You know what they say: If at first you don't succeed at mass government surveillance, try, try again. Only two days after India backpedaled on its plan to force smartphone makers to preinstall a state-run "cybersecurity" app, Reuters reports that the country is back at it. It’s said to be considering a telecom industry proposal with another draconian requirement. This one would require smartphone makers to enable always-on satellite-based location tracking (Assisted GPS).

The measure would require location services to remain on at all times, with no option to switch them off. The telecom industry also wants phone makers to disable notifications that alert users when their carriers have accessed their location. According to Reuters, India's home ministry was set to meet with smartphone industry executives on Friday, but the meeting was postponed.

RAFIQ MAQBOOL via Getty Images

Predictably, proponents claim the plan is about helping law enforcement keep you safe from the bad guys. (See also: Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.) The administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has long been concerned that law enforcement agencies can’t obtain precise enough locations during investigations. Cell tower data alone can be off by several meters. And hey, what's the privacy of 1.4 billion people next to tracking criminals with an extra 10 ft. or so of accuracy, right?

Apple, Google and Samsung are said to oppose the move and have urged the Modi government to reject it. The lobbying group India Cellular & Electronics Association (ICEA), which represents them, reportedly wrote in a confidential letter this summer that the proposal has no precedent anywhere in the world. The group's letter described the measure as a "regulatory overreach," which is probably putting it mildly. They warned that it could compromise military personnel, judges, corporate executives and journalists.

In a statement sent to Engadget, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sounded the alarm on the proposal. "Requiring phones to have A-GPS enabled all the time would be a horrifying decision by the Indian government with significant impacts on the privacy of everyone in the country,” EFF Senior Staff Technologist Cooper Quintin said. “With this change, the phone company and law enforcement get your exact location at any time, potentially even without legal due process."

Hackers with links to China reportedly successfully infiltrated a number of unnamed government and tech entities using advanced malware. As reported by Reuters, cybersecurity agencies from the US and Canada confirmed the attack, which used a backdoor known as “Brickstorm” to target organizations using the VMware vSphere cloud computing platform.

As detailed in a report published by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security on December 4, PRC state-sponsored hackers maintained "long-term persistent access" to an unnamed victim’s internal network. After compromising the affected platform, the cybercriminals were able to steal credentials, manipulate sensitive files and create "rogue, hidden VMs" (virtual machines), effectively seizing control unnoticed. The attack could have begun as far back as April 2024 and lasted until at least September of this year.

The malware analysis report published by the Canadian Cyber Centre, with assistance from The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the National Security Agency (NSA), cites eight different Brickstorm malware samples. It is not clear exactly how many organizations in total were either targeted or successfully penetrated.

In an email to Reuters, a spokesperson for VMware vSphere owner Broadcom said it was aware of the alleged hack, and encouraged its customers to download up-to-date security patches whenever possible. In September, the Google Threat Intelligence Group published its own report on Brickstorm, in which it urged organizations to "reevaluate their threat model for appliances and conduct hunt exercises" against specified threat actors.

The Department of Transportation under President Donald Trump is moving to reverse more of the climate policies that had been enacted by President Joe Biden. Under a proposed rulemaking by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks in model year 2031 will be reduced to an average of 34.5 miles per gallon, down from the standard of 50.4 miles per gallon that was part of Biden's plans to encourage more adoption of electric vehicles among US drivers. 

The move was expected since Trump re-took office. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy ordered the NHTSA to review fuel efficiency standards in January a day after he assumed the title. The current administration also ended a tax credit for buying electric vehicles over the summer. In the meantime, international manufacturers are racing ahead in their progress on building better EVs, offering other markets more exciting models that won’t arrive in the US thanks to tariffs.

While Trump's announcement today claimed that the change would reduce the average cost of a new car by $1,000 and offer a savings of $109 billion over five years, gas prices are on track to increase if the Environmental Protection Agency does successfully repeal the finding that climate change causes human harm. Plus there's the incalculable financial and human cost of a growing number of catastrophic weather events that have been predicted if the planet continues to get warmer.

India will no longer require smartphone makers to preinstall the Sanchar Saathi "security" app. After blowback from Apple, Samsung and opposition leaders, the Modi government issued a statement saying it "has decided not to make the pre-installation mandatory for mobile manufacturers." The app is still available as a voluntary download.

India's Ministry of Communications framed the U-turn as a result of strong voluntary adoption. The nation said 14 million users (around 1 percent of the nation’s population) have downloaded the app. "The number of users has been increasing rapidly, and the mandate to install the app was meant to accelerate this process and make the app available to less aware citizens easily," the statement read.

In a statement sent to Engadget, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) celebrated India’s reversal. "This was a terrible and dangerous idea by the Indian government that lasted 24 hours longer than it ever should have," EFF Civil Liberties Director David Greene wrote. "We thank our colleague organizations in India, such as SFLC.in and Internet Freedom Foundation, for promptly opposing it."

The Indian government had previously given smartphone makers 90 days to preinstall the Sanchar Saathi app on all new phones. They were also required to deliver it to existing devices via software updates. India claims its app exists solely for cybersecurity purposes. It includes tools allowing users to report and lock lost or stolen devices.

But privacy advocates warned that it could be used as a government backdoor for mass surveillance. According to the BBC, the app’s privacy policy allows it to make and manage calls and send messages. It can access call and message histories, files, photos and the camera.

Reuters reports that industry experts cited Russia as the only known precedent for such a requirement. In August, Vladimir Putin's regime ordered the messenger app MAX to be preinstalled on all mobile devices in the country. Like with India's example, experts warned that it could be used for surveillance.

On Tuesday, Reuters reported that Apple would not comply with India's order, citing privacy and security concerns. Samsung reportedly followed. Opposition leaders in the Indian government also joined the fray. Senior Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala called on the Modi government to clarify its legal authority for "mandating a non-removable app." Despite India's framing, it seems likely that the two companies' stances, along with domestic political pressure, played no small role in the reversal.

