ICYMI ET&I Keynote Fireside Chat Seval Oz

A fireside chat from ACT-IAC’s Emerging Tech and Innovation Conference with Seval Oz, senior advisor (and nominee for assistant secretary) in USDOT’s Office of Research and Technology, and Amy McKenna of SAIC. Oz describes how DOT migrated to Google-based workspace IT and uses large language models to cut RFI analysis from six weeks to 24–48 hours. She explains the “Interstate 2.0” corridors initiative, where 23 states are forming adjoining-state teams to enable data interoperability across major routes (including I-10 and I-35) and prioritize a first use case of work zones and lane closures, convening states, industry, and academia.

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Transcript

HOST: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Buzz with ACT-IAC, where government and industry leaders discuss the innovations, ideas, and people shaping the future of the public sector. A few weeks ago, ACT-IAC hosted our Emerging Tech and Innovation Conference. In case you missed the event, this episode is a fireside chat with Seval Oz, senior advisor at the USDOT's Office of Research and Technology.

HOST: They describe how the DOT is using modern workspace IT and large language models to speed RFI analysis. All right, here it is. I hope you enjoy

FACILITATOR: And, uh, I will invite our next group on stage, and that's Amy McKenna from SAIC and Seval Oz from the Department of Transportation. 

FACILITATOR 2: Yes, let's give them a round of applause. 

AMY MCKENNA: Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Happy Friday. Um, before I get started, just wanna say [00:01:00] congratulations to the Voyagers. I was a Voyager over 14 years ago before my daughter was born.

AMY MCKENNA: So, uh, it's a great program and, uh, congratulations to you all. Uh, so again, Amy McKenna. Uh, good morning. And, uh, for more than 25 years, I've been, uh, working with the federal agencies on technology modernization and complex program delivery efforts. At SAIC, a... I lead a portfolio of programs across the Department of Transportation, uh, focused on mission and enterprise IT, shared services, and operational transformation.

AMY MCKENNA: Uh, my experience spans large scale digital modernization and cloud migration initiatives across the federal civilian government. So looking forward to, uh, joining the conversation with Seval today about the future of transportation and where DOT is headed. And now to introduce our illustrious, uh- My illustrious partner here, Seval Oz, serves as the senior advisor and nominee for assistant secretary for the Office of the [00:02:00] Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology at the US Department of Transportation, where she drives innovation deployment and aligns R&D with national strategic goals.

AMY MCKENNA: She's a pioneer in autonomous and connect- and connected mobility. Seval formerly served as head of global partnerships for Google X's self-driving car program, Waymo, and as CEO of Continental Intelligence Transportation Systems, she launched Continental AG Silicon Valley division. So a very impressive, uh, resume here.

AMY MCKENNA: So looking forward to hearing, uh, more from Seval on where, uh, DOT is headed next. So first question. All right, so can you describe your time in the public sector and how you're leveraging best practices at DOT? And can you, uh, comment on the new Corridors initiative? 

SEVAL OZ: Sure. Um, first of all, thank you very much, um, to ACT IAC and also, um, uh, David, and, and thank you very much, Amy, and, and all of you who make such a big difference.[00:03:00] 

SEVAL OZ: Um, a colleague with me, Anil Chaudhary, from our, um... There he is, from our, uh, Office of Research and Technology. And just a little bit, um, before I start, I just wanna let you know I'm wearing this hat, um, for personal reasons because of the lights, not because I wanna be, uh, part of the DOT, uh, branding today.

SEVAL OZ: So for those of you who are wondering. Um, I, I think, I think it's really important to, to understand the role you all play and the role, um, we would like you to continue to play in the operation that we're trying to stand up right now. Mm-hmm. Um, the US Government DOT is one of the most advanced, um, agencies in using current technology, um, and incredible workspace IT.

SEVAL OZ: We, we migrated over to a Google I- IT technology back end, and all of our workspace is, um, through that right now, including, um, the large language models we use to, um, to really [00:04:00] expedite a lot of our responses from RFIs. Mm-hmm. You know, we've get, we get sometimes 3,000 pages, and what used to take six weeks now takes lo- roughly twenty-four to forty-eight hours, um, in terms of being able to get back on that.

