ICYMI: Keynote Fireside Chat, Transformation Reimagined (part 2)

In this engaging session, Steve Boberski, Public Sector Chief Technology Officer for Genesys, introduces James McCament, the first Digital Transformation Officer for CBP. The discussion highlights James' extensive experience in federal service and his role in leveraging digital innovations and AI for enhancing CBP operations. James outlines his strategy for identifying and automating administrative tasks to give 'time back to mission,' emphasizing the importance of human-centered design and field innovation. Real-world examples, including the use of AI for non-intrusive inspections and the development of low-code solutions by frontline officers, illustrate how technology complements human intuition in critical decision-making. The conversation touches on change management strategies to foster trust and adoption of new technologies, underscoring the importance of collaboration, transparency, and practical application. The session concludes with a Q&A, addressing the integration of AI with human oversight and strategies to support cultural shifts within the agency.

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Intro/Outro Music: See a Brighter Day/Gloria Tells
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound

(Episodes 1-159: Intro/Outro Music: Focal Point/Young Community
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound)

Transcript

Steve Boberski: [00:00:00] Thank you. We have, we have two mics going, right? So let's, let's, uh, got your mic. Yeah. Let, let's, let's, we'll pass on two mics today. So I'm, I'm really excited about this session. My name's Steve Boberski. I'm the, um, public sector Chief Technology officer for Genesys among many other roles. Um. We are just a little bit about us.

Steve Boberski: We're a digital transformation, uh, AI journey orchestration company. So, uh, Gartner Magic Quadrant leader in CCAS, contact centers of service. If you'd like to know more, we table in the back. That's about as far as that goes. So I'm really excited to introduce James. James and I had a nice chat, uh, a few weeks ago and we talked for about an hour to talk about.

Steve Boberski: We're gonna try and talk about for 20 minutes, right? So he's doing some really great stuff. But a little bit about James. Um, first of all, 24 years of federal service. He's an, uh, department of Treasury, founding member of Homeland Security, uh, and currently the first digital transformation officer for CBP, which is very cool.

Steve Boberski: Um, his job, it builds strong partnerships with domestic international entities while overseeing the experience division, which is focused on [00:01:00] human-centered design to ensure that their products are meeting the needs of employees successfully. Complete the bishop and address the services that are facing the stakeholders, which are.

Steve Boberski: The public sector, right? So CBP secured facilitation of lawful trade and travel is achieved by reducing and simplifying CBP procedures, harnessing innovative technologies and streamlining CBP operations to improve mission and critical service, which is a lot of ways to say he's busy, right? So, um, before this role from November 24th through January 25, he led CBPs Presidential transition team and be, and then also prior to that he was CBPs interim Chief Operating Officer.

Steve Boberski: So he's got a lot of insights. So, um, I'm gonna join James on the stage. We're gonna have a chat. Great. 

JAMES MCCAMENT: Thanks Steve.

Steve Boberski: So is this off now? It's on 

JAMES MCCAMENT: or I can pass you mine. 

Steve Boberski: Can you hear me? I broke it already. 

JAMES MCCAMENT: Testing. 

Steve Boberski: There we 

JAMES MCCAMENT: go. 

Steve Boberski: I probably don't need a mic, but you know, I'll go with it just for consistency sake. So first digital. You know, chief Digital Officer for CPP, [00:02:00] it's a new role. That's right. And, you know, massive agency.

Steve Boberski: How do you see what you're doing? You know, what's your vision, what do you think you should be doing and, and how do you go about getting started? 

JAMES MCCAMENT: Yeah. Well, thank you for that. I, um. Pulled this a little bit away. I mean, I, it's, uh, our role, the role for the Chief Digital Transformation officer I designed coming out of being the acting Chief Operating Officer, and it was focused on, and we are focused on identifying the opportunities to use the digital applications, the agents, to maximize what we're referring to as time back to mission or TBM to increase efficiency, of course, but also assist with user adoption of digital services.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Develop a maintenance framework, evaluation of how can we automate a lot of the tasks. That are administrative, that are clunky in, uh, time, that they take a lot of time from our officers and agents. Here's the key part though. There, there are actions that must be done. But they're not the actions that our officers, agents and frontline personnel signed up for, were trained to do.