Update, December 3, 2025, 2:50 PM ET: This story has been updated to add a statement from the EFF.

You can tell a lot about a company by what they're willing to sue over. Take Instacart, which just filed a lawsuit against New York City. Its beef? The company doesn't like five new city laws, set to take effect in January. They would require Instacart to pay workers more and give customers a tipping option of at least 10 percent.

Reuters reports that Instacart's suit targets Local Law 124, which mandates that grocery delivery workers receive the same minimum pay as restaurant delivery workers. It also challenged Local Law 107, which mandates 10 percent or higher tipping options (or a place to enter one manually). The lawsuit also takes aim at other laws requiring extra recordkeeping and disclosures. The new rules are set to take effect on January 26.

As is typical of companies griping about regulations that hurt their bottom lines, Instacart framed the issue as a noble fight for what's right. "When a law threatens to harm shoppers, consumers, and local grocers — and especially when it does so unlawfully — we have a responsibility to act," the company proclaimed in a blog post. "This legal challenge is about standing up for fairness, for the independence that tens of thousands of New York grocery delivery workers rely on and for affordable access to groceries for the people who need it most."

Instacart's suit reportedly claims that Congress banned state and local governments from regulating prices on platforms such as its own. It also alleges that New York's state legislature "has long taken charge" of minimum pay, and that the US Constitution doesn't allow states and cities to discriminate against out-of-state companies.

The company warns that everyone will lose if it's forced to comply. Should the laws take effect, "Instacart will be forced to restructure its platform, restrict shoppers' access to work, disrupt relationships with consumers and retailers and suffer constitutional injuries with no adequate legal remedy," it claimed in the filing.

Instacart CEO Chris Rogers, elevated to the post in May, has an estimated net worth of at least $28.6 million. His predecessor, Fidji Simo, who chairs the board and is now with OpenAI, is reportedly worth around $72.7 million. If NYC’s minimum pay laws will be as catastrophic as Instacart claims, maybe they could chip in to help.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Update December 3 2025, 10:43am ET: India has withdrawn its mandate requesting manufacturers to install the Sanchar Saathi app, according to reporting from Reuters. The text below has been left unaltered.

India has issued a mandate to all smartphone manufacturers and importers requiring them to install a state-owned cyber security app. But Apple is reportedly not going to comply, citing privacy and security concerns, according to Reuters. 

The app, called Sanchar Saathi (meaning Communication Companion), is supposed to expedite the process of finding lost or stolen devices and stopping their misuse, according to a government press release on Monday. It further states that companies, including the likes of Samsung and Xiaomi, should "endeavor" to use software updates to download the app on previously purchased smartphones. 

The Sanchar Saathi app comes alongside an entire website designed for reporting fraudulent communication and tracking missing phones. However, critics worry that the app is a means for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government to gain access to every smartphone in India. 

The messages coming out of the Indian government have been mixed so far. In Monday's public announcement, it said companies must comply within 90 days and submit a report within 120 days. It also states that the app should be "readily visible and accessible to the end users at the time of first use or device setup and that its functionalities are not disabled or restricted." 

Yet, today, India's Union Communications Minister Shri Jyotiraditya Scindia stated that the app is "completely democratic and fully voluntary." He added that users can deactivate or delete it "at any time."

At the same time, industry sources told Reuters that Apple will not comply with preinstalling the app. Whether that pushback lasts remains to be seen — Apple has bowed to government mandates in the past. Recently, it removed two of China's biggest LGBTQ+ dating apps, following orders from the country's internet regulator and censor. 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has opened an investigation into online fast fashion retailer Shein. The probe will examine whether the company violated state laws related to labor practices and product safety. According to a release, Paxton's office wants to know if Shein uses toxic or hazardous materials and whether it misleads consumers about product safety and ethical sourcing. The Texas investigation will also look into privacy concerns and data collection at Shein, which isn't the first time those topics have arisen for the business.

Shein also drew criticism last month after a French consumer protection watchdog discovered illegal weapons and childlike sex dolls available on its website. France is now taking steps to suspend Shein's business in the country. Last year, the US government also seemed ready to take action against Shein and fellow low-cost retailer Temu over issues of product safety.

Cyber attacks on water infrastructure are growing. Josh Corman of IAmTheCavalry joins us to discuss efforts to secure critical water systems.

The post Cyber Threats to Water Infrastructure: Insights from Josh Corman appeared first on The Security Ledger with Paul F. Roberts.

Why Power Constraints Are About to Clarify Bitcoin’s Intrinsic Value

For years, investors, traditional finance professionals and even neighbors have debated whether Bitcoin has “intrinsic value.”

The answer may be obvious to those who understand physics, energy markets, and monetary systems , but not to the mainstream. That’s because society hadn’t yet reached the point where the world’s technological ambitions collided with a physical limit.

We’re now entering this moment.

The artificial intelligence boom , which is the most powerful technology cycle since the internet , is hitting a wall. That wall isn’t innovation, regulation, capital or demand; it’s energy.

This shift, paradoxically, is about to make the case for Bitcoin more compelling than ever.

AI’s Hidden Crisis: The Power Grid Can’t Keep Up

For the past two years, markets have priced AI companies as if compute could scale indefinitely. Every major company forecasts an exponential growth in model size, cluster count, and data-center deployment.

But there’s a problem; exponential compute requires exponential electricity.

Electricity is not infinite. At least not the ability to capture, transmit, and use it. The grid can’t expand fast enough. Transformers, substations, turbines, and nuclear buildouts take years.

Even hyperscalers, who are the largest energy consumers in the digital economy , now admit publicly what engineers have been whispering for months; power, not chips, is the bottleneck.

This marks the first time since the dot-com bubble that a major tech cycle faces a hard physical cap rather than investor skepticism. And when growth hits a ceiling, valuations unravel. NVIDIA, cloud hyperscalers, and the entire AI-dependent equity complex suddenly look fragile.

