Nextgov Emerging Technology

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    EMERGINGT E C H N O L O G Y

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     2  NEXTGOV DECEMBER 2015

    PG 3 CENSUS’ PLAN FOR 2020 COUNT FUL L OFNEW TECH

    PG 5 ARE CYBER DOPPELGÄNGERS IN OUR FUT URE?

    PG 8 HOW GAMES TRANSFORM FEDERALDISASTER RESPONSE

    PG 11 FCC’S AMIBITIOUS CLOUD PLAN

    PG 15 A DARPA DEAL FOR ROBOTICS MAKERS

    Outside Washington, there’s a notion that the private sector outpaces the publicsector in adopting new technology.In the past year, the federal government has been taking measured steps to change

    that perception. The departments of Defense and Homeland Security both openedoutposts in Silicon Valley, aiming to absorb new ideas and commercial tech talent. The

    president’s 2016 budget request includes $146 billion in research a nd development.This eBook takes us on a tour of federal projects involving leading-edge technol-ogy — from the Census Bureau’s plans to modernize the 2020 survey, by outfittingfieldworkers with mobile devices, to “gamifying” disaster response by nudging firstresponders to compete with each other on the job.

    In the process, these agencies give us a glimpse into what the government of thefuture looks like, one, five or 15 years down the line.

    Camille Tuutti Executive EditorNextgov

    Introduction

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     3  NEXTGOV DECEMBER 2015

    By Hallie Golden

    F rom offering Internet response options toequipping fieldworkers with mobile devic-es, the Census Bureau has big tech plans for itsdecennial count.

    On Sept. 8, the bureau released its 2020Census Operational Plan, a detailed outline ofhow it will carry out its nationwide populationcount. And if all goes according to this plan,these innovative techniques could make it thefirst count to be cheaper than its predecessor.

    In 2010, the count cost about $124 per house-hold, said Lisa Blumerman, associate directorfor decennial census programs, during a Sept. 8review of the plan. T he bureau’s estimated costfor the 2020 count is $88 per household.

    The overarching goal of the plan is simple:“to count everyone once, only once, and in theright place.” The techniques Census plans touse for achieving this goal, however, are muchmore complex and involve a big boost in howthe agency uses technology.

    Census plans to encourage the public torespond to the count via the Internet, use data

    previously collected to reduce door-to-door visits, automate operations in the field a nd usegeographic information systems and aerialimagery to boost the accuracy of its address list.

    This will be the first time the bureau hasused many of t hese techniques to count theentire country. (The agency attempted touse mobile devices during the 2010 count,but ultimately failed). With only fours yearsleft of preparation time, Census is enteringcrunch time.

    “Conducting a successful and cost-effectivecensus takes years of careful planning,” said

    Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., in an Oct. 6 state-ment about Census’ 2020 plans.

    Successfully counting some 320 millionpeople in a matter of months will a lso requireCongress to equip the bureau w ith the neces-sary resources to both prepare for the countand execute it, Carper added.

    “If Congress continues to subject the bureauto ‘crisis budgeting,’ with repeated stop-gapspending measures, sequester, and shortfallsin funding, the bureau’s operational plan willquickly be thrown off track,” he said.

    Focus on new technological techniques and cost savings

    Census’ Plan for 2020 Count Full ofNew Tech

    “CONDUCTING A SUCCESSFUL AND COSTEFFECTIVECENSUS TAKES YEARS OF

    CAREFUL PLANNING.”Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del.

     

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    By Camille Tuutti 

    In the not too distant future — perhaps soon-er we’d expect — humans could have digitaldoppelgängers who look like us, act like us andpotentially, even have the same legal rights as us.

    It may sound like science fiction, but it’s the vision Mart ine R othblatt has of a world p ow-ered by big data.

     Admit tedl y, Rothbl att ’s idea s a re a bit out

    there. She’s a transhumanist, a futurist whobelieves technology can free humans fromtheir limitations. Rothblatt pointed to thefact that increasingly today the contents ofour minds — thoughts shared on social mediaplatforms, video surveillance and purchasesmade on e-commerce sites — are being pouredinto big data repositories. In the near future,all that data can be used to create cyber car-bon copies of humans that can outlast physi-cal bodies, she argues.

