The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has proposed to amend its regulations to establish rules that would provide incentives to electric companies and other public utilities for making cybersecurity investments that go beyond the requirements of the Critical Infrastructure Protection Reliability Standards.

The proposed rule published Friday in Federal Register would allow public utilities to seek an increase in the rate of return on equity and apply for “deferred cost recovery” for their cybersecurity-related investments.

The deferred cost recovery would apply for three types of expenses: spending related to third-party provision of software, hardware and computing networking services; spending on training to implement cyber improvements; and risk assessments and other implementation expenses by third parties.

“In all such cases, eligible costs would be limited to costs associated with implementing cybersecurity upgrades and would not include ongoing costs including system maintenance, surveillance, and other labor costs, either in the form of employee salaries or third-party service contracts,” FERC said in the notice.

The commission will accept comments on the proposed rule through April 6th.

Stephen Russell, information sciences division chief at DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory (ARL), said ARL uses cloud and network infrastructure to conduct research, perform materials modeling and advance the development of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, the Army reported Monday.

“Consider materials modeling as an example, to do that activity efficiently you likely need cloud compute and you need infrastructure to not only analyze complex materials properties, but also to create high-resolution models,” Russell said during a Jan. 27 virtual discussion hosted by FedInsider and George Washington University Center for Excellence in Public Leadership. “These kinds of models are important to improve the capabilities the Army needs for the nature of its many missions.”

Russell also discussed the internet of battlefield things concept and mentioned his division’s efforts to advance tactical edge computing.

“In the Information Sciences Division, we do a great deal of work on low-level algorithms that make devices intelligent and autonomously functional across the spectrum of cloud and edge computing,” Russell said.

Featuring Derek Tournear, SDA Director and 2021 Wash100 Award recipient, as the keynote speaker, 2021 SDA Forum will address advancements and challenges within the development and delivery of innovative space solutions, as well as how the industry can support SDA initiatives.

Join Potomac Officers Club’s 2021 SDA Forum to learn how SDA continues to evolve, in addition to how the government and industry work together to deliver the best technologies, so the nation can maintain its advantage in the modern space race.

To register for the 2021 SDA Forum, as well as view upcoming opportunities, visit Potomac Officers Club’s Event Page.

Mark Forman, a federal information technology market veteran and former administrator for e-government and IT at the Office of Management and Budget, said there are ways agency chief information officers can fund IT modernization efforts without seeking congressional funding and one is through agency priority goals, Federal News Network reported Friday.

“And we know, in this next phase of picking up the pieces after the triage that was done immediately after the pandemic, there are going to be gaps and agencies will have to invest in it,” Forman said on FNN’s Ask the CIO.

“Tying that investment — not anecdotes, but specific metrics tied to either the outgoing Trump administration or the incoming Biden administration priority goals — is path one, but it requires clear line of sight to how the investment drives the benefits.”

The former Unisys Federal executive called on agency CIOs to partner with those working on evidence-based policymaking and advance use of their data action plans. Another path agencies could consider to fund IT modernization initiatives is through the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act, he noted.

“We know as a result of this movement to basically the workforce and business processes being online, there needs to be changes in user experience, both inside the government and with the state and local governments,” said Forman, who

“As these delivery processes move online, this is not outside of the CIO, just a piece within the CIO organization. This needs to be a core area that they look at for modernization, leveraging, what is a Circular A-11 for 21st Century IDEA Act.”

Lt. Col. Matthew Arrol, commandant of the U.S. Army’s Joint Support Team at Hurlburt Field in Florida, wrote in an article published Friday on Breaking Defense that the service should conduct a thorough analysis of its current command-and-control structures and optimize C2 to advance multidomain operations and make the Combined Joint All-Domain C2 concept a reality.

Arrol said the Army should consider “how closely and widely we want to integrate the new C2 systems with our allies and non-military Unified Action Partners.” He called on the service to design its C2 systems “from the ground up with inclusion as a mission goal” and work to achieve and protect that synergy with a multinational force.

“Even for those partners outside of traditional alliances, US forces must prepare for the day when we may need to rapidly integrate those forces,” Arrol said. “Hybrid warfare and winning in the ‘competition period’ requires the capabilities and expertise of a whole-of-government approach.”

Arrol noted that adapting the C2 structure to support C/JADC2 calls for the Army to address education by reassessing the skills and training at all echelons and exposing warfighters to the joint force far earlier in their careers.

