Poland's science ministry will build a new space mapping technology for NASA under an agreement between the two organizations and a larger effort to study the sun's heliosphere.

Poland will develop the Global Solar Wind Structure instrument that would gather data on hydrogen from solar wind and interstellar space, NASA said Thursday. GLOWS' function will support the U.S. space agency's Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) that aims to assess and map the sun's heliosphere.

IMAP also seeks to observe the interaction between the solar heliosphere and neighboring galaxies. David J. McComas, a Princeton University professor who serves as IMAP's principal investigator, will lead a party of 24 international institutions for the effort.

NASA launched IMAP as the fifth entry in the space agency's Solar Terrestrial Probes program managed within Goddard Space Flight Center.

The Department of Defense (DoD) demonstrated the autonomous performance of an experimental unmanned surface vessel at an exercise with U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps, DoD News reported Wednesday. 

The Ghost Fleet Overlord USV took part in the Department of the Navy's (DON) Dawn Blitz exercise to demonstrate compliance with international standards made to prevent ship collisions.

The autonomous vessel also traversed over 4,700 nautical miles with almost completely autonomous performance on its way to the exercise on the west coast. DoD's Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) partnered with DON to develop Ghost Fleet Overlord.

"It represents what SCO does best: integrate mature technologies to accelerate service priorities and create new capabilities for our warfighters,'' SCO Director Jay Dryer said about the USV's demonstrated performance.

SCO will transfer a pair of Ghost Fleet Overlord prototypes to the Navy's Surface Development Squadron One before the current fiscal year ends.

The General Services Administration (GSA) will integrate its digital assets and tools it has created to ensure the agency operates as efficiently as possible by reengineering agency business processes, FedScoop reported on Thursday. David Shive, chief information officer of GSA, said that the agency will work to become a “true, end-to-end digital entity.”

GSA will continually improve systems and services throughout the acquisition life cycle to improve efficiency. “We’ve digitized the vast majority of the intellectual assets of GSA, but a lot of those are first gen,” Shive said. “They’re basically digital copies of existing paper processes.”

The agency recently established shared service product lines for cloud and identity and credentialing services, and will work to launch more services moving into the new year. The product lines will enable better system integration, which will improve security and data exchange, said Beth Killoran, deputy CIO at GSA.

GSA will also improve cybersecurity tools by augmenting them with artificial intelligence (AI) for predictive analytics. The agency will procure emerging technologies under its enterprise-wide Infrastructure Capabilities and IT Operations contract. The contract is designed to reduce operational costs for reinvestment and enable GSA to partner innovative contractors to support digital transformation.

The agency recently awarded NCI Information Systems a prime $807 million task order to support GSA’s Office of Digital Infrastructure Technologies (IDT) as a strategic partner to help transform GSA IT capabilities, drive digital modernization, provide a more flexible service delivery model and deliver continuous business value for agency customers.

“This award represents our total commitment to helping the government achieve modernization and digital transformation at scale,” said Paul Dillahay, president and CEO of NCI, and two-time Wash100 Award recipient. “Modernizing GSA’s legacy infrastructure, technology and workforce will accelerate operational processes and create more efficient ways to serve the agency’s internal customers.”

NCI will work under the Digital Innovation for GSA Infrastructure Technologies (DIGIT) task order to support GSA’s IT strategy and the adoption of AI, machine learning, automation and other emerging technologies with a best-in-class team assembled by NCI.

The Department of Defense (DoD) has started migrating its IT users to Defense Enterprise Office Solutions (DEOS), the multibillion commercial cloud-based environment that will deliver collaboration services to the Defense Department, Federal News Network reported on Friday.

DEOS began the rollout process to its first users on Jan. 14th, according to the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), who is spearheading the migration. Following the initial stages, DISA will deliver the cloud-based office suite to customers at other DoD agencies. 

“We’re replacing legacy capabilities… We chose this approach because industry provides these state-of-the-art SaaS offerings and keeps them more current than we’ve been able to,” said Dr. Brian Hermann, the director of DISA’s services development directorate.

While DISA will support the new cloud-based services for its customers in the “fourth estate,” the military services will have to procure their own services from the DEOS contract. Following the purchase, DoD will unify them in a “federated” environment.

“This aligns with our overall strategy of adopting and buying capabilities that exist before we create something that that industry already provides, and we’re pursuing the same approach in most of our portfolios that have commercial analogues,” Hermann added. 

The DEOS offerings are being provided through a 10-year contract with General Dynamics Information Technology, with the core SaaS platform based on Microsoft’s Office 365. “It’s been pretty effective for us and it allows us to connect with some of our mission partners outside DoD, but I think it could be made more modern as we move forward in that space,” Hermann stated. 

During the beginning stages, DISA will only deploy DEOS on unclassified networks. The offerings will be certified up to impact level 5. Following, the department will introduce similar capabilities across its classified networks.

The Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium (MTEC), composed of medical enterprise technology developers, will work to create prototypes that link medical data, software and situational awareness to create a unified network across different parts of the military, such as  research labs and tactical responders, FedScoop reported on Friday.  

With the solicitation, the Department of Defense (DoD) will add another health data interoperability project to its electronic health records overhaul programs. The DoD currently anticipates spending $5.8 million on a prototype, with potential funds for follow-on work.

The request “aims to establish prototypes with the ability to provide commanders at all levels with visual understanding of how medical capabilities are arrayed throughout the operational environment,” MTEC wrote. 

The operating concept will link networks together to create a common data architecture for commanders to control troops and weapons in air, land, sea, space and cyber conflicts. The networks will work in collaboration as opposed to only one domain. 

Under the solicitation, MTEC will add visibility by linking disparate networks and software medical personnel in military use. The recent request parallels the Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) and other network modernization initiatives. 

At the end of 2020, David Spirk, chief data officer at the DoD said the department also developed its data strategy with the JADC2 concept in mind.  The department’s cross-functional team responsible for developing JADC2 has adopted the goals of the data strategy. 

The Pentagon released the data strategy in Oct. 2020 that considers data as a strategic asset critical to building and maintaining operational advantage on the battlefield. “We’ve come to an agreement to bring the JADC2 data interoperability working group into one of our working groups under the DoD CDO Council,” Spirk said. 

“When you lay the data strategy out and you really go to the principles inside of it, it’s about creating operational advantage and efficiency. The operational advantage puts JADC2 right at the heart of the data strategy, and it was designed to be that way," he added. 

A report from the Department of Defense’s (DoD) office of the Director Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) recommends that the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness provide the Defense Health Agency (DHA) with sufficient resources to support continued training, content development and other assistance during the deployment and sustainment of the MHS Genesis electronic health records system.

The DOT&E’s fiscal year 2020 annual report also recommends that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) allow the Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) and DOT&E to help with operational testing of early deployment of MHS Genesis at VA.

The program office should continue to address cybersecurity vulnerabilities, improve interoperability and conduct latency and periodic capacity assessments during the EHR system’s future deployments, according to the report.

The recommendations were made based on observations from the follow-on operational test and evaluation of MHS Genesis at four military medical treatment facilities in California and Idaho as well as adversarial and cooperative vulnerability and penetration assessments.

The report listed Leidos, Cerner, Accenture Federal Services and Henry Schein as major contractors on the MHS Genesis program.