AI: Success is in the Research with Daniel Chenok

Episode 41 • 24th August 2022 • Tech Transforms • Carolyn Ford

Carolyn:

Welcome to Tech Transforms sponsored by Dynatrace. I'm Carolyn Ford. Each week, Mark Senell and I talk with top influencers to explore how the US government is harnessing the power of technology to solve complex challenges and improve our lives.

Carolyn:

Hi, Mark. How are you doing?

Mark:

Hey, Carolyn. Good morning.

Carolyn:

Good morning. Well, this week we get to talk to Dan Chenok, Executive Director of the IBM Center for Business of Government and former Chief of the Information Policy and Technology at OMB. And that's just one of his many positions in government. One of my favorite positions that he served on was President Barack Obama's transition team as the government lead for the Technology, Innovation & Government Reform Group and this position actually won him one of his many awards.

Carolyn:

Today we're going to get Dan's insights on a top government story about the US Special Operations Command Chief Data Officer calling for more AI and how to improve the cybersecurity workforce. Welcome to Tech Transforms, Dan.

Daniel:

Thanks Carolyn. Thanks for having me and looking forward to it.

Mark:

Welcome Dan.

Carolyn:

Yeah.

Daniel:

Thanks Mark.

Carolyn:

Well, let's just dive right in. During an episode on The Daily Scoop Podcast in May, you stated that one of the top stories impacting the business of government was Thomas Kenny speaking in this article, US Special Operations Command Chief Data Officer says Digital Information Depends on AI. I was a little surprised that you would say this is one of the top stories of the year and I would love for you to unpack that a little bit. What are the key ideas that make this the top story?

Daniel:

Well first of all, it was top story of the week. I was on the FedScoop Countdown, which talks about the three top stories that different guests have every week. Nonetheless, for that week I thought this was very important because you hear a lot about AI and how it's affecting service delivery or customer service in companies and how governments, in their service provision, are going to more AI based customer service for social security or local driver's licenses. You hear some about AI and it's improving the defense mission but not a lot, and so the Chief Data Officer at SOCOM, I think even following a larger Defense Department move toward AI that was led principally in the last couple years by the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center or the JAKE and then kind of has now been instantiated across DOD and has reached a new formulation in DOD headquarters...

Daniel:

So SOCOM, which is the Special Operations Command, has people, missions, around the world and some of the most important, most relevant missions in terms of defending the nation and carrying out the work of the Defense Department overseas is done through SOCOM missions. The Chief Data Officer first and foremost talked about AI isn't just about automating a business process. It's actually helping deliver the mission to soldiers and support teams in the field and so the three parts strategy of mission first, and then business intelligence... Because when you're in the field and there's information coming in about threats or engagements from different domains, whether it's land, sea, air, cyber, that information's coming and has to get to the person in the field to make quick decisions about what to do next with where to move troops or where to fall back to, how to allocate different types of military material.

Daniel:

The intelligence part of this is helping democratize the data across all different parts of defense so that those special operations forces can have the power of all of the Defense Department's information at their finger tips, in their mobile devices, in their different types of ways that they receive information, so that's the second part of the strategy, is the fusing of data and information. Supporting the mission, fusing of data, and then the third part is the more traditional. What you hear about from AI in the last few years. I call it more traditional. I guess that's the last few years. Use of AI to improve back office operations. To improve how finance, HR systems, also IT systems, are working and that can raise the performance of the entire organization as it has been doing for several years in a demonstrated way across different agencies in the government. I thought those three elements were really interesting and that's what called it out to me.

Mark:

So, a general call to arms, pardon the pun, to increase our use and acceptance of AI across the board, because you really hit a lot of different areas.

Daniel:

Yeah. It's a full scope strategy and it enables... This can be translated, I know we'll talk about this in a second, to other mission settings but the idea of let's think about how AI supports the mission, how AI supports getting data into the hands of the right people quickly so that they can make decisions, and how does it help raise the bar of the entire enterprise in terms of all of the systems that are operating to support those people in the field I think is very important.