SEVAL OZ: And one clear example of that is our corridors effort. So when I started in September we, um, thought it would be a good idea to get the states together and see what their problems were. So we basically did these round-robin speed dating type things with the states, and we found out that most of them clearly were concerned about one thing, which is how do they get their back-end transportation m- um, uh, operating centers or, or, or traffic centers to talk to each other?

SEVAL OZ: So how do you get these data cycles, um, uh, to be able to handshake and, and share, um, you know, interoperable? So we worked through a lot of that digital, uh, transformation through RFIs and convening [00:05:00] with TRB and AASHTO, et cetera. And I'm really proud and honored to let you all know as one of the first groups I'm speaking in front of today that we have, um, about 23 states now That have agreed to somehow form what I call these Final Four basketball teams.

SEVAL OZ: 'Cause I know you guys like to deal with sports, so I thought that would be a good metaphor. They've signed up the corridors, and they've, um, basically these are pairs and triplicates of adjoining states that are working on data interoperability within those, uh, states for that corridor. So what does this mean?

SEVAL OZ: In a nutshell, it means now we have the Port of LA and, and Long Beach, the largest port in the United States, connecting through to Jacksonville on the East Coast. Right. We have route, uh, over I-10. We have, um, Laredo, Texas I-35 going up through Oklahoma, Kansas, ex- uh, Kansas City, um, uh, uh, [00:06:00] uh, who else is up there now?

SEVAL OZ: Io- uh, Iowa, Michi- I mean, excuse me, uh, uh, um, Minnesota, Wisconsin, up to the Great Lakes. So we've got this north-south parable of what now we can do in terms of creating a resilient backbone for all types of commerce, um, uh, all types of passenger delivery, transit delivery, et cetera. So one of the things I'm very grateful for is the Office of Research and Technology, um, supports all the different modes in the Department of Transportation, including FAA, maritime, transit, um, federal highways, uh, NHTSA, et cetera.

SEVAL OZ: So we have exposure to all these different, um, categories of mu- multimodal capabilities, and we are stitching that together right now to formulate, um, the, the Interstate 2.0, which is the corridor initiative. And we have about 36 university transportation centers, [00:07:00] so academic research centers that report in to us, where we, um, we provide grants and funding for special projects that are working towards this.

SEVAL OZ: So the beautiful helix innovation of industry, state local, of course federal as being the kind of the, uh, the, the, the lightweight governing federated, uh, uh, uh, tethered system, and then industry, uh, and academia. So, so those three efforts right now are joining very... It's a very good example of how we are aligning, working together, very collaborative, and industry has stepped up.

SEVAL OZ: So the last call we had And by the way, we don't necessarily feel the need to actually kumbaya all the time, so we do a lot of this through virtual, um, capabilities. We l- uh, we, we had 77 people on the call for three and a half hours, and the usual suspects on the industry side representing the cellular phone companies, the back-end data, um, [00:08:00] you know, connoisseurs I call them, a lot of the integration work.

SEVAL OZ: Um, the... So, so the... You know, we, we are, we are making this work right now in a way that's extremely collaborative, where all the federal government really doing, is doing, is doing gap analysis, convening, um, repeatedly convening, and ensuring that we're, um, we're gonna make this work probably, um, hopefully within the year is what I'm thinking of.

SEVAL OZ: It's a very exciting project, and I encourage you all to think about it, talk about it, look about- you know, read about it. We have a really nice portal now called Office of- Department of Transportation Office of Research and Technology, and a lot of what we do, including this event today, is posted continuously.

SEVAL OZ: So that's one of the things we're trying to do, is en- ensure great visibility for the work. 

AMY MCKENNA: Yeah, that's groundbreaking for, uh, DOT, I'm sure. 

SEVAL OZ: Yeah. So... 

AMY MCKENNA: And how about AI, the AI journey at DOT? Can you talk a little bit about that? 

SEVAL OZ: Well, you know, um, I have another, um, sibling, um, an older brother who works on the health side, and we constantly, you know, uh, sort of debate [00:09:00] w- which domain AI is gonna affect the first, and it's either health or transportation.

