The latest news and opportunities in government data and analytics                                                   

VOLUME 6. ISSUE 40.

Email-Header-Generic.jpg

Welcome to Carpe Datum’s weekly newsletter, the Federal Data Prospector, the only publication of its kind dedicated exclusively to data and analytics companies that share our passion for serving the public sector. Our featured items begin with the Defense Intelligence Agency's Data Science, Operations, Requirements, Exploitation and Enhanced Engineering (DORE3) RFI and pre-solicitation conference. DORE3 seeks advisory services across eleven support areas, including data science, technical exploitation, IoT, and rapid prototyping, to support both the Intelligence Community and relevant Department of Defense (DoD) elements.

 

 

In other data news, on September 30th, The Register  published an article entitled Remote ID verification tech is often biased, bungling, and no good on its own. In this story, Chris Burt details the General Services Administration (GSA) study revealing that remote identity verification (RiDV) technologies can be biased and unreliable across demographics. Only two out of five tested products performed equitably, with the others showing significant error rates, particularly for Black and Asian participants.

 

  • The GSA said it plans to release the final peer-reviewed version of the study in 2025, which will include further analysis into causes of false negatives and inconclusive results, as well as product performance at each step of the identity verification process. 'GSA looks forward to using the results of the study to help GSA and other federal agencies advance equity in new, modern technologies and deliver services more effectively for the public,' an agency spokesperson told us in an emailed statement.”

 

Please take a moment to share our newsletter with anyone who you think might find it useful and/or interesting ... as the saying goes, "the more, the merrier!" - Click here to subscribe.

 

The Carpe Datum Team

Data Management and Data Analytics Software-as-a-Service

Dept. of Veterans Affairs

The Office of Enterprise Integration and Office of Information Technology are co-sponsoring the sustainment of the Common Operating Platform, referred to from this point forward as the ‘National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics Platform’ or ‘NCVAS Platform’. VA currently has the Palantir Foundry Software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution, which underpins its current capability. VA seeks a SaaS solution that provides the same functionality as the current operational decision support capability.

242 Industry Data and Credit Analytics (IDCA)

Dept. of Housing and Urban Development

The purpose of this action is to purchase a commercially available subscription located on the contractor’s platform. The subscription service shall provide online reports and materials covering the American healthcare sector. This will include, but is not limited to, rating agency reports, sector commentary, benchmarks, and industry outlooks.

Command and Control Plus Data Mediation for the Exploitation of Mobile Devices

Dept. of Justice

This RFI is to conduct market research into capable vendors that can provide command and control plus data mediation for the exploitation of mobile devices.

Electronic Subscription Access to a News Aggregator and Business Database

Dept. of the Treasury

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Office of Chief Counsel, Library (hereafter IRS Counsel Library) seeks an electronic subscription access to a news aggregator and business database for ten (10) users. This electronic subscription access will aggregate news from global news sources in near real-time, provides archival coverage of global news content, provides alerting services, and provides information about businesses worldwide.

Geospatial Intelligence Processing and Exploitation (GeoPEX)

Dept. of Defense

Republished solicitation, including previous announcements.

Adaptive Fusion, & Reasoning of Multi-Source Data (AFAR)

Dept. of Defense

Republished solicitation, including previous announcements.

SEQUOIA (Formerly known as AI/ML Data Labeling)

Dept. of Defense

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) issued the final Request for Proposal (RFP) HM047624R0005 for SEQUOIA, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Data Labeling services requirement.  

Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) Solutions for Evolving Scenarios (SESS)

Dept. of Defense

Republished solicitation, including previous announcements.

Standalone License 1YR Subscription Service

Dept. of Defense

The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) intends to award a sole source purchase order S&P Global Inc of New York, New York to furnish a 2d/3dPAK Standalone License 1 year Subscription Service.

Army Vantage, Sole Source, Follow-on, PEO EIS ARDAP

Dept. of Defense

The Army requires a tailorable data integration solution that integrates, analyzes, and visualizes information from multiple disparate data sources. The solution will make data available for use either using the tools available in the KTR’s product or made available to the Government’s third-party tools and other data platforms.

Intent to award a sole source award to Dataminr, Inc for First Alert License

Dept. of Justice

The Office of Protective Intelligence (OPI) has a requirement for the First Alert Software as Service Subscription licenses which are peculiar to one manufacturer. First Alert is a digital content search translation, and analysis tool which delivers news alerts which transforms publicly available information into actionable breaking news alerts, identifying the most relevant information in real time for members of the United States Marshall Service.

