What is your background and current role within the federal identity space?
I’ve been working in the FedID space for 25 years, even though I had a rather inauspicious start. I had just been promoted to a program manager position in the Department of Defense’s Counterdrug Technology Development Program Office and my first assignment in that new role was to terminate the seminal FERET program! While doing so I recognized that there were still funds available, which created a transition opportunity. The result was creating FRVT, the first open and statistically-relevant evaluation of commercial biometric technology. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has continued managing FRVT evaluations to this day.
I later managed programs at both the National Institute of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that, in part, worked to mature identity capabilities so that they could eventually be useful in government operations. During that time, the Attorney General’s science advisor tasked me with fostering collaboration across the department’s growing activities related to identity. I also co-chaired the FAA’s identity planning work after 9/11 and served on a couple of “Go-Teams” that helped design TSA’s screening approaches when it was created.
I then spent eight years in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where one of my responsibilities was chairing the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC’s) Subcommittee on Biometrics and Identity Management. This subcommittee was highly impactful in advancing technology, driving national and international standards, establishing best practices, fostering interagency collaboration, and (in partnership with the National Security Council) implementing and overseeing screening approaches in the nation’s post-9/11 security paradigm. While in this role, I also supported numerous other federal identity activities, such as writing the requirement that led to the creation of the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace.
Soon after departing the White House for MITRE, a not-for-profit operator of federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs), an interagency team asked me to take over chairing FedID. MITRE and I have been honored to strategically support the federal government for the past 10 years as it designs and hosts its annual identity conference.
What do you see as the biggest opportunity (and/or obstacle) for the future of identity in the federal government?
I believe the biggest opportunity continues to be the growing role of identity in providing benefits to the proper individuals. For example, the federal government loses much more each year in payment errors within its benefit programs than it spends on research and development—and identity issues are one of the two largest components of that payment integrity problem. Imagine the fiscal benefits to the nation if the FedID community overcomes this issue!
Overcoming identity issues within benefits programs will not be easy, however, and will require nationwide collaboration. In fact, this year’s FedID marks the 15th anniversary of the NSTC’s Identity Management Task Force Report, which aimed to cohesively highlight the coming national importance of identity for the first time and to provide an initial future vision for the federal government and identity community. We are still striving to address some fundamental issues that will enable these communities to support a broad range of identity needs, including payment integrity.
As for the biggest obstacle, I’m going to let my bias toward policy-level issues take precedence: information integrity. Identity itself is complicated, and the applications that rely on it have personal ramifications—and often political or advocate intrigue. That is a combustible mixture, leading to a significant amount of mis-, dis-, and malinformation for policymakers to wade through. Information integrity issues have recently been most pronounced in face recognition, where many existing policy analyses and press articles on the technology have been inaccurate. I fully expect similar information integrity issues to materialize as more citizen-facing programs strengthen their identity protections. The FedID community needs to learn and adapt from prior experiences as we work to develop and discuss enhanced use of identity within public and private programs.
How does FedID help your agency (or organization) succeed?
FedID has been extremely helpful to the federal government for the past three decades in a couple of key ways. First, FedID brings together representatives from different agencies to exchange information and best practices. While interagency coordination does regularly occur on matters of high-level policy or specific operational matters, FedID is where larger and more broadly focused groups of federal employees gather to learn from one another.
Second, FedID drives public-private collaboration. FedID was a huge help in the government meeting its post-9/11 security identity requirements. It will be even more impactful for current and future federal identity concerns because they will be more heavily driven by the private sector than before. While FedID is no longer one of the only identity conferences in existence, it’s still the only one designed by the federal government to support its identity endeavors. The public-private presentations and conversations that take place here are extremely critical to helping ensure that the federal government understands what is happening in the broader identity space and what the federal government itself needs to do to ensure the nation succeeds more broadly on identity matters.
What are you most looking forward to for FedID 2023?
Honestly, I’m looking forward to the same thing as last year: being in person again for those interagency/public-private conversations. The two years that we had to be virtual due to COVID were still beneficial, but everyone who attended last year was ecstatic to be back in person. And being physically located close to DC this year will make it even easier for new individuals and organizations to attend, thus further broadening the conversation possibilities. (The federal government usually wants FedID to be held outside the DC area to ensure attendees can dedicate their full attention to the conference, but we’ll also occasionally choose to host it in the DC region, where it is easier for newer federal audiences to attend.)