SEVAL OZ: Mm-hmm. Um, so it's interesting that we're having a healthy debate over these two domains that are gonna benefit profusely from having AI, um, do all the pattern recognition, help us with detecting anomalies, help us with nefarious acts. Because transportation safety, which is what we're responsible for, is bleeding into national security.

SEVAL OZ: Yeah. Right? You have drones, you have EV tolls, you have other modes of, of activity now that are occurring that we need to protect for, and there's collateral debris that comes out if you, you know, shoot a drone up in the air, uh, on roads or public environments. So we have to be responsible for the civilian effort, and we are, and we have a seat at the table.

SEVAL OZ: But me- much of that work we're doing in terms of creating standard operating procedures on, you know, identifying and then having an, an, uh, an activity around that are being very well aligned [00:10:00] inter-agency with Department of War, Homeland Security, us, and, you know, FAA and several other, um, you know, participants.

SEVAL OZ: So there's a lot of joint equity, um, sharing that's going on, and people need to have a seat at the table s- in order to be able to identify, protect, and then basically create, um, standards around how do you approach- Mm-hmm ... this type of activity. So yeah, that's, that's quite exciting. That work's going on as well.

AMY MCKENNA: And now that you've been at DOT for a little over a year- 

SEVAL OZ: No, not quite a year. 

AMY MCKENNA: Hey, not quite a year. Um, you've observed the agency at work. Uh, what hurdles or obstacles, uh, do you see when it comes to innovation? 

SEVAL OZ: You know, I don't really see, um, the speed bumps like others. Mm-hmm. I ca- I tend to have that vision, and then the speed bumps, I feel, are things you just need to pivot around.

SEVAL OZ: You need to work through the puddles, the speed bumps, the bad weathers, the people, the naysayers. I find that in terms of workforce, we have such a deep [00:11:00] institutional knowledge base of federal employees, and all people really want is to be part of a winning team. And I, I'm a strong believer in inclusivity and bringing everyone's knowledge to bear, and I op- allow people to opt in.

SEVAL OZ: I say, "We have these really exciting programs. Do you wanna be part of it?" Right? Well, of course, being part of something means you're only as strong as your weakest link. Right. So everybody's gotta have a seat at the table and have sharp elbows a little bit to dig in. So I give that option available, as I do with most people, you know, even with family members, as we want, we, we embrace, you know, challenging environments.

SEVAL OZ: So the workforce renewal that, you know, um, Arun Gupta and Scott Kapor, I really embrace the fact that if you have young people in the government at an early age and they understand how the government apparatus works, you can then leave- Mm-hmm ... you know, explore industry, but understand how sort of we can, you know, you can come back to the government and, and, and know how [00:12:00] it works so you can play into that.

SEVAL OZ: I have a lot of industry people which, you know, come to our o- offices often and are, are kind of approaching it in a way that, how can you help me sell what I'm trying to sell? And I, I just think a better understanding that that quite d- that doesn't quite work with the federal government, right? You, you kinda come in with the federal government with more of a how can I help you on your corridors mission or on your states or, you know, um, if you've got a gap, help plug the gap.

SEVAL OZ: That's kind of a reverse psychology, but it works, I think, a lot better, and those types of industry leaders get a lot more traction with government efforts because they're coming in trying to solve a problem as opposed to trying to sell something that might be a little bit latent in its, um, in its timeliness.

SEVAL OZ: Which goes to the other point I really wanna bring up, which is about research and technology timeliness. What we're here to do is to take research out of the sandbox, get it ready, [00:13:00] put it in a acceleration of deployment phase. And that means that you bring technology and research into scaling deployment of autonomous and other modernization technologies that we need and should have by now.

SEVAL OZ: Mm-hmm. We created a lot of the AV technology in this country. Yeah. Especially the software. Isn't it kind of unfortunate if we lose that, you know, t- uh, sharp end of the spear to somewhere else because they can make it cheaper or more affordable or they have programs which enable scalability? And so that's kind of where we are now in that, in that inflection point where I think the administration, and especially the secretary, gives us a lot of, um, launch, um, pads or a lot of, you know, runway to be able to sort of deploy and see and do as we, as we believe, um, innovation should take us.

