Lawmakers from both chambers, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., sent a letter to IRS commissioner Daniel Werfel and the Treasury Department on Monday in which they said a large majority of Americans support the creation of a free direct filing service.

“We write to applaud this announcement and your leadership on this issue, and to share our support for making a strong tool available to as many taxpayers as feasible next filing season and for continuing to build the free and easy filing tool that many Americans want and deserve,” the Democrats wrote in the letter to Werfel and the Treasury Department.

The Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Digital Service are working to develop a prototype free filing service, which is expected to be made available to certain taxpayers in January 2024.

“We urge you to make this pilot of the direct file tool available to as many taxpayers as is feasible, in order to deliver real value quickly to American taxpayers and demonstrate the value of modernizing the IRS, while also gathering data to make improvements and to better serve American taxpayers,” the Democrats’ letter added. 

The missive highlighted a recent IRS report to Congress which indicated that taxpayers trust the IRS to provide a direct free filing service, and think it is the agency’s role to build and operate such a system.

In the Monday letter, lawmakers argued that the Treasury agency’s existing Free File Program—which is a partnership between IRS and private tax preparation companies—has not been successful despite 70% of taxpayers qualifying for the service.

The missive also criticized companies offering tax preparation services that are advertised to be free but often are not. Last month, TurboTax began paying $141 million in settlement payments to American taxpayers who the company allegedly unfairly steered into paying for tax preparation software that should have been free, the Democrats said.

The Democrats’ letter states 72% of taxpayers across party lines are interested in an IRS direct file tool and 68% of taxpayers who currently self-prepare their returns are likely to switch to a direct free filing IRS tool if given the chance to.

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The trademark office said the data leak affected about 3% of the total number of trademark applicants filed during the three-year period and that the issue was fully fixed on April 1, without any data having been misused. 

“Upon discovery, the USPTO reported the data exposure to the Department’s Senior Agency Official for Privacy and it’s Enterprise Security Operations Center, which in turn reported the exposure to the Department of Homeland Security. As you are aware, the USPTO also notified affected parties of the exposure,” a USPTO spokesperson emailed FedScoop.

“The USPTO has no reason to believe that the data has been misused,” the spokesperson added.

U.S. law requires trademark applicants to include their private address when submitting an application in order to combat fraudulent trademark filings.

The trademark office said in a notice sent to all those impacted by the data leak that by April 1 the issue had been fully fixed by properly masking all of the private addresses and correcting all system vulnerabilities found.

The trademark office said that in February it discovered that private domicile addresses that should have been hidden from public view appeared in records retrieved through some application programming interfaces (APIs) of the Trademark Status and Document Review system (TSDR). The APIs are used in apps by both agency staff and trademark filers to access the TSDR system for checking the status of pending and registered trademarks.

Some private addresses also appeared on the bulk data portal of the USPTO website.

The trademark office highlighted that as a federal government agency, the USPTO does not have the same reporting requirements as a private company or a state or local agency would and does have a process whereby those who do not want their address to be shown publicly can request that it is not made public or they can waive the requirement altogether.

Details of the USPTO leak were first reported by TechCrunch.

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Earlier this week, Chief Administrative Officer Catherine L. Szpindor sent a memo to all House staff saying that offices are only authorized to use the paid version of the AI tool known as ChatGPT Plus, which has a $20-per-month subscription that “incorporates important privacy features that are necessary to protect House data.” 

Furthermore, Szpindor highlighted that offices are allowed to use the chatbot for “research and evaluation only” and are “not authorized to incorporate it into regular workflow” or use it for any official purposes.

Lieu — a member of the House Artificial Intelligence Caucus and one of three members of Congress with a computer science degree — pushed back on the CAO’s new rules during an interview with FedScoop, saying he planned to reach out to the CAO with a number of questions on the decision.

“I don’t believe all this is [necessary]. I don’t understand why they’re making any statements about workflow. I think that’s something within the province of each member’s office, and each member can figure out how they want the workflow of their office to function,” Lieu told FedScoop during an interview on the subject of AI in Congress.

“And so if they’ve determined that ChatGPT is not a security threat, which it looks like they’ve determined that, then I think every office should use it as they deem fit,” he said. 

FedScoop first reported in April that the House of Representatives’ digital service had obtained 40 licenses of ChatGPT Plus, the first publicized congressional use of the popular AI tool. House offices said they were using ChatGPT for generating constituent response drafts and press documents, summarizing large amounts of text in speeches, and drafting policy papers or, in some cases, bill language.