    “It will be inevitable that there will be digitalreplicas of ourselves that sound like ourselves,think like ourselves, perhaps even feel like our-selves,” said Rothblatt, CEO of biotech companyUnited Therapeutics, speaking Sept. 30 at The Atlantic’s Washington Ideas forum. And whenour bodies begin to fail, for example, becauseof dementia or Alzheimer’s, these “cyber-con-scious continuations of ourselves will claimthey are ourselves and they will have a right tocontinue our activ ity as citizens.”

    Martine Rothblatt’s vision of a big-data world

     Are Cyber Doppelgängers inOur Future?

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    In that scenario, Rothblatt says, issues l ikeethics and legality will come into play. Butmore important, what will need explorationis the philosophical question about whethera cyber human is just “a fancy digital puppet”

    or possesses values and has internal feelingsabout its world, Rothblatt said.

    Moreover, should cyber-conscious beings begranted the legal rights of their predecessors?

    Rothblatt has taken on this topic more in depthin her latest book, Virtually Human: The Promise

    and Peril of Digital Immortality , which exploresthe potential rise of digital doppelgängers.

     A worl d wit h so -ca ll ed mi nd clon es mayseem light years away. But consider somecurrent advancements in intelligent technol-ogy that a few years ago seemed mere fanta-sy. Rothblatt, a transgender woman, has anartificial intelligence modeled after her wife,Bina Aspen Rothblatt, dubbed Bina48, who’s mentioned in a March 2015 TED Talk, “My  Daughter, My Wife, Our Robot and Our Questfor Immortality.”

    But on a bigger, commercial scale, today’ssoftware companies are racing to develop a

    product that will “out-Siri Siri,” by creatingand tweaking “mindware” to closer approxi-mate our human personalities, Rothblatt said.

    “The hottest area of software development iswhat I call mindware: software that replicates

    more and more aspects of the human mind andthe human personality,” Rothblatt said.

     An d as thi s min dwa re gets fi ne-t une d toreflect each individual’s unique personality,a world with digital doppelgängers may notseem so crazy after all.

    CYBER DOPPELGÄNGERS | Tuutti

    “IT WILL BE INEVITABLE THAT THERE WILL BEDIGITAL REPLICAS OF OURSELVES THAT SOUNDLIKE OURSELVES, THINK LIKE OURSELVES,PERHAPS EVEN FEEL LIKE OURSELVES.” Martine Rothblatt 

    https://www.ted.com/talks/martine_rothblatt_my_daughter_my_wife_our_robot_and_the_quest_for_immortality?language=enhttps://www.ted.com/talks/martine_rothblatt_my_daughter_my_wife_our_robot_and_the_quest_for_immortality?language=enhttps://www.ted.com/talks/martine_rothblatt_my_daughter_my_wife_our_robot_and_the_quest_for_immortality?language=enhttps://www.ted.com/talks/martine_rothblatt_my_daughter_my_wife_our_robot_and_the_quest_for_immortality?language=enhttps://www.ted.com/talks/martine_rothblatt_my_daughter_my_wife_our_robot_and_the_quest_for_immortality?language=enhttps://www.ted.com/talks/martine_rothblatt_my_daughter_my_wife_our_robot_and_the_quest_for_immortality?language=enhttps://www.ted.com/talks/martine_rothblatt_my_daughter_my_wife_our_robot_and_the_quest_for_immortality?language=enhttps://www.ted.com/talks/martine_rothblatt_my_daughter_my_wife_our_robot_and_the_quest_for_immortality?language=enhttp://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/nasa-jpl-curiosity/

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    The Sk's Never The LimitNASA beamed Mars to Earh via the S cloud.

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    By Mohana Ravindranath

    F or more than a year, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has been refining its open-source disaster mapping system, GeoQ. Thesystem lets first responders document damage —tornado wreckage, for instance — and upload geo-tagged images to an open, crowdsourced, search-able map, helping to ensure responders aren’tduplicating their clean-up and rescue efforts.

    The spy agency is continually updating GeoQ

    — adding new features such as color-taggingworkflow — and NGA is still figuring out howto measure whether it’s worth the time andfinancial investment. NGA tech lead Ray Bauerchatted with Nextgov about the agency’s effortsto trim inefficiency by giving first responders aclearer picture of disaster scenes.

    This conversation has been edited for lengthand clarity.

    What are NGA’s future plans for GeoQ?How is it evolving?

    Ray Bauer: [NGA Director Robert] Cardilloreally wants us to push forward with the“democratization of GEOINT [geospatialintelligence]” — his words. How are we to pullin a lot of this data that’s out there and makesense of the noise?