SEVAL OZ: So I'm excited about that. 

AMY MCKENNA: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I was gonna... To add on to that, how do you... You know, 'cause everyone in the room's been probably in [00:14:00] industry for a while, and, you know, the government's had a lot of red tape and their legacy way of doing things. And yes, the administration wants to move faster. How do you see the government or DOT- Breaking through that, you know, to, you 

SEVAL OZ: know It's, it's you, it's you all.

SEVAL OZ: It's industry, right? It's basically we need... We, we have procurement that is used to dealing with a lot of CapEx situations, building bridges, building roads, repairing things. Well, why should states have to make a decision between repairing their bridge and upgrading their software, right? So the procurement and the acquisition and the funds, you know, formula pooled funds, all, we are doing deep analysis into how we can do better at that.

SEVAL OZ: Mm-hmm. And industry and, and P3s, we just had a very big P3 industry day, which I'm sure many of you were, uh, uh, actively involved in. You know, that's an example where we're asking industry to step up and use the business tooling and models- Mm ... to enable us to think about how do we [00:15:00] procure differently for software, for software upgrades, maintenance, operations, all the things that we know how to do.

SEVAL OZ: Mm-hmm. Especially on the data side. Government's not... Government shouldn't be the software landlord. Government's not really even good at creating data, but industry is- Mm ... and industry knows how that flywheel feedback system works. We did it at Google, and we did it very successfully. Industry should, at some point now, either bring up some of those capabilities- Mm-hmm

SEVAL OZ: help us bring up some of those capabilities, the refreshing, the latency, the probing data. All of that needs to be put into the back end for shared interoperable systems so that states can approach standards, right? We don't wanna sit around and wait for standards to be written, but I think we could have good default standards through many of the foundation...

SEVAL OZ: Open Mobility Foundation's doing a great job with understanding curbside behavior, right? We need curbside physical to the car or physical to the bus activity knowledge so that we can use blueprints for templates. And [00:16:00] as six states start to adopt it, then nine states start to adopt it, goes to now 23 states, all of a sudden it becomes a de facto self-certified or standard.

SEVAL OZ: Mm-hmm. And that's what we're aiming for. 

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AMY MCKENNA: And what personal characteristics have served you well in your role? 

SEVAL OZ: Oh, definitely listening. Yeah, okay, right. I, that's one thing I do have to probably work harder on. But [00:17:00] I, I, I think, you know, um, you know, those people who know me, um, you know, like I said earlier, don't really like to take no for an answer, don't really like to take slow for an answer.

SEVAL OZ: So slow and no really don't work very well for me. They never have really worked all my life. I try and kind of migrate those or, or pivot those into y- you know, yes, and how quickly, and, you know, how many people. Um, I love building high-performance teams. 

HOST: Mm-hmm. 

SEVAL OZ: If, if you say there's one thing about what I really enjoy doing, it's building high-performance teams.

SEVAL OZ: You know, my father was a heart surgeon. My brother's a surgeon. I grew up on high-performance teams. You don't go in there and operate without a great anesthesiologist, without a great, um, closer, without a great, you know... They're, they're just everybody... The best examples of success in this world have been because of high-performance teams.

SEVAL OZ: And, and in those teams, what I'm asking people to do is get an industry player, a partner Have your state and local government [00:18:00] lead this, have an academic institution embedded in it, and shoot for the moon. So make sure that you can bring all those aspects, what I call the helix innovation, into the declaration of innovation as we start on these new trajectories, which, um, hopefully will get done within our term in this administration.

AMY MCKENNA: Yeah, which leads to my next question on when your time at DOT comes to an end- ... if it does, uh, what legacy would you want to leave? 

SEVAL OZ: I, I, I think, I think the best legacy is, is having, you know, some good feelings about great stuff that you did. Mm-hmm. Right? I mean, that's ... We, we c- and we can't really ask for more than that.

