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Have you ever tried to cancel an online subscription and ended up clicking around in circles trying to find the right button to press? If so, you experienced a "dark pattern" - a deceptive tactic of UX design that tries to trick users into doing something they don't want to do.
In the online age, UX designers have enormous power in facilitating our access to information and services. What happens when this power is used for evil?
To discuss this question (and more), we're joined by Colin Gray, Associate Professor of Informatics at Indiana University Bloomington and Director of the Human-Computer Interaction design program. They've spent the past several years documenting and classifying dark patterns and exploring the legal and ethical questions surrounding their use.Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.
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This week, The Buzz presents a session from ACT-IAC's 2024 Digital Transformation Summit.
This panel of fedtech experts discusses the progress they have made in their respective agencies to leverage digital transformation to enhance the citizen experience, focusing on policy and process impediments that can derail progress and how to overcome them.
Andrea Fletcher - Chief Digital Strategy Officer, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid ServicesRaymond Holder - .VP of Digital Growth, MaximusBeth Martin - Digital Services Expert, OPMRaj Iyer (Moderator) - Global Head of Public Sector, ServiceNow
Panelists:Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.
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About a year ago, we were joined on the show by Gabriel Zucker of Code for America to talk taxes. Specifically, a provision of the Inflation Reduction Act that directed the IRS to develop their own proprietary, free tax prep software for the first time in history.
Since then, the IRS has been hard at work. 2024 tax season marks the launch of the IRS Direct File pilot, a simplified tax prep tool available to residents of twelve states. It's free, easy, fast, and represents a huge win for civic tech.
So we invited Code for America back on to celebrate this win and discuss the implications and future of this momentous project. This week The Buzz is joined by Courtney O' Reilly, Senior Program Manager for Tax Benefits at CforA.
Resources:
Code for America's FileYourStateTaxes
IRS Direct File Report to CongressSubscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.
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This week, The Buzz is joined once again by Robert Puentes, President and CEO of the Eno Center for Transportation. Last time, we talked about some of the challenges facing American aviation and the FAA. The intervening weeks have magnified some of this as Boeing, under scrutiny for a series of engineering failures, has started seeing some serious turnover in upper management and a slew of promises to shape up.
So maybe now is a good time to examine a different transportation mode for your next vacation or long-distance trip. American regional rail, once among the best in the world, has spent the last 100 years shriveling up into a fractured network that captures only 33 million passengers annually (barely 1/30th of US airlines). But that may be changing. Amtrak gained nearly 25% more passengers from 2022 to 2023, and billions of dollars of federal money are flowing into rail projects all over the country, courtesy of the Inflation Reduction Act and 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill.
With all this momentum, perhaps a new age in American rail is upon us? We discuss the past, present and future of rail travel this week on The Buzz.
More from the Eno Center: https://enotrans.org/issues-and-modes/railroads/
More on Permitting and Planning Challenges: The Green Transition Dilemma with James Salzman and J.B. RuhlSubscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.
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This week, The Buzz presents a session from our 2024 Shared Services Summit, in partnership with the Shared Services Leadership Coalition. Learn more at sharedservicesnow.org.
In this fireside chat, Maria Banks, Director of Federal Sales at Atlassian, sat down with Susan Dorr, Chief Information Officer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.
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This episode originally aired on April 5th, 2023.
As tax season ramps up in earnest, and given the good news about the IRS's Direct File Pilot Program, we thought now would be a good time to revisit an interview we conducted last year with Code For America's Gabriel Zucker, the Interim Program Director of Tax Policy and Partnerships.
This interview focused on how the IRS could design a direct file system, what such a tool might look like, and Code for America's work in civic tech for taxes.Resources:
GAO Free File Report
ProPublica's Investigation into Private Tax Prep Software
Code for America's Direct File Prototype
Code for America's Research on Simple Tax FilingSubscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.
Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.
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This week, The Buzz presents a session from our archives.
The concept of customer experience has driven business decisions in private industry for some time, but it's only in the last decade that CX, or citizen service, has become a focus of government.
The creation of healthcare.gov in 2013 heralded a new era in government, one marked by an interest in the lessons learned from tech start-ups and the relationship between IT systems, government processes and the people that use them. In this fireside chat from ACT-IAC's 2014 Executive Leadership Conference, we see the beginning stages of an ongoing conversation that continues to evolve to this day.
Dan Tangherlini, then General Administrator of the GSA, discussed all this and more with Evan Burfield, entrepreneur, author and civic tech enthusiast.Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.