JAMES MCCAMENT: It is not their unique, intentional difference that we bring them in for. [00:03:00] And so we are looking at how we can automate so many of those tasks using a combination of ai, uh, different models. It could be RPAs, it could be a lot of different actions to give that time back to mission, to frame it up and, uh, with those digital innovations.

JAMES MCCAMENT: We are also doing that on the frontline for administrative tasks. We're also focused on fixes to global entry and enhancements, uh, the ace, the trade systems, and we wrap that within the framework of customer experience. And, uh, Janet Pence, who's the head of our customer experience division, very fortunate to have her on my team in leading that because she brings a lot of many decades of experience across customs as well.

JAMES MCCAMENT: So our role in doing this is guided by a couple of key principles. One, we are an enormous agency. We have the largest law enforcement agency in the country. Um, at times we might say maybe larger than just in the country, but certainly in the the United States. We're also the largest trade agency. And so we are known by the points of encounter, which means people know customs and border protection.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Some parts may be along [00:04:00] the border, some when you walk into the ports of entry, over 328 ports of entry, um, when you're greeted coming back into the country and also in the trade space. So of course every good that's coming into the country, all the tariffs, the duties that are collected are collected by CBP as well.

JAMES MCCAMENT: So we have a large team, but our mission dramatically outsizes that size of our agency. And so for the last at least 50 years, from what I can tell, and someone else can bid because. Customs has been around since 1789, but at least since the 1970s, we have really been focused on using technology and innovation as it exists in each generation to try to find the maximum efficiencies possible.

Steve Boberski: So, you know what? Everybody talks about transformation, the challenges. Obviously there's a cultural change that has to happen within the agency. When you do this, what are the things you do? We talked a little bit about some of the innovation that's happening in the field, uh, that people are doing some of this themselves, and how you get to leverage that.

Steve Boberski: How do you encourage that? Maybe give some examples and, and, and some, some, how that's been successful. 

JAMES MCCAMENT: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it. My [00:05:00] role as the Chief Digital Transformation guy Officer is to focus upon finding all the areas of innovation across the agency. And as I repeatedly told, our leaders and the frontline keep doing what you're doing.

JAMES MCCAMENT: I'm not trying to centralize it, but I want to find out all of your best practices and our frontline officers and agents, which, and, and the mission support personnel out in the field are the ones that are the closest to this. Problems that they need to find solutions for. I said we have 328 ports of entry.

JAMES MCCAMENT: We also have almost 200 more sites, which are, uh, border patrol as well as Aaron Marine Operations, as well as our hr, it, and other locations in the field. So that means sometimes there's a need for a solution that only fits that particular area, San Ysidro, JFK, the Port of Long Beach. Other times they may find some indicators of.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Of broader solutions. So we've zeroed in on what the frontline is doing and uh, I'm gonna brag a little bit on one part of that digital innovation that we found, which is over the last three or four years, a little longer, our, [00:06:00] uh, OIT team, sunny Bagg Walla, have leaned in with giving this low cost, uh, low, low cost, no code solutions, making that a available through Power BI and other automation platforms.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Well, our field teams have on their own. S sought that out. So out of 67,000, almost 67,000 employees, we have almost 3000 of our employees that have on their own found this started building their own solutions. Here's what really was mind boggling to, made me realize one, innovation is always something for CBP.

JAMES MCCAMENT: We just find a solution and keep going. You mentioned one of the culture challenges, and I sort of talked, but I haven't addressed One is this every minute. Of of field action and operator officer action is vital. So what that means is when you're looking for a way to save time, you can't spend a lot of time to find a way to save time to put it into place, or you're going to waste time.