Ironically, it’s this same energy constraint that finally makes Bitcoin’s value proposition unmistakable.

Bitcoin’s Design Meets the World’s New Reality

Unlike artificial intelligence, Bitcoin does not require exponential energy growth; it requires secure, consistent, non-political energy input.

More importantly, Bitcoin is the only monetary asset whose issuance is anchored in energy and thermodynamics rather than policy decisions, political incentives, or debt cycles.

If the world is now discovering that our ability to generate and deliver energy is limited, electricity capacity is becoming scarce, and power has emerged as the true bottleneck of economic progress, then a currency backed by energy itself suddenly looks far less abstract.

This is the moment when Bitcoin’s intrinsic value becomes visible to the average person.

Bitcoin Is Not “Digital Gold” — It’s Monetary Energy Storage

Bitcoin miners already serve roles that traditional economists never anticipated:

• acting as a buyer of last resort for excess energy
• monetizing stranded renewables
• balancing grid load during peak and off-peak cycles
• incentivizing new energy production where demand is thin

In an energy-tight world, this is no longer a niche feature. Bitcoin becomes a synthetic battery, a grid optimizer, and a monetary representation of energy stored through time.

AI consumes energy to produce increasingly costly computations. Bitcoin consumes energy to produce final settlement and monetary security.

One market faces diminishing returns. The other faces increasing legitimacy. This distinction matters.

Michael Saylor grasps this dynamic because his background in engineering, thermodynamics, and enterprise software gives him a uniquely technical lens on money. He knows Bitcoin turns unused or cheap electricity into lasting economic value, while other technologies depend on constant increases in power that are getting harder to achieve. Strategy’s steady Bitcoin accumulation reflects his belief that energy-backed money will hold up better than systems that require ever-growing electricity to survive.

When Energy Becomes the Most Valuable Commodity, Bitcoin Re-prices

If the economic narrative shifts toward energy scarcity , which all signs suggest it will , then Bitcoin becomes a geopolitical asset, not a speculative one.

It is:

• scarce
• apolitical
• globally distributed
• energy-secured
• impossible to inflate
• rooted in physical constraints

And most importantly:

Bitcoin turns energy into value that holds, while fiat slowly loses value because business and government spending push against real physical limitations

This is the definition of intrinsic value:
A clear link between production, scarcity, and physical reality.

It just took an energy-dependent global technology boom to make this clear.

Why We Needed to Reach This Point

For years, the public struggled to grasp Bitcoin because the world still believed in infinite technological expansion. Markets assumed:

• unlimited compute
• unlimited growth
• unlimited power
• unlimited liquidity

Bitcoin has continuously been dismissed as a curiosity ; a “digital asset,” not a real asset.

But now, the same system that believed in limitless growth is being forced to confront real limits. AI is running into physics. Data centers are hitting the grid ceiling. Markets are realizing that innovation cannot outrun infrastructure.

In that moment, Bitcoin’s value becomes obvious.

A currency tied to energy , which is the foundational input of the entire economy , suddenly makes more sense than a currency tied to political committees or central-bank forecasts.

We needed this friction. We needed this path. We needed to reach the boundary of what the grid can deliver. We needed a real-world example of exponential demand colliding with a finite resource.

Only now will society clearly see why Bitcoin is built the way it is.

Conclusion: The Next Narrative Shift

The market is starting to sour on AI, not because AI is a failure, but because physics is the constraint. This will likely drive a broader correction in equities. The shift from gold and AI to Bitcoin may be the next step, because energy’s return to center stage only strengthens Bitcoin’s core thesis.

Bitcoin’s worth has always been tied to:

• scarcity
• energy
• physics
• security
• and time

For the first time, the rest of the world will catch up to this realization.

Bitcoin’s intrinsic value isn’t theoretical anymore. It has become visible; because the world has hit the one limit Bitcoin was designed to make explicit.

Energy!

Energy, AI, the Coming Reality Check was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Interview transcript

Terry Gerton There’s so many headlines coming out of Congress, I can’t even keep track, but let’s get to funding. Rumor has it that the NDAA is going to get a vote soon. What are you hearing?

Loren Duggan That’s what we’re hearing as well. This has been a target to do something by the end of the year. Both chambers passed versions and sent them to informal talks where they’re trying to come up with a compromise and the big four, the chairman and ranking members of the committees have been sitting down and hashing that out. We first need to see texts. They’ll come up an agreement and post this text. We’ll be pouring over it and seeing what it says. And they had hoped for votes in early December, once they all get back to town after Thanksgiving and get that through and onto President Trump, because it is a big bill every year. They always do it. No one wants to fail at doing it. And so we’re likely to see a compromise and some votes in December on that.

Terry Gerton Any surprising additions over the last few weeks?

Loren Duggan Well, I think the big thing that’s been introduced to the debate has been whether or not to preempt state AI regulation using language in this bill. That was something that had come up in the summer around the reconciliation or the one big, beautiful bill act where they had inserted it in the house, took it out in the Senate and it’s come back as an issue and would talk around maybe a draft executive order on AI policy or some sort of legislative language to address that. So that’s, been one of the things that’s come up. And you know, the bill like that always attracts everything from contracting policy to defense questions to war and peace and things like that. So, you know I think the compromise that comes out will have broad support among the folks who need to vote on it. So that might mean some things drop out of the conversation, but … until we see that language, we won’t know what makes the cut.

Terry Gerton Well, it’s good to hear that it’s moving forward on that end of the year timeline. Let’s move to appropriations bills. When we got the shutdown settlement, we got a small minibus of bills with full-year appropriations. But now they’re talking about some other combinations. What are you hearing and what’s the progress before January 30th?