Earlier this year, Lieu introduced the first measure in Congress that was written entirely by ChatGPT with a nonbinding resolution on how to comprehensively regulate AI in Congress.

Similarly, he said he gives his staff immense freedom to use tech tools without restrictions.

“So I put an enormous amount of trust in my staff, and my staff can basically do whatever they want. So if they feel like looking something up on Google Bard they can do that. If they want to use ChatGPT to draft, do the first draft of a document [or policy], they can do that,” Lieu said.

The California congressman said his staff regularly uses ChatGPT for regular day–to–day purposes but wasn’t sure if they use the CAO-authorized ChatGPT Plus service. Lieu added that his staff would look into getting the paid version of the tool if they weren’t already using it.

The CAO’s ChatGPT guidance comes as lawmakers from both parties and in both chambers are rushing to craft legislation on how to regulate AI, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY., and Lieu, who is pushing for a new bipartisan AI regulatory commission. 

The House Chief Administrative Office said the memo is not enforceable by law but is intended to provide best practice guidance based on internal research and procedures.

“Our intent in providing this information on ChatGPT was to explain best practice guidance consistent with our approved processes and procedures,” a CAO spokesperson told FedScoop. “Our House Cyber team will study this closely and continue to advise offices on the appropriate use of emerging technology.”

The CAO memo regarding limits and restrictions on ChatGPT use in Congress was first reported by Axios.

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Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, chairman of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Government Operations and the Federal Workforce, and Ranking Member Rep. Kweisi Mfume, D-Md., sent a letter to senior officials at the GSA, including those in the offices that house the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) and the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF), requesting further information to help determine the extent of misrepresentations the agency made about Login.gov. 

“While GSA took action to address this concerning matter and has accepted responsibility for the conduct of its employees, important questions remain unanswered,” reads the letter. “To assist with answering these questions, we request related documents and communications, as well as a staff-level briefing.”

In specific, the lawmakers want to better understand the extent of the misleading statements made about Login.gov in GSA’s proposal for TMF funds and the extent to which representatives of GSA made misleading statements about Login.gov during the FedRAMP authorization process.

As part of an investigation that has run since last April, GSA’s Office of the Inspector General found in March that the agency knowingly billed agencies more than $10 million for Identity Assurance Level 2-compliant services, even though Login.gov did not meet IAL2 standards.

IAL2 is an identity proofing requirement set by NIST as part of its SP 800-63 guidance series that provides crucial technical requirements and guidance for identity proofing by government IT systems on open networks.  

During a House Oversight and Accountability Committee meeting in March, Republicans blasted GSA, accusing leaders of criminal fraud and calling to prosecute those responsible for the misrepresentations. Agency leaders received scrutiny from both sides of the aisle as Democratic lawmakers also raised concerns about discrimination and racial bias issues associated with the platform.

In the letter, Sessions and Mfume called on GSA to provide a staff-level briefing in front of Congress before July 10 regarding the agency’s misrepresentations.

“The briefing should provide an update on how, or whether, Login.gov intends to become compliant with NIST IAL2 standards, as well as an explanation of the active Request for Information on Next Generation Identity Proofing for GSA/Technology Transformation Services Login.gov,” the letter said. “This update should include, at a minimum, an initial overview of the feedback received regarding the draft requirements and preliminary acquisition strategy for the procurement of Login.gov’s Next Generation Identity Proofing Solutions.”

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Speaking at a House Oversight Committee hearing last week, Ghost Robotics Chief Executive Gavin Kenneally said the ability of the technology to work in extreme environments while also detecting bombs, drugs and humans in need of help, could be a gamechanger.

He said: “The robots’ ability to traverse difficult terrain in all weathers and extreme temperatures makes it ideal for environments found along the U.S. southern and northern borders.”

Kenneally added: “Given that several hundred migrants die every year near the southern border from drowning or heat-related causes, a thermal camera could be equipped on the robot and used to identify them before it’s too late.

Philadelphia-headquartered Ghost Robotics supplies robots to the federal government and allied foreign governments. A few hundred of the company’s Vision 60 ‘robot dogs’ are already in use by the Defense Department for conducting perimeter security checks at Air Force bases and by law enforcement agencies.

Each robot costs $165,000 and can function in almost any terrain including rocks, sand, hills, ice, snow and staircases, and can operate in temperatures of -40 to 130 degrees Fahrenheit. According to Ghost Robotics, they can operate for over six miles on one charge at speeds of up to six miles per hour and store all data locally on computing devices that have undergone cybersecurity penetration testing. 

