FAST23 - IT Solutions - Part 6: User Stories/Case Studies

FAST23 - IT Solutions - Part 6: User Stories/Case Studies

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- Our last session will tie everything together for the audience by showcasing how actual customers have utilized GSA solutions to solve their problems, meet their needs, and support their missions with real life user stories. We've categorized this segment into three categories, acquisition guidance to procure 5G, moving a legacy system to a modern secure cloud, and reducing risk posture for supply chain risk management, SCRM. As we go through these user stories, imagine yourself in the shoes of the person in the story. Does what you're hearing resonate with you? Can you imagine yourself taking similar actions? And what would you do things differently? How would you do things differently? Or could you build upon what's already been done or use existing knowledge and tools to help your organization? With all of that in mind, I would like to introduce our first speaker, Christian Williams.

- Thank you, Robin. All right, so good day everyone. My name is Christian Williams and I'm the Section Chief for the Wireless Mobility Solutions, and COMSATCOM programs at GSA. I am also the co-chair of the Federal Mobility Group, or FMG for short. The FMG is a community of practice chartered under the federal CIO council that works across federal government to identify common mobility challenges, develop workable solutions, and create an opportunity to share best practices.

All right, so I know everyone is filling out that poll. I greatly appreciate it. Please stay tuned and we'll see the results at the end. Next slide.

All right. All right, so today I would like to start by talking about the acquisition guidance to procure 5G technology. We call it the 5G Acquisition Guide for short. The 5G Acquisition Guide has recently been released, and I encourage you all to download it after this event on buy gsa.gov, and or CMLS. Just type in 5G in the keyword search and you will find it there. And we're gonna post that in the chat as well.

All right, so the purpose of this document, is to provide agencies with the information and guidance when it comes to procuring secure 5G technology. This document was produced in accordance with a Secure 5G Beyond Act of 2020, which is associated with the national strategy to secure 5G. We created this guidance with contracting officers, specialists, and cores in mind to help them with the numerous factors to consider with their IT managers when it comes to 5G technology. This guidance will also help agency leaders with strategies and tools to help improve security posture when it comes to 5G technology solutions. All right, next slide. Thank you.

So, I did want to mention that putting this guidance together was a total team effort. Many of our government and industry partners were instrumental in assisting GSA in putting this document together. I definitely wanna extend my sincere thanks to all of them, as you see here on this slide. Very much appreciative.

All right, next slide. All right, so I wanna touch on the evolution of 5G for a moment. How did we get here? And why is it important to tap into this medium? So, as you can see here on this slide, you probably all remember 1980s. Well, some of you maybe that, you know, cell phones at the time were just, they were just, all you could do was make a call, right? It was a big brick that you held up to your head.

And that's all you could do was make a call. The end in the 1990s, we started shifting into 2G. You were able to do more than just calls. You were able to text, but I don't know if y'all remember the texting, if you wanted to get to the letter C, you had to hit the '2' button three times just to get to that letter. So, texting was a challenge. And then it was also flip phones, right? Even though flip phones are coming back, so.

So, old is new again, I guess, so. Then in 2000 we shifted to 3G. Now, you're starting to actually be able to watch videos on your phones and on your tablets. We were able to internet browse a bit. Then in the 2010s, we started getting into 4G, which is somewhere you probably still have on your phone today. The 4G LTE, right? So, now you're actually doing your video chatting, you're streaming, things like that.

And low and behold, 5G is here. A lot of you have that on your phones now. You're probably seeing increased download speeds. You're starting to see a lot of IoT devices that are powering it. So, yeah.

And you know, we always gotta keep that butter churning. So, look out for XG, it's right around the corner. We don't stop, right? All right, so next slide. All right, so this is one of my favorite slides here. So, the roadmap to 5G means different things to different people. There are so many ideas.

Sometimes it's hard to know where to start. This is true for any organization considering an emerging technology. A few years ago, the Wireless Mobility Solutions team at GSA worked out a 5G for government strategy composed of six core concepts. All right, so the first is technology.

