Matt Skone

“The appropriations bill released Tuesday includes a $220 million funding increase for DIU’s fielding of capabilities aimed at “addressing the most pressing combatant commander priorities,” and a $240 million boost for DIU’s fielding of technologies with programming commitments from the military services, according to the summary.” Appreciate Congress recognizing that innovation can and must be tuned to meeting combatant commanders’ pressing needs. Zero trust based secure C5ISR with joint forces, coalition entities and other partners, at the speed of tactical relevance, including real-time next generation flexible communications and data sharing are among several COCOM needs. The ability to pilot, operationally with negligible and no meaningful risk to existing environments and ecosystems exists today. SelectiveTRUST by KnectIQ is ready to meet this need today. “A fiscal 2025 defense appropriations bill, which is scheduled to be marked up Wednesday by the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, would provide $833 billion in total discretionary funding for the department, including more than $1.3 billion for DIU and “select Defense-Wide innovation efforts to deliver capabilities from nontraditional sources, including small and medium-sized businesses,” according to a summary of the legislation.” KnectIQ , a non traditional source developed this technology, vetted by Assured Information Security (AIS) under contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory. Michael McLaughlin Michele Iversen Jon Stanley Michael Black Terry Halvorsen Sinclair M Harris Dwight Shepherd, Rear Admiral (Ret) Tracy L. Lanier Rick Kitchens #indopacom Sean Olone Chris Nott House Armed Services Committee Democrats House Armed Services Committee Republicans United States Senate Committee on Armed Services

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📢☀️ Summer catalog refresh alert! 🚀 End of week and first week of summer comes with Summer catalog refresh for the #Awesome gee-community-catalog.org. Explore why data continuity is so important with datasets and catalogs. Here are the datasets that got updates 🌍 Esri Land Cover dataset from Impact Observatory now at v3 with 2023 data included. 🌳 Global Forest Carbon Flux dataset featuring 2023 emissions, removals, and net carbon flux information from Global Forest Watch 🌾 US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) provided Crop Sequence Boundary dataset covering the period 2016-2023. Bonus feature! 🚨 The Github repo at https://lnkd.in/dR2QBrA now contains all JS example codes. ⭐️ the repo & help the catalog grow. This and so much more. Subscribe to the newsletter to get alerts about new data in the community catalog, catalog summaries, and data deep dives directly in your email. 📨 https://lnkd.in/gnf4BVEE #GEECommunityCatalog #DataInnovation #GeospatialData #DataDive 🌐🛰️ #OpenSource #OpenData #geospatialdata #dataforgood #GIS #EnvironmentalData #SpatialData #TechForGood #climatechange #googleearthengine #OpenData #OpenScience

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AI is the new technology frontier and innovation pioneers are creating new pathways and concepts for future development. Has the U.S. government positioned our U.S. based firms to accelerate and outpace foreign development? Or have we handcuffed ourselves to policies that lack vision and hold firm to a risk adverse cultural mindset?

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https://lnkd.in/eCgchb8U While this is a step in the right direction...I have some thoughts. First about the article in general: the title of the article addresses industry "complaints" and "gripes" regarding #ATO issues...children "complain" about being tired, spouses "gripe" about dishes being left in the sink or towels on the bathroom floor, industry vendors (specifically small businesses) who spend years investing hundreds of thousands of dollars, precious resources, time, and energy into a convoluted process that often ends up in projects being halted or killed completely are concerned and frustrated and often devastated by the exorbitant timelines and loss of revenue. If you want industry to feel heard and validated, choose better words. Instead, the first line of this article invalidated and callously dismissed a serious thing many of us are experiencing. Second about the policy itself: I have been in this game for many years, both inside the government and out. Reciprocity has always supposedly been a thing. I reached out the the #DAF #CIO 5 years ago and she presented me a letter stating reciprocity was to be honored which the governing bodies of the ATO process ignored. Until you hold those entities accountable by way of a reporting mechanism businesses can use to alert to non-compliance of the policy or until you reward the granting of reciprocity in some way, this is lip service. Additionally, reciprocity assumes you were even able to get through the process in the first place. If you truly want this to be easier, give units the proper resources to support this requirement. (ISO, ISSO, ISSM, etc.) Everyone wants to require it, but no one wants to support it or can't support it. This is a problem that hinders industry in a major way. Also, train these folks on alternative solutions that are available like PlatformOne, cATO, and the myriad government backed third party vendors offering easier solutions for #cybersecurity. Legacy processes are an easy, lazy way these folks hide behind 24 month timelines to no account. --end rant (or should I say end gripe lol 😝 ) Adam Chitwood thanks for sending this to me this morning and getting me all fired up 🤣