Mark:

Are you doing work today with... And when I think of AI, and I think of IBM, I think of Watson and some of that stuff that you guys do there. Are you working with that division or in that group to help customers on the government side of the house?

Daniel:

IBM's done a lot of work on artificial intelligence with the government for several years. Our center is an independent think tank of sorts in IBM. We don't per se work with the business teams but we work alongside them to understand the best practices in AI for government and bringing that and lots of other information, through academic research and partnering, to government. Yes, we work alongside but we're not part of the delivery of AI services in that way.

Carolyn:

I want to talk more about the center because it is impressive, Mark. There's a lot. The thing in the article that really jumped out to me was the analyzing and the delivery of the data and just how important that is, really, to national security, to the war fighter's life, but I like that you point out that it really is AI in those three different areas because AI; that's such a huge term. I would love to know, before we jump from this article, how you think agencies can better align with this three prong mission that Kenny talked about.

Daniel:

Right. Yeah. I think it's a really good model for other agencies to follow, which is another reason why I thought it was an important article. They're Chief Data Officers now at every agency and our center's written a couple of different reports on how to be a Chief Data Officer successfully in a government agency by-

Carolyn:

And those reports are free, by the way. I'm just going to keep shamelessly plugging this center.

Daniel:

You do.

Carolyn:

It's massive and there's just so much there.

Daniel:

www.businessofgovernment.org

Carolyn:

There we go.

Daniel:

It's all free, it's all there. We're all public domain. Any agency, whether it's the Department of Education delivering student financial aid to families and students in need, or the Department of Health and Human Services delivering assistance to needy families, or the Department of Transportation working with air transit companies who are sending information about their air traffic situation around the world, any agency can apply that strategy to their mission to say, all right, what's the goal that we have to achieve and how can the use of artificial intelligence, which basically means systems that learn over time and that enable people to do their jobs better by giving them information more quickly, by allowing them to see the needle in the haystack, the anomaly that's going to cause a problem quickly without having to do hours, weeks, or even months of analysis to get there...

Daniel:

AI accelerates that decision making and you can apply that to customer service, in the education example, or to business partnership, in the transportation example. All of that data comes from many different sources. Sticking with the education example, in order to award a loan to a student you need to have data coming from the family, you need to have data often coming from the financial institution, data coming from the Department of Education to verify that the family needs funding from the college and university who kind of administer that. There's lots of different entities. In the financial services world, there's multiple enterprises that often get involved, especially in commercial loans. There's lots of different data and that second part of the frame, around fusing that data, making sure that everybody has it and can track it at the same time, that's important.

Daniel:

r service improvements in the: 2020

Carolyn:

Did you say that... Sorry, Mark. I just want to know, did you say that the reports that you guys have in the center break down that mission? Do any of them break down the three parts of the mission and even suggest not vendors but technologies that would aid in each of those?

Daniel:

We haven't framed it in the way that the article did, that's why I thought the article was so interesting, but we have touched on all three of those areas in multiple reports around AI and related technologies in a suite that we refer to as intelligent automation. Those technologies include robotics, process automation, making commonly repeated tasks quicker and the use of bots to enable faster service. Blockchain networks, which we can get into if you want, which are shared networks of secure information exchange. Then emerging technologies... Of course, cybersecurity underlies all intelligent automation in terms of making sure that we deliver trusted service. We've written about, both in our academic research and also in our points of view that we often write on our blog, we've held round tables about these topics with government leaders. There's a lot there in the center about the topic.

Mark:

I think we're going to try to touch on some of the cybersecurity efforts in a little bit, but I am curious to know if you have an opinion on how the US, and in this case I guess the government as a whole, is competing globally as it relates to AI.

Daniel:

If you think about private industry globally and government globally AI, like any technology, tends to trail a little bit in its application in government. Even though the creation of new technologies, government's often funding the most innovative and advanced uses of those technologies through DARPA, the Defense Research Projects Agency, through the National Science Foundation. There's a lot of funding of basic research, the Department of Energy's labs come to mind, NASA and its centers come to mind, that are driving a lot of really significant, important application of new technologies in new ways. In terms of applying that to business processes, the private sector now, as it has always, has the business incentive to bring in those technologies quickly so that they can get a competitive advantage and improve their customer service. Because government doesn't necessarily have that, they tend to lag a few years and this is true for many technologies over decades, in terms of bringing those technologies into their orbit. I think that you're seeing that continuing today.