SEVAL OZ: Right. Um, and, and st- and stay plugged in, you know. If, if... I mean, I'm 64. I should be retiring this year, right? But, but, you know, I mean, to some degree, many of us think about retirement as like, "What am I gonna do?" Mm-hmm. And, and, and I think that we have so much more to add in terms of our skillsets, our knowledge, our curiosity, our [00:19:00] adventuresome.

SEVAL OZ: Find something that you feel you can continue to have an impact on- Mm-hmm ... and work another five years, right? So I, I believe that there's... We all have that sense of like we wanna, you know, maybe give back during this period, maybe teach, maybe accumulate wisdom, maybe run harder at a new industry startup or whatever.

SEVAL OZ: But there's definitely things to do after government. Uh, and, uh, I encourage you all to consider those things, as you have, because you're all here. 

AMY MCKENNA: So you've definitely brought your passion from industry to DOT- I have ... for sure. 

SEVAL OZ: I have. 

AMY MCKENNA: Are there any other initiatives, aside from the corridors, that you would wanna comment on for the group today?

SEVAL OZ: Well, we have several going on. One is, uh, um, our geospatial effort. Uh, we have a very powerfully, um, you know, technologically advanced team that, um, I, I brought with me from industry and from colleagues. Um, we're working on complementary PNT, uh, position, navigation, and timing, which is critical, right? We've seen some nefarious activities.

SEVAL OZ: What happens if a cell tower gets, you know, um, uh, brought down? Uh, we need to [00:20:00] have backup systems in place. The same thing with GPS. We're working on atomic clocks. We're working on other types of, um, you know, of reforcing against, um, hacking and spoofing we've seen in the trucking industry. Mm. We've seen a huge problem with non-domiciled CDLs, which the secretary has talked a lot about.

SEVAL OZ: All of that research has come out of our group. We've signed, um, contracts now with, I think, three or four, um, industry providers- Wow ... to help us, um, track, digitalize, and, and verify, confirm and verify some of that activity. So we've brought in four different industry players- Mm-hmm ... to help us with that. So th- those are different ongoing projects we're constantly, um, you know, keeping track of and moving forward.

AMY MCKENNA: Okay. Uh, any other quest- Do we have any questions or comments from the audience?

SEVAL OZ: Oh, I love questions 

AMY MCKENNA: I know

AUDIENCE: Hi, I'm Anne Marie [00:21:00] Johnson from CGI Federal. I want to thank you for a great conversation. I loved the comment that you made about high-performance teams and how you love to create high-performance teams. I think you're spot on. That's where you get the best outcomes. I'd love for you to pull that thread a little bit and tell us a couple of your favorite best practices, tips, or tricks so that we can all learn from your experience in creating high-performance teams.

SEVAL OZ: Oh, that's a great, that's a great, uh, landing, uh, page. I appreciate that question. Um, you know, w- w- a couple things on high-performing teams. About the meetings themselves, right? No meeting I have at, at the DOT lasts more than 30 minutes. Why? Because people's attention spans start to drop after that. Hmm. Um, I don't typically allow laptops, or I hope...

SEVAL OZ: I, I, I discourage phones because I want people's 30 minutes to be completely focused- Hmm ... and on what we're doing. You know, Steve Jobs once told me years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting him, um, because I, I, uh, spent a lot of time in Silicon Valley, and he said, "You know, Seval, 95% of what's out there is noise."[00:22:00] 

SEVAL OZ: Hmm. "The hardest thing is just taking that 5% and focusing on, on it." It's like, it's like, you know, s- it's, it's, it's like a, an athletic sport, right? Mm-hmm. It's like a basketball game. You know, full court press, man to man, you can only do it for so long, right? So t- you know, make sure that that 30 minutes that you have with your high-performing team is a sprint where everybody is focused.

SEVAL OZ: There are no wrong questions. There are no silly questions. Everything is up for grabs. I, I don't dis- I, I, I don't discourage active debate, right? I, I think people need to ask questions and test each other, and that's the beauty of the challenge. Um, so it's sometimes it can... I won't say it can get rough, but we encourage the conversations to take place at the table as opposed to outside the room, all right?

