AI in Federal Government: Uses, Potential Applications, and Issues

1. Opening remarks
2. Panelists provide their own perspectives on artificial intelligence and its use in federal government
3. The moderator poses key questions to panelists 
4. Webinar viewers submit questions to panelists 

About the Panelists

Xuming He joined Washington University in July 2023 as the inaugural chair of the Department of Statistics and Data Science. Previously, he served as the H.C. Carver Collegiate Professor of Statistics at the University of Michigan. He is a renowned leader in the fields of robust statistics, quantile regression, Bayesian inference, and post-selection inference; he is also a proponent of interdisciplinary research in data science. Before joining the University of Michigan in 2011, He held positions at the National University of Singapore and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and served as program director of statistics at the National Science Foundation. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Statistical Association. Currently, He serves as President (2023-2025) of the International Statistical Institute. He received his bachelor's of science from Fudan University and his master's (mathematics) and PhD (statistics) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Nancy Potok is the Former Chief Statistician of the United States from January, 2017 to December 2019 within the Office of Management and Budget, where she was responsible for providing coordination, guidance, and oversight for U.S. federal statistical agencies and activities.  She is currently the CEO of NAPx Consulting. While Chief Statistician, Potok served as a Commissioner on the congressionally established U.S. Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking. In 2020, Potok was named a volunteer member of the Joe Biden presidential transition Agency Review Team to support transition efforts related to the Department of Commerce. She co-chaired the American Statistical Association Task Force to develop indicators used to assess the quality of the 2020 Census. Nancy Potok also held the position of deputy director and chief operating officer of the U.S. Census Bureau. She is a former member of the American Statistical Aassociation, and an elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Her government service also includes stints as deputy undersecretary for economic affairs in the Department of Commerce; the Census Bureau's associate director for demographic programs; and the principal associate director and chief financial officer in charge of field operations, information technology, and administration during the 2000 Census. Her career of more than 30 years also includes time spent as senior vice president and director of the economic, labor, and population studies department at The University of Chicago’s famed National Opinion Research Center.

Bhramar Mukherjee is John D. Kalbfleisch Collegiate Professor and Chair, Department of Biostatistics; Professor, Department of Epidemiology, Professor, Global Public Health, University of Michigan (UM) School of Public Health;  Faculty Affiliate, Michigan Institute of Data Science (MIDAS), University of Michigan. She also serves as the Associate Director for Quantitative Data Sciences, University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center. She has been engaged with the U-M Precision Health, an institution-wide presidential initiative for the last decade in various roles. Her research interests include statistical methods for analysis of electronic health records, studies of gene-environment interaction, Bayesian methods, shrinkage estimation, analysis of multiple pollutants. Collaborative areas are mainly in cancer, cardiovascular diseases, reproductive health, exposure science and environmental epidemiology. She has co-authored more than 350 publications in statistics, biostatistics, medicine and public health and is serving as PI on NSF and NIH funded methodology grants. She is the founding director of the University of Michigan’s summer institute on Big Data. Bhramar is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  Bhramar is a member of the National Academy of Medicine. She is the recipient of many awards for her scholarship, service and teaching at the University of Michigan and beyond including the Gertrude Cox award, the Adrienne Cupples award, the Janet Norwood award and the Sarah Goddard Power award. Bhramar and her team have been modeling the SARS-CoV-2 virus trajectory in India during the COVID-19 pandemic which has been covered by major media outlets like Reuters, BBC, NPR, NYT, WSJ, Der Spiegel, Australian National Radio and the Times of India.

Michael Hawes is senior advisor for Data Access and Privacy. He is responsible for outreach and engagement with the Census Bureau’s data users on issues relating to the impact of privacy protection methodologies on the accessibility and usability of census data. Prior to joining the Census Bureau, Michael served as director of Student Privacy at the U.S. Department of Education, the department’s senior policy official responsible for the administration and enforcement of federal laws governing the privacy and confidentiality of education records. Michael is a member of the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology and chair of its Confidentiality and Data Access Committee. He has supported numerous federal government-wide initiatives relating to data privacy and confidentiality and served as a privacy consultant to the federal Commission on Evidence-based Policymaking. Michael received a bachelor’s degree in political science and history from Duke University and a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Chicago. He is a member of the American Statistical Association, a Certified Information Privacy Professional/Government by the International Association of Privacy Professionals, and a Certified Project Management Professional by the Project Management Institute. 

Chris S. Marcum holds the current role of Senior Statistician and Senior Science Policy Analyst in the White House Office of Managemetn and Budget, Office of the Chief Statistician of the United States. Previously, he served as the Assistant Director for Open Science and Data Policy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. In that capacity, he advanced the Biden-Harris Administration priorities on restoring trust in government through scientific integrity and evidence-based policy making and delivering a more equitably accessible return on the American public’s investments in Federal research and development through open science and public access.

About the Moderator

Jennifer Parker is the Director of the Division of Research and Methodology at the National Center for Health Statistics part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Health and Human Services. Her publications include highly-cited works relating socioeconomic status, air pollution, and birth weight of infants. As well as her position at the National Center for Health Statistics, Parker holds a position as adjunct research professor in the Department of Applied Environmental Health of the University of Maryland School of Public Health. Parker also served as the president of the Caucus for Women in Statistics in 2010 and in 2017, she was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. Parker completed her Ph.D. in biostatistics at the University of California, Berkeley, and did postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Francisco. 

About the Series

The National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS) and the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology (FCSM) are collaborating on a series of webinars on Artificial Intelligence (AI). This series aims to benefit federal practitioners and managers by providing behind-the-scenes information on uses of AI in federal agencies and from insights on how agencies meet organizational, managerial, and ethical challenges in harnessing the power of AI. Participation by researchers and managers in the webinars can help streamline current efforts to adopt AI and inspire new endeavors. The NISS/FCSM webinar series creates unique opportunities not easily available through other forums or venues. Federal staff with all levels of AI expertise, and supervisors of researchers, will benefit from learning how AI is used now, how it might be used in the future, and how the issues and challenges it poses are being met by federal agencies.

See full details on the event series page: https://www.niss.org/nissfcsm-ai-federal-government-series

Recordings of Previous Webinars in Series

Recordings of webinars in the series are available on the NISS/FCSM AI in Federal Government YouTube Playlist: NISS/FCSM Webinar Series on AI in Federal Government - YouTube