Loren Duggan Right, so the continuing resolution that reopened the government had three of the bills for agriculture and FDA, legislative branch, and military construction and VA. So those are all set, but there’s still nine to go. And one of the questions is, how do you package them? What do you do? And which chambers vote on things next? So what we have been anticipating is a package in the Senate that would be the Senate bills, not necessarily a compromise, but at least to move the ball forward, package together four or five bills. I think the keys to that would be defense and then the labor HHS education bills, which are kind of like your guns and butter combination, plus some other bills that have come out of the appropriations committee. Likewise, the appropriators, the top ones in the House and the Senate sat down and tried to find their own path forward. You know, what talks can we have? Do we want to wait for the Senate? So there’s been some talk and some activity, but the January 30th deadline gives them a little bit of wiggle room. They may try to get something done. Before the end of the year, but obviously they don’t have to do another thing until January 30th.

Terry Gerton Let’s talk about that first bundle you mentioned, Defense, Labor, H[ousing], and Education. The Trump administration has been announcing its dismemberment of the Education Department, not its disestablishment, but its dismemberment. If they pass an appropriations bill that treats the department like it always was, how do you put Humpty Dumpty back together again in those circumstances?

Loren Duggan I mean, this sort of goes back to the executive action on a lot of different things where Congress had asked — I mean let’s go back to the beginning of this year where USAID was a fully funded agency and was slowly phased out and some of its responsibilities diffused elsewhere. So, you know, the education department, as you mentioned, they took some steps last week, announced some, you know, spidering out of its duties across the government as they’d like to see. Congress would probably have to pass a bill to completely disestablish the department, but we’ll see what they say in these bills. I mean, they’ve written, to my knowledge, the education portion of that Labor-HHS-Education bill is as though the department was what it was when they approved that bill. So, you know, Congress may push back on a complete dismemberment of the department, but that’s part of the kind of ongoing dynamic here that we’ve seen all year.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Loren Duggan, he’s deputy news director at Bloomberg Government. Loren, a couple other things I want to take up with you. One, discharge petitions seem to be having a moment in the house. Talk to us about why that is happening and what it means in terms of regular order.

Loren Duggan So discharge petitions matter most when there’s a really narrow majority. And you know, there’s the majority party and the majority of a day. And the majority of a day means you get 218 to sign onto one of these petitions and you can pull forward legislation, even if leaders don’t want. And to your point, we’ve seen that a couple of times this year. We saw it on proxy voting for parents. We saw it on most recently — we saw it on the Epstein case, obviously, which was one that had dragged out for a while. And then Jared Golden, a Maine Democrat, got it on a labor-related bill, and he attracted enough Republican support. And that’s what it means here. There are a lot of Democrats, but you need at least a few Republicans. They cross over. You can control the floor or at least push your bill forward. Historically, this existed because the speaker had an iron grip on the House agenda and members banded together and created this process. There is some talk now, some pushback. Do we need to change this process, make it harder? And we’ll see if there’s any traction for that, but as long as the majority is as narrow as it is, and you get enough members to band with you, you can kind of control the agenda for a brief period of time.

Terry Gerton Well, it does at least seem to be moving some things forward.

Loren Duggan It definitely is moving things around. I mean, the Epstein vote had been wanted by people for a long time and then they finally got it. And what was even more interesting there is you went from like a bare majority signing onto the discharge petition to all but one of those who voted voting yes in the end. So, you know, the dynamics there are really interesting.

Terry Gerton So there’s one more topic that I want to take up with you, and it bundles several recent headlines together. We had a federal judge who ruled that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in the District of Columbia was illegal. We had some members of both houses of Congress create a video talking about why the military doesn’t need to obey illegal orders, and a response from the White House on that. And then we’ve got Ukraine and Venezuelan operations that continue to circulate. I don’t want to dig into any of those specifically, but collectively, Congress has a responsibility here when it comes to military operations and deployment. Do all of these things perhaps portend a more active engagement from either the Senate or the House on these issues of military operations?

Loren Duggan I mean, we’ve seen some of that, obviously there’s pushback a lot of times from Democrats on what this administration is doing, but there is Republican pushback as well. We’ve seen that on some of the foreign policy questions, whether it’s terrorists or, attacking Venezuela, preventing an attack on land in Venezuela, dealing with the boats. So Congress is asserting itself in some places, but, you know, controlling the hearings right now, that’s all Republicans. And if they want to avoid a hearing that would perhaps raise some of these questions. But at the same time, if you get a a nominee for a defense job in front of some senators, they may ask some tough questions and likewise in the house. So I think we’ll see some discussions, some pushback on some of these things. The defense debate that we’ve talked about having both on the spending side and the authorization side, there could be discussion around all those topics in there as well. So, you know, we see Congress asserting itself in different ways and outside of Congress too, using social media channels, using the media to get their message across or try to push back on what they don’t like.

Terry Gerton So what are you anticipating will be at the top of the agenda when Congress gets back after the Thanksgiving holiday?

Loren Duggan One thing that’s going to surge back is this ACA enhanced premium tax credit issue, how to prevent increases in what people are paying for their health insurance under Obamacare. Going into the recess, there was no consensus. They’re going to try to push for it. Senators agree to vote by the end of the year on something. We’ll be looking to see what that something ends up being. But that’s really driving a lot of the discussion on and off the floor right now.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Loren Duggan, deputy news director at Bloomberg Government. Loren, thanks as always. Thank you. We’ll post this interview at federalnewsnetwork.com slash federal drive. Here at the federal drive on your schedule, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

The post What’s happening with the 2026 appropriations bills? first appeared on Federal News Network.

Interview transcript

Eric White Tell me about Diella. What was your experience and how you came to find out about her?

Sam Adebayo Yeah, so as a technology reporter, I’m always trying to sniff out and see what’s going on in the technology industry. And it’s not often that you find, you know, something that jumps at you right away and you’re like, I have to write about this. So when I saw the announcement that Albania was launching sort of like an AI minister, I’m like, that sounds interesting, you know. It Seems like something to write about. And it is not the first time really that a government has tried to use AI in its operations. The US Treasury, for instance, has this AI system for check fraud detection, which has been very helpful in checking for fraud. And as a matter of fact, there was about, I think, $400 million that was recovered in 2023. Canada has some sort of AI system for its immigration tasks. The UK has also dabbled in using some sort of AI systems. This is not the first time, but this is the first time we’re seeing a nation-state actually elevate an AI system up to the point where it’s making high-profile decisions in something as important as public procurement. When I saw the news, I’m like, I have to really look at what’s happening here. And see what could be the potential impact across governments around the world.

