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

Tom Temin: Miss Tung, great to have you on.

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

Tom Temin: And you are searching for a procedure to recognize, I guess, the CUI, the controlled but unclassified facts. Let us start out with that sort of facts. Is that the toughest to identify or the most refined, or why commence there?

Doris Tung: Perfectly, the managed unclassified facts, which I’m going to refer to as CUI, it is complicated to mark simply because it has over 120 types, and there are subsets of individuals. So for an conclusion user to recognize whether your doc involves a distinctive marking or not, can be fairly cumbersome. Whereas with categorised documents, you’re pretty positive no matter whether or not you are doing the job on a method which is heading to be, you know, top secret, top rated magic formula, and the documents that are created from that have to have to have their proper marking. So CUI has been all over as a necessity for awhile. But for the reason that of its broad the greater part of categories, and specific marking prerequisites, and also legacy markings with “for official use only”, and things like that, it can get sophisticated for a user to determine whether or not a doc is CUI, and then “how do I mark it?”.

Tom Temin: And I visualize, there’s a wonderful possibility for inconsistency from man or woman to human being or device to device or bureau to bureau, as well?

Doris Tung: Oh, unquestionably. Feel about all the documents that we deliver in the federal authorities. We’re developing so many paperwork, specifically electronically now, as well. So you know, absolutely everyone is making their have choices on irrespective of whether it needs to be marked, and then doing it properly. Since there is extremely precise specifications on what do. You will need to put on the header or the footer of the document. And then if you’re executing emails, you know, how do you distribute CUI? So there’s specific requirements that an conclusion-user from particular person to human being may perhaps not be knowledgeable, and they are just applying what they believe is right.

Tom Temin: And ahead of we get into the particulars of the challenge you’ve introduced, why is it coming by means of the Philadelphia division of the Naval Surface Warfare Middle of all the achievable areas in the Navy?

Doris Tung: I’m a element of a section of Navy leadership method referred to as “Bridging the Hole,” a progress method for focusing on escalating senior govt support. And so as part of this system, senior govt support from the Navy participates by offering actual life challenges for the workforce to solve so we can do some motion understanding. And Mr. Alonzie Scott, who is a SCS at the Place of work of Naval Analysis, he presented his dilemma to this system and our workforce,. You know, I’m coming out of Philadelphia, he introduced a problem of, you know, how do we simplify marking of controlled unclassified information making use of and leveraging automation and synthetic intelligence and equipment learning? I perform in the contracts office, and I’m a contracting officer, and as section of the Naval Surface Warfare Heart, we do have the authority to situation prize problems. And that was a option that our staff came on. You know, the crew associates consist of folks throughout the Navy.

Tom Temin: Secure to say the output of this job could have Navy-large implications, however, or even DoD extensive.

Doris Tung: Ideal, proper. Unquestionably. I signify, I feel it could go past DoD, mainly because we did have discussions as section of our market place study with little business enterprise administration, defense technological details middle. And you know, folks are all battling to determine out how do you properly put into practice this the place the customers have an understanding of how to mark it, and perhaps using off some of that stress off of the stop-user. So it could have doable implications for Navy and potentially outside of.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Doris Tang. She’s acquisition division manager in the Philadelphia division of the Naval Floor Warfare Center. Explain to us about the challenge, then, this is a not a grant plan, but a prize challenge-variety of system. And who are you reaching out to? And what are you hoping to occur up with?

Doris Tung: So the prize challenge we determined to go with this technique vs . any classic Much, you know, Federal Acquisition Regulation-based contracting, for the reason that the prize obstacle allows us go out to the public. So it can be firms, nonprofits, people today, any individual can take part. There’s particular limitations, but normally, you know, everyone who has a answer can submit their idea. So the prize challenge is to question if any one has a option wherever they can leverage the artificial intelligence device discovering to automate the marking of the doc, and we have damaged up the challenge into two phases. In period just one, which really just shut, is a white paper to reveal, you know, what is their prototype, and then they will have a down find, where by we move on to stage two. And those people individuals then can then really build a prototype, and then we’ll check it with real documentation to see if they can mark it precisely. And the winner that will be chosen, you know, would have the optimum accuracy level, so we’re fired up to see what remedies does business and the public have to solving this challenge?

