Tech Talks
The GSA CTO team hosts in-depth Tech Talks, where presenters discuss technology topics affecting the agency. Each Tech Talk is a 30-minute informal meeting with an audience of internal GSA members. Demonstrations are often provided along with follow-up Q&A. Registration is limited to internal GSA personnel. To register to attend a Tech Talk event, please contact Joe Novak at Joseph.Novak@gsa.gov.
For general questions about the Tech Talks, please contact the GSA CTO team at cto@gsa.gov.
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GSA's Electronic Document Management System (EDMS)
August 9, 2018, 1-1:30p
Objective
Learn more about the GSA’s EDMS system and how you can use it to help formalize the way you manage documents and electronic records.
During this presentation, we will explain what an EDMS is and how it can help your organization be more efficient. We will also explain the difference between EDMS and Google Drive and when you should use each tool.
Finally, we will show the process for moving your content onto the EDMS so that you can prepare to work with the EDMS team if you are interested.
Location
Virtual and 1800F Rm 3232
Who
Dean Grady and Joe Hilger
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Battle of Bots
July 31, 2018, 1-1:30p
Objective
Have you ever been interested in machine learning but didn’t know how to start? Lindsay Young will share her tribulations in making a simple machine learning app.
She’ll go over how it works and what code libraries are available for exploration. You will get an understanding of what situations make for good machine learning opportunities, and how to evaluate your options to know if you should use it for a given task.
Location
Virtual and 1800F Rm 4232
Who
Lindsay Young
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Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI)
July 17, 2018, 1-1:30p
Objective
The Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) Program is coming to GSA! This new program, to be implemented across all Executive Branch agencies, will standardize the way agencies mark, handle, and share information that is unclassified but requires protection. Types of information that will be affected include PII, SBU, legal info, contracts, bids, etc. Tune in July 17th to learn more about the program and implementation plans for GSA.
Location
Virtual and 1800F Rm 3334
Who
Karen Overall
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Grace IaaS Cloud
June 26, 2018, 1-1:30p
Objective
GRACE is the new GSA enterprise cloud platform offering. The platform offers near full automation of IaaS capability to quickly on-board new tenants and empower them with self-provisioning capability.
So, what is it, how does it work, and how can you get started with it? Kishore from the CTO team will provide information on the core principles, architecture details, automation workflow, and core components of the GRACE platform.
We will talk about “why GRACE?” and compare it with other GSA’s IaaS offerings. We will also briefly touch on “incremental ATO process”, which is being developed in collaboration with the security team to build GRACE platform.
This is another interesting Tech Talk related to the topic of the Cloud!
Location
Virtual and 1800F Rm 3334
Who
Kishore Kakani
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Section 508 Testing for Developers
June 14, 2018, 1-1:30p
Objective
Andrew Starling (IAE) and Dan Perkins (GSA IT Section 508 team) have worked together in conducting Section 508 testing during the design and development of beta.sam.gov.
This Tech Talk will provide an overview of their Section 508 testing processes and how they complement each other.
Mark Buchko (GSA IT Section 508 team) will also give an overview of the automated testing tool AMP (Accessibility Management Platform by Level Access) that is available to everyone in GSA.
This is the second tech talk related to the topic of IT Standards.
Location
Virtual and 1800F
Who
Andrew Starling, Dan Perkins, and Mark Buchko
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Cloud.gov Quick Start and Whirlwind Tour
May 24, 2018, 1-1:30p
Objective
Cloud.gov is the TTS-operated platform-as-a-service for the federal government.
So, what is it, how does it work, and how can you get started with it?
Peter with the cloud.gov team will walk you through deploying a database-backed web application, and illustrate how cloud.gov is different from other cloud offerings.
In particular, the Cloud Foundry-based PaaS offloads much of the work that IaaSes require for security and compliance – saving you money and vastly speeding up time to delivery.
Location
Virtual and 1800F
Who
Peter Burkholder
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Cloud Strategy
May 10, 2018, 1-1:30p
Objective
Everyone talks about the Cloud and how it is important in the present and the future. Have you ever wondered where GSA IT is headed in the area of the Cloud?
Do you know that GSA will be using SaaS, IaaS and PaaS?
Navin will explain where we are and where we are heading in this technology frontier.
Come join us for the unveiling of the GSA-IT Cloud Strategy!
Location
Virtual and 1800F
Who
Navin Vembar
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IT Standards Team
April 26, 2018, 1-1:30p
Objective
Have you ever needed a new software loaded onto your work laptop?
Where do you start, who do you contact, what information do you even need to begin?
Never fear the GSA IT Standards team is here!!
We will take you through the steps of acquiring the software you need. We will start in GEAR searching through GSA approved software that can be used, to searching GEAR for an alternative that may meet your need.
We will discuss our ‘New Software’ request form, talk about why we ask the questions we do, and how your responses can assist us in moving your ticket through the approval process.
We want to share with you the steps we must complete, the reviews that are required, and the approvals that must be acquired.
We also want to hear from you, so join us on April 26th and bring your questions.
Location
Virtual and 1800F Room 4232
Who
Cindy Smith and Gokul Ramamoorthy
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Parametric and Logical Types for Programming and Architecture
April 16, 2018, 1-1:30p
Objective
Below is this Tech Talk’s Objective. All are welcome, but it is a more Technical topic than most Tech Talks
Milner’s slogan “Well typed programs can’t go wrong” characterizes type-safe computation
Strongly typed languages with static type checking allow both parametric polymorphism and lifting their logic to the type system. This constructive logic is sound and complete. UML templates allow us to represent such type-safe computation in a technical architecture.
Rick will introduce parametric and logical types for programming and architecture with examples from both Java Generics and UML templates. Participants are encouraged to read Rick’s paper “Parametric and Logical Types for Model-Driven Engineering” before the talk.
We will discuss the results of industrial research on static type systems used by Facebook (Flow) and Microsoft (TypeScript) with JavaScript. We will identify adoption risk of weakly and dynamically typed languages such as Perl, PHP and Python.
Paper: Parametric and Logical Types for Model-Driven Engineering
Location
Virtual and 1800F Room 2002
Who
Rick Murphy
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Digital Signature Solutions
March 22, 2018, 1-1:30p
Objective
Digital Signatures Solutions (DSS) is THE enterprise wide secure signing solution in GSA today!
This tool that is used to incorporate digital signatures on all paperless transactions is known as e-SignLive.
We offer vanilla out of the box solutions to those who need it, as well as customized and integrated and API driven solutions for those who require more specific customization depending on their use case.
As of today, we have 3000+ users.
We offer informal, need based individual training to user groups. These meetings are held using Adobe meeting space and can have a number of attendees ranging from 2 to close to 200. Come to the Digital Signature Solutions Tech Talk to learn more about how this product can help you and your organization.
Location
Virtual and 1800F Room 3022
Who
