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Maj. Gen. Robert Skinner Confirmed for DISA Leadership Role
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Maj. Gen. Robert Skinner Confirmed for DISA Leadership Role

Maj. Gen. Robert Skinner has received Senate confirmation to lead the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) as director, succeeding Vice Adm. Nancy Norton, Air Force Magazine reported Monday.

He will rank up to lieutenant general for the role through which he will lead efforts to protect the Department of Defense’s (DoD) enterprise infrastructure and operate joint command-and-control functions.

Skinner will return to DISA after concluding his tenure with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command as director for command, control, communications and cyber. He formerly functioned as DISA chief of staff, a role he held for over half a year.

The DISA director-to-be will concurrently serve as commander of the Joint Force Headquarters—DoD Information Network. JFHQ DODIN oversees cybersecurity matters relevant to DoD’s information technology infrastructure and connected devices.

Skinner joined the military in 1989 and went on to take up various communications- and software-related work at the U.S. Air Force.

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NSA Personnel Karen Presley, Linda Burger Named to Federal Laboratory Consortium Board
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NSA Personnel Karen Presley, Linda Burger Named to Federal Laboratory Consortium Board

The Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) has appointed National Security Agency (NSA) research directorate personnel Karen Presley and Linda Burger to join the organization’s executive board.

Presley and Burger will demonstrate the implementation of technology transfer efforts to augment NSA’s efforts as part of their new roles, the agency said Monday.

Karen Presley, deputy director of the Technology Transfer Program at NSA
Karen Presley, deputy director of NSA’s Technology Transfer Program

The consortium has named Presley to lead the education committee as its first chairperson. She will work to help the team enhance education initiatives for its members. Burger has also taken the role of vice chair at the committee under her appointment.

Composed of 300 federal government research laboratories, centers and agencies in the U.S., FLC seeks to promote tech transfer efforts to its member laboratories to achieve commercialization objectives.

About Federal Laboratory Consortium 

The Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC) is the formally chartered, nationwide network of over 300 federal laboratories, agencies, and research centers that fosters commercialization best practice strategies and opportunities for accelerating federal technologies from out of the labs and into the marketplace.

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Maximus Recognized as a Top Employer for Veterans; Bruce Caswell Quoted
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Maximus Recognized as a Top Employer for Veterans; Bruce Caswell Quoted

Maximus has ranked 54th on the Military Times Best for Vets: Employers 2020, recognizing the company for its support services as a nationwide employer for veterans, Maximus reported on Tuesday. Maximus received high marks for its veteran retention support programs as well as their recruitment and employment practices.

“We are extremely proud to be honored on this important list, which shows that our commitment to veterans and disabled veterans is having an impact,” said Bruce Caswell, president and CEO of Maximus and 2020 Wash100 Award recipient. “The initiatives we have put in place to support our country’s heroes and their families carry great significance to us at a company level, and all of us on a personal level.”

Maximus has supported military-connected employees regardless of whether they have served themselves, at home or abroad, are a military spouse or have any other military connection.

Courtney Browne, supervisor of Maximus’ Military Talent Sourcing team, has highlighted the company’s retention support for military connected employees and benefits and programming designed specifically for active Guard and Reserve employees. 

Additionally, Maximus has partnered with the Posse Foundation’s Veterans Program to provide professional development workshops and orientation support for post-9/11 veterans pursuing bachelor’s degrees at colleges and universities across the country. 

Maximus has also promoted the hiring of veterans, leveraging sourcing strategies and outreach to veteran service organizations, as well as hosted Veteran recognition month in November to spotlight veteran employees. Maximus has also participated in Military Spouse Employment Partnership (MSEP), hiring events, quarterly partner meetings, and employer roundtables.

The Best for Vets rankings are based on a survey that includes more than 100 questions created through years of Military Times research, interviews with veterans, input from veterans’ advocates and human resources professionals.

About Maximus

Since 1975, Maximus has operated under its founding mission of Helping Government Serve the People®, enabling citizens around the globe to successfully engage with their governments at all levels and across a variety of health and human services programs. 