Tom Temin: And do you have some objective sets of documents that absolutely everyone has agreed these are definitely CUI, due to the fact before, we talked about the variability that can arrive in there. And you outlined 120 possible types. And we’ve heard this for lots of yrs about how numerous layers there are. So what is your reference type of info?

Doris Tung: So for the prize obstacle, we are concentrating on giving just a subset of the CUI group. So focusing on the privateness and the procurement and regulation enforcement. So we have documentation that we know for confident is marked appropriately. And there is a sample set, you know, with synthetic intelligence and machine discovering, the additional files that you can see the instrument, the much more the machine can find out. So they will need the data. So we understand that element of this is that we need to give them a superior information set for the device to actually master. So we have variety of been scrubbing as element of our workforce, creating these documents, guaranteeing that it is safe to share with the public as nicely, for this obstacle. But we are focusing on just specific subsets and then hopefully, you know, dependent on what is the outcome of this prize obstacle, then, you know, growing over and above just those sure subsets.

Tom Temin: And do you also have patently un-CUI that you toss in there to type of strain check the algorithm, for case in point, like throwing in a comic book or a novel?

Doris Tung: I imply, we definitely believed that. We do have non-CUI documents so that the device can study what is CUI and what is not CUI. But which is a good notion about throwing in a comedian guide. That is a little something we’ll have to take into consideration.

Tom Temin: And I was just wondering if the algorithm can also place categorized by accident that could get in there. That would be a characteristic, I imagine you would want to have like a purple gentle will come on and suggests, “Hey, hold out a minute, this is not only not unclassified, but it ought to be categorised.”

Doris Tung: Oh, that would be an great improvement for the tool. Proper now we’re only focusing on just can it even determine out is it CUI, non-CUI? And then, you know, if people have an capability to even tackle that section, we would enjoy to see if they integrated that categorised piece, because categorized 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 standard trouble, then we can then transfer on to see what sort of probable these tools could have. That would be one thing I feel folks would want.

Tom Temin: And what do you suspect are some of the strategies that this could be finished by? For illustration, is it a straightforward term lookup and compare kind of point? Or is it extra refined than that. Is there context? Is there syntax? Simply because you are dealing with typically created documents truthful to say?

Doris Tung: That is truthful to say that it is all prepared paperwork. So we did check out what program was existing out there. And there are instruments out there now with establishing CUI marking tool with search term lookups. But we observed that to be problematic, simply because you’re likely to rely on an individual seeking to discover all the key phrases that could potentially flag a sure classification. And so we’re talking about 120 classes, and then there’s a subset. So do we have folks who are equipped to really hone in on what keyword phrases would flag every of individuals types? So that’s why we shift towards the equipment understanding to synthetic intelligence device finding out when the device then reads all these info sets, then it can figure out, you know, which of these text are, you know, I imply, which is the section where we’re hoping that the participants not the prize challenge is going to convey to us like how can your machine do this?

Tom Temin: And now you’re obtaining the white papers in, what is the next period? And does this come to be a thing that as a know-how transfer candidate or some thing, you would flip into a product or service that the Navy could obtain?

Doris Tung: So the up coming stage soon after we assessment the white papers is the tech demo. And likely, what we’re on the lookout into is, you know, there’s new procurement vehicles and strategies, these as the other transaction agreements out there. So we are searching into, you know, dependent on the accomplishment of section two, in which they do the demonstrations, we will then pursue whether or not it’s essentially heading to be anything like a products that we can in fact procure, or no matter whether there just wants to be additional stick to-up procurement approaches to see. Because there are other Navy, Marine Corps functioning technique specifications that we also have to contemplate that suitable now the obstacle isn’t truly restricting the contributors in that fashion still.

Tom Temin: Certain. So when you get this solved, probably you can take on agreement composing.

Doris Tung: Indeed, I believe it would definitely be a situation that could seriously be delved into.

Tom Temin: You know, I promise you’d rocket to the SES if it obtained that a single solved. Doris Tung is the acquisition division supervisor in the Philadelphia division of the Naval Area Warfare Centre. Thanks so significantly.