SEVAL OZ: And then we keep m- we have morning check-ins and evening check-ins, um, because I think we, a lot, a lot of work gets done on a day and, and in a day, and I think keeping track of that on a, on a daily basis I [00:23:00] really think helps people align so that you don't come to work every morning... When you leave work in the evening, you know what you're gonna do ne- the next day.

AMY MCKENNA: More of that agile 

SEVAL OZ: More the agile- Agile ... work stream. And also, you know what your deliverables are. Too many times we don't set expectations on deliverables, or those deliverables are out there in the ethernet somewhere, right? So concentrate on your staged deliverables and have them, um, you know, have them apply to the sensibility of the project, right?

SEVAL OZ: Don't make something that's you want to happen in six months pushed to three months. Don't have something you want to have in a year pushed. It just, be realistic about those expectations. And I tend to have, um, a door open policy, right? People can walk into my door, talk to me, you know, chat, chat about, um, things that they're, you know, sort of concerned about.

SEVAL OZ: So I f- I find that part of the high-performance effort is really, um, uh, leadership that, that encourages, um, you know, uh, accessibility. So I think those are the hot buttons. Thank you very much for the question[00:24:00] 

AUDIENCE: Hello. Juliet Jack from Accenture. Um, I really loved your point about- By the 

SEVAL OZ: way, she's... They're one of our industry, uh, collaborators in that 77 

AUDIENCE: page- Yes, very exciting things happening. Um, it's been great working with you, and I w- wanted to go back to your point on interoperability and connecting different data sets across jurisdictions, across state and local.

AUDIENCE: So when we talk about that data mesh, what to you is the most important use case challenge problem that you would like to face? 

SEVAL OZ: Okay. That's a great question, and I, I, I'm really excited that I get a chance to tell you that you're interested. So like I, I, I mentioned earlier, we did the basketball Final Four.

SEVAL OZ: So what I, what I did is about, about a month and a half ago, I asked the, uh, the president of AASHTO, which leads the CEO DOTs for the states, um, which we started the speed dating effort back in September, I think, or October, I talked to Mia. So I, I reached out to Russ McMurray, who's head of AASHTO, um, [00:25:00] together with Jim Tymes, and I said, "Can you reach out to the progressive states on the corridors and ask them if they'd be willing to anchor up a state?"

SEVAL OZ: So they'd be willing to sort of the I-95, the I-10, the I-35, 20, et cetera. And it was beautiful because he wrote a, a, a letter, which he shared with Federal Highways and ourselves, and he asked for the commitment of certain state DOTs to, to, to, to, you know, to, to To a volunteer. And it was like, it, it was like magic.

SEVAL OZ: I mean, one day l- uh, it, it, you know, one day later, Mark Williams from Texas came in and said, "I'll, I'll, I'll take 35." Scott Marr came in with 65, Iowa. Then we had Tracy Palmer, uh, Larkins who said, "I'll take Nevada to I-40, to I-80." Jared Per- Perdue came in with, on Florida. Um, so, so it just s- and a- and at the end, we got everybody.

SEVAL OZ: So it took one leader, Scott, I mean, uh, Russ McMurry, head of AASHTO, don't all jump on him at the same time, by the way, [00:26:00] everybody. He's got a lot of work to do. Um, to basically tap his colleagues and say, "I want you on my team. I want you to l- lead that team. I want you to lead that team." So he aggregated everybody.

SEVAL OZ: Now we have a working group. Then talk about the deliverables. We decided that we wanted to have the most important priority, um, on what we can ask the states to do, and that is lane closures and, um, construction working zones. Mm. So the, we, we limited the first priority data spin to that particular objective.

SEVAL OZ: So now everybody's working on the next stage, which is tying up those feeds, um, back to the backend so they can make the interconnects or the end-to-end open source talk to each other. If they're not talking to each other, we're gonna have a translation in, you know, intermediator in interface so they can, 'cause you

SEVAL OZ: people are getting d- scraping data from all different areas. That's where industry comes in. That's where the Accentures and the Googles and [00:27:00] the Palantirs and all the other, you know, folks come in and say... And, and also the, the, the mobile network providers, you know, the, the Verizons, AT&T, and, and, uh, T-Mobile come in and say, "We already have 5G coverage, Seval.