Aggregated Retail Point-of-Sale/Scanner Transaction Data

Dept. of Commerce

This justification and approval sets forth the facts and approval for the award of a sole source contract to Nielsen Consumer LLC (NielsenIQ) to obtain real-time point-of-sale grocery and pharmacy sector data about individual retailers. The objective of this procurement is to improve the quality of Census Bureau retail data products while also reducing the burden to respondents.

iCYLON Subscription Service

Dept. of Homeland Security

The iCYLON system functionality is designed specifically to link disparate datasets into a coherent picture to support investigations. iCYLON, LLC is the only company that can provide integrated access to research information that is not available in any similar scope. iCYLON holds exclusive patent, trademarks, proprietary process, and intellectual property rights to Mercury Draw (MD) Exquisite Graph-as-a-Service (GaaS). These services curate PAI, CIA, GIA, and breech data into a searchable database with international coverage.

Notice of Intent to Sole Source - Economic Data Subscription

Dept. of Labor

The Haver Analytics service is needed to provide quick and flexible access to timely economic information regarding the U.S. economy, states, and local areas (i.e., cities, counties, metropolitan areas), as well as other countries. The data in the Haver Analytics database is uniquely comprehensive, detailed, and accessible.

Medical Logistics Authoritative Data Exchange and Database Subscription Services for DHA MEDLOG

Dept. of Defense

This subscription service will provide authoritative, real-time data for hazard alerts and recalls for medical equipment and supplies, capital market analytics, data standardization, patient safety communications, and price guides, to include data, product catalogs and utilization analytics.

IARPA Director Talks OSINT, Trust, AI for Coming Strategy Vision

“Traditionally, the intelligence community had a few sources of intelligence, and had a pretty good idea how well they can trust those sources of intelligence,” he said. “Now we’re entering an era with all different kinds of open source intelligence, where we’ve got an almost endless collection of sources and we have no idea of how much we can trust any of these things.”

FTC targets deceptive AI claims in new crackdown

The crackdown by the FTC is part of a new law enforcement sweep called Operation AI Comply, according to the agency. In this instance, the five companies “relied” on AI to “supercharge deceptive or unfair conduct,” the FTC said. “Using AI tools to trick, mislead, or defraud people is illegal,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement.

HII Mission Technologies' Henry Choi Shares How 'Data Fabric' Is Key to DOD's All-Domain Future

Data is king in the digital age, and it has become an increasingly crucial element in informing the United States’ strategies both on and off the battlefield. In this Executive Spotlight interview, Henry Choi, vice president of growth and strategy at HII Mission Technologies, shared his thoughts on how data enables CJADC2, major GovCon market trends and HII’s strategic vision for the future. 

FDA’s views on AI are evolving

"A lot of that data sits either in silos within the same organization or across organizations. So the one thing that I think collectively the ecosystem needs to think about is: How do we increase the pool of fit-for-purpose data to train models better?"

AI not yet a 'revolutionary influence tool,' US says

A top official at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the U.S. agency charged with overseeing election security, told VOA earlier this month that to this point the malicious use of AI has not been able to live up to some of the hype. “Generative AI is not going to fundamentally introduce new threats to this election cycle,” said CISA senior adviser Cait Conley. “What we're seeing is consistent with what we expected to see.” That does not mean, however, that U.S. adversaries are not trying.

From data to delivery: How GenAI is shaping the future of public service

“GenAI efforts should always be linked to real-world goals and needs (such as better quality of life, financial growth, national security or simple internal efficiencies), and not pursued in and of themselves,” he explained. Tan shared a few potential use cases for GenAI in the government, top challenges faced in scaling up the technology, as well as potential ways to overcome those challenges.

Quality Data a Must for an Interoperable IC, According to Experts

“AI is dependent upon data. It’s the quality of the data, it’s the speed of access to data, and of course, the algorithmic solutions associated with AI and the modeling that’s put into place that drives the result of AI,” he said. While the vast expanse of data available today offers numerous opportunities for government agencies, “we have to be a little more deliberate in the Department and Defense and IC about where the data’s coming from,” said Mark Munsell, director of data and digital innovation at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

NYC Adds, Simplifies Data Sets in Annual Open Data Report

“I think New York City’s administrative data is one of the most critical assets the city has,” said NYC Chief Analytics Officer Martha Norrick. “In addition to the ways that city officials are using that data, having this data be open really means that New Yorkers can use this data, as well, to advocate for the things that they want to see in their community.”