Maximus delivers innovative business process management and technology solutions that contribute to improved outcomes for citizens and higher levels of productivity, accuracy, accountability, and efficiency of government-sponsored programs. With approximately 30,000 employees worldwide, Maximus is a proud partner to government agencies in the United States, Australia, Canada, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. 

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BAE Systems Wins Multiple Contracts to Support US Army A-Team Program; Chris Eisenbies Quoted
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BAE Systems Wins Multiple Contracts to Support US Army A-Team Program; Chris Eisenbies Quoted

BAE Systems has been awarded multiple contracts, with a total value of $9 million, from the U.S. Army for the Advanced Teaming Demonstration (A-Team) program, the company reported on Tuesday. BAE Systems will develop advanced technologies to support the service branch’s program. 

The contracts include awards for the Human Machine Interface, Platform Resource Capability Management and Situational Awareness Management elements of the program. 

“Our mature autonomy technology, which is the basis of our offering for the A-Team program, will greatly increase the warfighter’s ability to have a complete view of the battlespace and streamline decision making,” said Chris Eisenbies, product line director of the Autonomy, Control, and Estimation group at BAE Systems’ FAST Labs

Under the contracts, BAE Systems will support the advancement of manned and unmanned teaming (MUM-T) capabilities that are expected to be critical components in the U.S. Army’s Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program.

In order to combat the evolving battlespace presented by near-peer adversaries, the U.S. Army developed the A-Team program to create an automated system to offload the cognitive burden of pilots while enabling them to command swarms of unmanned aircraft.

“Future conflicts will include manned and unmanned teaming and increased automation in highly contested environments, helping to enable mission success,” added Eisenbies. 

BAE Systems will deliver an automated system to provide situational awareness, information processing, resource management and decision making that is beyond human capabilities, which will support unmanned aircraft that will be controlled by pilots in real time.

The company’s FAST Labs research and development team and Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) Systems business area will leverage their decades of work pioneering autonomy technologies to provide the critical autonomy technology.

The program will leverage the Future Open Rotorcraft Cockpit Environment Lab to conduct simulation tests and demonstrations with products from different contractors in consideration of transition to the FVL program.

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Gen. James Dickinson: Spacecom Eyes HQ Relocation, Workforce Expansion in 2021
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Gen. James Dickinson: Spacecom Eyes HQ Relocation, Workforce Expansion in 2021

Gen. James Dickinson, commander of the U.S. Space Command, has said the command seeks to expand its personnel beyond 1,000 ahead of the potential relocation of its headquarters in 2021, SpaceNews reported Monday.

Dickinson told the publication in an interview that he expects the Department of the Air Force to conclude a basing review and issue a decision on the relocation of Spacecom’s headquarters from Colorado Springs early next year. He noted that Spacecom is working to ensure that space is a “safe domain in which to operate.”

“What’s changed is that space is the sole focus of this command,” said Dickinson. “We want to maintain a peaceful presence within the space domain and hold our competitors accountable for what they’re doing.”

Spacecom will continue issuing statements condemning aggressive behavior in response to threats, he added. Dickinson received Senate confirmation to serve in his current role in August 2020.

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CISA Director Touts Efforts to Combat Election Disinformation Campaigns
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CISA Director Touts Efforts to Combat Election Disinformation Campaigns

Christopher Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), has assured that CISA has increased its information sharing efforts with state officials in anticipation of disinformation campaigns threatening the U.S. presidential election, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) cybersecurity arm has also offered to brief reporters to help them identify real and fake threats, in addition to launching a page on the CISA website to dispute allegations such as election hacking by foreign attackers and other known kinds of disinformation.

“We remain confident that no foreign cyber actor can change your vote,” said Krebs, a two-time Wash100 Award recipient. However, he added that threats remain as attackers are expected to try to disrupt polls and "make sensationalist claims" overstating their skills. Other election officials have also shared how they are working to curb election disinformation.