What can 5G do that previous sailor technologies could not? Well, for starters, it can move much more data at much higher speeds. The Wireless Mobility Solutions program at GSA encourages agencies to explore the capabilities of 5G enabled devices and services. Inter-agency forums like the Federal Mobility Group are good place for this as well. We also look at the overlap, how mobile technologies with 5G capabilities can be used to connect, control, secure, and integrate solutions powered by other emerging technologies, like machine learning, augmented reality, and edge computing, just to name a few. Next, we direct agencies to examine relevant standards.

This is mainly the realm of NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology. NIST sets the standards agencies use them to define their requirements, and industry follows them to deliver solutions. There are also international organizations like 3GPP, 3rd Generation Partnership Project, which develops protocols for mobile's telecommunications used all over the world.

You also have to take into account spectrum allocation since different 5G technologies operate at different bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. The third aspect is security. 5G enables vast networks of devices which can be vulnerable to sophisticated cyber attacks, which you've heard today.

To address this, Congress passed the Secure 5G Beyond Act of 2020, which directed relevant agencies to develop a strategy to secure and protect 5G future systems and infrastructure. GSA works with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, CISA, to vac security requirements directly into contracts that we manage. One such example, is Cyber Supply Chain Risk Management, or C-SCRM, which is the framework that looks at entire life cycles of a technology from its raw components to its decommissioning, and reinforces any weak points in the supply chain that malicious actors could exploit. These security considerations drive the fourth aspect, which is government-wide policy.

In order to fully realize the Secure 5G and Beyond Act of 2020, the government needs a strategy to get there. And we have that in a national strategy to secure 5G. It details how the United States will lead global development, deployment, and management of secure and reliable 5G infrastructure. The last two areas we focus on are acquisition and use cases. Acquisition is the nuts and bolts of getting the solution in place in the most efficient and effective way. Use cases are the real world applications that agencies are pursuing or want to achieve.

Once you understand the technology, know the standards and consider the security aspects, and are up to date on the policies, then it's time to plan and execute. If you think of the strategy, look at it like a will. The use case is the end of one cycle, and the beginning of another. All right, so next slide. So, this leads me into 5G use cases. We know 5G is here by the many commercials that we see, and looking at the bars on our phone, right? But, how will it really benefit the government? Is there anyone out there using 5G driven technology right now? This is where identifying use cases is critical.

Use cases are what helps agencies see the real world scenarios that will work for them. This is very important when it comes to 5G and emerging technologies that will come from it. As I mentioned before, I am a co-chair of the Federal Mobility Group, or FMG. In 2019, and 2020, the FMG visited more than 15 5G labs and test beds nationwide to understand each lab's capabilities and how the federal government could use the lab.

FMG undertook this initiative as a service for all agencies, whether they were ready to test or pilot 5G capabilities, and to also understand how to leverage 5G for their missions. We also, at the FMG, hosted a series of 5G executive tours to select technology hubs around the country. During each tour visit, senior federal IT executives, CIOs, CISOs, CTOs, and SESs, experienced live demonstrations of game-changing capabilities enabled by 5G and other emerging technologies. Participants were also introduced to state-of-the-art research and connected with thought leaders and labs beyond innovations that will change federal agency workplaces and their mission at attainments, and capabilities. We were able to see some remarkable use cases during these tours.

Next slide. All right, so this slide here has a list of 5G service provider use cases. There are many emerging technologies that really only 5G can make happen.

These use cases can range from smart sensors that can monitor traffic embedded in the road, to logistical smart warehouses that are completely powered by 5G technology. All right. You see that here. And, next slide. All right, so this slide here shows 5G enterprise systems. This is where you see entire networks and operations where 5G is replacing your simple T1 and ethernet type connections.

