MeriTalking

In this episode of MeriTalking, MeriTalk’s Gail Emery sits down with Antonella O’Brien, Consultant, CSG Federal Systems Integrators and Channel, Dell Technologies, to discuss what it really takes to enable AI at the desktop in federal environments where agencies are working to boost productivity, speed decisions, and turn AI pilots into repeatable mission outcomes. The conversation explores the workforce use cases that are best suited for on-device AI, how agencies can build trust through security and governance, and what a practical path from pilot to scale can look like.

The biggest threat to state and local governments isn’t one budget gap, it’s compounding uncertainty: shifting funding rules, rising compliance demands, and disruptions that trigger spending now and reimbursement later. In this episode of MeriTalking, Gail Emery sits down with Melissa Moore, chief financial officer of Buncombe County, North Carolina, and James Harris, senior manager at Workday, to unpack what fiscal resilience looks like in practice.

MeriTalk’s Gail Emery speaks with Suril Desai, vice president of engineering at Acalvio, and Ralph Kahn, general manager for federal at Acalvio, about how cyber deception helps agencies detect adversaries earlier. They discuss how deception produces high-fidelity alerts, reduces security operations center alert fatigue, and strengthens zero trust by improving visibility into attacker activity.

In this episode of MeriTalking, Nicole Burdette sits down with ICF’s Kyle Tuberson to discuss how agencies can go from lab to live, supported by a consistent delivery approach in ICF’s Fathom, which bakes in security, governance, and integration with existing systems. They’ll also address the drivers for AI, from efficiency pressures to practical technology maturity, and the common barriers leaders face, from talent to infrastructure and security.

In this episode of MeriTalking, Nicole Burdette sits down with LaRel Rogers, staff product marketing manager for federal at Okta, to discuss the rise of agentic AI and its impact across government. Together, they explore how autonomous AI agents are transforming mission delivery, along with strategies for protecting critical access points and data flows between human users, AI agents, and sensitive government systems.

In this episode of MeriTalking, Gail Emery sits down with Cisco’s JT Clay and Norman St. Laurent to discuss how federal agencies can meet the modernization mandate while improving security and efficiency. Gail and her guests explore how agencies are blocking cyber threats, accelerating mission workflows, and trimming tool sprawl, plus smart tactics for measuring success and staying ahead of evolving mandates.

In this episode of MeriTalking, MeriTalk’s Gail Emery sits down with Bob Kerr, product management leader at Dell Technologies’ Mission Systems, to discuss how federal leaders can evaluate public, hybrid and dedicated wireless choices – and why dedicated federal wireless is so important today. Kerr outlines why and how Dell built a 5G solution tailored specifically for federal missions.

In this episode of MeriTalking, MeriTalk’s Gail Emery sits down with Jeff Brown, Google’s Global Public Sector Workspace Lead, to discuss where modern collaboration, AI, and security intersect for the federal government. They explore how agencies can evolve their collaboration strategies, embrace AI responsibly, and align with zero trust principles – all while overcoming the persistent challenges of outdated processes and fragmented technology.

In this episode of MeriTalking, MeriTalk’s Gail Emery chats with George Teas, Vice President of Solutions Architecture at Elastic, about the Federal zero trust journey. As agencies move from crawl to run, they face mounting challenges with visibility, interoperability, and scalability. Teas shares insights on how agencies can harness data across the five pillars of zero trust to overcome these hurdles—without losing ground on their existing cybersecurity investments.

In this episode of MeriTalking, Gen. Kurt L. Sonntag, a member of the EY U.S. Army Advisory Council, and Joe Blanton, director, strategic initiatives at GDIT discuss key vulnerabilities in global supply chains, the technologies driving logistics capabilities, and the significance of data management in logistics, and more.

In this episode of MeriTalking, Citrix’s David Smith, senior director, public sector sales and Gary Pentecost, senior director, account technical strategist, sit down with MeriTalk’s Gail Emery to explore why agencies should adopt a hybrid multi-cloud approach. They also provide key considerations for agencies as they develop hybrid multi-cloud strategies.

In this episode of MeriTalking, MeriTalk’s Gail Emery sits down with Surya Durvasula, senior vice president and general manager, Dell Technologies, Federal, and Eric Trexler, senior vice president of public sector, Palo Alto Networks, to discuss the findings of the “Tech Tonic: FY25 Federal CIO Forecast” and provide their own recommendations on where CIOs should focus going forward.

In this episode of MeriTalking, Mike Nash, director of engineering and Kent Laursen, GDIT’s technology director for digital engineering, sit down with MeriTalk’s Gail Emery to explore how digital engineering provides benefits for Federal organizations.

Enterprise security is undergoing a significant transformation as Federal agencies adopt cloud applications and a decentralized approach to networking. In this episode of MeriTalking, MeriTalk’s Gail Emery sits down with Norman St. Laurent, Federal product marketing manager for security at Cisco, to discuss the intersection of Federal cybersecurity mandates and cloud-centric modernization. They explore how agencies are evaluating cloud risk and leveraging cloud-delivered security capabilities to not only meet cybersecurity compliance requirements, but also to truly secure data and networks – while reducing complexity and improving flexibility for security teams.

State and local governments are using more devices, applications, and tools than ever before – increasing their cybersecurity complexity. And with limited resources, many IT teams are unable to create a comprehensive view of their security posture as threats evolve in sophistication. In this episode of MeriTalking, MeriTalk’s John Curran sits down with Peter Romness, cybersecurity principal in the CISO Advisors Office at Cisco, to discuss how overburdened state and local government security teams can gain control over cybersecurity data and quickly detect, prioritize, and remediate threats.