Eric White Yeah. And it’s the first time I’ve seen, myself, of one being actually personified. Right. I mean … it’s a character. It’s an avatar.

Sam Adebayo Yeah, yeah, dressed in all nice Albanian costumes.

Eric White Yeah. Does that add another layer to it where, you know, I’m sure that in meetings and conversations, and even when you were writing about it, did you feel as if you’re writing about an actual person sometimes?

Sam Adebayo I mean, there’s some sort of anthropomorphism here where you sort of, like, allude some sense of humanity to or animate the tool in a way. So it sort of felt like that when I was writing about it. But of course, I’ve been writing about AI for a while, so I know that it’s still a machine. It was trained on specific data sets, right? But it was very interesting to actually write about this development, especially with everything that’s happening in AI today.

Eric White Let’s get into the nitty gritty a little bit. What is it that Diella can actually do and what is her main job? As well as you can explain it, what was curious about what you found?

Sam Adebayo The Albanian government actually rolled out — but at the time it wasn’t exactly called Diella. It was like an AI system that was supposed to help people who were Albanian citizens who were looking to benefit from like citizen services. There was this E-Albanian website that you would log into if you wanted to like skip some bureaucratic processes and get maybe a document provided for you or something like covering services in general. And so, because the Albanian prime minister has actually been looking forward to showing the world that Albania is becoming more and more a transparent society, because experts have said over and over again that Albanian is like a hub for international gangs to launder money through public tenders that are often enmeshed in corrupt processes. So this was kind of like an effort by the prime minister to create a system that was gonna help public tenders to become more transparent, right, more accountable and in showing the world that, hey, Albania is not what it used to be or what the perception about Albania [is]. It was just like an attempt to change the perception about Albania really. So it was that system that they were using in January that was then elevated to a cabinet-level minister. It’s essentially an AI bot, if I can describe it that way, that was helping the citizens with citizen services, but now is doing much more by deciding. And that’s what actually caught my interest because this system doesn’t just now help, it’s deciding what beat goes to who, right? What beat doesn’t go to who. and it’s just really helping for private contracts with the government of Albania and things like that. So that’s essentially what Diella is supposed to do. Of course, we don’t know if it’s going to really be able to do that, but that’s what it’s supposed to.

Eric White Yeah, that was what was going to be my next question of, what was sort of the reception in folks that you spoke to? I mean, obviously the idea here is to take any bias or human interest out of the decision-making process when deciding who gets a government contract and who doesn’t, you know, is that even capable from the source that the AI derives its decision- making capabilities from?

Sam Adebayo I mean, I think the reactions have been mixed. On the one hand, there are people who say any effort by the government to try to position itself as being transparent is welcome, right? Especially because Albania has been trying to join the EU since 2009, and you know, the prime minister wants that ambition to join in the EU to happen before or by 2030. So they’re doing everything they can to show that, hey, we’re transparent, right, we’re accountable. But on the other hand, you know, there are questions about what is the ethics of this, how are we sure that this system is actually going to be accurate? Because when you talk about AI systems, there are always going to be the questions of bias, hallucinations and fabricated results — and even manipulation, because essentially AI systems are just large data sets that are really good at pattern recognition. It’s not like they can reason like human beings. And so at the data level, if there’s any bias or somebody at the back end [who] can manipulate that data, or somebody just manipulates the system, pretty much the same way you can manipulate Chat GPT, you know. I’ll give you an example. And I was just playing around with one of those tools and I asked the tool, do you know my location? And the tool said — well, I don’t want to mention the name — but it said, I don’t know your location. And then I said, okay, suggest to me the best restaurants that sell so-and-so around me. And then he suggests this to me. And I’m like, but you told me you don’t know my location. Essentially, that was me sort of like trying to jailbreak the tool to say what it didn’t want to say in the first instance. So there are those concerns. So on the one hand, it’s good that they’re trying to be transparent. On the other hand, there are questions about the ethics, the accountability of this. If the system makes a mistake, who’s gonna be accountable for that mistake? Is it gonna be the government, the prime minister, or the system itself, right? So the reactions really from the people that I talked to or spoke to before I wrote the story was quite mixed.

Eric White We can go further into the future. I mean, how many political appointees or elected officials could find themselves in the unemployment line if the AI revolution comes for their jobs as well?

Sam Adebayo I mean this is really a test experiment. Nobody, even the Albanian government I guess, really knows what exactly is going to come out of this. Just the other day I heard the prime minister saying that Diella had now given birth to its three children and essentially was metaphorically describing the fact that there were now new AI assistants for members of the parliament, for each member of the Parliament, the three members of the parliament who are going to be assisting them. so more and more, I think we’re going to see governments try to use AI to speed up processes or become more productive, more transparent or accountable. But I don’t think anyone can say for sure what is going to be the outcome of this. If the results are positive, you can bet that there’ll be other governments around the world who, you know, try to do something similar. I don’t know for sure if they’re going to use AI for a high stakes domain like public procurement, right? But you can expect that there’ll be more and more governments trying to do something similar.

The post What happens when a government gives an algorithm a seat at the cabinet table? first appeared on Federal News Network.

Evan Davis views the federal government’s modernization efforts as a strategic opportunity to rebuild trust and achieve mission success through smarter, more human-centered service design.

The recent executive order on digital design makes the timing ideal, said Davis, executive managing director for federal growth at Maximus.

The key? Agencies need to use every citizen interaction as a data point to improve systems, predict needs and personalize service, he recommended during an interview for Federal News Network’s Forward-Thinking Government series.