JAMES MCCAMENT: And so if you only have a minute or two. Even in the field, it is [00:07:00] hard sometimes for folks to have either the time or even the operating space to be able to say, Hey, I go need, I need to go create this. You can't come back six months later. You've gotta fix it now. And that's part of what the app and the Power BI and some of the other automate platforms are allowing our folks to do.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Those 3000 employees, almost 2,900 and. 70 or so. We're trying to get it up above the 3000. Um, they have created so far over 11,000 apps, over 17,000 power flows. And that means over the last three, four years where we've been counting it, there have been over a million app launches. So that's only three to 4% of our agency.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Think about the impact on that and what that is from a cultural aspect is we're seeing increasingly recognition that utilizing that technology is allowing our folks to put more time back to mission. And that is our key operating guiding principle is finding that time back to core mission. And that's what this technology is allowing our folks to do, and we're [00:08:00] seeking to encourage it even more.

Steve Boberski: I mean, that that's, that's pretty cool. I mean, you're enabling the field. To do what they need to do. Yeah. 

JAMES MCCAMENT: And they're the frontline. 

Steve Boberski: And you know, a lot of people will step on that and say, there's security challenges, we need to review it. And you're letting 'em just go and you're taking advantage of that.

Steve Boberski: So you have a realtime mission. Um, we talk to all the time at Genesis, we talk to a lot of the DHS agencies, dh, and, and we see, you know, real time, you gotta make changes. That's exactly right. How impacting the real time is it, how do you introduce transformation without, you know, you wanna save time, but how do you do it without.

Steve Boberski: Impinging on the mission on a daily basis. You're talking about a real challenge. 

JAMES MCCAMENT: So there's two prongs to that and great question. One is finding where the innovation is already happening, right? One of the best ways to have that conversation within the agency is to point out something's already been built and delivering results.

JAMES MCCAMENT: And then we say, this isn't exactly a precise framework, but it's a broad framework that we're using, uh, that my team is using through Janet and others to support these efforts. First is to look at the, the existing process. Do you actually need to automate that or do you need to change [00:09:00] and remove that process or modify it?

JAMES MCCAMENT: So automating something that is already burdensome is just going to, well automate it. It's not gonna make it smoother. So that's one part. And then this is where a field is critical. Again, one minute of time, think about this and I'll give this stat. With over 60,000 employees, if we have a loss of minute per employee.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Whether it's in a login issue or in a processing space, we've lost over 60,000 operating minutes, period. If you, if you gain it right, you bring back, um, you can gain. Thousands of hours back. I'll just give you this if it's a minute. 'cause this is my simple math, right? I don't go much higher than those numbers, so just kidding, sort of.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Um, but if you take an a minute of time and we say that process is cumbersome and we need to reduce it, and we need to look at a way to change it, and you go from one minute down to 20 seconds. In that process using AI or another technology, that [00:10:00] 42nd gain of time means that in one week you've gained over 4,000 operating hours.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Back to mission period. And so in doing that, we are looking for the solutions. Once we know this is the right process, and maybe it's already being used, can we grow that solution? Does this work within, for example, border patrol at another sector or at another station? Does it work within OFO at the ports at another port, or can it work across all of CBP?

JAMES MCCAMENT: We may be able to repeat it or we may be able to, I use the term harvest, right? Hey, 50% of this. That's pretty similar. We can bring it over here. At the same time, letting those that create something know we don't have a, an intuitive fix. Focus on saying let's just. S make this broad across all the agency, it may not always be the right solution.

JAMES MCCAMENT: This is where the digital platforms are different, I think, than previous generations of change that we've had in the federal government and otherwise, it gives the [00:11:00] frontline a quicker response and it gives us accessible tools and nothing is shadow it. It's within the operating framework. And I think that's key where technology today, which I grant people, have probably been using that phrase for many decades.

JAMES MCCAMENT: But I mean it that I think in these nuances it's different and it allows us to get some wins that we could not in the past, at a time when there's even enhanced scrutiny on how we're doing our business. 