    In talking with [GeoQ’s Huntsville, Alabama,team], they noted that during emergencyresponse in triage centers, first responders wereactually writing on their arms the number ofcritically injured to to less-severely injured tokeep track of those numbers at a location. So we

    added the ability to triage, and a way for them toadd information to an online version of a triagelist that, in real time, hospitals could watch asthose numbers would increase or decrease.

    How do you measure success of open sourceprojects like GeoQ?

    Bauer: Since it’s new for us, trying to collectthe appropriate business analytics is kind ofan emerging science for us. One of the waysI’ve been measuring the success of GeoQ is the

    number of stars that it’s gotten on GitHub. Starsare the equivalent of “likes.” GeoQ has receivedover 237 as of this morning. Somebody out onGitHub made a heatmap that shows you all overthe globe people that have starred your reposi-tory. We’re not trending in Kazak hstan yet, butwe are in some areas of Asia and Europe.

    How do you market this project to first-response teams?

    Bauer: We’re kind of new to this, especially

    with Github, even though we’ve been out therefor over a year.

     We have created these projects for a nyoneto participate with us in developing, or even forcompanies to take the code and make it better,and possibly resell it. There’s no restriction onthe licensing for this.

     An othe r per son [on the Geo Q tea m] hasbeen contacted by an insurance company whosees using GeoQ as a really great way to do anafter-damage [report] to show where insura nceagents have done adjustments.

    NGA’s gamification efforts trim inefficiency and help first responders

    How Games Transform FederalDisaster Response

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    Tell us how you’re gamifying disasterresponse on GeoQ.

    Bauer: We set up the gamification server almosta year ago. It gives you badges and it gives you

    points, following a lot of those other apps like Waze and others. We kind of looked at them andtried to mimic some of the best features.

    Right now, they are getting points for“Feature Creation.” For each damaged house,they would get a point. You can see how this

    kind of wouldn’t be fair if someone got an areathat didn’t have damage.

     We want to us e badge s to help de velop ou rtradecraft. For example, if we have a group ofpeople who do disaster response, we want tomake sure everyone gets a “Tornado Badge,”everyone gets a “ Hurricane Badge,” everyonegets an “Earthquake Badge.” And then, wewe can also measure their level of proficiencywithin that.

    In a perfect world, we would want everyonewho does disaster response to have all the

    badges and the maximum amount of points.That’s one of our main goals.

     We actu al ly test ed gami ficat ion duri ng atornado outbreak in Oklahoma a year and a halfago and we witnessed what was I thought pretty

    awesome. We didn’t even tell the folks what thepoints were for, and people started to compete ina friendly way. They were actually coming to lookfor more work, because the analyst next to themhad completed their work and had 10 points andthey completed theirs, and only had eight.

     We actua lly fou nd one gentleman who wa shelping us test this system — he was gamingthe system. He was creating lots of little dam-age points, instead of drawing one damagepolygon. What he taught us is we have a lotmore to learn.

    What’s GeoQ’s ultimate goal?

    Bauer: I’m trying to change the geospatial-intel-ligence collaboration [process] through GeoQ. Alldisasters are local, so when a tornado hits a small

    town in Alabama, local has to contact the state,which has to contact federal. That time takesaway from disaster response. Instead of havingthe federal agencies be in the lead for some ofthese tools and doing damage assessment, I’m

    trying to flip that collaboration model on its head. We’re also seeing that we ca n overcome cer-

    tain legal and policy issues if we do change thecollaboration model in putting the locals andstates in the lead, [including laws about] domes-tic imagery. . . We as part of the intelligence com-

    munity are not permitted to spy on U.S. persons,so in order to get imagery and collect it, we mustgo through the appropriate PUM, or Proper UseMemorandum, and through our lawyers, whichtakes time to do correctly.

    However, the locals and these states don’t havethat hindrance. So they can start the process . . .sometimes quicker than we can.

    DISASTER RESPONSE | Ravindranath

    “ALL DISASTERS ARE LOCAL, SO WHEN A

    TORNADO HITS A SMALL TOWN IN ALABAMA,LOCAL HAS TO CONTACT THE STATE, WHICH HAS TOCONTACT FEDERAL. THAT TIME TAKES AWAY FROMDISASTER RESPONSE.” Ray Bauer 

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    By Frank Konkel 

    Cloud computing is expected to change

    how government does business, butat a time when most federal agencies arehesitantly trying out the concept, the FederalCommunications Commission has shovedits poker chips to the center of the table andyelled, “all in.”