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This week, The Buzz presents a session from ACT-IAC's 2024 Digital Transformation Summit.
Digital transformation efforts often rely on implementation of new systems. This presents an opportunity to integrate improved cybersecurity policy from the ground up. Unfortunately, cyber is still often ignored in the digital transformation process despite its importance.
In this fireside chat, Paul Butterfoss, CTO of Federal Civilian IT at Leidos, discusses proper cyber hygiene with Paul Selby, CISO and Deputy CIO at the Department of Energy.Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.
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While virtual reality has been around for several decades, both as a concept and a technology, it is only in the past few years that inexpensive, mass-produced, higher-quality VR systems have become broadly available. This has enabled more people to experiment and conduct research with VR software, and better determine its potential and use.
The field of medicine has exemplified this approach. Medical Extended Reality, or MXR, is an emerging area of research surrounding the psychology, physiology, and ethics of virtual reality and augmented reality. By applying it to the treatment of mental and physical illnesses, MXR sheds light on some of the most mysterious, even philosophical aspects of human existence - perception and the mind.
Dr. Brennen Spiegel is the Director Health Services Research for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he and his colleagues are exploring the cutting edge of MXR. He is also the author of VRx: How Virtual Therapeutics Will Revolutionize Medicine.Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.
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Since the mass adoption of remote work began in 2020, there has been an ongoing question around what the shift in commuting habits means for American downtowns. What should office space look like? Where should people be living and working, and how do they get between those two places? All of these have implications for local policymakers, developers, and property owners.
And the Federal Government is, in a way, all three of these. The Public Buildings Service (PBS), a division of the GSA, is responsible for maintaining all of the 352 million square feet of federally-owned property across America. The PBS also seeks to invest and develop urban communities, trial and prove sustainable buildings solutions, and be a willing and enthusiastic partner with state and local government in achieving their goals. Now, as the entire federal government reassesses how its employees will work, the PBS is also doing its best to steward federal properties towards their best and highest use.
This week, we're joined by PBS Commissioner Elliot Doomes to discuss the many facets of the agency's current initiatives.Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.
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This week, The Buzz presents a session from our 2024 Acquisition Forum, which specifically focused this year on AI in government.
Our forum ended with a fireside chat between Susie Rainey, Diplomacy and Exploration Lead at Accenture Federal, and Michael Derrios, Senior Procurement Executive at the US Department of State. Together, they discuss the implications of artificial intelligence-driven systems in the procurement process.
Submit a nomination for the 2024 Innovation Awards here!Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.
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In just a few short years, the aviation sector has experienced the whipsaw of a pandemic-era travel freeze followed by a post-pandemic travel explosion.
Like many other industries, our already complex air travel system has experienced some recent pain points related to labor shortages, technological failures, and governance challenges. Some are new, but others are long-standing concerns that have resurfaced due to the pressures of a rapidly changing world.
This week, we're joined by Robert Puentes, president and CEO at the Eno Center for Transportation, a non-partisan think tank that focuses on improving all facets of American transportation. He'll give us a primer on the interaction of private, federal, state and local actors that make up the aviation sector and how they can build a more resilient air travel system.Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.
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As we've explored on this show before, the past few years have seen an unprecedented level of public and private investment in green energy, green infrastructure, and electrification. Between the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, over $1 Trillion has flowed into the green economy. This reflects the urgency of the climate crisis and the need to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions to attempt to avoid worst-case global warming scenarios.
Unfortunately, when it comes to physically building all these projects - from wind turbines, to lithium mines, to transmission lines - we are seeing massive, decades-long delays in the permitting and planning process, often as a result of environmental law meant to, ironically, protect us from pollution and ecological harm. In the fight against climate change, every second counts, and we cannot afford these delays.
Our guests this week are James Salzman and J.B. Ruhl, environmental law professors at UCLA and Vanderbilt, respectively. They are the authors of The Greens' Dilemma, a framework for understanding how our regulatory regime is inhibiting our capacity to confront climate change, what the stakes are, and what to do about it.
Read The Greens' Dilemma: Building Tomorrow's Climate Infrastructure TodaySubscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.
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This week, The Buzz presents something a little different than usual.
ELC 2023, ACT-IAC's flagship conference in Hershey, PA, opened with a rousing, inspirational keynote from Art Jackson about personal leadership.
Art Jackson is a professional speaker and coach, West Point graduate, and former IT executive. Learn more about him at https://artjackson.com/.
Learn more about the ACT-IAC Associates Program here!