SEVAL OZ: We can actually bring this up as long as the states can connect to each other across the corridor." So that's defining our first use cases, um, through Work Zone Exchange, which f- fits very nicely into the glove of federal highways in terms of digitalizing or modernizing, preparing those corridors for autonomy.

SEVAL OZ: Because at the end of the day, what we're really trying to do is create an affordable autonomy economy, right? We're gonna m- bring up manufacturing, retooling. We've got eight ports along I-10, for example. Um, you know, we've got inland ports. We've got Mississippi up to the Great Lakes. We really have to understand how goods, people, and services move in this country, and move in a way that it's resilient, civilian, [00:28:00] military, and we need to bring in the autonomous nature of this.

SEVAL OZ: So I hope I answered your question. Sure. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Is this some exciting stuff, you guys? Yeah, no, this is really cool. I'm giving you a playbook. Yeah.

AUDIENCE: Good morning, Seval. Love your energy and passion. I'm, I'm really curious, uh, what's the priorities from you and the secretary as it relates to the modernization of the Federal Aviation Administration and the 400 plus major airports across our nation? 

SEVAL OZ: Yeah, it's a great question. And, and, uh, you know, as you know, the secretary came into a whirlwind of hurt when we had the first DCA tragedy, uh, uh, you know, when, when he first started at the administration.

SEVAL OZ: And he's been very actively, uh, pushing for and getting the funding, getting the teams, getting the air traffic controllers. Um, quite a lot of effort's been spent on this, and, and I, I, I just, you know, salute [00:29:00] him, um, as much as I can because of this. We are working also very closely tech- on the technology side.

SEVAL OZ: So we have a working group with the Federal Aviation, uh, Advanced, um, Technologies Group led by Jessica Jones. Uh, and we're now, um, our Deputy Secretary Steve Bradbury has a working group that we've stood up. Um, and we are working, um, with other forms of, of, uh, the a- o- other agencies such as Department of War and, um, and oth- and other, uh, you know, the usual suspects I'll call them, FCC, et cetera, to test new types of electronic conspicuity for collision avoidance.

SEVAL OZ: And this is a very important, and, you know, part of this effort because as you know, aviation's changed. Um, and we've had some very unfortunate tragedies, and we will continue to develop anti-collision capabilities, um, through testing. Uh, and the secretary's enabled that. He's enabled the alignment of [00:30:00] bringing, um, Federal Aviation, which is fifty thousand people, into a unified DOT that now is working together towards harnessing the active technology n- you know, um, you know, s- s- you know, the active technology groups that already exist, as I mentioned earlier.

SEVAL OZ: We have great career staff who've been doing this for years, that now are working together feverishly to try and build out this next capability of electronic conspicuity, which would involve collision avoidance. And again, to your point, it's not just the aerial, right? It's completely geofacial. What works up there is gonna work for collision avoidance on the ground and vice versa.

SEVAL OZ: So it is a complete spectrum of activity, and we've got some really, really good smart people working on these problems. So yeah, thank you for the question. 

AMY MCKENNA: We're almost out of time. 

SEVAL OZ: We're almost out of time? Okay. 

AMY MCKENNA: Well- Any last remarks? 

SEVAL OZ: No, I just r- I, I [00:31:00] really appreciate what everybody's doing. I, um, I appreciate the, um, the, the energy you all bring, the industry brings.

SEVAL OZ: Uh, I think it's time to converge a lot of what we did on the industry side to what we're doing now on the federal side. The states and local governments are key leadership positions in this. So as much as you can spend time with them working on some of the problems that w- you know, we're com- we're c- you know, we're both working or we're all working on, that would be excellent.

SEVAL OZ: Um, heed some of the conversations or, or notes we've made on how you can help the federal government when you go and see them and spend time with us. And I think, you know, we're all looking for modernization, efficiency, safety, national security, um, reduction in paperwork and bureaucracy, increased workforce skillset.

SEVAL OZ: I mean, those are the tall point... Those are the tall poles in the tent. We all know what they are, so collectively, I think we can make a huge impact, um, in this, uh, in the next few years we have. So thank you very much. I appreciate your time. [00:32:00] Thank you so much. 

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