A new challenge to automate one of the most tedious jobs in government

Tom Temin: Pass up Tung, superior to have you on.

Doris Tung: Of course, thank you for possessing me.

Tom Temin: And you are on the lookout for a technique to establish, I guess, the CUI, the controlled but unclassified info. Let’s start with that type of knowledge. Is that the most difficult to discover or the most subtle, or why start there?

Doris Tung: Well, the managed unclassified information, which I’m heading to refer to as CUI, it is challenging to mark since it has about 120 classes, and there are subsets of those. So for an end person to discover no matter if your doc necessitates a particular marking or not, can be pretty monotonous. Whereas with categorised documents, you are pretty guaranteed irrespective of whether or not you’re working on a software that’s likely to be, you know, key, major solution, and the files that are generated from that have to have to have their appropriate marking. So CUI has been all over as a need for awhile. But due to the fact of its vast majority of classes, and specific marking necessities, and also legacy markings with “for official use only”, and things like that, it can get difficult for a person to figure out no matter whether a doc is CUI, and then “how do I mark it?”.

Tom Temin: And I consider, there’s a terrific possibility for inconsistency from particular person to man or woman or device to device or bureau to bureau, way too?

Doris Tung: Oh, unquestionably. Believe about all the paperwork that we deliver in the federal authorities. We’re developing so a lot of files, especially electronically now, way too. So you know, everyone is creating their have choices on regardless of whether it desires to be marked, and then carrying out it appropriately. Simply because there is pretty particular needs on what do. You need to have to set on the header or the footer of the document. And then if you’re performing email messages, you know, how do you distribute CUI? So there’s specific demands that an conclusion-user from particular person to human being may well not be informed, and they are just making use of what they think is accurate.

Tom Temin: And just before we get into the details of the obstacle you have introduced, why is it coming by way of the Philadelphia division of the Naval Area Warfare Heart of all the probable areas in the Navy?

Doris Tung: I’m a portion of a office of Navy management method named “Bridging the Hole,” a improvement method for focusing on escalating senior executive assistance. And so as component of this system, senior executive support from the Navy participates by supplying authentic lifetime complications for the team to solve so we can do some motion finding out. And Mr. Alonzie Scott, who is a SCS at the Office environment of Naval Investigation, he introduced his difficulty to this program and our staff,. You know, I’m coming out of Philadelphia, he presented a obstacle of, you know, how do we simplify marking of managed unclassified info using and leveraging automation and synthetic intelligence and device discovering? I work in the contracts department, and I’m a contracting officer, and as aspect of the Naval Surface area Warfare Centre, we do have the authority to situation prize problems. And that was a remedy that our staff arrived upon. You know, the staff users consist of folks throughout the Navy.

Tom Temin: Risk-free to say the output of this challenge could have Navy-huge implications, even though, or even DoD huge.

Doris Tung: Right, right. Surely. I mean, I imagine it could go outside of DoD, for the reason that we did have conversations as element of our market study with little business administration, protection technical details middle. And you know, individuals are all having difficulties to figure out how do you correctly implement this exactly where the end users have an understanding of how to mark it, and perhaps getting off some of that burden off of the conclude-user. So it could have attainable implications for Navy and possibly beyond.

Tom Temin: We’re talking with Doris Tang. She’s acquisition division manager in the Philadelphia division of the Naval Area Warfare Centre. Inform us about the challenge, then, this is a not a grant plan, but a prize obstacle-form of application. And who are you achieving out to? And what are you hoping to arrive up with?

Doris Tung: So the prize obstacle we decided to go with this process versus any common Significantly, you know, Federal Acquisition Regulation-dependent contracting, because the prize challenge allows us go out to the community. So it can be firms, nonprofits, people today, any one can take part. There’s sure limits, but typically, you know, any person who has a resolution can post their plan. So the prize challenge is to ask if any individual has a resolution where by they can leverage the artificial intelligence machine discovering to automate the marking of the doc, and we have damaged up the challenge into two phases. In stage 1, which actually just closed, is a white paper to reveal, you know, what is their prototype, and then they will have a down find, the place we go on to section two. And these persons then can then essentially establish a prototype, and then we’ll check it with precise documentation to see if they can mark it accurately. And the winner that will be picked, you know, would have the maximum accuracy rate, so we’re fired up to see what options does sector and the public have to fixing this problem?

