Thomas Harker, acting secretary of the U.S. Navy, told Government Matters in an interview aired Sunday that the service branch's new budget request reflects its goals to balance multidomain investments and modernize naval forces.

He said the Navy also moved to update its information technology network and key computer applications when personnel shifted to a remote work environment due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The former Navy comptroller also mentioned the ongoing project to move legacy software platforms across the service to the Microsoft Office 365 suite of collaboration and communication apps.

As the service branch awaits confirmation of its next full-time secretary, Harker said he hopes to turn over the current initiative to ensure mental health care for sailors and address sexual assault in the force.

“We tried to destigmatize people seeking mental health treatment and get people to go and request help for mental health issues like they would for their physical health,” he said.

“We can start the dialog and they can get additional treatment where needed,” Harker said.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has partnered with California-based startup accelerator Founder Institute to identify emerging health care technologies through a pitch competition scheduled for Aug. 26th.

The Breaking Boundaries Collaboration Challenge will invite 20 innovators, entrepreneurs, startups and affiliates to pitch their ideas to leaders and staff members of the Veterans Health Administration Innovation Ecosystem and Innovators Network.

On the day of the pitch event, VA will hold a panel to discuss how entrepreneurs can work with industry to help former military personnel manage their health with the use of technology.

Speakers include Allison Amrhein, director of operations for VHA iNET; Ryan Micheletti, head of global operations at the Founder Institute; and Ryan Vega, chief officer in the VHA Office of Healthcare Innovation and Learning.

The department plans to name the winners of the challenge on Aug. 27th.

The U.S. Air Force has transitioned more than 42 systems to a virtual cloud computing environment, culminating a three-year data center migration project led by the military service's digital transformation unit.

An authorized cloud provider now hosts all USAF applications including the Air Force Promotions System, Virtual Military Personnel Flight, and the Air Force Personnel Center Secure platform, the service branch said Friday.

The apps and the new operating system completed an extensive compatibility test prior to the transaction.

Greg Parsons, director of plans and integration at AF A1, said the virtual platform gives the branch a capacity to accelerate server and software updates and manage the security of its systems.

“We can patch and upgrade systems near-real-time and do not have to purchase new hardware since the servers are virtual,” said Gary Trautmann, chief of the platform operations division at the AF Digital Transformation Activity.

USAF added that its virtual cloud provider holds accreditation from the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) and the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA).

The Department of the Treasury’s bureau of the fiscal service has released a playbook that seeks to help federal agencies accelerate digitization by advancing automation and innovation to reduce manual processes, improve customer experience and achieve cost savings.

The Digital End-to-End Efficiency (DEEE) Playbook from the bureau’s office of financial innovation and transformation intends to identify process improvement opportunities by combining human-centered design with traditional process analysis and enable digital transformation through the implementation of a step-by-step framework: define; select; analyze; assess and prioritize.

Under the DEEE framework, agencies should define end-to-end processes, select processes to achieve the most value, analyze the process to identify pain points and opportunities, assess potential solutions and balance value and cost to prioritize investments.

The playbook describes the concepts of digitization, scalability and transformation and offers tools and techniques to help prepare agencies to implement and scale platforms to transform processes.

Craig Fischer, innovation program manager at the Department of the Treasury, told Federal News Network in an interview that the document seeks to benefit financial agencies across the government.

“This is not something that we just want to have in-house in the Fiscal Service. We want to try to find and help people identify those savings opportunities, and find those solutions that really can help achieve their business missions and improve operational efficiency,” Fischer said.

If you want to hear federal executives and thought leaders discuss the government's digital modernization efforts, then check out the Potomac Officers Club's 2021 Digital Transformation Forum coming up on Aug. 10th. To register for this virtual forum and view other upcoming events, visit the POC Events page.

Netskope announced on Friday that the company closed a new $300 million investment round led by existing investor ICONIQ Growth. Major existing Netskope investors such as Lightspeed Venture Partners, Accel, Sequoia Capital Global Equities, Base Partners, Sapphire Ventures and Geodesic Capital also participated in this funding. The SASE company now has a post-money valuation of $7.5 billion.

"We started Netskope because we saw a cloud-centric, digital-first future of business that simply can't be achieved using legacy approaches to security and networking," commented Sanjay Beri, Netskope’s CEO and co-founder. 

"We were SASE before the term SASE existed and today we are seeing our vision manifest across the globe as enterprises increasingly turn to Netskope to enable secure digital transformation. We are fortunate to have attracted a truly exceptional team and set of partners, customers and industry luminaries who support and bring tremendous value to us, and we are pleased to take another step forward with all of them in our journey,” added Beri. 

The successful investment round illustrates the company's notable team, vision, track record of strong global execution and opportunity to continue its rapid gaining of share in the fast-growing CAGR market, which analysts estimate to be a $30 billion total addressable market by 2024.

The company intends to aggressively expand its platform and go-to-market during its hypergrowth to meet the high demand for its market-leading Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architecture.

Netskope's Security Cloud provides a comprehensive, cloud-native SASE platform that enables secure enterprise digital transformation and secure remote connectivity through integrated zero-trust network access, secure web gateway and cloud access security broker capabilities. 

"Digital transformation doesn't happen without network transformation and security transformation, and we believe that's where Netskope delivers like no other provider. Netskope is pointing the way to where cloud, networking, security, and data protection are headed long-term. We deeply value our investment partnership with the company and are excited to expand it as we continue on this journey," stated Will Griffith, ICONIQ Growth founding partner. 

The Federal Aviation Administration now has a prototype tool designed to help the agency track space launches and reentries at speeds close to real-time.

FAA said Thursday its Space Data Integrator (SDI) delivers telemetry data to the agency's Air Traffic Control System Command Center in an automated fashion. This telemetry data includes a vehicle's altitude, speed, position and trajectory changes.

SDI boosts FAA's situational awareness of the national airspace system and also has the potential to support air traffic management activities. The agency expects SDI to minimize the impact of space launches on other activities happening in U.S. airspace.

“With this capability, we will be able to safely reopen the airspace more quickly and reduce the number of aircraft and other airspace users affected by a launch or reentry," said Steve Dickson, FAA administrator.

The Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate has released results of a 2020 effort that demonstrated privacy protection technologies.

DHS said Thursday that its 2020 Privacy Technology Demonstration aimed to showcase tools that can help maintain the privacy of people seen in visual media such as photos and videos.

“The purpose of this research is to nurture the development of privacy-enhancing technologies that can be used by organizations that have an interest in operating various types of camera systems, but recognize concerns related to face recognition surveillance," said Arun Vemury, director of S&T’s Biometric and Identity Technology Center. 

Five privacy technologies underwent testing at the event and demonstrated the ability to detect and censor the faces of individuals in a video. Interested parties may view the results at the website of S&T’s Maryland Test Facility.