The device has multiple cameras and microphones built in and can interface with zoom thermal or infrared cameras to conduct more accurate analysis or anomaly detection of its surroundings before streaming video or information back to the human controller or a base station.

Some members of Congress including Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., asked during the House Oversight hearing if there were ways to ensure that the robot dog or other innovative cutting-edge technologies can be stopped in the future from being used as weapons to hurt people physically or through cyber warfare.

Kenneally with Ghost Robotics said their robot dogs have no weaponry or harmful devices built into them and cannot take any action besides basic movement from one location to another without human input.

Furthermore, Wahid Nawabi, CEO of AeroVironment, a military drone and robotic systems company, said during the hearing that the devices his company makes are meant to use sensors with AI-driven algorithms to provide actionable intelligence for human beings like troops and engineers to make better decisions and are not meant to allow machines to make autonomous choices.

Ryan Rawding, the head of business development at Pangiam, a security and identity verification technology company for CBP and other agencies, added that his company creates software and tools using supervised machine learning models where the tools give risk-based scores to allow officers to make better decisions at the border while meeting CBP’s rules on data protections.

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New York Democrat Schumer’s plan, called the “Safe Innovation Framework for AI Policy,” outlines ways to “protect, expand, and harness AI’s potential” as Congress pursues legislation, his office said.

In a keynote speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, Schumer said there is “no choice but to acknowledge that AI’s changes are coming,” and pointed out the need for a strategy to support innovation.

He also highlighted the role of the federal government in AI regulation.

“How much federal intervention on the tax side and on the spending side must there be? Is federal intervention to encourage innovation necessary at all? Or should we just let the private
sector develop on its own?” Schumer questioned during his remarks.

At the same time, a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Reps. Ted Lieu, D-Calif. and Ken Buck, R-Colo., introduced legislation Tuesday that would create a blue-ribbon commission on artificial intelligence to develop a comprehensive framework for the regulation of the emerging technology.

The bicameral National AI Commission Act would create a 20-member commission to explore AI regulation, including how regulation responsibility is distributed across agencies, the capacity of agencies to address challenges relating to regulation, and alignment among agencies in their enforcement actions. 

“We must come up with a plan that encourages — not stifles — innovation in this new world of AI, and that means asking some important questions,” Schumer said Wednesday. “We are going to work very hard to come up with comprehensive legislation. Because this is so important, we are going to do everything we can to succeed.”

In April, Schumer met with the CEOs of AI giants like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google to discuss the development and regulation of the technology. 

President Joe Biden and his administration have also expressed commitment to safeguarding Americans’ rights and safety with a focus on protecting user privacy and addressing bias and misinformation in AI. Biden earlier this week met with tech leaders and academics in the AI space in Silicon Valley.

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The bicameral National AI Commission Act would create a 20-member commission to explore AI regulation, including how regulation responsibility is distributed across agencies, the capacity of agencies to address challenges relating to regulation, and alignment among agencies in their enforcement actions. 

The commission would be comprised of experts from civil society, government, industry and labor, and those with technical expertise – with no one sector constituting a majority of the members of the commission. Half of the members would be appointed by Democrats and half by Republicans

“Our bill forges a path toward responsible AI regulation that promotes technological progress while keeping Americans safe,” the bill’s lead sponsor Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., said in a statement.

“Transparency is critical when legislating on something as complicated as AI, and this bipartisan, blue ribbon commission will provide policymakers and the American public with the basis and reasoning for the recommendations and what information was relied upon,” added Lieu, who previewed the legislation while speaking with FedScoop earlier this month on the sidelines of the AWS Public Summit in Washington.

Reps. Ken Buck, R-Colo., and Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., also sponsored the legislation.

Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii., will be introducing companion legislation in the Senate soon.

Furthermore, the commission would be tasked with recommending new governmental structures that may be needed to oversee and regulate AI systems, including the feasibility of a new oversight approach for powerful AI systems using an evidence-based approach. 

Finally, the commission would also be tasked with establishing a binding risk-based approach built upon previous federal and international AI regulatory efforts.

“Artificial Intelligence holds tremendous opportunity for individuals and our economy,” said Buck. “It’s also possible that AI poses a great risk for our national security. I’m proud to lead this bipartisan piece of legislation with Rep. Lieu to ensure that Congress considers expert opinions before the government takes action in this emerging field.”

