Ola Olude-Afolabi Illustrated The Pathway for Data Innovation and AI in the U.S. Federal Government
How is AI empowering governments?
Dr. Ola Olude-Afolabi, data scientist and AI project manager at the U.S. Department of Commerce attended Worldwide AI Webinar to talk about how data and AI are changing the landscape for the U.S. in an insightful keynote. Keep reading for the highlights of her speech!
Check out her presentation on our website and YouTube channel.
Joint Venture Partner program at National Technical Information Service (NTIS)
Having operated since 1988, NTIS has evolved over the years and morphed into creating innovations and AI solutions. With the new Joint Venture Partner (JVP) program, NTIS aims to empower federal agencies in matters such as cybersecurity, fraud & anomaly detection, and enterprise data governance among others.
NTIS has a detailed four-step process when collaborating with partners for innovation, skills acceleration, and invoicing burden reduction:
- Ideate
- Conceptualize
- Propose
- Implement
What’s more, there will be a whiteboarding session where the agency will meet with all JVPs to answer their questions before proceeding to obtain a clearer picture of the targeted group.
NTIS values
Ola detailed five values of NTIS:
- Accelerated project setup: NTIS strives to initiate projects quickly through collaboration with the customer and with establish a relationship with the JVP program
- Highly collaborative: NTIS remains closely involved throughout the lifetime of the project
- Extremely diverse skillset pool: NTIS offers unprecedented access to industry expertise
- Customer ownership: the customer fully drives the agile project ensuring that its business needs are accomplished
- Reduced invoicing burden: NTIS vets work-performed evaluates performer invoicing, and requests the agency’s approval prior to authorizing payment
The importance of AI ethics
While AI and data have been at the forefront, protecting citizens remains the nation’s top priority. Therefore, DOC encourages other corporate entities to keep financial data and confidential information safe and secure.
Dr. Olude-Afolabi also shared some responsible AI resources, such as:
- Executive Order 13960: The Executive Order calls for the CIO council to identify, provide guidance on and make publicly available the criteria, format, and mechanism for agency inventories and share the consolidated inventories with other agencies
- Accountability, Ethics & Governance framework
- Responsible AI framework
- IEEE AI Ethics Standard
All in all, Ola claimed that NTIS offers:
- Easy access to solutions
- Fed-to-Fed services allow for transparent communication and the exchange of ideas
- Wide range of industry experts from a diverse group of partners including industry and academia
- NTIS manages JVP relationships and ensures customer satisfaction
- Agile deployment allows the ability to test different strategies to achieve the optimal solution with potentially no paperwork or change of specifications
- High satisfaction rate
- Reduced invoicing burden