During our 5G executive tours, we visited the VA Palo Alto Hospital, which is the first powered 5G VA hospital. Here we saw AR and VR, and how it's changing how medical procedures are being taught to students, and how immersive technology can help improve medicine. All right, next slide. All right, so as I had mentioned, 5G will increase productivity, improve mission delivery and business operations, as well as open the door to a host of new applications and services.

Knowing this, the Wireless Mobility Solutions program revamped and expanded our best in class wireless mobility solutions SIN on the GSA multiple awards schedule and addition patient of future growth. GSA's, wireless mobility solutions offer agencies a procurement path for a comprehensive portfolio of wireless products and services. We break them down into 11 subcategories. Wireless carrier services, mobile hardware infrastructure, mobility-as-a-service, enterprise mobility management, mobile backend-as-a-service, telecom expense management services, mobile vacation vetting, mobile threat protection, mobile identity management, internet of things, other mobile services. I realize everyone won't know what all those different club categories are, but that's why you can definitely reach out to us, and go to our website.

So, you'll find these special offerings on our special item number SIN 517312. The wireless mobility solutions. This program is open to all federal agencies, as well as state, local, and tribal governments via the cooperative purchasing program. And like I mentioned earlier, you can find that on our website. Also, if you have any questions or wanna talk more about this, cause, our team would love to talk to you.

We love talking about wireless mobility. Please reach out to wireless@gsa.gov, and we can put that in the chat for you. Wireless gsa.gov. We love to talk to you more about this. All right, next slide.

So, also recently, GSA modified the enterprise infrastructure solutions, EIS contract to bring in aspects of the wireless mobility solutions SIN 517312. The added elements of the SIN to the EIS contract permit EIS industry partners with the capability to better provide a more inclusive enterprise infrastructure solution under a single agency task order. This reduces agency acquisition complexity and quantity of task orders to manage. It also better enables a shift to managed services and as a service.

Now, all compatible EIS services are updated, leveraging wireless interfaces to include direct mentions of 5G and future evolutions. All right, next slide. All right, so I would like to reiterate the importance of GSA having a leadership role in the Federal Mobility Group under the Federal CIO Council.

The FMG is made up of 400 federal members supporting over 45 agencies across the federal government. The leadership includes our two executive sponsors, Bon Noga of CIO, the CIO of EPA, Mr. Brian Epley, the principal director of CIO, of DOE. And our executive category manager sponsor, Larry Hale of GSA. We also have two other co-chairs besides myself, and that's Lillian Herrera of DHS CISA and Jim Mahao of NIST. The FMG also has four working group strategic pillars that include leads from different agencies to include DOI, GSA, DHS CISA, NASA, and DoD.

Our mobile security pillars led by DOI, GSA, DHS and CISA. Our acquisition pillar is led by NASA. Our 5G and mobile pillar network infrastructure is led by DoD. And our missile enablement pillar is led by Department of State. Our membership is open to all federal employees and support personnel.

You can contact us if you would love to join, and we would love to have you at fmg@gsa.gov. Just drop us a line and we would love to invite you to our group. All right, so that wraps up my presentation today. Now, let's take a quick look at our poll results. If we can pull that up.

Awesome. Wow. Understanding technology.

I think that was the winner here. And I definitely can understand why that's the big challenge. And that's why we do have groups like the Federal Mobility Group.

And like I said before, you can contact us wireless@gsa.gov, and we can answer any question you have. All right? And I know there are probably some questions in the chat right now, but due to time we will answer those.

And I'll make a deal with you. How about this? I'll make a deal with you. If you email us your questions at wireless@gsa.gov, we will make sure we, my team and I will make sure we, we answer those promptly. Thumbs up. Good deal? Thumbs up, everybody.

Hopefully. Yeah, there we go. All right. Appreciate that, appreciate that. All right, that concludes my presentation. Everyone have a great day.

Thank you. Back to you, Tamika and Robin. - Thank you, Christian. Joining us to discuss our next user story is Barry Hodge. Barry, tell us about your user story. - All right, thanks Tamika.