Steve Boberski: So, I mean, you mentioned AI heard somewhere that AI was a thing these days. So you know, um, tell me a little bit about some of the successes you've had.

Steve Boberski: You have to introduce. This technology that's, it's still developed. It's changing rapidly. Yeah. Every day, uh, securely, uh, and look for ways to impact the mission. I think you, you gave a really good example of, of, of a border crossing incident that I thought was very cool. 

JAMES MCCAMENT: Yeah. This was, uh, this perfect example of this.

JAMES MCCAMENT: So in the border patrol, uh, we had a, of a tool that's now in existence began in Tucson sector called the automated processing toolkit, a PT. So what's that? Well, it's, it's a tool that was identified for streamlining [00:12:00] processing, reducing processing, manpower requirements, and strengthening overall our enforcement capabilities.

JAMES MCCAMENT: So what is. That mean? Well, it was a recognition by our border patrol agents that the ability to actually process at the local stations involved a great deal of manual handoff processes they needed to be done. It's what I started with, with my remarks. Right. I disagree with the term that's used sometime about administrivia.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Mm-hmm. I can't speak to everybody, other, other agencies, but I've rarely seen something where I think, oh, you just don't need to do that at all. That's, that's not quite true, but. It's manual, it takes longer. And so what happened in Tucson Sector a couple of years ago was one of our border patrol agents with a team began looking at a way to automate using a series of automations, real time monitoring and automated decision making, making processes.

JAMES MCCAMENT: By the way, automated decision making doesn't mean the human isn't in the loop. It means it's stacking up the information that needs to be evaluated, [00:13:00] consolidating it, showing the math, so to speak, handing it to the office of a decision, and then being able to work through how those, the paperwork and information was filled out.

JAMES MCCAMENT: So we went from. Where it may take filling out forms to maybe eight cases, a shift to many hundreds of multiples. And possibility for that. What did that mean in a real time response? 'cause this is your point, right? Culture. Hey, we've got this great, uh, technology. If you give us six months and 50 people to fix it, okay.

JAMES MCCAMENT: That's, that's, that's not going to exist on arrival. Right? And I wouldn't sanction that either. What this delivered, this technology in Tucson Sector, San Diego, Del Rio and El Paso sectors, um, it returned the equivalent of 339 border patrol agents to their enforcement activities by term of hours. That's one technology across multiple sectors.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Divine designed. Exactly. And only by the field now using the tools that we had, thanks to the OIT [00:14:00] team, of course. But that's one example. And we have many others that we're seeing big and small. And this is another part that our team is working aggressively on, heavily on, is how do we measure all of that because.

JAMES MCCAMENT: We measure how we spend our dollars. We have to, I know this is the former COO, uh, and former head of leg affairs in another life. Absolutely. You need to report, report response. Are you saying budgets are 

Steve Boberski: not unlimited? Is this is I I thought you guys shockingly That is correct. Yes, 

JAMES MCCAMENT: that's right. And, uh, so, so because of that, we're also working at ways and frameworks we can evaluate what does that time back to mission mean.

JAMES MCCAMENT: And so this a PT, the automated processing toolkit is one key example, and we're learning from that to extrapolate out how we're doing that across the agency with other technologies and innovations. 

Steve Boberski: You know, you know. Genesis, we have this, we have agent assistance, right? It's copilot. It's, it's an opportunity to provide more information to the agent, let 'em focus on the mission.

Steve Boberski: You gave an example of, uh, specifically an agent being able to focus and catch something that they might not have been able to catch. Right. [00:15:00] Just because they were able to focus more on what was in front of them. 'cause some of the administrator. Was already taken care of that That's right. There was already a pass that allowed them to enhance.

Steve Boberski: But can you talk about that a little bit? 

JAMES MCCAMENT: Absolutely. So this involves our non-intrusive inspection technology. So at the ports of entry, uh, many of you know this, but those that may not, I'll just quick refresh, uh, as vehicles and folks come forward. But as, as cargo is coming into the port of entry, our non-intrusive inspection technology screens, that it's a combination of AI and other technologies.