Daniel:

Having said that, there are many government agencies in the US and around the world, countries ranging from Singapore to the UK, that are taking AI and related technologies and applying it to different types of processes that they're involved. In some areas I think the US is doing really well. In other areas other countries are doing well and interestingly, you're seeing some international organizations that work with multiple countries that are applying AI to benefit many.

Mark:

So a little bit yes and a little bit no.

Carolyn:

Well, it sounds like we're great innovators in the government and we lag with the application.

Daniel:

I think that's a technology cycle that has existed for decades and I think while it may be accelerating today, I think it's still generally accurate.

Mark:

I've got to think the DOD and the IEC are much further along. They've got more incentive. Maybe not the business. They don't have that business driver like commercial organizations do, but they certainly have national security interests that are zero sum game type scenarios and that's a strong incentive.

Daniel:

Sure. DOD's done some phenomenal work, the SOCOM example being one, in leveraging AI to improve its work. Like every agency, DOD still has many systems that are based on older technologies that are... They're moving forward slowly and other agencies are in the same position. One of the other initiatives that we are working on in the center is helping make the government more agile. We're working with the National Academy of Public Administration, which is sort of like the National Academy of Sciences or Engineering but for government work, and we've set up a thing called the Agile Government Center, which tries to accelerate government's ability to not only implement technology but to deliver policies, programs, and to implement programs in a way that kind of addresses that point.

Mark:

One more question Carolyn and I promise I'll shut up.

Carolyn:

You better not shut up. That's the whole point of this, Mark.

Mark:

Dan, it seems to me that, because you've mentioned the connection between government and a lot of different organizations being able to work together and to share ideas, it used to be, at least it seems it used to be, that academia and the government had a connection to share thoughts and ideas and technologies. Where do we stand on that today? Is it as strong as it used to be or do we need to improve there?

Daniel:

Well, I'm a graduate of a school of government and our center works regularly... That's sort of the core of our research base is academia. Academic research from leading experts who are writing for government. We are sort of sitting at the intersection of government industry and academia in terms of how we bring information forward to the world and to government leaders. I think there are other organizations where you've got a lot of government research affiliation with universities in their field, like medical schools with the Department of Health and Human Services or many research teams across the country from academia with the National Science Foundation. I think you've got a lot of different ways that government intersects with academia.

Daniel:

That said, people in academia are about teaching and research and so the trick is to make sure that you get the roles and responsibilities right. Academics aren't going to be the ones delivering a program but they can help bring best practice to that and part of what we try to do is identify for government who are the academics that are really doing innovative work and bring those ideas forward.

Mark:

Gotcha. Yeah.

Carolyn:

One of the big challenges that we have, that you've talked a lot about Dan, is cybersecurity. We have... Well, okay. I'm going to stay off my soap box here and stick to the topic that I want to talk about. Just the talent gap in cybersecurity across private and public sector. It's estimated that we have half a million jobs that aren't filled, that that is growing and you have one article and I'm going to cite it here because I want it in the show notes so our listeners can link to it. It's Building The Cybersecurity Workforce America Needs, that you wrote. Will you talk about what you talked about in the article and what you think needs to be done to build the cyber workforce and what is being done to build the cyber workforce?

Daniel:

Sure. That report, A Call to Action was the title we used around improving cybersecurity workforce for government and the nation, was actually chartered by Congress to have the Department of Homeland Security contract with the National Academy of Public Administration that I mentioned before, which I'll refer to as NAPA, to do a study of this issue. My co-chair, Karen Evans, who is the former Federal Chief Information Officer at OMB and a really all star panel of fellows that NAPA has, fellows that are kind of senior leaders in government, academia and some industry as well; we basically work with a study team to address the issue and understand, so what's that gap... If you get beyond that half a million job gap number, what's causing that and what can the government do about it? As we were doing the research, the White House was implementing a newly congressionally authorized office around cybersecurity to basically coordinate across multiple agencies. White Houses have always done this, but they haven't had the congressional imprimatur and they haven't been large enterprises like the NCD is now. They're staffing up toward a hundred or so people.

