The Internal Revenue Service has built a predictive model-based online application that seeks to provide an immediate answer to the question “when will a contract be signed?”

The Projected Contract Award Date app uses an algorithm designed to estimate the number of days before a contract is awarded in the agency’s Integrated Financial System-Procurement for the Public Sector, the IRS said.

The interactive platform is a result of collaborative research work by the IRS Office of the Chief Procurement Officer and Fairfax, Virginia-based information technology consulting firm Data and Analytic Solutions.

“This effort is a new trend in contract management that adjusts our business processes based on timing factors in the government contracting process, using cutting-edge data science technologies,” said Shanna Webbers, IRS chief procurement officer.

The web app also allows the IRS, which allocates as much as $2.5 billion in contract funds annually, to modify standards and reevaluate requirements including the solicitation method, competition and classification of goods or services.

The agency said its forecasting tool has potential application to other federal organizations that want to gain insight about when a procurement request will transition to the contract signing phase.

Brandon Wales, acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said CISA plans to test secure cloud instances using some of the $650 million in funds the agency received through the American Rescue Plan in response to the SolarWinds hack, Federal News Network reported Wednesday.

“So part of our additional resources under the American Rescue Plan Act is standing up a secure, threat hardened cloud environment,” Wales said Tuesday during a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

“We will pilot that out and then promulgate the reference architecture across the federal government to help improve the security of cloud environments for all of our federal partners,” he added.

Wales mentioned CISA’s other priorities during the hearing: expansion of the agency’s cyber defensive teams, deployment of new sensors and technologies in federal networks and transition to zero trust and other defensive architectures. He also cited plans to establish the Joint Cyber Planning Office and continue recruitment efforts.

The Navy workforce will begin transitioning to the Microsoft 365 cloud-based collaboration and productivity environment on June 1. 

The service will issue a series of emails to approximately 266,000 personnel who are using Commercial Virtual Remote and Navy Marine Corps Internet O365 for them to gain access to the new M365 cloud environment called Flank Speed, the Navy said Tuesday.

The announcement comes as the Department of Defense prepares to sunset the CVR platform on June 15 and NMCI O365 by Oct. 1. Flank Speed will provide users access to one terabyte of OneDrive storage, Teams and M365 productivity suite. 

The zero trust-based cloud environment will support unclassified systems and those operating at Impact Level 5 and allow users to download data using government-furnished equipment with a virtual private network connection. 

The Navy said about 472,000 users are expected to secure access to Flank Speed by the end of fiscal year 2021.

Klas Government announced Wednesday the availability of VoyagerGPU, the market’s first tactical GPU that unlocks artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning(ML) and video processing/transcoding at the network edge.

“We believe future-proofing tactical networks requires a modular and scalable range of network, compute and radio systems modules designed with a common form factor and ability to seamlessly integrate with market-leading technologies,” commented Chris Ericksen, Klas Government’s chief revenue officer.

“VoyagerGPU is a core component of Klas’ modular system that allows our DoD customers to incorporate new, innovative capabilities as the mission dictates,” Ericksen added.

The embedded graphics-processing units (GPUs) are critical for military systems with heavy processing demands such as those required for AI and analyzing moving images in real-time. Before Klas Government’s new GPU, this kind of power was not available for clients to operate at the tactical edge.

VoyagerGPU is the first tactical unit to incorporate NVIDIA’s latest GPU technology (Turing-based GPU), which addresses these tactical edge challenges while meeting Standardized A-Kit / Vehicle Envelope (SAVE) specifications for tactical communication SWAP in military vehicles.

Klas’ Voyager Tactical Cloud Platform (TCP) uses VoyagerGPU as a core component. This provides TCP with the significant analytical power of the cloud to the forward edge and battlefield vehicles operating in tactical edge environments.

The VoyagerGPU is also easily configurable into the Voyager 6 power chassis, enabling AI capabilities to be readily available in military ground vehicles without requiring major modifications to the vehicle.

About Klas Government

Klas Government makes the world’s most potent deployable communications solutions to meet the needs of government and military communicators in any operational environment. The company enables customers to communicate in extreme environments, where nobody else in the market can deliver tactical and executive communications systems specifically designed to move faster, travel lighter, and work better under worse conditions than anything else available.

A Boeing-made B-52 Stratofortress stealth bomber demonstrated hypersonic shooting earlier this month during an Alaska-bound sortie that lasted over 13 hours.

The bomber shot a practice target with the AGM-183 hypersonic weapon from a distance of 600 nautical miles during the Northern Edge 21 exercise, which took place on May 5, Air Force Global Strike Command said Thursday.

“We were really exercising the data links that we needed in order to complete that kill chain loop, and then get the feedback to the players in the airspace that the simulated hypersonic missile was fired and effective,” said Lt. Col. Joe Little, deputy commander of the 53rd Test Management Group.

Indo-Pacific Command ran NE21 to train warfighters in realistic scenarios and demonstrate joint interoperability. The exercise commenced at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, move to Alaska and then returned back to the starting point.

Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is preparing to integrate a pair of multi-manifest satellite vehicles that would gather data for future technology development.

The Space-Based Infrared System GEO-5 satellite will carry Technology Demonstration Orbiters 3 and 4, which contain several payloads for U.S. Air Force Academy, Los Angeles Air Force Base said Monday.

The Launch Enterprise Mission Manifest Office within the U.S. Space Force's Space and Missile Systems Center delivered TDO-3 and TDO-4 to Cape Canaveral. Input gathered by both TDOs will inform the development of new military technologies and applications.

USSF and its partners from NASA and the space industry designed, developed and tested both TDO vehicles over a span of nine months. Parsons produced an integrated flight system for the two vehicles.

Both vehicles will be released to a Geo Transfer Orbit before fully separating from SBIRS GEO-5.

Two organizations within the Department of Defense (DOD) partnered to automate financial transactions via machine learning technology, FedScoop reported Tuesday.

The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) infused robotic process automation (RPA) with machine learning to enable complex transaction tasks. 

These complex tasks include tracking unmatched or wrongly labeled transactions, a problem that DOD says takes too much time. Eric Dorsey, a program manager for DIU's AI portfolio, said DOD has been using RPAs that are limited to basic “if-then-else” applications.

ML augments RPA with processed information based on financial data. This allows RPA to perform more complex tasks, such as correcting unmatched transactions.