stackArmor, which provides approval-to-operate (ATO) acceleration services for government organizations and best of breed commercial cloud providers looking to sell to government agencies, is putting the finishing touches on its new AI Risk Management Center of Excellence (CoE) that will help agencies to roll out secure and safe adoption of artificial intelligence technologies in accordance with new government standards.
stackArmor first announced the AI Risk Management CoE on Sept. 27. The group features a blue-chip lineup of Federal and private sector technology officials, including:
- Former Federal CIO Suzette Kent;
- Former Deputy Federal CIO Maria Roat;
- Former GSA Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Alan Thomas;
- Former Homeland Security Department CIO Richard Spires; and
- Former Microsoft and AWS executive Teresa Carlson.
The company’s launch of the new CoE last month shows opportune timing with the Biden administration’s AI Executive Order issued by the White House on Oct. 30.
The sweeping EO establishes new standards for AI in eight categories including: safety and security; privacy; equity and civil rights; supporting consumers and workers; innovation and competition; American leadership; and government use of AI.
The order also issues major policy marching orders to no less than seven Federal agencies for specific follow-up work and calls on Congress to approve legislation on data privacy and other AI-related topics.
Watch for more details soon from stackArmor and MeriTalk on our executive forum in Washington, D.C., in January that will cover how companies can deliver their AI apps to government more quickly, and what government needs to do to manage the acquisition process.
“Harnessing the power of AI for delivery of government mission and services will be transformational,” said Kent, who is the latest addition to the CoE. “But it is complicated to align all the emerging policy, risk frameworks, approval processes and existing policy and law.”
“I am thrilled to be included in the COE because I have seen the work of the stackArmor team to drill down to details and find a path to connect all the pieces,” Kent said. “We can only get to use operational AI at scale by working through these details. I hope the output of the COE will deliver tools that agencies can use to move faster and to confidently scale AI capabilities.”
“AI adoption is a complicated journey with a unique set of challenges,” said Gaurav “GP” Pal, founder and CEO at stackArmor. “By making the CoE broadly accessible, we can help accelerate the safe and secure adoption of AI across the public and private sectors.”
In an interview with MeriTalk, Pal talked about how the new AI Risk Management CoE was conceived, and how stackArmor is innovating the group’s engagement model.
“The AI Risk Management CoE was designed to be a collection of senior executives experienced in operationalizing new technologies, whether it’s cloud technologies, internet of things (IoT), mobile, or any other kind of technology,” he said. “People like Suzette Kent, and Maria Roat, and Richard Spires, they have a lot of experience doing that.”
“In many ways, we felt AI is similar in the sense that it’s a new technology, and so we wanted to offer in one place a set of people that can respond to a broad range of questions about AI technology and how to roll it out safely,” he said.
“Whether the question is about acquisitions, we have a person like Alan Thomas,” he said. “On the policy and workforce side, we have people like Suzette Kent. When it comes to governance and oversight from a cyber risk management standpoint, we have people like Maria Roat. Then we have Richard Spires, who has deep operational agency experience in how to incorporate new systems into the enterprise. Also then we have the very critical industry solutions marketplace expertise with Teresa Carlson.”
“So all of these people bring unique experiences, and they are all under one umbrella to help us to accelerate the adoption of AI,” Pal emphasized.
“We believe this group of professionals is very uniquely suited to provide perspective on how to accelerate the adoption of AI in federal networks,” Pal said. He added that stackArmor is innovating its engagement model for the CoE with an aim to achieve “the very best way that they can help organizations.”
