Dr. Ola Olude-Afolabi, data scientist and AI project manager at the U.S. Department of Commerce attended Worldwide AI Webinar to talk about how data and AI are changing the landscape for the U.S. in an insightful keynote. Keep reading for the highlights of her speech!

Check out her presentation on our website and YouTube channel.

Joint Venture Partner program at National Technical Information Service (NTIS)

Having operated since 1988, NTIS has evolved over the years and morphed into creating innovations and AI solutions. With the new Joint Venture Partner (JVP) program, NTIS aims to empower federal agencies in matters such as cybersecurity, fraud & anomaly detection, and enterprise data governance among others.

NTIS has a detailed four-step process when collaborating with partners for innovation, skills acceleration, and invoicing burden reduction:

Ideate
Conceptualize
Propose
Implement

What’s more, there will be a whiteboarding session where the agency will meet with all JVPs to answer their questions before proceeding to obtain a clearer picture of the targeted group.

NTIS values

Ola detailed five values of NTIS:

Accelerated project setup: NTIS strives to initiate projects quickly through collaboration with the customer and with establish a relationship with the JVP program
Highly collaborative: NTIS remains closely involved throughout the lifetime of the project
Extremely diverse skillset pool: NTIS offers unprecedented access to industry expertise
Customer ownership: the customer fully drives the agile project ensuring that its business needs are accomplished
Reduced invoicing burden: NTIS vets work-performed evaluates performer invoicing, and requests the agency’s approval prior to authorizing payment

The importance of AI ethics

While AI and data have been at the forefront, protecting citizens remains the nation’s top priority. Therefore, DOC encourages other corporate entities to keep financial data and confidential information safe and secure.

Dr. Olude-Afolabi also shared some responsible AI resources, such as:

Executive Order 13960: The Executive Order calls for the CIO council to identify, provide guidance on and make publicly available the criteria, format, and mechanism for agency inventories and share the consolidated inventories with other agencies
Accountability, Ethics & Governance framework
Responsible AI framework
IEEE AI Ethics Standard

All in all, Ola claimed that NTIS offers:

Easy access to solutions
Fed-to-Fed services allow for transparent communication and the exchange of ideas
Wide range of industry experts from a diverse group of partners including industry and academia
NTIS manages JVP relationships and ensures customer satisfaction
Agile deployment allows the ability to test different strategies to achieve the optimal solution with potentially no paperwork or change of specifications
High satisfaction rate
Reduced invoicing burden