    By the end of 2017, the agency plans its ITto be nearly 100 percent cloud based, whichincludes a dual-pronged ongoing effort tophysically move servers out of FCC’s currentheadquarters while modernizing current andfuture applications for cloud use.

    In terms of cloud vision, few agencies outsidethe Central Intelligence Agency  can match FCC’sfor radical IT innovation. What’s surprising,though, is how far behind the technological

    curve FCC was only a few years ago.Speaking in July at an event hosted by  

     Nextgov, FCC Chief Information Officer DavidBray outlined the myriad challenges facing FCCwhen he took the CIO helm almost two yearsago. The agency, which employs 1,750 people,had 207 different systems, or one system forevery nine people, with more than half of thosesystems over 10 years old. More than 80 percentof FCC’s IT spending went toward maintaininglegacy IT systems, Bray added.

    There were personnel issues as well.

    The entrenched tech team employed some50 federal employees and 375 contractors.The average tenure of the existing federalemployees was nine years; for contractors,

    it was 15 years. About the only job changingwas the one Bray took: FCC had employednine CIOs in eight years when Bray began in August 2013.

    “They had gotten used to doing things onsite,” Bray said.

    PEOPLE, THEN TECHNOLOGY

    Bray’s approach was first to focus on the deep-seated personnel problems.

    In the late 2000s, FCC experimented witha “new media” team of Silicon Valley tech

    The agency plans its IT to be nearly 100 percent cloud based in 2017

    FCC’s Ambitious Cloud Plan

    http://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/emerging-tech-blog/2015/07/fcc-wants-operate-100-percent-cloud-end-2017/117880/?oref=ng-relatedstorieshttp://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/the-details-about-the-cias-deal-with-amazon/374632/http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/the-details-about-the-cias-deal-with-amazon/374632/http://www.nextgov.com/feature/where-cloud-computing-meets-mission/http://www.nextgov.com/feature/where-cloud-computing-meets-mission/http://www.nextgov.com/feature/where-cloud-computing-meets-mission/http://www.nextgov.com/feature/where-cloud-computing-meets-mission/http://www.nextgov.com/feature/where-cloud-computing-meets-mission/http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/the-details-about-the-cias-deal-with-amazon/374632/http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/the-details-about-the-cias-deal-with-amazon/374632/http://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/emerging-tech-blog/2015/07/fcc-wants-operate-100-percent-cloud-end-2017/117880/?oref=ng-relatedstories

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    talent – think of it as a sort of precursor to theGeneral Services Administration’s 18F team.That effort ultimately didn’t work out. Theteam, while not lacking ideas, didn’t integratewith FCC’s existing staff and the resulting

    friction “left people scarred,” Bray said.That experience, combined with Bray’s

    cloud-heavy vision for FCC, made it an

    unsettling time for established contractors.They felt threatened by FCC’s strides away

    from the decades-old and very lucrative“waterfall” development approach, to a moreagile, cheaper way of doing business.

    “Going to cloud was actually eating into theprofit model of legacy contractors,” Bray said.“And some of those legacy contractors we useto do things on site also knew they would beout of a job once we got this done.”

    If funded by Congress to fully completeits IT modernization, FCC will eliminateapproximately 60-80 contracted O&Mpositions, Bray told Nextgov. That’s because

    FCC won’t need contracted staff to maintainlegacy systems, a task that will be done bycommercial cloud providers.

    Instead, FCC’s focus will be on a modular,data-centric approach “that remixes existing

    [software-as-a-service] a nd [platform-as-a-service platforms] that’s much faster, moreresilient and easier to maintain than anything

    they could do on-premise themselves,” Bray said.Bray integrated the remaining members

    of the defunct new media team with the restof the agency and made additional new hires.They included established feds like DeputyCIO John Skudlarek and Deputy CIO ofResiliency Christine Calvosa, and a mixtureof talented techies from both inside theBeltway and the West Coast.

    “The good news is that people come hereand stay for a long time,” Skudlarek toldNextgov, before providing the punch line:“The bad news is they come and stay for a longtime. We had to bring in some new people

    with new ideas and integrate them with theexisting team. It worked.”