The legislation would call for the bipartisan commission to create three reports to send to Congress and the president — an interim report six months after enactment of the law with immediate actions, a final report a year after passage with the binding regulatory framework, and a follow-up report a year after that with any new findings and revised AI recommendations. 

“As Co-Chair of the bipartisan Congressional Artificial Intelligence Caucus, I understand how complex the issue of artificial intelligence is. The National AI Commission Act is an important first step to bring together stakeholders and experts to better understand how we can regulate AI and what guardrails must be in place as AI becomes more prevalent across society,” Rep. Eshoo said in a statement.

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In its 13th annual duplication and cost savings report, GAO identified 100 new matters and recommendations in 35 new topic areas for Congress or federal agencies to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government. Some of the biggest potential savings identified in the report come from improvements to Medicare payments within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), nuclear waste disposal within the Energy Department, Navy shipbuilding, and IRS enforcement efforts.

“Congressional and agency action in these areas has yielded about $600 billion in cost savings and revenue increases. Addressing remaining matters and recommendations could save tens of billions more dollars and improve government services,” the GAO said in a summary of its report released this week.

The GAO issues annual reports on federal programs, agencies, offices, and initiatives that have duplicative goals or activities and also identifies additional opportunities for greater efficiency and effectiveness that could result in cost savings or enhanced revenue collection.

Fragmentation refers to instances when more than one federal agency (or more than one organization within an agency) is involved in the same broad mission and opportunities exist to improve service delivery and efficiency.  

Overlap occurs when multiple agencies or programs have similar goals, engage in similar activities or strategies to achieve them, or target similar beneficiaries. 

Duplication is when two or more agencies or government programs are engaged in the same activities or provide the same service to the same beneficiaries.

Some of the largest areas of financial benefit to the federal government and taxpayers from the GAO report include:

• Medicare Payments by Place of Service: Congress should consider directing the Secretary of HHS to equalize payment rates between settings for evaluation and management office visits and other services that the secretary deems appropriate, which could create financial benefits of $141 billion over 10 years, per Congressional Budget Office (CBO) data.
• Nuclear Waste Disposal: The Department of Energy may be able to reduce certain risks by adopting alternative approaches to treating a portion of its low-activity radioactive waste and create tens of billions of dollars in financial benefits in the process, per GAO data.
• Navy Shipbuilding: The U.S. Navy could improve its acquisition practices and take steps to ensure ships can be efficiently sustained and create financial benefits of billions of dollars, GAO data showed.
• Medicare Advantage: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services could better adjust payments for differences between Medicare Advantage plans and traditional Medicare providers in the reporting of beneficiary diagnoses and create financial benefits of billions of dollars, per MedPAC data.
• Internal Revenue Service Enforcement Efforts: Enhancing the IRS’s enforcement and service capabilities can help reduce the gap between taxes owed and paid by collecting tax revenue and facilitating voluntary compliance. This could include expanding third-party information reporting, which could save billions of dollars, per Joint Committee on Taxation data.
• Congress could reauthorize the First Responder Network Authority by 2027 to ensure the continuity of the public-safety broadband network and collection of potential revenues of billions of dollars over 15 years, the report states.
• Foreign Military Sales Administrative Account: Congress should consider redefining what can be considered an allowable expense to be charged from the administrative account of the Defense Department which could create financial benefits of tens of millions of dollars annually, per GAO data.

The new additions to the report fall on top of the 1,885 that GAO has identified in prior reports. Of those, Congress and agencies have fully addressed 1,239 — about 66 % — of those existing items.

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Melinda Rogers, who oversees the Justice Department’s $3.1 billion IT portfolio and leads the agency’s tech and cybersecurity programs, told FedScoop recently that she hopes to make significant improvements to DOJ’s IT service desk program through new and recompeted contracts that will deploy cutting edge AI technologies. 

“I think something as basic as our service desk, that’s an area where we can have lots of opportunities for improvement [using AI]. And our IT service desk is just one of those areas where it’s hard to get it smooth and clean and so if I would start anywhere with AI, I would probably start there to help improve our user experience,” Rogers told FedScoop during a wide-ranging interview at the Justice Department headquarters earlier this month.  

“So we’re recompeting our IT service desk contract … but I want to be very intentional on how we go about deploying our service desk so that I can have the opportunity to bring in some artificial intelligence and make it a better customer experience,” Rogers said. 

Rogers said that the Justice Department could look to certain companies in the private sector that have excelled at IT customer service as examples of how to successfully overhaul its own program.

