute for Innovation Initiative, took the stage at ACT-IAC’s Imagine Nation ELC 2018 last month. They shared the collaboration of leading acquisition and IT professionals with their mission partners to accelerate the PMA IT modernization goal.

Lesley stressed the need for acquisition professionals to work closely with their mission partners, take advantage of all of the tools available to them, and share their knowledge to improve acquisition results. Tim, who is leading the ACT-IAC Institute for Innovation’s “Accelerating IT Modernization Through Acquisition Innovation” initiative, described four workstreams focused on problems, processes, authorities, and successful buying organizations, that will provide federal agencies and the companies that support them with tools and best practices to aid their acquisition efforts. Those products are planned to be made widely available as they are completed in the coming months. In the meantime, you can stay abreast of acquisition innovation events and activities by following the “Acquisition Innovators Daily” newsletter

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