Trevor Timmons, chief information officer for the Colorado Secretary of State, said a team sent out alerts assuring that in-person voting would continue in response to posts on Twitter claiming that state restrictions due to COVID-19 would result in the closure of polling places.

Meanwhile, social media platforms have implemented policies to limit the dissemination of false information.

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USCYBERCOM Broadens Operations Against Foreign Adversaries
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USCYBERCOM Broadens Operations Against Foreign Adversaries

U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) moved to expand its operations to identify cyber threat actors from countries like Russia, China and Iran ahead of the presidential elections Tuesday as part of efforts to protect against potential foreign interference, CNN reported Monday.

"USCYBERCOM has a 24/7 ops center, and we are specifically postured for the elections—however, we've integrated election defense into our everyday operations. There are two parts to this: We are enabling our partners, and we are ready to act," an official with the command told the network. "We also have liaison officers embedded with our interagency partners, for better flow of information and coordination."

The USCYBERCOM official said the command has active chatrooms with interagency partners to facilitate sharing of information on cyber threats and will continue to crack down on adversaries even after the elections.

"Also, USCYBERCOM and NSA have the ability to alert interagency and private industry partners to act on information; for example, we may detect a cyber-event from an adversary and can tip a partner to this anomaly — then within hours those partners can alert victims of cyber activity and engage mitigation response. It is the ability for us to act and respond as a whole of government at speed that is significant,” the official added.

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Maria Roat: IT Changes During Pandemic Give Agencies Opportunity to Further Advance Modernization
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Maria Roat: IT Changes During Pandemic Give Agencies Opportunity to Further Advance Modernization

Maria Roat, deputy federal chief information officer at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and a 2020 Wash100 Award winner, said federal agencies’ move to cloud-based telework arrangement and adoption of new digital tools during the COVID-19 pandemic to facilitate continuity of operations highlighted the potential for modernization that agencies must continue in 2021, FedScoop reported Monday.

“The federal government has to continue to really thrive as it’s using advanced digital technology to make sure that we’re communicating with the public and that we’re interacting with service providers, that we’re leveraging all the technologies there,” Roat said at ACT-IAC’s virtual ELC conference.

“And as I look over the next year, these changes really give us opportunities to continue to innovate and challenge the norms and status quo. We did this this year — we cut through the bureaucracy,” she added.

Roat also cited the need for agency CIOs to double down on application rationalization and efforts when it comes to identifying legacy platforms that could be maintained and transitioned into modernized environments.

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White House Drops OPM-GSA Merger Plan
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White House Drops OPM-GSA Merger Plan

The White House has decided to drop its plan to merge the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) with the General Services Administration (GSA), Federal Times reported Monday. An OPM official confirmed the move to the publication.

The move comes after the Trump administration faced opposition in Congress. Lawmakers questioned whether officials had performed enough work to prove that eliminating OPM and transitioning its responsibilities to GSA could help improve efficiency.

The National Academy of Public Administration entered into a contract with OPM in March 2020 to study the potential outcomes of the proposed merger of the office with GSA. NAPA is expected to hand over the report to Congress by March 2021.

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USTRANSCOM Eyes Study on Space-Based Global Logistics Ops; Gen. Stephen Lyons Quoted
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USTRANSCOM Eyes Study on Space-Based Global Logistics Ops; Gen. Stephen Lyons Quoted

U.S. Transportation Command plans to start evaluating the feasibility of integrating space-based transport into logistics operations next year ahead of a point-to-point proof of concept exercise with industry and Department of Defense partners.

USTRANSCOM is looking to address its doctrinal, statutory, diplomatic and organizational matters in its efforts to deploy commercial space launches for point-to-point logistics operations, the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA)  said Thursday.

Gen. Stephen Lyons, commander, USTRANSCOM, said at an Airlift/Tanker Association conference that a proof of concept in 2021 to use space technologies for global logistics and humanitarian assistance operations is “well within the realm of possibility.”

In March, SpaceX entered into a two-year cooperative research and development agreement with USTRANSCOM to asses commercial launch capabilities for the transport of DoD personnel and materiel.

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