Douglas Matty is exiting his role as the Pentagon’s chief digital and artificial intelligence officer and moving on to focus on the Trump administration’s “Golden Dome for America” missile defense initiative, DefenseScoop has learned. Principal Deputy CDAO Andrew Mapes will lead the department’s AI hub in an acting capacity until a new CDAO is hired. Ahead of reaching full operational capacity in 2022, the AI-accelerating office merged and integrated multiple technology-focused predecessor organizations at the Pentagon, including the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), Defense Digital Service (DDS), Office of the Chief Data Officer, and the Maven and Advana programs. The DOD’s vision and priorities for the CDAO have been reconfigured several times since its inception. And while AI is a major priority for the U.S. government under President Donald Trump, the Pentagon’s CDAO office has seen an exodus of senior leaders and other technical employees this year. Matty’s departure also comes as the office is hustling to execute on a range of DOD-wide efforts to speed up the delivery and fielding of data analytics, automation, computer vision, machine learning and other next-generation AI capabilities for military and civilian personnel. Last week, Pentagon leaders unveiled a new purpose-built platform — GenAI.mil — to provide commercial options directly to most of its workforce on their desktops.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has tapped ID.me to verify the identities of beneficiaries on Medicare.gov, according to a Tuesday announcement from the identity-proofing company. ID.me will be available as an option for identity verification and sign-in on Medicare.gov starting in early 2026, per the release. The deal adds to the growing number of federal programs opting to use the digital identity service that leverages facial recognition technology and has been the subject of some controversy in the past. Already, ID.me is used at 21 federal agencies, including the Social Security Administration and Department of Veterans Affairs, per the release. Opting in means an ID.me user could sign in with the same credentials at any of the other federal, state or private-sector entities that use the service, the company said in a statement to FedScoop.
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Douglas Matty is exiting his role as the Pentagon’s chief digital and artificial intelligence officer and moving on to focus on the Trump administration’s “Golden Dome for America” missile defense initiative, DefenseScoop has learned. Principal Deputy CDAO Andrew Mapes will lead the department’s AI hub in an acting capacity until a new CDAO is hired. Ahead of reaching full operational capacity in 2022, the AI-accelerating office merged and integrated multiple technology-focused predecessor organizations at the Pentagon, including the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), Defense Digital Service (DDS), Office of the Chief Data Officer, and the Maven and Advana programs. The DOD’s vision and priorities for the CDAO have been reconfigured several times since its inception. And while AI is a major priority for the U.S. government under President Donald Trump, the Pentagon’s CDAO office has seen an exodus of senior leaders and other technical employees this year. Matty’s departure also comes as the office is hustling to execute on a range of DOD-wide efforts to speed up the delivery and fielding of data analytics, automation, computer vision, machine learning and other next-generation AI capabilities for military and civilian personnel. Last week, Pentagon leaders unveiled a new purpose-built platform — GenAI.mil — to provide commercial options directly to most of its workforce on their desktops.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has tapped ID.me to verify the identities of beneficiaries on Medicare.gov, according to a Tuesday announcement from the identity-proofing company. ID.me will be available as an option for identity verification and sign-in on Medicare.gov starting in early 2026, per the release. The deal adds to the growing number of federal programs opting to use the digital identity service that leverages facial recognition technology and has been the subject of some controversy in the past. Already, ID.me is used at 21 federal agencies, including the Social Security Administration and Department of Veterans Affairs, per the release. Opting in means an ID.me user could sign in with the same credentials at any of the other federal, state or private-sector entities that use the service, the company said in a statement to FedScoop.
A bill that would overhaul how the federal government purchases software has found itself in a familiar place: moving forward in the House while awaiting Senate consideration with just a few weeks left in the congressional calendar. The Strengthening Agency Management and Oversight of Software Assets (SAMOSA) Act advanced out of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday, teeing it up for a vote in the full chamber. The SAMOSA Act, which would direct federal agencies to assess their software licensing practices and streamline future IT buying decisions to avoid duplicative purchases, was reintroduced in the House in September following the Senate’s move to do the same in July. The bill passed the House a year ago but stalled out in the upper chamber, despite backing from a host of software and IT trade groups, including the Computer & Communications Industry Association, the Alliance for Digital Innovation, NetChoice, OpenPolicy and the Software Information Industry Association. Congress has been trying to move forward with the SAMOSA Act since at least 2022. House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., noted during Tuesday’s markup that the current iteration of the SAMOSA Act is “identical” to what passed the chamber last year.
In other news: The Small Business Administration may soon be forced to confront the flawed rollout of an online certification platform it launched late in the Biden administration.The House on Monday passed a bill that would require the SBA to implement nearly a dozen recommendations made in a Government Accountability Office report about the agency’s Unified Certification Platform for small business contracting assistance. The lawmakers behind the SBA IT Modernization Reporting Act — Reps. Gil Cisneros, D-Calif., and Brian Jack, R-Ga. — believe the legislation will help the agency avoid various pitfalls that plagued the UCP, helping it better develop and manage digital projects going forward. The UCP project was launched in 2023 with the goal of easing small businesses’ interactions with the SBA’s contract assistance programs. But deployment of the platform was delayed and applications for certification were paused in August 2024. The UCP went live two months later, but according to the GAO, work to migrate data and secure the system was incomplete. House Small Business Committee Chair Roger Williams said before Monday’s vote that the “failed … portal rollout resulted in delays, errors and cybersecurity risks, shutting out small businesses from the vital government contracting opportunities.”
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Douglas Matty is exiting his role as the Pentagon’s chief digital and artificial intelligence officer and moving on to focus on the Trump administration’s “Golden Dome for America” missile defense initiative, DefenseScoop has learned. Principal Deputy CDAO Andrew Mapes will lead the department’s AI hub in an acting capacity until a new CDAO is hired. Ahead of reaching full operational capacity in 2022, the AI-accelerating office merged and integrated multiple technology-focused predecessor organizations at the Pentagon, including the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), Defense Digital Service (DDS), Office of the Chief Data Officer, and the Maven and Advana programs. The DOD’s vision and priorities for the CDAO have been reconfigured several times since its inception. And while AI is a major priority for the U.S. government under President Donald Trump, the Pentagon’s CDAO office has seen an exodus of senior leaders and other technical employees this year. Matty’s departure also comes as the office is hustling to execute on a range of DOD-wide efforts to speed up the delivery and fielding of data analytics, automation, computer vision, machine learning and other next-generation AI capabilities for military and civilian personnel. Last week, Pentagon leaders unveiled a new purpose-built platform — GenAI.mil — to provide commercial options directly to most of its workforce on their desktops.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has tapped ID.me to verify the identities of beneficiaries on Medicare.gov, according to a Tuesday announcement from the identity-proofing company. ID.me will be available as an option for identity verification and sign-in on Medicare.gov starting in early 2026, per the release. The deal adds to the growing number of federal programs opting to use the digital identity service that leverages facial recognition technology and has been the subject of some controversy in the past. Already, ID.me is used at 21 federal agencies, including the Social Security Administration and Department of Veterans Affairs, per the release. Opting in means an ID.me user could sign in with the same credentials at any of the other federal, state or private-sector entities that use the service, the company said in a statement to FedScoop.