Before I get started though, I'm gonna have to cut a deal with you and Robin to get a earlier slide in fast 24. It's tough following all these great presentations of my colleagues have been able to to give out today. So, good afternoon everyone. I am Barry Hodge with the ITC products subcategory working in the software and cloud division. I'm the branch chief for the cloud branch and I lead a small team of cloud subject matter experts that help GSA connect with...

connect with vetted vendors on the GSA vehicles that provide Cloud and Cloud related IT professional services. Next slide, please. So, today I'll be covering a user story from a relatively recent outreach and engagement conducted by my team with the selective service system regarding their registration, compliance and verification system.

And I'll refer to it going forward as RCV. My team engaged with the SSS, to review a draft performance work statement that they developed to cover a full end-to-end migration of the RCV system to the Cloud. Selective service sought and received funding for this system modernization effort through the technology modernization fund, or TMF, covering about three years of planned effort. We conducted several joint working sessions to discuss the history, background and other factors surrounding the effort. Next slide, please.

So, we found that during these working sessions, many of the considerations and factors are impacting selective service or common problems that media agencies phase, in one form or another, as they plan and migrate existing on-premises services to the Cloud. There were also factors that were specific to this scenario. First, as an example of a scenario specific consideration, selective service had deadlines related to the TMF funding that impacted recommendations. This was a factor because TMF has intensive planning and reporting requirements. And this presented a problem due to the fact that limited information was available to SSS for the out year activities at this point. A more gradual approach to help them inform and iteratively build on the whole plan was necessary.

As examples of some of the more common factors that I mentioned earlier, selected service had a need for improved resiliency, and scalability. Like many agencies, the selective services on-prem environment had limitations in terms of the ability to withstand infrastructure, downtime and outages. As well as limitations in the ability to adjust capacity based on workload ebbs and flows. Again in the common factors arena, the ever increase in attention and focus on cybersecurity, which was covered extensively in our previous segments. That's particularly important for this system, which contains PII data for the American public.

Many of us remember the fallout from the OPM data breach back in 2015. Imagine that being extended to all 18 year old males, and above. Also along these lines, on-premises federal systems have benefited from years of aggregate security improvements and there's perceived loss of control when migrating systems from a known government owned and operated security perimeter to a commercial environment partially managed by a cloud service provider. Additionally, there may be interoperability requirements that remain post-migration with other on-prem systems, data sets and users. And lastly, many agencies encounter resource constraints, whether in the form of limited experience in the Cloud, or existing resources simply don't have the time or the means to take on additional work beyond keeping the existing systems operational and healthy.

So, all of these factors were relevant to the RCB migration, and helped influence the recommendations we ended up providing. Next slide, please. So, based on the aforementioned factors, we ultimately recommended phases to the acquisition with a modular acquisition approach rather than a single large acquisition covering the migration cradle grave. Given the increased project planning and reporting requirements and approach with each acquisition, providing inputs to the next was recommended and that aligned better with the out year reporting requirements for the TMF. First acquisition in year one was scope to application rationalization. The attend of this app rationalization is to produce all the necessary documentation and artifacts about the RCB system to help determine an optimal cloud architecture and migration strategy.

Thereby the phase one acquisition outputs feed the phase two acquisition and so on. So, in phase one, building out the business technical and security needs, they're being documented in that phase. You know, questions that are being asked and answered in this phase, in this app rationalization phase. What are current infrastructure requirements that would cover things like compute network and storage requirements that would be needed as the systems move to the Cloud? What are our uptime requirements? How do we quickly, how quickly do we need to recover from a major failure? What's our end user community? And where do they connect from? Do they connect from the internet? Do they connect from the corporate network? What interconnections are required for the system to operate? So, the list goes much further than that.