Lean into the better design executive order

The Improving Our Nation Through Better Design EO is a natural extension of the push to improve experience and the relationship between the government and its constituents, Davis said. “That relationship needs to get built one encounter at a time.”

That matters because the public’s digital service expectations have expanded as commercial interactions have rapidly surpassed those offered in the public sector.

But right now, “there’s a recognition that these government experiences, when looked at carefully with new technology, can meet not only those new expectations but bring federal government encounters to a place where constituents feel appreciated and feel considered in those engagements,” Davis said.

With more than two decades spent helping agencies connect with their constituents, much of it spent partnering within federal contact centers, we asked Davis to share his perspective on the most effective strategies and tactics for advancing digital maturity across government.

Position contact centers as strategic intelligence hubs

For starters, it’s critical to reenvision government contact centers as far more than transactional endpoints. Davis argues that they are rich, underutilized sources of qualitative data that reveal citizen intent, frustration and unmet needs.

With artificial intelligence and analytics, agencies can mine center interactions to inform policy, improve service design and respond in real time, he said.

“I’m constantly amazed by the wealth of untapped data insights hidden within federal agency call centers,” Davis noted and added that center staff members also have a “real-time understanding of the incredible complexity of what it means to engage with the government.”

• 3 tactics: To take advantage of contact center data, Davis suggests that agencies should:
  • Analyze call transcripts for patterns in citizen needs.
  • Use insights to refine FAQs, digital flows and policy language.
  • Feed findings into broader customer experience and service improvement efforts.

With this approach, agencies — for the first time — “can truly use data to influence policy, to influence an understanding of what’s important to citizens,” he said

Build a digital-first, omnichannel foundation

Davis stressed that digital first doesn’t mean digital only. Agencies must unify systems and channels to guide citizens to the right help, whether that’s a chatbot, a human agent or a proactive SMS update. An omnichannel foundation will enable cost savings, faster service and trust-building through transparency, he said.

“Digital first is not digital separate. … How do I use that first point of contact to get people to the right place based on where they are at the moment?”

The goal, Davis explained, is to reduce the total amount of time and individual actions that citizens must take to address a need.

• 3 tactics: He suggested that to establish that omnichannel foundation, agencies should:
  • Consolidate legacy contact center systems into a scalable, modular platform.
  • Standardize agent interfaces and data flows.
  • Enable proactive outreach across channels.

“It will also give agents, regardless of the exact content that they’re responsible for, the same user interface, the same pane of glass to look at every day,” Davis said. “It will also allow them to start pulling in that huge amount of data and doing something with it to inform what next steps they should take.”

 Use AI to decode intent and predict needs

Understanding why a citizen contacts an agency is often more complex than a dropdown menu can capture. Davis explained that AI can uncover true intent, match it to policy requirements and guide citizens to resolutions faster. It can also help leaders spot emerging issues before they escalate.

“AI has already proven incredibly adept at understanding true intent of the citizen’s needs” at the micro level and gives agencies more options to quickly respond appropriately, he said. And at macro level, “you can rely on AI to answer things like: What’s changed today? What do I need to know when I wake up this morning as the leader of citizen engagement?”

• 3 tactics: To speed response times through integrating AI capabilities, Davis recommended that agencies should:
  • Deploy AI-powered intelligent virtual assistant and agent assist tools.
  • Use AI to analyze qualitative data and surface trends.
  • Train models using up-to-date knowledge management systems.

Long term, by integrating AI in these ways and moving to modernized data infrastructures, Davis expects agencies will achieve a state of ongoing transformation and be able to incrementally improve and scale services.

Why tackling service systems matters now

Davis tied these tactics directly to the urgency of the moment: aging systems, rising citizen expectations and the availability of transformative technologies. Agencies must act now, not just to modernize, but to deliver on their missions more effectively, he said.

The beauty of integrating contact center data sources and analyzing that data in real time, Davis pointed out, is that agencies can begin making correlations between circumstances on an interaction that tend to lead to increased costs but also tend to lead to erosion of trust.

“We can begin looking at incredible positive change — to both provide cleaner, simpler, more cost-effective solutions but also to rebuild trust.”

Discover more ways to use technology to reimagine how your agency meets its mission in our Forward-Thinking Government series.

The post Turning the government’s contact centers into engines of intelligence to power federal modernization efforts first appeared on Federal News Network.

Interview transcript

Eric White Loren, thank you so much for joining us.

Loren DeJonge Schulman Eric, I am so excited to be here. This is the key question to me that we should all be thinking about and answering, certainly on a regular basis, but most urgently now, of rethinking what it is we want to design government around, and how can we get there.

Eric White Alright, so let’s back up a little bit and just go to the project itself. How did this all come about? And what were you all hoping to obtain from it? And are you finding that you’re getting some good ideas for that future government?

Loren DeJonge Schulman This project came about as I was leaving government and recognized that, while we got a tremendous amount done in the Biden administration, there were a lot of things left on the table that I just realized we were not thinking big enough [about]. We were doing incremental change around the margins because that’s all that we thought was possible in some absolutely critical areas. Since then, we have seen the Trump administration come in and do some pretty significant, radical transformations of government. At the same time, we are looking at the advent of artificial intelligence, the enormous challenge of climate change and so many more big trends that are shaping how we think about governments. So I wanted to step back and say, like, all right, if all of this is happening anyway; if we could step back and say, how might we redesign government in the future to what we want it to be? Not just based on where it is today and how we make changes on the margins, but around a set of principles that work for us as Americans, how would we get both? What would that look like? What would it look like in practice? And then also what are the ingredients that help us get there? And so with a project that I started with the Federation of American Scientists, we did a series of exercises over the summer. It started with just that core question, everybody sitting in a room closing their eyes and saying, if you could design government around one thing by 2050, what would that be and what change would you want that to bring about? And we use that visioning exercise to then go much deeper on not only what would that government deliver and how, and how would that different than today, but really critically. What are the ingredients that we need to help us get there? Not just magically, we snap our fingers and it comes about, but what are the processes, the management ingredients, the organizations, the institutions that make that possible?