JAMES MCCAMENT: We've had it in existence for, you know, we say for CBP, we've been using AI as. Currently defined probably since about 20 12, 20 13, in different iterations. Okay, so the non-intrusive inspection technology screens, the cargo screens, the truck, the conveyance as it's coming in. So this is the example, and I'm gonna try to be as precise as it was given to me by, uh, the folks in the field that run the NAI program gave this.

JAMES MCCAMENT: I thought it was exactly the point of why you need the technology and you need the human, and you need both. [00:16:00] Truck is coming up towards the port of entry, the NAI, which was one of our best enhanced 'cause we're constantly evolving, right? It's most enhanced technology being applied. Iteration of that screens the truck looks, cargo, seems fine.

JAMES MCCAMENT: You don't see any humans inside. There's nothing that's that alerts. And I saw the, you know, heard as I explained the scan. Okay? So the way that works, scans, and it relays to the officer who then reviews the scan. So it's not automatic. Officer also looked check. Okay. Relayed to the officer. Actually at the lane of entry truck is coming forward.

JAMES MCCAMENT: So again, green check, green check. Seasoned officer. Looks, pauses, looks at the truck. Pauses, pull the truck aside. It's green. And again, every minute counts, right? You. You don't have time for a lot of speculation. Seasoned officer, pull the truck over. [00:17:00] The officer was right there was contraband. So what was it?

JAMES MCCAMENT: This is it. The green checks accurate. The officer looked and saw the sun was hitting the side of the truck of the fuselage. It was shiny metallic point. It's a truck that crosses, according to the record, manifest every day. Why did you repaint the fuselage? 'cause the rest of the truck wasn't painted. And because the officer, because she saw the sun hit.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Fuselage pulls the truck aside. Inside the truck. Inside the fuselage was liquid meth. They were using it to smuggle drugs. So this is the, this is my conclusion point. Did the technology fail? Absolutely not. This is what it bought. It checked all of. Right. Had we not have that had, did we not, if we did not have that technology, our officer would be taking the minute or two to screen the information lookup.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Look at the other more. For many years we've had an ability to screen [00:18:00] right, but not at the level of the NI that we use now. Would've checked, would they? Could she have possibly seen that? Maybe. Yeah, but also might well have been looking at a screen and saying, okay, it's fine. So the technology delivered everything that it had available to the officer and the decision maker, but that gave the decision maker the chance to say, okay, it's all green checked.

JAMES MCCAMENT: It's, wait a minute, my human experience tells me if you're going to paint, I'm not a truck painter, but if you're gonna paint it, paint all, why would you paint? Just the fuselage like that doesn't make sense. And it seems that they knew enough about our con, our screening, that the thought was painting it that way would somehow deflect the NII.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Now, my understanding is that wasn't why they couldn't see it. It was because the way the liquid was in there. But regardless, it allowed the officer of the space to make their decision to what they were uniquely trained to do, what they have the intuition to [00:19:00] do, and they have the background to do. And so officer gets to do their role.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Rewarded for it, right? It's like, great, you did a great job and the technology bought us time. So it's that time back to mission and I think that's, I know that there are myriad examples, but to me, just learning of that a few months ago, I thought this is, this is the point. You can't have just one. You need both, and you need to maximize both.

JAMES MCCAMENT: I, I 

Steve Boberski: like it because it, you know, it's just what we say, it allowed them to focus on something different. Right. They had the check, they had the, it could have been just as easy for them to say it's good. Go. Right. Um, but that's not how they're trained, so. Right. I know a lot of folks are worried about. The dependency they're gonna have on artificial intelligence.

Steve Boberski: What do we do? How do we make sure that we don't change our, and just make it too easy up? I, the technology says it's good, check, move on. Right. You know what? What are you doing to keep that culture alive? 