But that gives the idea of what the process entails, and how the answers help make decisions in the next phase. Next slide, please. Sharing this slide, we don't have enough time to do a deep dive on app rationalization, but I wanted to share that if you'd like to learn more, the Federal CIO Council has developed the App Rationalization Playbook. We often provide this to customers that engage us for efforts like this.

It provides a framework for assessing your agency's application portfolio for next steps. There's a lot of reusable information in there that can help, that can be tailored to your agency's specific needs. Just use your favorite search engine, and look for the PDF on cio.gov. Next slide, please. So in phase two, we recommended a modernization and migration scope. This phase require acquires a subject matter expertise to help select the service migrate the application to a FedRAMP moderate cloud environment.

In the way of modernization, in addition to optimizing the architecture for improved cybersecurity and the resiliency and scalability they required, our recommendation here is typically to give heavier weight to automation of infrastructure and platform components, and to use cloud agnostic tooling to do that, rather than relying on legacy. And many times manual methods of deployment. So, using deliverables and knowledge gain for phase one, this phase will deliver to the selective service new cloud architecture and design documentation. And a documented migration plan.

Also performed in this phase is the actual execution of the migration, including any prerequisite foundational work to enable a new cloud instance. Also, very importantly, this phase requires a development of support documentation, which will be owned by the government as a contract deliverable. It ends with the transition of operations to a separate support contract, which we'll cover in the next slide.

So, the third phase will be the recipient of the phase two operational transition. This phase covers standard IT operations and maintenance activities for the newly deployed cloud system, ranging from regular system maintenance, such as security patching, backup and application upgrades, all the way through to incident management, troubleshooting, and problem resolution. At this point, there's still some flexibility in terms of establishing a completely new acquisition specific to RCV operational support in the Cloud, or having this operational transition be targeted to existing operational support contracts or federal resources that are supporting the on-premises environment. Next slide.

So, what are the major expected outcomes and benefits of this modular acquisition approach? First, selective service will get a fully documented system pre and post migration to include the system architecture, the migration history, and full operational support artifacts during that operational transition. Additionally, the the desired system scalability and resiliency where the initial drivers will have been achieved. And by following these recommendations, selective service has broken this work down into smaller, manageable chunks, which promotes vendor flexibility for them, and gives vendors into small business arena a chance of competing with the large integrators for smaller pieces of work. By adopting automation and cloud agnostic tooling that I mentioned, selective service will achieve better system portability, allowing them to avoid being locked into a specific CSB out in the future. And then the agile implementation allows for course correction between contracts, whether due to information discovered in the previous phases or for unforeseeable factors that may materialize at any point.

Each phase also provides more information for better cost estimating in cost control for the ensuing phases. And to close things out, selective service will have achieved the cloud smart objectives that all of us are subject to, and while doing so with qualified and vetted vendors that avoid having to hire permanent federal employees for work that's limited duration. Another way to look at that is you're freeing up those existing federal resources to do other important work. So, that concludes the user story.

If you could jump to the next slide. How can we assist you in the cloud acquisition journey? Next slide, please. If you wanna reach out to us, I won't read this, but our cloudinfo@gsa.gov email address is how you would get in touch with us. We monitor that and usually try to respond very quickly. There's also some additional links and resources there for you to peruse at your leisure.

Appreciate everyone's time today. We'll look forward to any questions that come in. - Thank you, Barry. For our final user story, we are joined by the director of Assisted Acquisition Services, Mark Johnson. Mark, the floor is yours.

- Hey, thanks Tamika. Hopefully, everybody can hear me okay. Boy, I tell you what Barry, I know you thought you were in a tough spot, but I think I'm, Going last year, I'm between everyone in a nice frosty beverage of everyone's choice here. So, I'm gonna try to make it quick and get to the point. So, good afternoon everybody. Again, my name is Mark Johnson, and I'm the Region 6 Assisted Acquisition Services director here in Kansas City.

