The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) looks to develop a cloud-based, enterprise-wide system of records intended to track civil rights discrimination complaints against the agency’s programs and activities.

The Civil Rights Management System will consist of an application suite and will be facilitated through the Salesforce platform under the USDA Office of the Chief Information Officer, according to the notice published Tuesday on the federal register.

Previously known as the Program Complaints Management System, the platform will help manage the needs of agency leaders responsible for ensuring compliance with civil rights laws and regulations. 

The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights (OASCR) is in charge of maintaining the system records and lodging the hard copies at the National Archives and Records Administration. 

The document noted that physical security measures are put in place to prohibit the access of unauthorized persons. The electronic records are kept in secure file servers and the OASCR has ensured the use of physical access controls, firewalls and intrusion detection tools. 

Proposed revisions to the notice include the updating of system location, records’ categories, storage, safeguards, retention and disposal. Comments on the proposed system are due Sept. 16th.

The Department of the Treasury has partnered with civic technology nonprofit Code for America to introduce a bilingual sign-up tool to enable eligible U.S. families to enroll and claim their child tax credit (CTC). The Treasury said Friday the new tool is expected to come online in the next few weeks.

The department also announced plans to build a permanent multilingual platform to enable more citizens who do not regularly file taxes to sign up and claim CTC for their children. The Treasury will also work with Congress to provide resources for the initiative.

The Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service said they disbursed the second month of advance CTC payments worth more than $15 billion to families as part of the American Rescue Plan, covering an additional 1.6 million children. 

The U.S. government issued eligible families a monthly payment of up to $300 for each child under age 6 and up to $250 per month for each child age 6 to 17.

“Today 61 million children across America are benefiting from the advance Child Tax Credit, helping families put food on the table and meet the needs of the next generation,” said Wally Adeyemo, deputy secretary of the Treasury. “We want every eligible family to have access to the advance Child Tax Credit, which is why we will continue our outreach efforts to drive enrollment as our children return to school.”

Vice Adm. Jon Hill, director of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), said MDA is advancing the development of an interceptor that can defend against hypersonic missile threats, Defense News reported Friday.

“We’ve got some great feedback coming from industry, it is something that can be done, and we shouldn’t be afraid to go do it … and so we’re taking that on,” Hill told the publication at a symposium Thursday.

He said the agency evaluated its ballistic missile defense capability and found that it already had some assets that could help address hypersonic weapons, including the Sea-Based X-Band Terminal and the Aegis ship.

Hill noted that the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor and the SPY-6 radar are some of the future initiatives that are expected to come online. HBTSS is a satellite that could be deployed in low-Earth orbit to detect hypersonic missiles in flight. SPY-6 will further help strengthen the ability to identify hypersonic threats.

He said the agency would focus on targeting hypersonic weapons in the glide flight phase.

MDA asked industry to submit white papers on platforms for a glide phase interceptor in April. Hill said he expects a systems requirements review to occur later this year and that MDA would select industry teams to build the interceptor.

He noted that the agency will initially focus on providing the U.S. Navy with a capability and once the effort becomes successful, “we can move it to the land-based battery to protect other things against that sort of hypersonic threat.”