Daniel:

We put all this together and we said now is a great opportunity to have a national strategy led by the Center of Government. There had been great work on national strategies led out of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST, at the Commerce Department. They had not sort of reached a whole of government implementation level just because... Having worked at OMB for many years, I'm probably biased a little bit, but it's... When the Center of Government speaks, it normally kind of drives multiple agencies in a different way, especially when it involves the budget authority at OMB. As an aside, we've got research showing that to be the case in other countries.

Daniel:

This opportunity in the White House, combined with the gaps that we saw, which is you need to have a strategy around engaging with long term education of the workforce, so teaching all of our kids to be better cyber implementers. Basically, we teach all our kids to drive a car when they're 16 and they go through training and stuff. We don't teach them how to drive a computer, and that can introduce a lot of vulnerabilities. So, working with the K to 12 system to do more education. Second part of the strategy is around working with vocational schools, colleges, universities, to make sure we're providing the type of training that enables people to enter the workforce with a leg up. That gives us a competitive advantage relative to our adversaries. The third is, all right, once you've trained people, you need to help them find jobs in the market. So how do you match people to jobs, how do you indicate where all the government jobs are, where all the government support jobs are and sort of match skills to availability. The fourth part is how do you measure that the whole system's working? Can we create what we called in the report a Bureau of Cyber Statistics or Bureau of Cyber Data to show that you have the metrics to move this forward.

Daniel:

Finally, putting all this together, you need a governance framework where every.... There's lots of different agencies in the US federal government, not to mention state and local governments or international partners. How do you put together a whole of government approach that's more than a strategy document? That's actually an implementation frame? We saw that led by ONCD, the cyber office in the White House. Really important to work with all the other agencies; with NIST, with DHS, with the National Security Agency and the intelligence community, with the National Science Foundation, Department of Education, Department of Labor, I can keep going, all of whom have cybersecurity responsibility. That's basically, in a nutshell, what the report said.

Carolyn:

So, this was a recommendation. Has it been implemented on any level?

Daniel:

We submitted our report to the Department of Homeland Security and briefed the congressional authorizing staff. We also briefed the White House Cyber Office and of course, other interested parties. We briefed NIST as well. Different parts are starting to be implemented. Actually, there's a cybersecurity summit that the White House Office of National Cyber Director is hosting soon and we'll have representative there at the summit and that will be helping to drive forward the strategy recommendation that we have. I'd say we've still got a lot of momentum and if we talk again in six months, I'll probably have a more tangible outcome. We just got the report out a couple of months ago. Takes a little time.

Carolyn:

Okay. I love that it's been recommended that we have leadership at the government level. I wonder... I'm just thinking about sibling rivalry here, but is one of the barriers to implementing this going to be who gets to be the belly button, as my friend in the Navy would say?

Daniel:

That's where the governance framework really is important. Establishing roles and responsibilities, making sure that people know that they own their lane, but their lane is one lane on a super highway that's getting bigger and busier. Part of that, that I didn't mention, is the private sector partnership because most of the critical infrastructure, most of the vulnerabilities that you see come in through industry. Having a strong connection, having a strong partnership, is something we pointed out in the report around skill development. It's also, more importantly, a critical success factor for cybersecurity at the enterprise level and I know that's another thing that the administration is looking at.

Mark:

This may be a good segue, I'm not sure, but recently IBM announced that they're establishing a new cybersecurity center for US federal civilians and I want to understand what that means. Can you talk a little bit about what that is? What the IBM center for government cybersecurity is and what the central goals are?