The Growing Importance of Data Monetization in the Age of AI

Data monetization financially incentivizes organizations to share their internal data safely. It creates the economic model for an open data sharing ecosystem, which is opening up new opportunities for businesses across various sectors. Companies that share data in compliance with data protection and privacy regulations can build fast-growing data-as-a-service (DaaS) businesses safely.  This practice not only maximizes the value of existing resources but also supports innovation and improved decision-making, whilst protecting the original rights holder of the data. 

FBI’s Carahsoft raid comes amid allegations of price-fixing

News of the raid prompted speculation about possible — but thus far unsubstantiated — links to an ongoing court case that was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland last year and involved efforts to defraud government agencies. The names of the vendors allegedly involved in the scheme were redacted. A report in Bloomberg, citing an unredacted filing, named SAP and noted that prosecutors were also examining other resellers and a unit of Accenture. 

Building the Best Data Pipelines

Traditionally, data pipelines have been linear, making the extract, transform, load (ETL) process the norm. Businesses would extract data from sources, transform and clean up the data, and then load it into a data warehouse or data lake. But as AI technologies increasingly drive digital transformations, data pipelines must evolve to become non-linear and avoid moving data as much as possible to accommodate the weight of unstructured data and the iterative nature of AI.

'Working with AI will soon be just like onboarding new employees,' says NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang

During a fireside chat with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Huang emphasised that AI won’t replace human workers but will instead complement them. By taking over repetitive and time-consuming tasks, such as data entry, AI will free employees to focus on more strategic and creative work. Huang likened the integration of AI to onboarding a new colleague, where the AI agent is introduced, trained, and given specific tasks to support the business.

Data – Driven Compliance: The DOJ Mandate on Transforming Compliance Through Data Analytics and AI with Vince Walden

Are you struggling to keep up with the ever-changing compliance programs in your business? Look no further than the award-winning Data Driven Compliance podcast, hosted by Tom Fox, is a podcast featuring an in-depth conversation around the uses of data and data analytics in compliance programs. Data Driven Compliance is back with another exciting episode.

'Enhanced Situational Awareness' Solutions Meeting: Industry Observers

The Innovation & Modernization (I&M) office within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD (R&E)) is inviting industry investors and business advisors to their “Enhanced Situational Awareness” Solutions Meeting.  Solutions Meetings facilitate engagement between the Department of Defense (DoD) and the innovation ecosystem to discuss promising technical solutions for operational challenges.

govDATAx 2024 - Data Foundation's Center for Data Policy and Center for Evidence Capacity

At the heart of govDATAx 2024 is a visionary message: The Evidence Act laid the foundation for a new era of governance as a catalyst for change in the next 25 years. We now look ahead to the next 25 years of possibility. The govDATAx 2024 summit will explore the long-term trajectory of data-driven decision-making, from current best practices to future scenarios that will shape government operations and citizen services through 2050 and beyond.

Live RFI - Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) Enterprise Data Integration and Management Support (EDIMS) Services

The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) Office of Acquisition (RAD-30) and Office of Research, Data, and Innovation (RDI) invite you to participate in a virtual Live Request for Information (RFI) event supporting the FRA's upcoming Enterprise Data Integration and Management Support (EDIMS) Services requirement. The resultant contract solution will provide data engineering support and enable data analytics that advances data-driven decision making across FRA.

Trust '24 Data Integrity Summit

Get AI-ready when you join us at LeBow College of Business in Philly! Don’t miss this chance to connect with industry experts and gain the skills and actionable insights you need to excel in the AI-driven future. Get inspired with engaging keynotes, including Zack Kass, Futurist and Former Head of GTM at OpenAI. Hear about the latest data integrity trends and innovations – plus, student and customer success stories.

Twitter  Linkedin  
The Federal Data Prospector is curated by Carpe Datum employees, and delivers fresh content about the intersection of the data and analytics industry and the Federal Government for businesses who want to start or grow their public sector practices.

View the archives.

Was this forwarded to you? Subscribe to receive the Federal Data Prospector.