JAMES MCCAMENT: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it is a concern in our agency. We hear it from officers and agents. It's one of those that Janet and I and our team took on when I created this role was recognizing, okay, there has to be [00:20:00] an answer to that question.

JAMES MCCAMENT: It will not take your job, but why won't it take your job? Oh, because it should only, AI technology should really only take those parts of your job that you never should have had to have done because they're not central to who you are and what you're trained to do. And so what we're doing is maximizing that messaging, using these examples, and also saying again, you have a unique difference as an officer, an agent.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Part of that is informed by something I. I truly firmly believe technology will never deliver, which is the intuition, which is the background and the experience, which is that officer again saying, look, you don't paint one part of a truck, something's wrong, but you have time to actually do that. So that's what we're emphasizing is, and then saying, and the more that you as our field, as our personnel, as our leadership can find those.

JAMES MCCAMENT: S areas that need solutioning. We're working in the trade space, we're working in the, the field operations space, [00:21:00] screening space, um, across looking at the international stage as well as the domestic stage and saying there's really no issue that's too small. Although I will note, and I was mentioning in some of the principles on automation, if something is small, so to speak.

JAMES MCCAMENT: It doesn't necessarily mean our first thought is always to automate either. It may be, you know what, you're right, but right now we don't have a good solution for that. That if it's going to take us again, a lot of time to save time, then maybe right now just put that on the board. Let's go look at other solutions that we can deliver and keep chewing away at that time.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Back to mission time, back to mission, and it's, it's the time back to mission both for. The officers and the the agency, it's also time back to life, right? Because our officers and agents, we wanna make sure people are as, as much as possible, able to be balanced and have the space to perform their professional roles as well as their personal.

JAMES MCCAMENT: And so all this delivers [00:22:00] back. 

Steve Boberski: So we have apparently 20 seconds. So in 20 seconds 

JAMES MCCAMENT: you've talked a 

Steve Boberski: lot. Yeah, I, I know. I don't know how I can't help. Sorry, I'm just a microphone hug. Um, tell me, you know, what are you, where are you going? What's, what's next? Yeah, I mean, you have got have a plan, right? Yep. So, yep, we absolutely do.

Steve Boberski: So that's a lot of tactical going on, but what's the strategy? 

JAMES MCCAMENT: What, yeah, so that's right. So our goal is to keep maximizing, accelerating what I'm talking about, right? Um, give us more time for critical threat analysis. Optimize our reallocation of resources. The more money we receive. The more responsibility we have to spend it appropriately, you know, that we've received not only our, our we're working through the budget as everyone else's.

JAMES MCCAMENT: CBP also received a significant amount of money through the trust of the Congress and the White House to spend on a variety of technologies actions, which I note. Is a combination of, you know, we have a, a budget and we have, what I say is more like an inheritance. Spend it, well just don't incorporate it in your day-to-day budget.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Right? And so we are looking at how can we, uh, more rapidly identify the trends more [00:23:00] rapidly, automate more rapidly, condense back time, back to mission. And so the technology enhancements I've discussed, they're not silver bullets. But they're force multipliers and they continue to promote the work of our team.

JAMES MCCAMENT: And I hope some of the things I've said, I hope you remember that example among others because it's why we need both human oversight, transparency, and international and domestic cooperation are essential. Because we all common challenges so we can build a smarter, safer, better framework based upon the needs of what our people signify and in doing that serve the mission and the nation ever more effectively.

JAMES MCCAMENT: So it's really an honor to do this work with all of our team and, um. If you have suggestions, as we say at DHS, if you see something, say something. So if you have questions about that, happy to answer or afterwards or different times. But Steve, thank you for the, uh, moderating and, and a great conversation.

JAMES MCCAMENT: That was 

Steve Boberski: a great time. Thanks for coming up and, uh, absolutely. You have a good day. Thanks everybody.[00:24:00] 

Steve Boberski: The, uh, timer was not on by the way, just so in front of the timer, just, um. Heads up. We 

JAMES MCCAMENT: thought we perpetually had 15 minutes. That's right. We, so we just kept 

Steve Boberski: going. We still got 15 minutes.