Daniel:

Sure. I'm on the advisory board for the center so I'll speak from that hat. IBM has many different capabilities, both from a technology perspective and also in terms of our consulting work, that address cybersecurity both directly as a service or a product and also indirectly in how we deliver things like cloud computing networks or AI networks. We kind of build cyber into all of our strategies, often referred to as cyber by design. What we wanted to do with the Center for Government Cybersecurity is kind of have, to use Carolyn's term, a belly button. To have a place where all of the different capabilities could be easy to access for government clients. By the way, "federal civilian". That just means all agencies that are not in the intelligence community.

Carolyn:

So, defense too?

Daniel:

Some parts of defense, but not those parts that are on the war fighting side.

Carolyn:

Well, I'll just say this center, Mark, is the thing that I've been shamelessly plugging. www.businessofgovernment.org

Daniel:

There's two centers going up.

Carolyn:

Oh, okay.

Daniel:

Our center, the think tank, addresses all of government including the intelligence community.

Carolyn:

And that's the one that I just mentioned, business of government?

Daniel:

Yes. The Center for Government Cybersecurity, which... Both centers have government in their name. One is the Center for the Business of Government and one is the Center for Government Cybersecurity. The Center for Government Cybersecurity, Mark was asking about and there we are working with all agencies and I would say it's really a whole of government effort. We're trying to work with experts in the intelligence space to bring their best practice to the civilian space.

Daniel:

Some of these solutions include zero trust, which is the term of art in the cyber world now that basically means you trust no one on your network. Assume that everybody's going to get in everywhere. How do you build multiple layers of defense? Traditional cybersecurity defenses were around the perimeter. How do you look inside your network to see who's coming in, have strong authentication, have good monitoring, good information sharing and exchange, quick response activities. All of those elements are part of that strategy. A lot of people think cloud computing is insecure because, well, I don't own the server so it's got to be introducing vulnerabilities because it's traveling over the area-

Carolyn:

I know. I still have that angst, honestly.

Daniel:

Actually, architected correctly, cloud network can be much more secure because you can spot problems quickly and then propagate solutions to the entire network over the same cloud-based network that's making your computing efficient. Cryptography is something that we're looking at in terms of protection, the use of that advanced technology, and then of course we do a lot of research and new applications around authentication. All of those types of activities are kind of what the Center for Government Cybersecurity will bring. IBM has a cyber range in Cambridge, Massachusetts that brings a lot of these kinds of capabilities there and we'll be working closely with that and other cyber centers.

Carolyn:

What do you mean a cyber range? Like a shooting range for cybersecurity?

Daniel:

No. A cyber range is sort of a term for... It's like a demo space. It's like you go there and you can kind of play with different cyber tools and see advanced technologies in action. So, it's something that we're trying to bring into the center. It'll be a physical location in Washington, DC.

Carolyn:

Okay. I want to come there.

Daniel:

You're welcome anytime.

Mark:

Not exciting as shooting ranges, I'm going to tell you.

Daniel:

The last thing I'll say about the cyber center is that a key element of this is the board that I mentioned, that I'm a member of. This advisory board includes both IBM but also outside leaders in the cyber field and people that have been in senior government jobs, both in the civilian space and in the intelligence community and the defense community. We're trying to bring best practice including IBM solutions but also looking much more broadly. What's happening across the world? What does research tell us? What are our partners in the cyber ecosystem that we work with, other companies that we work with, what are they bringing forward? How can we help our government partners implement the best practices that we find and take lessons learned and you know, don't do the thing that went wrong. The board serves that role as well.

Carolyn:

Are you involved in both centers? The Business of Government and the Cybersecurity Center?

Daniel:

Yes. I am the Executive Director, so I'm the head of the Business of Government Center, which is the think tank, and then I'm on the advisory board of the Center for Government Cybersecurity.

Carolyn:

I want to jump to your role in academia. You're a professor at the university of Texas. How long have you been doing that?

Daniel:

I'm an Adjunct Associate Professor. I am by no means a full professor. It's very important in academia to make sure that you get your title right. I have been doing that for, I guess this is the fifth or... I think this is the fifth year because the pandemic years... Yeah, that's right. I am not teaching actively at the moment but I did teach, for several years, a class on working with government in terms of how to navigate the budget and policy processes of government.