“For example, American Express, they have a pretty well-honed, good customer IT experience where you can chat with their reps easily online and it’s fast and super responsive. So that’s one area where we need to be more like American Express,” said Rogers.

“I could do a great job on the backend IT infrastructure stuff or our analytics or whatnot, but if I can’t get the basic customer-facing customer service desk stuff right, then I don’t think I can build the trust with people,” she added.

Rogers, who has been CIO at the Justice Department since 2020 and was CISO within the agency for eight years prior to that, started her career with Bank of America and Equifax in the private sector. She has a bachelor’s degree in economics from George Mason University and an MBA focused on marketing and finance from Emory University.

As Justice recompetes its IT service desk contract, Rogers wants the resulting contract to be more intentional and broken apart into smaller pieces rather than “a lot of different services all sort of swept into one master vehicle, which is how we’ve typically done it.”

Leidos is the incumbent holding the current contractor to support Justice’s service desk work.

She added that some sub-departments or components within the Justice Department have had success in deploying AI or other cutting-edge technologies when choosing to work with a smaller contractor.

“We’ve often had success going with smaller firms in the Beltway because maybe they have a little bit more attention to detail and a little more skin in the game, they push for that good customer experience,” said Rogers.

“Sometimes with larger firms, it’s more of a body shop, right? They just want buttcheeks in seats. And for me, it’s not just cheeks in seats. You need to know who the VIPs are when they call our phones and the system has to have gold stars next to that person so they don’t have to say can you spell ‘Garland’ for me,” Rogers said referring to Attorney General Merrick Garland. “You can’t have that.”

Rogers pointed out a frustrating personal experience she had with the need to constantly change her network password within the DOJ a few years ago, which she said was tiresome, didn’t work and pushed her to make customer experience a top priority as CIO.

“I’ve had some not-pleasant user experiences internally. And I work in IT and I thought it was, you know, cumbersome, right? It was not elegant. So my desire is to take our service desk to a place of elegance,” Rogers said.

Justice isn’t the only federal agency making customer experience — whether that’s internal or external customers — a top priority. The White House issued an executive order in late 2021 directing agencies that provide high-impact public services to make CX a top priority.

Just this week, the Navy announced a new initiative by which it — similar to what Justice is planning to do — will use AI to power a chatbot to support its IT help desk.

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The course was designed to educate congressional staff on federal data policy, how to better work with government data, and to modernize government data via new policy ideas.

Staff and policy aides from the offices of Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and Reps. Derek Kilmer, D-Wash., Gerry Connolly, D-Va., and Mark Takano, D-Calif., among others, took part in the program run by the University of California at Berkeley and USAFacts, a nonprofit and nonpartisan civic initiative focused on making government data more accessible. The cohort was 60% Democrats, 20% Republicans and 20% nonpartisan, according to organizers.

Forty-two staffers enrolled in the program, which began in February and will conclude this month. The program included eight classroom sessions held remotely with a mix of live and recorded lectures and opportunities for in-person meetings in D.C.

“The Data Skills for Congress program, launched in 2023, equips member and professional staff with skills to use data in policy-making and constituent services, and write legislation to improve public data,” USAFacts said in a blog post last week.

“This free program isn’t just an education in data literacy in order to shape policies that ensure accurate, usable data flows within government. It’s a catalyst for congressional modernization and a rallying cry for greater data use across Congress,” the group added.

The Data Skills for Congress class is the first program of its kind approved by the House and Senate Ethics Committees and is intended to be a first step toward providing skills and context for data policy and practices.

Some members of Congress, like Kilmer, are pushing for greater data-driven decision-making in Congress through recently introduced bipartisan legislation that would create a commission on “evidence-based policymaking” within Congress to ensure policymaking is based more on federal data and facts rather than opinions. The bill would also push for the creation of a chief data office responsible for cultivating congressional data strategies.

The Data Skills for Congress organizers say they exceeded enrollment goals in this first program by 66% and 87% of participants reported they would recommend the program to their peers. 

“I learned a lot and I think these are basic skills all congressional staff should have,” one congressional participant said, according to USAFacts.

The pilot program was focused on five key objectives related to U.S. open data topics:

• Educate participants on existing U.S. data policies through seminars led by data policy experts;
• Develop an understanding of open data challenges and technologies common in the U.S.;
• Build basic skills in data collection and visualization;
• Apply new open data knowledge to produce reports based on publicly available data or draft policy to improve government data; and
• Create relationships with other congressional staff who share an interest in open data and its use in Congress.

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