“Practitioners of C/JADC2 processes will need to be trained to execute in a degraded environment and possess the command relationships and authorities to act appropriately,” he wrote. “This will naturally be enabled by technology to diagnose, treat, and heal broken C2 networks automatically to maintain the desired decision advantage.”

He said the Army should identify “change agents” and “champions” that could help oversee JADC2, act as an active participant and “must be deliberate in its approach to change, resilient during the process, and seek out those who are uniquely qualified to help lead it.”

Two directorates within the U.S. Air Force (USAF) are preparing to launch a new event that will challenge procurement officers to deliver an automated workload reduction system.

USAF said Friday its Digital Directorate and Command, Control, Communications, Intelligence and Networks Directorate will host the competition titled the “Building Digital Wingman Challenge" on March 15.

The event will feature a bot-building competition, a discussion panel, training events and coaching about RPA technologies.

The effort seeks a robotic process automation system that would perform repetitive computer tasks in place of human users, who can then instead focus on more important work.

“This is an opportunity to create real and useful software applications and create solutions for obsolete processes we use in conducting our acquisition business – a chance to solve that frustrating manual process that can be readily automated,” said Steven Wert, Digital program executive officer.

A team from Hanscom Air Force Base demonstrated RPA's support capabilities in a competition held last year by the Air Force's vice chief of staff. The team's Bouncer Bot system helped the base's personnel perform security checks on the base's guests.

Tom Sasala, chief data officer of the U.S. Navy, said the service branch intends to implement a modernized data architecture as it works to execute a holistic approach to data governance, Nextgov reported Friday.

“Data is contextual in nature, right, so not all pieces of information that are generated at the tactical, not all pieces of information generated in the enterprise need to flow across each side,” Sasala said.

Sasala said at a FedInsider event that the Navy wants to roll out a data architecture developed in April 2020 to enable the transfer of data to secure and integrated storage locations.

The modernization effort includes the implementation of a data environment called Jupiter to support the use of complex access controls. The Navy also created new data-related positions to manage everyday data management and command-and-control activities.

“We’ve actually appointed … deputy data officers for the Navy and the Marine Corps so we have a kind of triad where the secretariat, where I sit, and then the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps each have a data officer,” Sasala said.

Clark Cully, acting deputy chief information officer at the DOD, noted during the same event that the Pentagon’s command, control and communications team is “investing heavily in the industry and international consortia” to ensure the implementation of zero-trust and cybersecurity standards for 5G projects which utilize tactical edge-level data.

The Department of Agriculture has launched a customer service program to centralize contact center operations as part of the General Services Administration’s Centers of Excellence (GSA CoE) initiative.

“AskUSDA has helped us improve the customer experience we offer and that’s helped drive the success of the website,” Simchah Suveyke-Bogin, chief customer experience officer at USDA. “It’s been a rewarding experience that’s resulted in being able to seamlessly answer tens of thousands of citizen inquiries.”

GSA said Friday the self-service AskUSDA Contact Center covers inquiries made through email, phone, chat or the web to free up personnel time for addressing customer concerns.

The contact center effort first began in 2018 and has since enabled the GSA and USDA team to collect real-time data on trends and insights encompassing 748 services and 903 customer archetypes.

The USDA Office of Customer Experience used the AskUSDA team’s analysis with the USDA chief information officer to create a Final Insights Report and address 93,000 identified inquiries as part of a pilot program.

Naval Sea Systems Command held a virtual forum to discuss programs that fund the research, development and transition of technologies made in partnership with small businesses. 

“In the end, the event enabled our small business community innovators to make many key connections with our Navy acquisition team," Dean Putnam, SBIR/STTR program manager for NAVSEA, said about the event.

The Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer Transition online event ran from Jan. 27 to 28, marking the forum's first virtual rendition, NAVSEA said Friday.

SBIR/STTR program entries each run over three phases: feasibility study, research and development and transition. Phase two participants virtually exhibited electronics, airborne systems, autonomy, sensors, energy technology, resilience-focused engineering and other naval technologies during the event.

Putnam added the SBIR/STTR program has undergone changes to accelerate technology development and transition timelines.

“The SBIR/STTR program has been re-engineered for faster technology development. The program has the ability to insert emerging technology into programs earlier and puts capability into the warfighters’ hands faster,” said Putnam.