Submit a nomination for the 2024 Innovation Awards here!Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.
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This week, The Buzz presents a session from our December 2023 CX Summit. CX is a key component of the Biden-Harris President's Management Agenda.
The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act appropriated an additional $79.4 billion to the IRS to assist in modernization and improved service delivery. In this keynote, Commissioner Danny Werfel details the challenges and priorities of the agency as they strive to build a simpler, fairer, more accessible tax system for Americans.
Learn more about the ACT-IAC Associates Program here!
Submit a nomination for the 2024 Innovation Awards here!Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.
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In August 2022, Congress passed the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors – or Chips and Science Act. Congratulations to whoever came up with that acronym. The law authorized more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in funding for domestic technology manufacturing and development. It has been recognized as a key piece of the reignition of US industrial policy – which has lain dormant for much of the 21st century.
As you can imagine, direct funding of research across the US is a key component of this legislation – so the bill set aside funding for the designation of Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs. The Economic Development Administration is spearheading this program, and now that things are up and running, we can start to dive deeper into the Tech Hubs Program, what it seeks to accomplish, and why it matters.
To do this, we're joined by Alejandra Castillo, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development.
Resources:
Tech Hubs Overview
List of Awardees
Learn more about the ACT-IAC Associates Program here!
Submit a nomination for the 2024 Innovation Awards here!Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.
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This week will be the last episode of The Buzz for 2023, and we're taking the time to reflect back on a busy year at ACT-IAC with Dave Wennergren, our CEO.
We review the major topics of interest for the federal government, how to deal with a rapidly-changing world, what ACT-IAC has been up to, and what to look forward to next year.
Thank you, listeners, for making The Buzz a part of your week in 2023. Have a fantastic holiday season, and we'll see you in 2024.Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.
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The last time we discussed cryptocurrency on this podcast in April 2022, both the economy and the technology sector were in very different places. Right around that time, inflation really began to accelerate, peaking at 9.1% year-over-year in June. The Federal Reserve pumped the brakes and hiked interest rates 5% in a 4-month period. The entire cryptocurrency market essentially collapsed by the end of 2022 - including several high-profile failures like the FTX exchange.
In November, the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT initiated the most visible phase of the generative AI arms race, and crypto faded into the background of public consciousness as a new tech hype cycle took over.
But crypto has not disappeared, and the Federal Government has yet to conclusively settle the most important questions concerning cryptocurrency regulation.
To discuss what went wrong, why this all matters, and what we should do next, The Buzz is joined once again by Hilary Allen, Professor of Law at American University.
You can listen to our first conversation with Hilary here.Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.
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This year, ACT-IAC's Imagine Nation ELC was our largest conference ever, with more than 1200 in-person attendees! We also had more sessions than ever, and The Buzz is excited to bring a selection of recordings from this year's event to our podcast audience.
Individual Award - James Greer, AWARE Program Manager, IRSTeam Award - Bonnie Evangelista and the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace Team, Department of DefenseSmall Business and Procurement Equity Individual Award - Darlene Bullock, Director of the Office of Small and Disadvantaged Utilization, DHSSmall Business and Procurement Equity Team Award - Anthony Lomelin and Team
This session features the presentation of the Federal Acquisition Institute's 2023 Chief Acquisition Officers Council Awards. After a brief introduction, moderator Christine Harada, Senior Advisor in the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, sits down with all our award-winners for a robust panel discussion around the important work they've done in 2023.
Awardees:
Indian Affairs Acquisition Office, Bureau of Indian AffairsLisa Wilusz Program Management Excellence Award - Mouncef Belcaid & Peggy O' Connor and Team, Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network Program Management Division, FirstNet Authority, Department of CommerceSustainable Acquisition Award - Gabriel Rangel, General Services Officer, U.S. Embassy of TanzaniaCongratulations again to all awardees!
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This fall, our federal government has teetered on the edge of shutdown more than once before a last-minute agreement could be reached. As of this episode, yet another Continuing Resolution has extended the day of reckoning to either mid-January or early February, depending on the agency.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time discord in Congress has disrupted government operations, and it's not likely to be the last. While the process of Congressional appropriations is byzantine and wonky, it has enormous implications for the basic function and effectiveness of government. Shutdowns, even the threat of shutdowns, bring significant negative impacts to the American public, whether they recognize it or not.
This week, we're joined by Philip Joyce, Professor of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. He'll take us into the weeds of how and why Congressional budgeting works (or rather doesn't work), the effects of shutdowns, and whether we can prevent this kind of instability in the future.Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.
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