Steve Boberski: Okay. So now we can, so apparently,

Steve Boberski: okay, so I didn't have my script in front you so. James, we have a q and a session, so apparently if there are any questions, so, so we can come back and there may not be any questions. So yes, you can come back up. My apologies. Thank you very much. There's one. Go ahead. Hi, good morning. Thank you. Thank you for this.

Steve Boberski: Um, so in your mission, it sounds like you have 

JAMES MCCAMENT: teams, hybrid teams of human and AI agents both making decisions at the same time. So if the AI gets something right, 

Gues: then 

JAMES MCCAMENT: that's a [00:25:00] training opportunity for the 

Gues: human, 

JAMES MCCAMENT: if 

Gues: the human gets something right, that's a training. How can you imagine how we can take that data and turn it into 

JAMES MCCAMENT: like a ongoing hybrid curriculum for those human.

JAMES MCCAMENT: So that's a great point. And I should say too, as we've been using ai, we are exploring and we have some examples of Agen age, uh, AI already within CBP and I. And by the way, we have a fantastic, uh, chief AI officer, um, uh, Josh Powell, who's also someone I encourage y all to, to meet if you haven't, um. So the, on that learning from each other, I think that's going to be an evolving space where, you know, I gave that example about the truck.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Right. Um, and I think we have spaces that we see it anecdotally. I think what you are going to see in the future is more and more of using the agent, pretty much as you described, which is documenting and noting what's been found. Determining whether, well, was that something that we need to [00:26:00] fix a process or do we need to fix the technology, or is it we learned right.

JAMES MCCAMENT: The the truck example, I'll go back to one more time is saying. Not sure there was much different to say other than that. We would perhaps eventually be able to say, look, take a note if you can tell if there's a difference in consistency on paint or things like that. But that might be one that right now takes far too long to modify the technology to that nuance without triggering a fail in some other space.

JAMES MCCAMENT: But I think over time, you know, Jensen Wang spoke about this at Edge in January about eventually having an entire global, like in your global Outlook system, having in basically a whole age agentic team answering questions and things like that. And we are not there yet. And by the way, in any government agency and any organization, talking too much about how you're gonna have a lot of ags while also saying they're not gonna take your job is.

JAMES MCCAMENT: A further math equation I need to work on. Right. So there's some nuances to it, but yeah, I think it has to be because this is what human officers learn, [00:27:00] right? Hey, did you see? Yeah. Okay. Well going forward, put out a bolo, be on the lookout, uh, for this, this, and this. And I think you're probably gonna see in the law enforcement space, something like that, at least initially with the use of the AI and the agent.

JAMES MCCAMENT: That's a great question. Yeah. 

Steve Boberski: Any other questions? Apologies for Skip. Go ahead. 

Gues: What kind of change management strategies have you found useful to,

Gues: what kind of change management strategies have you found useful to improve adoption of technologies, to increase that trust to where your agents do see it as an enabler, augmentation instead of replacement? 

JAMES MCCAMENT: Great question, and it was a good, uh, brief earlier conversation we had about the work that you're doing at DOD as well.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Um, so one is to let all of our teams know whether it's at the headquarters, at the field. 'cause there's a lot of innovation that happens in CBP, that the role of the digital transformation work is not to take something from anyone. It's to [00:28:00] learn from what you're doing. So we're not trying to consolidate, we're trying not to move spaces.

JAMES MCCAMENT: I mean, that may evolve at different points, but it's important to reassure people that the work that they've been doing. And this goes to the innovation part, the second part of your question. So therefore, if you've created something, we're not going to take something like, that's great. Hold. We're gonna go centralize it, we're gonna build a new solution.

JAMES MCCAMENT: We'll come back to you in six months. And. Yeah, that's not helpful. So another part is to say, is to praise and champion the work that we find. Third is to talk to the, and which I do very regularly with our senior leadership and obviously colleagues now and in my time as COO and in earlier iterations across the department, um, to reassure them and say, keep your innovation centers going.