Carolyn:

Oh, we need that course.

Daniel:

It was a lot of-

Carolyn:

We need to talk offline.

Mark:

That's true.

Daniel:

Yeah. A lot of OMB stuff, teaching people about how the budget works, teaching students how to do that when they get into government jobs. Also working with the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, with their DC Center. Like many schools, they have a presence in DC and so that's where I taught. I didn't actually travel to Austin other than for a meeting or two. It's a really interesting role. Going forward, we're talking about different ways that I can continue to contribute since I'm no longer teaching the class as of last year.

Mark:

So Carolyn, we may have to commission Dan to come in and talk to our sales team about that.

Carolyn:

No, I'm not kidding. We really need that. I'm wondering too if you've considered or toyed with the idea, going back to your cybersecurity report and recommendations, one of the things that you said is to educate our kids which, I'm not going to lie, I had a pang of guilt as a mother. I'm like, "Oh, I didn't really do that with my son." My son is not a millennial. He's a gen... Are they the gens Z-ers? So he was born in '98, and you know, cybersecurity was not as much of a thing in the beginning. It didn't really come to the forefront of my mind until he was already eyeballs deep into it. I'm just wondering if you've considered teaching a course in the classroom to educate our kids.

Daniel:

I have taught at the college level on cybersecurity, on AI, on blockchain, most of these guest lecturing. It's really important to educate kids. I've not done it myself but maybe in the next stage of life, when I'm serving on boards and what have you, I'll be able to have time to do that.

Carolyn:

Maybe you can just write a little manual for mothers.

Daniel:

Believe me, I have three girls, they're similar ages to yours. They're sort of around that era. It's always an interesting talk with them.

Carolyn:

All right. Well, we're going to jump to our tech talk questions now. These are just quick hit questions, just kind of fun. Mostly it's to build my reading list.

Daniel:

No, that's cool. I'm happy to talk about that and anything else you want to talk about.

Carolyn:

Okay. Well so, first tech talk question I'll take up, Mark, and I would love to know what you think the next big leap in technology will be. I'd also like to know what the next big leap in technology you would like to be. If you had a magic wand and you could wave it, what would you do?

Daniel:

I think, to the first question, quantum computing is really moving forward and you're seeing... IBM recently actually built a quantum computer, one of the first ones to be moved forward at that scale. You've got a tremendous amount of research on quantum computing and it's got the power to take all of the things that I said earlier and magnify their impact because it creates the ability to work at great speeds and in multiple dimensions. I don't mean that... I know we're going to talk about science fiction later, but it allows you to process multiple workloads at once in the same compute power. That's really sort of exponentially important in terms of speed and scale.

Carolyn:

Wait, this is a dumb question. Can't computers already do that?

Daniel:

Not as fast. Not as many. Even when they're working now they're doing gazillions of transactions a second, but they're... I'm not a computer scientist, so I may not describe this exactly correctly. My understanding is that quantum computing enables much more rapid, much more scalable processing power.

Mark:

Would a good analogy be... Think of it, Carolyn, like the hypersonic missiles. It's doing computing at a new level.

Carolyn:

Okay. Like they're going super fast and they're undetectable, right? Did I get that right?

Daniel:

No, they wouldn't be undetectable. You can set up networks, but they're going super fast and there are many, many things happening at once that are all going super fast.

Carolyn:

Okay.

Daniel:

Put it that way. My wish for technology. Actually, it's more about the impact of technology than what I wish technology would do and that's to have a material impact in improving how we all live our lives, how we all do our jobs, improving the welfare of societies by delivering services more quickly, by using technology to monitor the environment and help with achieving sustainability goals. Our center did a couple of reports on that a couple years ago. Improving, obviously, how governments deliver.

Daniel:

A lot of people think about technology as, oh my God, I'm never going to understand, it's a big black box. Done properly, my hope is that governments and other enterprises in society, businesses, schools, leverage the power of technology to really improve lives and livelihoods both in the US and around the world.

Carolyn:

That is my wish too. That is what makes me love my job. I think why haven't we solved a lot of these problems? Is it just because there's no money in solving them?

