Today, we have a pattern interrupt. Instead of a standard 25 minute interview, we will sit down with five nominees for a leadership award from Women in Technology.

Each candidate sits for a "lightning" round of eight minutes where they answer three questions about leadership and give their reason for participating in Women In Technology.

In order to see who won, you will have to visit Women In Technology.

Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/

Want to listen to other episodes? www.Federaltechpodcast.com

Everyone is trying to figure out how to apply AI to federal problems—essentially, building large language models and trying to wring value from them. Inevitably, many are jumping into creating LLMs from various data stores.

We are right at the point where consideration is given to managing enormous data sets in the federal government, emphasizing the need for operational efficiency and security.

The hard lesson learned is data in transit, which means expense.

Today, we will sit down with Dr. Ellison Anne Willimas to explore the potential of privacy-enhancing technologies to enable secure and efficient data use across classification boundaries and data silos.

Dr. Ellison Anne Williams suggests a solution called Privacy Enhancing Technology (PET). It is applied to data as it sits in a silo, a data lake, or whatever nomenclature is used to describe large data sets these days.

PETs allow the secure and private use of data across boundaries and classifications. She explains how PETs enable AI and machine learning models to be trained and used without compromising sensitive data.

The conversation also touches on the cost savings from avoiding data replication and the potential for significant operational efficiencies.

Explore the potential of privacy-enhancing technologies to enable secure and efficient data use across classification boundaries and data silos.

Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/

Want to listen to other episodes? www.Federaltechpodcast.com

Automation is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it promises greater efficiency; on the other hand, it can pose inherent risks, such as maliciously modified data, bias, and even data poisoning.

During today’s interview, Mia Jordan from Salesforce offers a solution. She is an experienced federal executive with a long-standing involvement in the federal technology community.

She has identified bottlenecks that can be solved with a structured approach that offers flexibility. Rather than grabbing any data set off the shelf, when the data has been curated, it can avoid many of the issues with creating specialized data sets.

Secondly, a company like Salesforce may have seen similar processes and have a store of code that can solve an agency’s problem. Re-purposing code that has worked before in a secure environment is a way to accelerate solving vexing federal issues.

The conversation also highlights the importance of collaboration and community within the federal government in enhancing efficiency and service delivery.

During the interview, Mia Jordan reviewed Agentforce and gave guidance on deploying a process called Role, Knowledge, Action, and Guardrails.