Tom Temin: And do you have some goal sets of documents that all people has agreed these are certainly CUI, for the reason that earlier, we talked about the variability that can arrive in there. And you mentioned 120 achievable classes. And we have listened to this for quite a few a long time about how quite a few layers there are. So what’s your reference sort of data?

Doris Tung: So for the prize obstacle, we are concentrating on providing just a subset of the CUI classification. So focusing on the privateness and the procurement and legislation enforcement. So we have documentation that we know for confident is marked correctly. And there’s a sample set, you know, with synthetic intelligence and machine understanding, the extra documents that you can see the software, the much more the equipment can understand. So they need the knowledge. So we realize that part of this is that we want to give them a great details established for the software to truly master. So we have kind of been scrubbing as part of our crew, creating these documents, making certain that it is protected to share with the public as well, for this obstacle. But we are concentrating on just particular subsets and then ideally, you know, relying on what is the consequence of this prize obstacle, then, you know, growing beyond just these specified subsets.

Tom Temin: And do you also have patently un-CUI that you throw in there to type of pressure examination the algorithm, for instance, like throwing in a comedian ebook or a novel?

Doris Tung: I mean, we unquestionably thought that. We do have non-CUI documents so that the resource can understand what is CUI and what is not CUI. But which is a very good plan about throwing in a comic e book. Which is one thing we’ll have to think about.

Tom Temin: And I was just thinking if the algorithm can also place categorized by incident that could get in there. That would be a attribute, I assume you would want to have like a pink mild will come on and says, “Hey, wait around a minute, this is not only not unclassified, but it ought to be categorized.”

Doris Tung: Oh, that would be an superb improvement for the software. Right now we’re only focusing on just can it even determine out is it CUI, non-CUI? And then, you know, if men and women have an skill to even handle that aspect, we would adore to see if they integrated that categorised piece, since classified is also a piece. It could be CUI and categorised. So there are truly a whole lot of variability to paperwork that you know, after hopefully, we can even just remedy this basic issue, then we can then transfer on to see what form of likely these instruments could have. That would be one thing I feel persons would want.

Tom Temin: And what do you suspect are some of the approaches that this could be finished by? For example, is it a uncomplicated phrase lookup and look at sort of factor? Or is it a lot more refined than that. Is there context? Is there syntax? Simply because you’re working with largely published documents truthful to say?

Doris Tung: That is reasonable to say that it is all written paperwork. So we did investigate what application was current out there. And there are equipment out there now with producing CUI marking device with key phrase queries. But we observed that to be problematic, simply because you’re heading to count on an particular person trying to determine all the keywords and phrases that could most likely flag a sure group. And so we’re talking about 120 classes, and then there is a subset. So do we have people today who are in a position to genuinely hone in on what keywords would flag each individual of those categories? So which is why we move towards the equipment discovering to synthetic intelligence device finding out when the equipment then reads all these knowledge sets, then it can figure out, you know, which of these words are, you know, I imply, that’s the element exactly where we’re hoping that the members not the prize challenge is going to explain to us like how can your machine do this?

Tom Temin: And now you are receiving the white papers in, what is the following period? And does this grow to be a thing that as a engineering transfer prospect or anything, you would switch into a item that the Navy could buy?

Doris Tung: So the upcoming section soon after we overview the white papers is the tech demo. And potentially, what we’re hunting into is, you know, there is new procurement automobiles and solutions, these as the other transaction agreements out there. So we are searching into, you know, based on the good results of section two, the place they do the demonstrations, we will then go after regardless of whether it’s in fact heading to be something like a product or service that we can in fact procure, or whether or not there just desires to be more abide by-up procurement solutions to see. Due to the fact there are other Navy, Maritime Corps operating system needs that we also have to contemplate that proper now the challenge is not seriously limiting the individuals in that way but.

Tom Temin: Positive. So when you get this solved, possibly you can choose on contract composing.

Doris Tung: Sure, I believe it would truly be a circumstance that could actually be delved into.

Tom Temin: You know, I guarantee you’d rocket to the SES if it acquired that a single solved. Doris Tung is the acquisition division manager in the Philadelphia division of the Naval Floor Warfare Middle. Many thanks so significantly.