Tech modernization, civil service protection big priorities for Virginia's new House Democrat

Fifteen years ago, incoming Virginia Rep-elect Suhas Subramanyam landed his first big job in Washington, D.C., working the hallowed Capitol Building halls as a legislative aid on behalf of then-Florida Rep. Suzanne Kosmas, addressing agriculture and healthcare issues.

Come January, the Virginia Democrat will be back on familiar House ground when he’s sworn in to represent the state’s 10th District, which includes the entirety of Loudoun and Fauquier counties and parts of Fairfax, Prince Williams and Rappahanock counties.

Once seated, Subramanyam told GovExec in an interview this week that two of his priorities will be to improve the delivery of government technology and ensure the protection of civil servants and federal contractors. The 10th District is home to more than 34,000 federal employees and contractors, and boasts numerous tech company headquarters and satellite offices. Many of those jobs could be at risk if President-elect Trump makes good on promises to strip civil service protections for federal employees.

“One: I think that’s bad for our economy here in northern Virginia,” he said. “And two: If you think the government isn’t working well right now, wait until it’s falling apart because subject matter experts and career officials don’t want to be there anymore.”

A lawyer by trade, Subramanyam will be among the few true techies in Congress, having served as technology policy advisor in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Obama. In that role, he led the White House Technology Policy Task Force and advised Obama on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, infrastructure policy, economic opportunity and other tech topics. In 2016, Subramanyam said the Obama administration examined the opportunities and challenges around AI and those assessments have “largely been on track with what we expected.”  

“There's an immense opportunity with AI,” he said. “You can have entire economies built on these data sets and the algorithms that use these data sets to help make a lot of things smarter, better, more efficient. That's a huge opportunity, and our country has to be a leader on it. We don't have a choice.”

One AI development he didn’t expect was the degree the technology might impact how Americans consume information.

“I don’t think I fully understood the impact AI would have on the dissemination of information and how easy it would be for someone to take simple, cheap technology, feed it a lot of dangerous misinformation and influence people with it,” Subramanyan said.

Subramanyan said he’s also excited to work to improve government service delivery and modernize federal IT systems. He worked on Capitol Hill during the passage of the Affordable Care Act and subsequent tech-plagued rollout of Healthcare.gov. The poor rollout taught him that “when people have a bad experience with the government, they don’t trust the government to do anything.”

“A lot of that starts with not just what kind of technology we're using, but how we're using technology,” he added. “So, some of the work involves retiring legacy systems that are in much need of replacement; securing our government systems, and being able to implement new technologies within government that can help execute the great policies that we pass in Congress. That gives the constituent and the average person a better experience with government.”

When asked about potential committee assignments, Subramanyam said he’d love to be on the House Appropriations Committee — "we don’t have anyone from Virginia on it,” he said — but freshmen lawmakers generally have to wait their turn for such an assignment.

However, he’s eyeing the House Committee on Science Space & Tech — “my background and how important it is to the district” make it attractive, he said — as well as the House Oversight and Accountability and Agriculture committees. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va, who represents the neighboring 11th District, is running to replace Rep. Jamie Raskin as the top Democrat on the Oversight and Accountability Committee, and has been a key figure in the federal IT space and championing civil servants.

“I’ve really looked close to the Oversight Committee,” Subramanyam said. “It's also an opportunity to work on federal IT modernization, and helping our federal contractors work in the IT space in northern Virginia. I’d be coming at it from a very different angle than my other kind of colleagues that are on there. It’s one that I think is every bit as important, especially to our region.”