Eric White All right, so you host this discussion group and it included up to 50 participants. Who was involved? And then we can kind of get into what was the process like, and then we can get into those ingredients that they did come up with.

Loren DeJonge Schulman Absolutely. So I lucked out by having a lot of people who are very passionate about the question, which to me was more important than having people who were specifically experts on the nitty gritty. But we had anywhere between people who’ve been thinking about government reform for their entire careers — whether that be around workforce issues, procurement, institutional design — to people who have been on the front lines of service delivery, thinking about how we do better disaster response or veterans benefits for Americans, to people who are themselves policy experts or organizers who have been thinking about how to bring better outcomes to their communities. I really wanted to make this to be a diverse group who weren’t just going to think in traditional increments like, well, let’s make government more digital, which is great, don’t get me wrong, or let’s make government hiring better. All of those are great things. But I wanted to shift the conversation around, if government was designed on a particular value, a principle, an organizing factor that drove everything — how we buy, how we hire, how we deliver for Americans, that our relationships and our communication strategy with Americans, what would that look like? And really importantly, what trade-offs would that require? Because it’s a really easy — some of us are natural optimists, some of us are natural pessimists. It’s really easy to think, my idea will just make everything better. But almost certainly, it’s going to come with trade-offs associated with it, and designing around those is that next level of criticality in terms of this whole process.

Eric White Yeah, I got to say, you know, reading through the first summary that you all put out, [as] somebody who covers this, [there’s] not a lot of Gov speak, which can be a lot — which can be almost as bad as corporate speak. Very plain language. It wasn’t hard to understand. So kudos to that and breaking things down and coming up with a group that, like you said, is sort is knowledgeable, but not too far into the weeds. So let’s do that here. Let’s get into some of the ingredients that you all came up with, because that was one of my surprises, that you’re thinking of an otherworldly future government. This is all stuff that is perfectly attainable and isn’t going to require some major new innovation. That was at least my takeaway. I’m interested to hear what you have to say.

Loren DeJonge Schulman That was so striking to me as well. So we had over a few different workshops, we had groups that were thinking about, what if we design around abundance? What if we designed around equity or dignity? What if we were very place-based or focused on burden reduction? They had many different models and all have really different ways that they went about the challenge. Afterwards I did the usual researcher thing, [asking] what are the common themes we found throughout? What is distinct? And What was really striking to me is that despite them going off in really radically different directions, a lot of the ingredients that they came up with that they said were crucial to the success of their models were both common — and I’ll talk about those in a second — but also things that you look around today and say like, all right, that fits into my model today too. That said, a few things stood out to me. One is that even if government in 2050 is just radically different and there’s many different possibilities to get there, we can and should start working towards that. Like, the design of government  — it may be radically different at that point in time — has a lot of commonalities with the specifics that we may want to pursue today. So those are some of those common ingredients, things that are going to be very familiar to your listeners. So in terms of — [I’ll] focus on talent — you need a workforce that is more flexible, where we are able to bring in different forms of talent on a different basis according to the needs of government. You need to be able to have different sorts of skillsets and roles in government, whether that be less oriented towards compliance or legal focuses and much more oriented towards delivery, community engagement, or design. In terms of procurement, there’s a lot of interesting commonalities around wanting to make sure that we had specific kinds of talent and resources and capacities in-house in the federal government in order to allow more flexibility in terms of how that operated. And to be able to do so with public value in mind, and moving more towards outcomes-based contracting rather than some of the models that we see today. No surprise, [there was] a lot of interest in having better data, not only improving data collection, but having it be more seamlessly and securely accessible across problem sets. And that data was not just sitting in a silo somewhere, that it was able to deliver better feedback loops to policymakers to know, is what we’re doing actually working overall. And on service delivery, all of my former customer experience colleagues will recognize a lot of these ingredients. People thought that the services designed by the federal government need to be far more frictionless, proactive, and available immediately for people who are in need. There could be more one-stop shops where people are able to solve particular challenges on one website or one consultation rather than having to deal with multiple agencies. And overall, our entire concept of government should be much more people-focused in terms of not only the design — not just like the website you go to — but in terms of the intent that you are starting with the end of the outcome for people and not just looking at the bureaucracies at hand. So none of those are like completely radical. And actually, I probably would have liked it if the groups got more radical. But it was striking to me how much all of those things are just as relevant to a government that is designed around something completely different than it is today as the government that we see before us at this moment.

Eric White We’re speaking with Loren DeJonge Schulman, senior advisor for government capacity at the Federation of American Scientists. One of my main takeaways from all of this as well was the focus on having more in-house services rather than relying on contractors. And that would actually probably fix a lot of the things that you mentioned, you know, having a one-stop shop, having more consistency and customer experience. This is a chicken-under-the-egg kind of thing, though, right? I mean, which couldn’t come first? Can you build a system within the government without relying on several different contractors that are going to give you a sort of a hodgepodge sort of mix of services? Or do you have to rely on them first to help create that one-stop shop and you know all government entities?

Loren DeJonge Schulman This is a great question, and I think it comes back to what I was wanting to relentlessly seek after in these workshops, but also [what] I would love all Americans to be able to think through is, what is it we genuinely want government and uniquely government to deliver and provide for us? Where the government is the one who is generating the value, that is understanding and building the process and that is in charge of making sure that it delivers effectively for Americans. That doesn’t mean that procurement or partnership doesn’t exist. It’s absolutely vital. But it’s more thinking about — it is more valuable for us to have a public orientation, [an] outcomes focus, a public sector mindset behind certain functions versus ones that are going to be more transient, short-term or not-as-consistently-necessary for public services. And that doesn’t happen — exactly as you say — that doesn’t happen overnight. You have to start small or start with specific areas. You’ve seen this in previous administrations and thinking about how to integrate digital services into the federal government, to be able to serve better as integrators and designers and technologists for federal systems. There may be other functions that we want to think about more actively in terms of, where does it make sense to have government be the owner and driver and deliverer versus partnering or relying on contractors on the outside? There’s transitions with that, and it’s also the sort of thing that may shift over time, but it comes back to this question of where is it that we want government to be responsible and accountable and have the internal skills to be able to know and manage these challenges versus they can reasonably rely on partners on the outside.

