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Friday, February 14, 2025

2025 Homeland Security Threat Forecast: Scaling AI for More Efficient and Effective Government

This time last year, as a technology and data professional, I warned that bureaucratic processes, if not streamlined, could inhibit progress on the potential that Artificial Intelligence (AI) can provide to support the homeland security mission. I am still concerned we are not moving fast enough. We cannot keep doing work in the same way and make progress on addressing the pervasive threats facing the nation. We are being outpaced by our adversaries in using AI in all areas.   

Total number of DHS AI Use Cases by Component 

(as of Dec 17, 2024) 

DHS Component  Total Number of AI Use Cases 
CBP  50 
CISA  7 
CWMD  1 
DHS  4 
FEMA  9 
ICE  21 
MGMT  9 
OHS  4 
TSA  18 
USCG  1 
USCIS  19 
USSS  1 
Grand Total  144 
 

As the incoming Administration looks to recommendations for a more lean and efficient government, the existing Federal Catalog of AI uses cases presents a potential goldmine. As of December 17, 2024, OMB published the 2024 consolidated inventory on their publicly accessible GitHub site. The catalog includes 37 agency submissions, totaling 1,757 AI use cases. It represents solid progress across the 37 Agencies on improving mission functions with AI and alleviating administrative burden in several mission supporting functions. 

DHS differentiated itself in making an investment in a new DHS AI Corps, an effort to hire 50 disciplinary professionals focused exclusively on deploying AI. This investment and leadership by former CIO and Chief AI officer, Eric Hysen, put DHS third in the overall Federal Government rankings. The DHS catalog and the newly staffed AI Corps can act as a force multiplier for addressing the massively complex threat environment facing DHS and the homeland security mission.    

Is it time to scale this focused effort? Over the last two years, each federal agency focused on its top priorities for the use of AI, resulting in a wide variance of use cases – a catalog not optimized for reuse on common Agency challenges. As an example, of the 1,757 use cases, less than 5% of these explicitly mention a focus on cyber use cases, and the majority of those that do are largely concentrated within two agencies: DHS and the Tennessee Valley Authority. We need experienced leaders to manage complexity and who have access to an AI Corp to bring AI techniques to address systematic and complex issues within and across agencies. 

Expanding the concept of the DHS AI Corps at large agencies and focusing the effort on common agency challenges, such as identifying and shutting down foreign maligned influence, terrorist networks, and illicit financing mechanisms, may be the most promising toolset for the incoming administration. 

Donna Roy
Donna Roy
Donna recently joined Guidehouse, Inc as a Strategic Advisor in the National Security Segment. She is a well-established management and technology executive, holding executive roles both in Federal government and Fortune 200 corporations for over 20 years. Over her 35 plus years, she developed extensive experience in core management functions such as budget, contracting, human resource, technology, and administrative operations, and most recently provided oversight of these functions as the Chief Operating Officer of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). As the COO, she developed and championed the customer experience approach for “Improvements in Day in the life of an employee”, overseeing the first Chief Experience Officer function delivering service design and process improvements for internal operation services for Human Resources, Finance, Procurement, Security, Data and IT services. She created a 2-year integrated management strategy aimed to strengthen and mature the CFPB beyond its first ten years. Prior to her role as the COO, she served as the Chief Information Officer, where she focused on the deployment of cloud-based technology services, with oversight for all technology investments in the $1B total operating budget. In the 13 years at DHS, she was responsible for helping the Homeland Security Community overcome information sharing challenges by leading efforts to increase adoption of the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) and the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) Programs. She was focused on ensuring the customer experience was embedded in the planning and execution of all enterprise technology services and operational programs under her responsibility. Donna led DHS’s Identity Credential and Access Management efforts which bolstered DHS’s cyber security posture and trusted IT environment for 240,000 users, on all classification levels, with DHS-wide two-factor authentication. She led innovations in mobile derived credentials, trusted identity exchanges and automated lifecycle management for improvements in on boarding / off boarding of employees and contractors. She worked across DHS to establish the Chief Data Officer function as well as led the DHS Enterprise Cloud Strategy for optimizing the enterprise computing services. Also, while at DHS, she spearheaded the DHS Data Framework, an approach aimed at closing mission critical data gaps and maturing the enterprise data access framework for securing and safeguarding sensitive and classified data. She has been focused on leveraging the power of data throughout her career, most recently using modern approaches (cloud, agile, dev/ops) to drive positive change across Federal, State, local and international partners. Donna is a proud New Englander and former United States Marine.

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