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State of Colorado has enacted SB 24-205 (informally, "The Mile High AI Act") into law, with Governor Jared Polis signing the bill yesterday. https://lnkd.in/eQbrF7np To my knowledge, this bill is the very first example of enacted AI law in the Americas that is separate from, and not subsumed under, other overarching rules on information privacy, human rights, consumer rights, or online safety (albeit touching these important areas appropriately). My very high level takeaways: - The primary concern is to manage the risk of algorithmic discrimination in AI systems deemed high risk. High risk is defined explicitly in the industry sectors and civic areas listed in the bill. - Vendors must provide model documentation describing data governance, intended use and evaluation, known limitations. - Users must have risk management procedures in place (including red teaming if appropriate), and provide consumers mechanisms for recourse if they feel like they suffered harm. (Disclaimers: I am not a lawyer and this is my personal opinion)

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INNOVATION MINDSET - "Situated DEI" is the new TSC position. “You can’t say you’re going to try to do at Tractor Supply what they do at the Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California — that’s definitely not going to work,” Completely walking back and abandoning their DEI stance. Just wow... See link at the bottom of this post. This morning I posted that EXPECTATIONS are more important than our genes. And I've been vocal that DIVERSITY is essential for INNOVATION. See my past posts. The foundation of expectations is knowing that each DIVERSE member of our corporate community has EQUITY and is INCLUDED. Apparently only some of the HR protected classes are truly protected, respected, and included at TSC. At this point every "diverse" community member at TSC should understand that they are not included as a matter of corporate policy. TSC is not willing to spend their $ and time on DEI. And nothing communicates our values better than how we're willing to spend our $ and time. #BetterTogether https://lnkd.in/g3VeUs49

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As I begin my doctoral studies into technical debt, I'm plagued by questions about how we in business perceive technical debt. So, I've built a survey to measure the varying perceptions of technical debt. I promise the survey is very short and quick. Please distribute/repost this survey FAR and WIDE so that I may gather as much data as possible to begin my research into this challenging problem! https://cvent.me/MVAOqw Thank you all! #technicaldebt #technologydebt

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I am really proud of the progress my team has made, developing AI/ML technologies to support government customers like the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and NASA. ASRC Federal created a commercial (featuring me!) showcasing our tool SimAccel(tm) which dramatically accelerates existing software simulators. https://lnkd.in/ee3TCXFi #asrcfederal #ai #innovations #simulation

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ICYMI: It's awesome to see this pilot program come to fruition as we figure out how to move faster with early-stage startups. I've said it several times, our advisories aren't asking the companies they work with about their DUNs number or CAGE code. We need to stop acting like we're buying big pieces of metal for a tank and move faster. This is an exciting first step to move us in the right direction! https://lnkd.in/gSHaC-tb

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Global threats are evolving at amazing rates and making use of cutting-edge tech innovation. DoD future capability assessment analytics must provide acquisition decision makers with higher velocity data to decision to stay ahead of these threats. Global freedom and peace depend upon it.

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This is welcome policy change and huge if done right! As someone who has personally spent countless hours managing RMF processes and seeing a lot of individualized ATOs done in a seemingly redundant way this, should help us get capability out the door faster in a responsible/secure manner. We often forget that an adversary also can employ the “DIME” principle of power to be competitive, and the longer we spend in non-value add activities like redundant security paperwork that delays capability delivery and wastes precious resources we are giving our competitors an economic advantage! I am a HUGE proponent of better security for all our systems, the best secure system is the one that touches nothing and no one uses it, but that also provides zero capability for our needs. Love that our highest DoD officials are constantly pushing for better and more relevant security policies like this one, promoting trust and accountability across the DoD workforce! #rapid #impactful #sustainable #capability #innovation #devsecops DISCLAIMER: These views are my own and not necessarily that of others or the federal government.

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I'm talking to an OPM group this week about federal technical hiring. I'd be happy to come to your federal agency and talk to you all, too. The talk is about how federal job announcements make it difficult for 'data' candidates to find roles they're a good fit for. Sometimes this is just mislabeling, like a data engineer or technical product manager job that's titled "data scientist". 🏷️ Sometimes this is a job where the duties are so ambiguous candidates can't tell what you're looking for 🤔. (And maybe you don't know, either!) Sometimes the duties are overly broad -- like, a skill set that could involve hiring a whole department, not just one person 🏢. Some of these are communications issues. Some are reflective of larger problems with how positions are structured. Either way, it's more than individual hiring managers can solve themselves. If this sounds relevant to the work your agency is doing, let me know. I'm also happy to look at some of your agency's specific 'data' announcements with you. 📊 I've written about the broader topic of technical job announcements here: https://lnkd.in/gtGst5Rg And this is the code that makes the figure below. (In retrospect, I should have done the scaling slightly differently.) https://lnkd.in/g-HewayN

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A really interesting talk, showing some real world applications and difficulties of automated image processing

