The rapid development of artificial intelligence has the potential to remake how the federal government delivers a broad range of core services to citizens in a profound way. When implemented correctly, these technologies can help the government to render decisions faster, using better data, at a far lower cost in vital areas ranging from awarding disability benefits to granting patents to adjudicating immigration applications and healthcare insurance benefits. Pursuing AI transformation will also position the government to better respond to sudden demand surges for relief as a result of pandemics or other unforeseen future emergencies. Right now, AI strategies are at an early adoption stage in most administrative agencies, with just 45 percent of surveyed agencies having an AI use case according to a recent report, Government by Algorithm, issued by Stanford University and NYU to the Administrative Conference of the United States. Out of those agencies that have implemented AI, only 12 percent were considered to be highly sophisticated applications, according to Stanford's computer scientists.

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Maxar Technologies' Radiant Solutions division has expanded a contract with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to continue development of machine learning and crowdsourcing tools in support of NGA's commercial GEOINT strategy updated earlier this year. NGA exercised the 2019 option year and expanded the value for Radiant to $92 million over a three-year period. The agency issued the award against a Small business Innovation Research Phase III contract, Radiant said Thursday. Radiant will work with NGA to further develop, prototype and deploy tools for analysts to process large volumes of remote sensing data in order to gain knowledge of global life patterns and search broad areas. For this contract, Radiant will concentrate on moving forward its DeepCore computer vision software development kit and Tomnod crowdsourcing platform for NGA.

Last week's White House summit on artificial intelligence (AI) is an encouraging sign of American government and industry working collaboratively to advance this transformative technology. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis recently told a congressional committee that the Department of Defense (DoD) is "not going to have more papers, we're going to move on [AI]." DoD is broadly pursuing AI, not just as another set of programs, but also as a powerful enabler for nearly every defense mission and function. Strategic competitors are not standing idly by, either, as they reshape their economies to more service-based industries bolstered by technology. The U.S. commercial sector has a sense of urgency in adopting AI in the face of increasing international competition.

Though Booz Allen Hamilton may be a 104-year-old company, it still views itself on the forefront of the future. "We kind of built the management consulting business, so when we think about our clients' problems, we come at it from a consultative approach," said Gary Labovich, a Booz Allen executive vice president. The Booz Allen legacy is a major factor that has driven the company's success, said Labovich. The McLean, Virginia-based company holds the No. 6 spot on this year's Top 100 list with $4.1 billion in prime federal contracts. One of the many highlights for the organization this year was in February when the FDA named Booz Allen Hamilton an awardee of a $300 million contract to modernize the human drug review process.

The future of federal IT belongs to CIOs who can build flexible, nimble organizations able to maximize the advantage of existing technologies like cloud services and automated machine intelligence while laying the groundwork for a range of emerging technologies on the horizon. That's according to a new report on government technology trends for 2017 published Wednesday by Deloitte. Researchers identified eight technologies they believe have an opportunity to disrupt and change the way the federal government leverages information, data and software over the next two years. Some are a continuation of existing trends that are already established, like IT consolidation and greater reliance on cloud-based software and services. Others, like artificial intelligence, mixed reality and nanotechnology veer more into the outer edges of what is currently possible today, but may have far more relevance a few years down the line.