And I'm gonna talk to you today about a good news story in which we were able to help out the office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment. So, a little historical driver. On July 21st, 2017, executive order 13806, Assessing and Strengthening the Manufacturing and Defense Industrial Base and Supply Chain Resiliency was signed by the president. The executive order assessment evaluated risk based on current and planned operating priorities. As of late 2017 and early 2018, an inter-agency task force led by DoD created 16 work groups with over 300 subject matter experts from across the federal government. Subsequently, executive order 14017, America's supply chains was signed on February 24th, 2021 by the president furthering the analysis required by the prior executive order.

As a result of this second executive order of fact sheet was written in outlined, outlining supply chain assessments for four critical products, semi-conductors, advanced pack manufacturing and advanced packaging, large capacity batteries, like those for electric vehicles, critical minerals and materials and pharmaceuticals. And active pharmaceutical ingredients. The administration took immediate action to address vulnerabilities and strengthen resilience.

With the launch of new effort aimed at addressing near term supply chain disruptions. And pursuant to the executive order, it is crafted strategies for six industrial bases that underpin America's economic and national security. To address these issues, the Small Business Innovation program ignited with development of tools to attempt to address this gap of information to quickly assess national security concerns, which lead us to where we are today. Next slide, please. So, what was the need? The Office of the End Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment or OUSD A&S is responsible for assessing and monitoring the industrial health and security of the defense industrial base or DIB in those industrial sectors that are inextricably linked to the resiliency and effectiveness of the DIB, as highlighted with the executive orders.

OUSD A&S is the executive sponsor for SCRM. And the Army leads a SCRM working group that is comprised of a myriad of organizations across DoD, and civilian agencies to standardize how SCRM is governed across the SCRM enterprise for consistency. Thus, as you can imagine, a need for an enterprise level solution that allows cross and horizontal organizational information sharing. One of the critical areas in measuring industrial health is supply chain illumination to allow the federal government to holistically screen and vet vendors, as well as their underlying supplier networks affiliated personnel to ensure suppliers are reputable, in good standing, financially and operationally secure, and will not introduce unacceptable risks to the government.

Without these services, the federal government would have an impaired defensive capability. Since the executive orders impact multiple agencies across the federal government, OUSD had to review and analyze and document the areas of concern from all stakeholders while repostering funds for emerging executive order priorities under the current admin administration. As a result, continue need for having access to critical data already obtained due to the utilization of an existing tool could not be underscored to the vital interest of mitigation of risk to the United States government's supply chain. So, to address this issue, what did we do? GSA's Assisted Acquisition Services is an execution arm for federal agencies to meet their contractual needs by soliciting, awarding, administering, and closing out contracts on their behalf in support of their mission. Region 6 AAS supported OUSD A&S by writing a task order office schedule, utilizing SIN 54151ECOM under NAICS 541519 to support their mission along with 35 current other tenant or federal organizations that work within the SCRM mission space. As stated, it currently services 35 separate agencies, both DoD and civilian, and continues to rise as a task order has the capability to onboard new tenants as their funding becomes available to support their agency SCRM mission needs.

We currently are in discussions with NASA and the Chief Digital and artificial intelligence office, or CDAO from DoD. This interim solution would has a ceiling of 74 and a half million dollars and has achieved bulk volume discount pricing, creating cost avoidance for the lower tier quantity tenants that otherwise would not have been realized. It also has a labor capability that can be leveraged under letters of technical direction to support agencies with SCRM capable SNE and supported the SCRM mission set.

This is proven to be very successful when agencies do not have the staff to address their SCRM mission. Lastly, as new capability becomes available on the platform, it is made available within the task order so that the agencies may take advantage of new emerging technologies within the SCRM discipline. The current contracting officer and project manager or Jennifer Allsbury and Katie Doll respectively. And their contact information is on this slide for you. They would love to hear from you. So, feel free to reach out to them if you find the solution may possibly meet some of your SCRM needs.

I think what is most impressive are the capabilities found within this solution to support agencies and augment their SCRM mission. Next slide, please. The capabilities underneath this task order are quite substantial.