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Happy National Park Week (April 20-28, 2024)! National Park Week is an annual week for celebration & recognition of the US National Parks. The National Park Service was founded in 1916, while the 1st official national park – Yellowstone National Park was established in 1872 via a law signed by President Ulysses S. Grant. Since then, the U.S. has amassed 63 national parks, from Alaska to the Florida Keys. To visit all of them, you’ll need to travel to 31 states and two U.S. territories: American Samoa & the U.S. Virgin Islands. There are also 429 national park sites in the U.S. that fall into several categories such as National Battlefields, National Historic Sites, National Monuments, National Seashores, & National Recreation Areas. Vising all US National Parks is on the top of my Bucket List and my current count is 40. National parks are special places that create lasting memories for everyone. Whether it’s the breathtaking views, historical significance, or personal connections, these natural wonders leave an incredible mark on our hearts. My journey to national parks always provides me true enjoyment, solace, inspiration, powerful experiences & life-changing moments while surrounded by nature. “If you truly love nature, you’ll find beauty everywhere”. #USNationalParks #YourParkStory #MyParkStory

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How expensive will AI be for the Federal Government? There were 270,798 in the Core Public Administration in 2023. If your AI subscription is $30/mo per user, that's just shy of $100M per year. There's 100 million reasons to consider developing and sharing open source Assistants and Agents across all departments. We need a discoverable repository of really sophisticated definitions which can be repurposed to serve corporate functions, customer services, programs, and services to Canadians. https://lnkd.in/gaA7-nhE

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🌶 Software estimates are a WASTE ⚠️ if provided by someone other than the team responsible for implementation. The incentive is to claim a lower cost, a faster implementation timeline, or better performance if NOT responsible for doing the work. ⚠️ if provided by anyone as a guarantee. The incentive is to promise an arbitrary, far off date and then beat it rather than provide a ground truth, best effort estimate. Software development is a learning process! Instead: ✅️ Give the team the reason if there is a deadline (ex., tax season, conference). Empower the team to candidly estimate if the timeline is achievable, achievable with a reduced scope, or that the timeline is not achievable at all. ✅️ Treat the team's estimates as they are - an honest estimate. Understand that estimates WILL change as lessons are learned from iteration to iteration. Doing the first 2 creates a hostile work environment. Doing the second two empowers the product team, enables transparency, and leads to more reliable information for decision making. #SoftwareEngineering #SoftwareDevelopment #productmanagement

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Cool new ‘@’ feature in Gemini (LLM alternative from Google). Asked about the top 5 videos on YouTube to learn about Prompt Engineering and a summary of the first one. Gemini’s 😎response: “Sure, here is a summary of the first video 4 Methods of Prompt Engineering by IBM Technology: The IBM video explains four different approaches to prompt engineering to get better results from large language models (LLMs).: Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Chain of Thought (COT), REACT, and Directional Stimulus Prompting (DSP). * 𝐑𝐀𝐆 (𝐑𝐞𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐥-𝐀𝐮𝐠𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧): This approach involves giving the LLM access to your domain-specific knowledge base. This helps the LLM to avoid hallucinations, which are incorrect results that can be generated when the LLM is trained on a massive dataset of general information from the internet. For example, if you ask an LLM directly about the total earnings of a company in a specific year, it might give you a random number because that information is not likely to be reliable in its general training data. But, if you use RAG and give the LLM access to your company's financial data, it can provide a more accurate answer. * 𝐂𝐎𝐓 (𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭): This approach involves breaking down a complex question into a series of simpler steps. This helps the LLM to understand the reasoning behind the question and provide a more explainable answer. For example, instead of asking an LLM directly for the total earnings of a company in 2022, you could break the question down into steps like: 1. What are the total earnings of the company for software in 2022? 2. What are the total earnings of the company for hardware in 2022? 3. What are the total earnings of the company for consulting in 2022? By following these steps, the LLM can arrive at a more accurate answer and explain how it got there. * 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐂𝐓 (𝐑𝐞𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐥-𝐀𝐮𝐠𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐄𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐬): This approach is similar to RAG, but it also allows the LLM to access public knowledge bases. This can be useful if you are asking a question that requires information that is not in your private knowledge base. For example, if you want to compare the total earnings of a company in 2010 and 2022, you might not have the 2010 data in your private knowledge base. But, REACT can allow the LLM to access public financial data to find the 2010 data. * 𝐃𝐒𝐏 (𝐃𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐒𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐮𝐥𝐮𝐬 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠) This approach involves giving the LLM a hint about the specific information you are looking for in the answer. This can help the LLM to focus its response and provide more relevant results. For example, if you ask an LLM about the annual earnings of a company, but you are really interested in the earnings for software and consulting, you can use DSP to nudge the LLM on specific areas. #AI4Good #JTBD https://lnkd.in/ep8pRG4j

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So ... we're building an AI-enabled BI platform for government contractors. It's a cool little set of tools. Really geared towards small businesses who don't have the bandwidth to hire capture managers for every opportunity. Anyway ... this question is a broad one for members of the GovCon / DIB / your favorite shorthand for the industry: What do you like to see from User Interfaces (site layout, access to functions, etc)(UI) for software build for our industry? Or ... what are you SO TIRED of seeing from software UI? Literally no wrong answers. No debate intended (unless y'all wanna spar in the comments). This is pure market research intended to make something the market actually might want. Thank you!

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