    Calvosa said FCC’s tech team created thenecessary conditions for people to “come inand try things,” with “top and political cover”

    provided by Bray, the self-proclaimed “humanflak jacket.” When Congress, other feds orcontractors dish out the verbal 21 questions

    to FCC, it is Bray or his top advisers who takethe heat.

    “There’s a real trust factor here,” Calvosasaid. “We make decisions, then inform.”

    Managing egos and a battered workforce is oneside of the challenge. Implementing technologicalinnovation in an agency replete with severalhundred risk-averse lawyers is another.

    Speaking Tuesday, FCC senior strategicadviser, Tony Summerlin, explained themain challenges as inventorying assets,rewriting existing applications for the cloudenvironment and getting legacy suppliersout of the way. Interestingly, Summerlin said

    CLOUD | Konkel

    “GOING TO CLOUD WAS ACTUALLY EATING INTO THEPROFIT MODEL OF LEGACY CONTRACTORS. AND

    SOME OF THOSE LEGACY CONTRACTORS WE USE TODO THINGS ON SITE ALSO KNEW THEY WOULD BEOUT OF A JOB ONCE WE GOT THIS DONE.” David Bray

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    the inventory itself led to the elimination ofapproximately 15 percent of internal serversthat did little more than guzzle energy andtake up space.

    Summerlin said the business ca se buy-in

    was more about speed and ag ility improvementthan it was about saving money. In “Top Gun”speak, FCC feels the need for speed.

    “Cloud may save you money, it may saveyou time, but the main thing is, it’s fast,”Summerlin said.

    EARLY RESULTS

    FCC granted IBM an authority to operate itsSoftlayer Federal Cloud last month, meaningIBM will be one of several vendors the agencyuses as it transitions all its IT services to cloudover the coming two years.

     Alr ea dy th ou gh , FC C ha s ex pe ri enc eda resounding “win” in cloud computing   byreplacing its aging Consumer Help Center.

    Designed to facilitate communications between FCC and the public with consumercomplaints, Bray said Tuesday building itinternally would have cost $3.2 million over 18-24months, according to estimates FCC obtained.

    “We didn’t have the time or the money towait,” Bray said.

    Instead, one of Bray ’s newly hired seniortechnical advisers, Silicon Valley startupfounder Dustin Laun, pulled together a SaaSsolution in six months at a cost of $450,000,according to Bray.

    In other words, FCC got its SaaS solutionat one-sixth the price of an internal system,in perhaps half the time. Under the internalmodel, O&M would have cost FCC $600,000a year to maintain, Bray explained. Using thecloud solution, O&M costs are $100,000 a year.

    Still, it wasn’t an easy lift.

    “Along the way, the change agents I had,Dustin Laun and [Sarah Millican], they wereexperiencing severe flak from both governmentand contractors,” Bray said. “It was my role asCIO to say, ‘Hey, talk to me, not them, they’re

     just getting stuff done.’”Since launching in January , it’s worked

    well, too.In replacing 18 outdated complaint forms

    with one easy-to-use Web portal and increasedcomplaint-handling speed, the Consumer Help Center has performed well enough to earn awards and even help save some Americans money .

    “Other organizations can do this, too,”Skudlarek said. “It is translatable. But otherorganizations are going to have to do the hardwork. It’s not easy, but it’s been worth it.”

    CLOUD | Konkel

    “THE GOOD NEWS IS THATPEOPLE COME HERE AND STAYFOR A LONG TIME. THE BAD N EWSIS THEY COME AND STAY FOR ALONG TIME.”  John Skud lare k 