Something very unique under the task orders is that government users share data, and the analysis internally with other government stakeholders on the contract that are on the task order, thereby maximizing information, sharing and awareness at scale. Each subscription allows an unlimited number of customer users from the organization. The task order, and the SaaS solution uses AI, and SCRM professionals to rapidly triage over 31 million unstructured sources and over 16,000 structured sources to include premium data sources. For example, organizations requiring subscriptions and contractual terms to purchase data for information on over 500 million legal entities in over 190 countries and over 1100 industry categories. Clients can integrate their data sets and enabling rapid in high confidence illumination of supply chain, identify increase in flagged risks and better insights into vendor and supplier alternatives. The platform has a global presence that provides access and insights into local data sets and perspective.

This capability reads and automatically translates data into approximately 70 languages. The platform tracks and transparently reports all decisions made by the cognitive engine to include search terms, data sources, and results used for each subject, even if there are no results. This allows traceability and reduces audit risk. The risk model was developed and refined by a multi-discipline team for of industry experts, and informed by government and commercial clients. The platform monitors entities for relative changes including regulatory violations, legal proceedings, or any other adverse content, and automatically triggers alerts tied to the risk of interest to the user.

It has a unique and customizable relevance and rating system. With support, name match confidence, and materiality of result, minimizing false positives that occur from keyword searching, removing up to 95% percent of false matches. And lastly, the task order has top secret FCL requirement and maintains a team of supply chain risk management professionals with deep expertise in national security intelligence and counterintelligence, and geospatial intelligence issues. So, support clients that work in the classified areas can still again, continue to receive benefit. One of the most recent items in which this task order helped aid in senior leadership to make informed decisions that you may have seen in the news is the temporary stopping of the delivery of the F35 back in August of 2022.

The root cause was the finding that there was an alloy used in the magnets on the jets turbo machine pumps that was produced in China. This task order capability illumined the supply chain, and provided a written analysis of the risk to the senior officials. Now, decisions are made being made in days, vice weeks. Next slide. So, what is the way forward? Cause this is an interim solution.

We have to understand at any point in the supply chain lifecycle from concept to design, manufacturer integration, deployment, maintenance, and retirement, the threat may be realized when an adversary's capabilities and intentions align with the inherent or introduced vulnerabilities of the system. There is no certainty that an attack will happen. But, the risk is there when this alignment occurs.

Once the functions of threat, vulnerability, and consequence are measured, and recorded and evaluated, risk can be determined. And a risk management program designed and implemented. So, having a multi-disciplined approach is necessary.

This approach is unique concept as it centers around how an assessment needs to be driven. The key is understanding how intelligence assessments are made that lead into informed decisions. Assessments are the development of behavioral forecasts, or recommended courses of action to leadership of an organization based on wide ranges of available information or intelligence assessments develop in response to requirements to informed decision making. An intelligence assessment, reviews available information and previous assessments for relevance and currency.

In this case, the key is for this information not to stem from the same source, nor gathered in the same manner. Having a toolkit that provides agencies the ability to leverage multiple tools, different tools is the key to ensure that a common operating picture is achievable and provided. This is exactly what Region 6 AAS and ITC is working on for the next gen solution. So, stay tuned.

By ensuring methods that are different, can and will provide affirmation of data, or create the environment in which a logical assessment can be developed to move from situational awareness to situational understanding. This will mitigate risk within the supply chain that affect the national security. This concludes my portion of the Fast 23 successful Acquiring IT solutions and Accelerate Modernization Brief.

Before I go, and I know we're all overtime, but I'd just like to thank you for your time today, and appreciate you listening, again. Back to you, Tamika. - Thank you, Mark.

These user stories were great examples of how GSA solutions can help organizations. Hopefully, you can follow the blueprint used successfully by others, to apply emerging technologies in your organization in ways that would drive mission success. (upbeat music) (upbeat music fades)

2023-04-23 16:39

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