Daniel:

There's a lot of... We're going to start getting into political science.

Carolyn:

I know, I know.

Daniel:

When you're trying to solve problems at a national scale, especially in a multicultural society like the US, with many... There's 50 states, there's many different organizations and counties, there's intersections with the private sector in lots of different ways, we have a highly ethnically diverse population. It's very difficult to line that all up in a single direction. You see more progress generally... Like Singapore. It's a small, city state nation. They've got a tremendous digital technology infrastructure work. I recently met with their Digital Minister. A gentleman named Kai Fong Chng, who was visiting the US. It's a tremendous story. Estonia has leveraged technology to democratize their cabinet meetings so everybody can kind of see in and see what's happening.

Daniel:

There's lots of ways that you can do it and there's lots of examples in the US of technology improving people's lives. One that comes to mind in the... Johnson County, Kansas, right? Biggest county in Kansas. Kansas City type environment. They had a problem with recidivism among their prison population and they used AI to say, "Let's look at all the data around the people that are leaving prison that don't come back and the people that are leaving prison that do, and let's design interventions during their prison tenure that make them more like the people that didn't come back. What were the characteristics of those people?" They actually saw a measurable improvement in recidivism.

Carolyn:

Wow. I love that. See, we all need to be like Bhutan and we... Did I say that right? The nation that measures gross happiness rather than GDP?

Daniel:

Bhutan, yeah. Bhutan. Dubai as well. Dubai does that as well.

Carolyn:

Yeah, and they believe in innovation, they believe in development, but always with a purpose. For the greater good.

Mark:

The problem we've got is we'll never agree on what happiness is here.

Carolyn:

That's the problem, right? None of us agree on what happiness is, what right or wrong is. Okay. We could talk about this forever. Mark, you-

Mark:

There's strength and there's weakness in that, but yeah that's a deep topic and we could literally do a whole podcast on that alone.

Carolyn:

Maybe we should.

Daniel:

I'm a big fan of Charlie Brown and Charles Schwartz wrote long ago that happiness is a warm puppy, so I'll start there. I think we can get broad agreement on that proposition.

Carolyn:

There we go.

Mark:

I think you're right. Well, to Carolyn's point at the very beginning of the tech talk questions was what are some of the things that you're listening to or that are inspiring you, like podcasts, it could be TV, books, movies? Anything like that, as it relates to tech.

Daniel:

n hear interviews with almost: 1000

Carolyn:

Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that. He does a full hour every week with a thought leader.

Mark:

Strange, we've never been rated, Carolyn. I don't get that.

Carolyn:

Hey, we will be, Mark. Now that we've had Dan on, we will be.

Daniel:

Of course, now I have a new podcast that I'm going to be listening to, now that I've made your acquaintance, so I look forward to that. I listen, personally, to a lot of political type podcasts. PoliticsNation, the one with James Carville and Al Hunt, or Pod Save America or Hacks On Tap. I'm sort of a DC junkie that way and while I'm walking my dog, that's when I get my podcasts listened to in the morning.

Daniel:

You said other sort of books. I try not to read about technology directly. Like, I don't read, usually, the biography of a big tech person but I'll try to read books that have a... I do read a lot of science fiction, I watched a lot of science fiction movies. We could talk more about that. It's got sort of a tech element and that of course inspires ideas about couldn't we do this because hey, I just saw it on the latest episode of the new Star Trek or something like that.

Carolyn:

That's right. This is why sci-fi is so important. It inspires those ideas, but let's just jump right to that. What's your favorite sci-fi? Give me some sci-fi books to read. What are you reading right now?

Daniel:

The book I just finished is Klara and the Sun, which is about a future in which artificial intelligence has been infused into mass produced artificial friends that kids have when they're growing up. Kids that are wealthier have these artificial friends, and they actually are sold in convenience stores and it's a fascinating look at how AI based culture can affect human relationships.

Carolyn:

Okay. Just added it to my reading list.

Mark:

Very interesting.