JAMES MCCAMENT: We need to champion the work that you're doing. And then off of that. Is then the documenting the framework and finding where all those solutions are. And this is something Janet and her team are working on too in the human-centered design work is saying, okay, [00:29:00] and now how can we track both the time back, promote it and also what we can do to duplicate.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Praise the fact that this came from one part of the agency, it's going to another. Um, so that's, it's a series I think, Greg, of saying it's a series of iterative steps that I truly believe over the next 'cause I've been in this nine months. Um. Over the next two, three years, I hope is really inculcated in the framework of CBP, just as innovation generally is to close the enormous gap, be the gap between resources and mission.

JAMES MCCAMENT: That we are also building that into the, the culture because it can't just be a pronouncement from headquarters. I know we're shocked, right? I mean that should in fact deliver, but just kidding, kind of. Um, and so we know that that's. Part of it. So it's iterative, championing, bringing people in and enrolling them each time and advising them, this is what's being done.

JAMES MCCAMENT: What else can we do? How can we build it? Um, and also each time we [00:30:00] find a technology or an action, my first thought is how can we incorporate this into the greater narrative? Not someone's doing something off. Rogue, you know, sort of rogue. You mentioned Steve, you didn't say these words, but it's kind of, I think a bent when we hear someone built something new in the field over here, I think we have an intuitive weight.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Uh, can you tell me more about that? Are you kind of going off the, all going a bit rogue here and so what I found is it's quite effective to, to know is like great work. I think we could use that somewhere else or sometimes that's fine. That's the part because I'll tell you that, uh, amongst us, well all of the 600 and some us, um, that initially when I found that we had the grassroots innovation at a level that we really didn't know.

JAMES MCCAMENT: We knew it was going on, but no one had sort of tabulated it and seen when I first asked, Hey, I'd love to meet with all the, the folks doing this. I [00:31:00] got the sense that there was a reaction of like, headquarters is calling, headquarters is calling, what did we do? 

Steve Boberski: Hide the women and children. Yep, yep. Pretty much a little 

JAMES MCCAMENT: bit 

Steve Boberski: of that.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Yep. So, so that's where I kind of pulled back and said, no problem. Keep doing what you're doing. I just wanna learn why you're doing it. So that's, I think Greg, part of that, and all of us are a little different, but I think there's probably some core similarities. That last part.

JAMES MCCAMENT: Wanna listen. We're trying to get that. Yeah. We've had the same problem with the army. Yeah. And you know, I think our cultures are set in a different way and so it is that it's culture change, but it's also kind of human nature change. Right. Why do you want to know? So Yeah, definitely. Great question. 

Steve Boberski: Okay.

Steve Boberski: I think that's all we have time for question one. Okay. Yeah, 

JAMES MCCAMENT: David's, uh, giving us the high sign. Be here all day. So, you know, um, that's right. Ill actually give kudos to David in saying I, I haven't thought of digital transformation as a combination between a magic wand and a gym membership, but [00:32:00] I'm gonna figure out how to incorporate that.

JAMES MCCAMENT: I 

Guest: got a better one for you actually. What's that? Uh, lemme see if I got this thing running. Hold on. Second. So one of the fun ones I heard was, uh, GPS, you never realized you were taking the long way around until you started using it. Nice. Okay. Look for that appearing at CBP sometime soon. Thank you very much.

Guest: Thank you so much for that. That was an amazing speech, uh, amazing set of op of kind of breakdown. And honestly, one of the things I loved about the truck example is, to me it's, it's like you said, it's the perfect example of not gonna solve everything but that ability to take the cognitive load. Mm-hmm.

Guest: Off of someone's day-to-day work really, and allowing them to focus on what makes them special and unique. Like what the human element and the value of the human element is not, not the computing element that that tends to distract us from what we can do. And I think that's like wonderful viewpoint of like how do we maximize that use case?

Guest: So thank you so much for that.