Eric White All right, so let’s zero in on one particular thing hanging over all this, and that’s the advent of AI. It’s here, whether any of us want it or not. And supposedly, it will make things more efficient and easier. That remains to be seen. But what is the role that you see it playing overall in government services? I swear, if you tell me I have to talk to another chatbot, I’m not going to be happy.

Loren DeJonge Schulman [S]omething critical to understand for all of us is that … absolutely, just like any other kind of software advancement, artificial intelligence is going to be a part of how we manage government and how citizens interact with government and how services are delivered and designed in the future. We need to have a better sense of where we are both comfortable with that, what are the values and norms associated with it, and where we’re finding actual improvements for outcomes. And that requires some comfort with experimentation, piloting, and testing things out that government is not always great at. So it’s gonna have to get more comfortable with seeing, where does this work, where does it not work. I think there’s a lot of potential in artificial intelligence being able to take on functions that may be more rote and have potential for automation. Where I think that we want to be cautious is making sure that we are able to preserve public service, public servants. In that outcome, citizen, American-focused, people-focused mindset where AI may not be able to best implement, or AI may not be able to protect the rights and norms that we want to be associated with how we deliver government. It can be a great tool for burden reduction. It could be a tool for being able to augment our workforce and free up a lot of the time that we want to devoted to better things. But I also think it requires us being very purposeful around — coming back to this question of what government does versus what it doesn’t — what is it we want public servants to take the lead on versus where we are comfortable with AI taking a burden away? I think that is a great conversation to be able to have, probably not with a chatbot, but maybe to consult them would be interesting to see.

Eric White Yeah, did the folks involved kind of take into consideration what the attitudes and feelings would be of the governed people in the future? You know, you talk about increased trust. A lot of people have a lot of distrust in AI right now. That probably will change as things progress and more and more folks get comfortable with it. I mean, I’m just curious if that came into play as you all were focusing on what people will actually desire from the government in the future as well.

Loren DeJonge Schulman Absolutely. So across all of the models that we generated — and they are summarized in a more recent publication that came out this morning, “Blue sky Thinking to Reimagine Government” — across all of them, a big part of our work was talking about, what are … the best possible world[s] associated with this, but also what’s the worst possible version of this where things have gone terribly wrong? We have designed around abundance or AI or burden reduction, and we realized, no, actually, incentives have gone about it the wrong way. We’ve also used that as an opportunity to think through first, second and third order effects of, what are the positive ones that may be associated with this sort of design model, but also potentially what are some of the negative ones or the ones that are not coming as naturally to us. We did that with the intent of trying to better understand the trade-offs associated with these models and also to try to think about what are they guard rails that we would want to set up if we worked towards designing around these goals. What’s the talent we would need to bring in in order to preserve the best possible versions? And how do we structure some of these management and operational ingredients that we’re talking about such that the intent of these design functions are preserved and we don’t kind of move into more of a compliance model where we’re trying to seek better outcomes. So you asked exactly the right question. In all of the models where people are thinking about different kinds of use of AI or data integration — and so the consequences they imagined were… If this goes wrong, then Americans will rightly question whether or not government is in place to secure their data privately, to manage their security, and to trust that government is the best integrator of this. So having those sorts of considerations up front, but doing so in a way that is both outcome-focused rather than compliance-focused, is going to be critical to any kind of redesign initiative.

Eric White Looking towards the future of your futurist project, what is it that you all have in mind? Right now, like I said, I’ve only seen the very broad strokes that you painted out for us. What are you looking to do with this information that you’ve obtained and any other future events that you have coming up or anything like that.

Loren DeJonge Schulman I think the biggest thing I’m excited about is expanding the conversation. We had a wonderful series of events over the summer. I wanna be able to take the conversation of what is it that we want from government … and broaden that to different audiences outside of D.C., whether that be students, folks around the country, community groups, organizers, and others, to be able drive a better conversation. Instead of what it is that we don’t like about government today, what bothers us, what’s annoying, to what is it we want instead? So that’s the next era of this. But then the second piece will be very critically, all those building blocks that we talked about that are common for those 2050 visions, we’re gonna be working at FAS with our partners across the ecosystem to help make those more in reality today, whether that be talent or digital services or more burden reduction in government services. We can start that and are starting that at this moment, no matter what that government looks like in 2050, we have the ability to make progress today.

Eric White And I want to finish up here by kind of bringing the focus back to you yourself. You were in government, you saw how the sausage was made. Now you’re on the outside kind of taking a more observational approach. Are you optimistic? Should we be optimistic here, Loren? you know, a lot of the stories that I get to report on daily are, you know, Inspector General reports on government failures. What is there to be hopeful for?

Loren DeJonge Schulman I think there are two things that I’m hopeful about. One is that I think there’s an entire generation of leaders who are excited to look at the potential of government as a deliverer of opportunity and a manager of risk that nobody else can — and it’s less that those leaders didn’t exist before and more that so many of us are seeing this like this is the moment that we need to be able to take this challenge on. The second thing I’m excited about is for all the changes that have taken place in government over the last nine months. It’s made Americans much more aware of what government does in their day-to-day lives, what it doesn’t do, and hopefully gotten them to think more about this question that drives me, which is, what is it they actually want out of it? … There’s been some challenges over the last several months, I want to use that as an opportunity to get a better national conversation going. That gives me hope.

The post What if we stopped fixing government at the margins and redesigned it from scratch? first appeared on Federal News Network.