Daniel:

Movies. In my house, my family has an expression that there's the Dan channel, which is anytime there's a Star Trek, Star Wars, or Lord of the Rings movie and I see it, I'll be glued to the set. Those are the three that I'll look to for different reasons.

Mark:

Star Trek or Star Wars?

Daniel:

Both. I know that there's a divide and there's some people-

Carolyn:

No. We don't have to choose, Dan. That's wrong to ask us to choose.

Daniel:

Absolutely.

Carolyn:

What do you think of the new Strange New Worlds? Have you watched that?

Daniel:

No. My kids watched it but I haven't. Oh, the Star Trek Strange New Worlds?

Carolyn:

Yes. Yeah. Not Stranger Things.

Daniel:

Yeah, I thought you were saying Stranger Things. No, I love Strange New Worlds. I think it's great.

Carolyn:

And Picard? Did you like that one?

Daniel:

Yeah, Picard's terrific. Discovery. I think they're all good. Picard's one of my favorite characters in science fiction.

Carolyn:

Me too, but I just love Patrick Stewart, but yeah. Picard, I want to marry him. Okay. Do you have any questions for us or anything that you want to mention, Dan, that we did not mention?

Daniel:

Just that part of our role as a center is to engage with people like yourselves and partners to build relationships and alliances that can help bring together companies and government folks who are working with companies and identifying what's best for the world and bringing that collective capability through blogs and podcasts and informing the research that we do.

Daniel:

If you're listeners and viewers hear this and they start looking at the website and they have ideas or thoughts about what could be done next, in terms of an academic report or a topic that we might address, I would welcome any and all comers. You can go to our website and basically contact us that way. You can also put my email in the show notes, which I think you've got.

Carolyn:

Okay. Fantastic.

Mark:

Well, this has been awesome and you've been a really good guest, Dan. Thank you for taking the time to do this with us this morning.

Daniel:

Sure. I'm happy to do it. Any last questions?

Mark:

Tee it up, Carolyn.

Carolyn:

All right. Well Dan, I do have one more question. Do you work with agencies? If they have a question about how to implement AI or need a strategy or something like that, can they come to you and say, "Counsel us"?

Daniel:

Yeah, they can and they do. Our center is not a delivery organization, so we wouldn't be the ones that would actually implement a strategy. That would be our business partners. Both IBM and the business partners that we work with, in the ecosystem of companies that work with government. Our center is more about what's the best practice in solving that problem. Let's bring together some experts for a round table or let's hire an academic expert to do that. Some of our content gets produced by specific questions from the government like that.

Daniel:

More often, the bulk of our content is actually produced off of a research agenda that we publish and that research agenda identifies, based on talking to government leaders, what are the key issues that they need help with, and then we take the research agenda and we put it out to the field, sort of like an academic peer review process for a periodical, and we say, "Give us proposals for papers," and they submit. Every six months or so we get about 50 to 75 proposals and we have a down select process where we do a peer review and we probably fund about five or six. About one in ten come in.

Carolyn:

You get that many proposals from government agencies or is it...

Daniel:

No, these are proposals from academia.

Carolyn:

Ah, okay.

Daniel:

These are problems presented by government, that we put together in a broad research agenda, and then we say to the academics, "Can you give ideas for papers that would solve these problems?" Through a process that we go through, we award what we believe the most relevant papers are.

Carolyn:

Fantastic.

Daniel:

All right. Well, thank you both. This has been a really fascinating discussion and I liked talking to both of you and the dog and the background.

Mark:

My apologies.

Daniel:

No, that's all right. There's one, I think, in both of your houses.

Carolyn:

Yeah. Yeah. Mine's been in and out. His name's Han Solo by the way.

Daniel:

Oh, okay. Wow, well you got me there. You got me there. Our dog Lola is upstairs, sleeping.

Carolyn:

All right. Well, thanks so much.

Mark:

Thank you so much.

Carolyn:

Yeah. Thank you, and thanks to our listeners. Like and share this episode and we will talk to you next week on Tech Transforms.

Carolyn:

Thanks for joining Tech Transforms, sponsored by Dynatrace. For more Tech Transforms, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.

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