Census Thinks a Clippy-Style AI Assistant Could Speed Up Security Authorizations

A team of innovation specialists at the Census Bureau is working to speed up the process for getting security authorizations--known as an authority to operate, or ATO--for new systems and applications. Among their potential solutions: Developing an artificial intelligence bot that offers wisdom from successful ATOs, akin to Microsoft's much-maligned Clippy office assistant. Security officials focused on the ATO process have long urged agencies to reuse authorizations for like-for-like systems. While leaders have said that is happening more often, program managers are often reticent to reuse an authorization that might not track exactly to the app they are standing up. But for a given security control, there is language and considerations for how the documentation is put together that can easily be borrowed from one authorization to the next, according to the Census FISMAtic project team.