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR2hajcuFEMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR2hajcuFEMhttp://cdn.nextgov.com/nextgov/interstitial.html?v=2.1.1&rf=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nextgov.com%2Fcloud-computing%2F2015%2F06%2Ffcc-gives-ibm-green-light-operate-new-cloud-services%2F116272%2Fhttps://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-ushttps://www.fcc.gov/blog/new-consumer-help-center-designed-empower-consumers-streamline-complaint-systemhttps://www.fcc.gov/blog/new-consumer-help-center-designed-empower-consumers-streamline-complaint-systemhttps://www.fcc.gov/blog/new-consumer-help-center-designed-empower-consumers-streamline-complaint-systemhttps://www.fcc.gov/blog/new-consumer-help-center-designed-empower-consumers-streamline-complaint-systemhttp://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/01/06/federal_communications_commission_launches_new_consumer_help_center_site.htmlhttp://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/01/06/federal_communications_commission_launches_new_consumer_help_center_site.htmlhttps://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-it-team-wins-federal-leadership-award-cloud-computinghttp://www.forbes.com/sites/erikamorphy/2015/07/06/how-the-fcc-saved-me-1800/http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikamorphy/2015/07/06/how-the-fcc-saved-me-1800/https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-it-team-wins-federal-leadership-award-cloud-computinghttps://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-it-team-wins-federal-leadership-award-cloud-computinghttp://www.forbes.com/sites/erikamorphy/2015/07/06/how-the-fcc-saved-me-1800/http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikamorphy/2015/07/06/how-the-fcc-saved-me-1800/https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-it-team-wins-federal-leadership-award-cloud-computinghttp://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/01/06/federal_communications_commission_launches_new_consumer_help_center_site.htmlhttps://www.fcc.gov/blog/new-consumer-help-center-designed-empower-consumers-streamline-complaint-systemhttps://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-ushttp://cdn.nextgov.com/nextgov/interstitial.html?v=2.1.1&rf=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nextgov.com%2Fcloud-computing%2F2015%2F06%2Ffcc-gives-ibm-green-light-operate-new-cloud-services%2F116272%2Fhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR2hajcuFEM

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     A DARPA Deal for Robotics MakersBy Mohana Ravindranath

    T echnological advancements — potentially crit-ical to national security — could be happening

    in garages and other “maker spaces” never to bediscovered by the Defense Department.

    That’s what DOD is trying to avoid with a newpilot program aimed at getting smal l businessesand individuals to work on small robotics con-tracts. DOD’s Defense Advanced ResearchProject Agency in May announced the RoboticsFast Track effort, which aims to reduce the

    proposal-to-contract turnaround time to lessthan a month for robotics technology.

    The program’s purview includes expansionand improvement of commercial off-the-shelfproducts, especially those that could improvethe agility and speed of robotic technology fordefense use. It also includes hardware and soft-ware that could be used for nonmilitary missions,such as firefighting and emergency response.

    “We spend too much time creating three- tofour-year solutions for six-month problems,”Mark Micire, a DARPA program manager, saidin a statement.

    Robotics Fast Track was designed to presentDARPA as a development partner, especially tothe small business community that has “tendedto fly under the radar of traditional federal agen-cies and commercial technology providers,which generally rely on multiyear, multimillion-dollar contracts for technology development.”

    Each project could last between six months anda year, with an average cost of $150,000, accordingto DARPA. The agency is promoting the effortthrough the Open Source Robotics Foundation, anonprofit focused on software development.

    OSRF is, in tur n, working with federal con-tractor BIT Systems to help technologists

    navigate federal contracting. The groups areworking on a website that can collect tech-nology proposals, submit them to a reviewboard, and streamline the vetting process,according to Brian Gerkey, chief executiveand founder of OSRF.

    During a call with reporters, officialsdeclined to share estimates for the totalbudget for the program as it is still in the pilotstage. DARPA’s goal in running this pilot,Micire said, is to “ prove the technical prowessof this community”.

    Pilot aims to get small businesses to work on robotics contracts

    “WE SPEND TOO MUCHTIME CREATING THREE TOFOURYEAR SOLUTIONS FORSIXMONTH PROBLEMS.” Mark Micire

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    16/17

    Transform your agency operationsi h k f i i li i

  • 8/18/2019 Nextgov Emerging Technology

    17/17

    Camille Tuutti is executive editorat Nextgov. She previously served aseditorial director at FedScoop, andprior to that, was a staff writer and“People” section editor at  FederalComputer Week.

    17 NEXTGOV DECEMBER 2015

    CAMILLE TUUTTIHallie Golden is the editorialfellow at  Nextgov. Previously, sheworked as a freelance journalist inSeattle, where she wrote for suchpublications as The Economist , The Atlantic and Seattle Magazine.

    HALLIE GOLDENMohana Ravindranath covers ci- vil ian agenc y tech nolog y and ITpolicy for Nextgov. She previouslycovered IT for The Washington Pos t , and her work has also ap-peared in Business Insider and The Philadelphia Inquirer .

    Frank Konkel is the editorial eventseditor for Government ExecutiveMedia Group and a technology jour-nalist for its publications. He writesabout emerging technologies, priva-cy, cybersecurity, policy and otherissues at the intersection of govern-ment and technology.

    MOHANA RAVINDRANATH FRANK KONKEL

     About the Authors