The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the Securities and Exchange Commission are moving forward to the next phase of their digital modernization initiatives, Federal News Network reported Thursday.
The agencies have progressed beyond initial efforts to migrate to the cloud that started five years ago. They are now leveraging cloud services to boost their IT modernization strategy, particularly on initiatives directly impacting their core missions and operational efficiency.
SEC’s Digital Transformation Initiative
According to SEC Chief Information Officer Dave Bottom, the agency prioritizes three key areas for adopting new and enhanced services. It moved its enterprise data warehouse to an enterprise data platform on Amazon Web Services and into Microsoft Office 365 for collaboration and access capabilities.
The SEC also prioritizes using software-as-a-service before building customized software and hosting it on-premises. The commission created a $250 million blanket purchase agreement, awarded to four firms in 2023, for acquiring digital services. The SEC CIO also stressed that the agency depends less on data centers since migrating to the cloud and modernizing its infrastructure.
USPTO’s Cloud Migration Efforts
The USPTO utilizes generative artificial intelligence to modernize its code, resulting in less latency in infrastructure and culture. USPTO CIO Jamie Holcombe said the agency is using AI to refactor old code and translate it for optimal cloud performance. It uses a 30-60-90-day pilot “fail fast” approach, in which the code modernization project will be terminated if there is no progress after 30 days. The GenAI has translated 80 percent of its old code after a 90-day pilot. The remaining 20 percent still require expert review to proceed with optimization.
USPTO developers are also leveraging AI on small code snippets and applying the lessons learned to further code refactoring. They are using GenAI to generate standard, repetitive code structures and identify memory leaks and other issues. The agency is also converting old Oracle stored procedures into Python and other scripting languages to enable the transition to the cloud and leverage cloud-native services like AWS, Google Cloud Platform, or Azure.
In addition, the agency is testing agentic AI for customer service to reduce the need for an answering desk. USPTO also aims to create a “culture of acceptance” with risks, failures and learning.