In this episode of MeriTalking, MeriTalk’s Gail Emery sits down with Kevin Chin, director of generative AI, and Jackson Scott, senior research scientist for the AI/Machine learning accelerator at Leidos, to explore how agencies can overcome the challenge of fighting public perception of generative AI and prepare their systems and teams for enterprise-wide implementation of the technology.

Federal IT is experiencing an explosion of complexity. At the same time, government is being asked to innovate and move faster. To meet these requirements and reduce complexity, agencies must change the way they work – both technically and culturally. In this episode of MeriTalking, MeriTalk’s Gail Emery is joined by Brian Mikkelsen, Datadog’s vice president and general manager for U.S. Public Sector, to break down the causes of complexity and discuss how enterprise-wide visibility can enable both technical and cultural transformation.

Efficient, effective government operations depend on interoperable systems that connect employees, citizens, and partners to the resources they need – securely. But legacy identity, credential, and access management (ICAM) can result in siloed, incompatible systems and inadequate access controls. In this episode of MeriTalking, MeriTalk’s Grace Dille sits down with Bryan Rosensteel, U.S. Federal chief technology officer at Ping Identity, to explore how Federal agencies can overcome the limitations of legacy ICAM to provide seamless and secure access to the right resources for the right people, at the right time.

In this episode of MeriTalking, MeriTalk’s Gail Emery sits down with Peter Romness, cybersecurity principal, CISO Advisors Office at Cisco, to explore how agencies need unifed cybersecurtity solutions, visibility across their enviornment, and comprehenseive threat intelligence capabilities to go toe-to-toe against bad actors – and earn the decision.

In this episode of MeriTalking, MeriTalk’s Gail Emery sits down with Brandon Iske, a principal solutions architect at Okta, and Bill Wells, a senior solutions architect at Amazon Web Services, to discuss zero trust progress and challenges, why identity is the foundation of zero trust, and how Okta and AWS work together to help agencies achieve zero trust.

While the Federal government and large corporations may dominate headlines about cyberattacks and disruptive system outages, state and local governments are far from immune to system failures – and catastrophic downtime that affects the public’s trust in government. On today’s episode of MeriTalking, MeriTalk’s Gail Emery is joined by Jim Richberg, the public sector chief information security officer at cybersecurity and networking firm Fortinet. We’ll discuss how state and local governments can sort through Federal cybersecurity guidelines to improve their cybersecurity posture, and how to go beyond the traditional focus on attack response with a holistic approach that builds operational resilience into cybersecurity roadmaps.

In this episode of MeriTalking, MeriTalk’s Gail Emery sits down with Kathleen Featheringham, vice president of artificial intelligence and machine learning at Maximus, to explore the big-picture potential of AI and how agencies can achieve immediate mission value from it.

In this MeriTalking podcast, MeriTalk’s Joe Franco is joined by Matt Lembright, director of Federal applications at Censys, which maintains a comprehensive internet map used for threat hunting. We’ll discuss the findings in Censys’s 2023 State of the Internet Report, the security vulnerabilities it uncovered, how Federal organizations can adapt – and how using data to anticipate the internet’s future mirrors the evolution of meteorology.

Across the public sector, agencies are seeing increasing demand for faster, digitally enabled service delivery – and a better user experience, for both employees and constituents. In this MeriTalking podcast, MeriTalk’s Gail Emery is joined by Joe Jeter, senior vice president of Federal technology at Maximus, to explore how user-centric approach to digital modernization, coupled with emerging technologies, can dramatically improve the citizen, employee, and user experience – the total experience with government.

The Federal government and numerous states are concerned that user data collected by some popular apps could be shared with foreign governments, including China. In this episode of MeriTalking, Joe Franco talks with Lookout’s Kristina Balaam about the data that popular apps collect, how it might be used by foreign governments, and how bans on Chinese apps can be enforced.

The Federal government is facing a workforce crisis, especially with skilled technology talent. Retention, recruitment, and retirement issues are hindering hiring managers, who are looking to fill critical open roles in order to meet mission objectives and new Federal mandates. In this MeriTalking podcast, MeriTalk’s Joe Franco is joined by Craig McCullough, Pluralsight’s senior vice president for public sector, to evaluate the skills gap and how to address it before it’s too late.

Cyberattacks, connected devices, and data are growing exponentially every year, into the billions, trillions, and zettabytes, respectively. Neither people nor traditional cybersecurity solutions can keep up with the data or the attacks. In this episode of MeriTalking, NVIDIA’s Killian Sexsmith and Matt Penn outline the burgeoning cybersecurity problem agencies face today and explore the Federal opportunity for new data approaches to form a powerful weapon against bad actors.

Over the last five years, the fields of AI and ML have achieved significant advancements in computer vision (e.g., object detection and classification.). While the technology has leapfrogged forward, deployment of computer vision applications is still nascent in the Federal government. On today’s episode of MeriTalking, MeriTalk’s editor-in-chief John Curran sits down with Ryan Simpson, Senior Data Scientist at NVIDIA and Mike Broadwater, Vice President of Technology Services at Government Acquisitions, Inc. (GAI), to dive into CV – applications, maturity, adoption barriers, and examples of how agencies are putting CV to work. How will CV impact the future?

CISA gets procurement authority, NIST picks quantum-resistant algorithms, NATO creates 1B euro tech investment fund, and more. For more news and insights on today’s mission-critical IT challenges, check us out on MeriTV.