The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) has partnered with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to select commercial partners that can integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning into the Department of Defense’s transaction management procedures.

JAIC said Thursday the two DoD entities selected contractors such as Summit2Sea and Vertosoft for the Humanless Unmatched Transactions (HUnT) effort aimed at deploying AI/ML models for identifying errors in accounting procedures and financial transactions.

The HUnT contractors will integrate AI and ML software into the DoD’s current robotic process automation (RPA) systems and the AI/ML models to categorize unmatched transactions. The program's second phase includes training the models to triage transactions. 

“We expect these vendors to supply working prototypes for field trials with the goal of saving the DoD labor hours per year in finding and correcting unmatched transactions,” said Jeff Klugman, director of DIU's AI portfolio.

One company will work with the General Funds Enterprise Business System while another will handle the Defense Agencies Initiative ledger under the DoD comptroller.

Sumo Logic will host a virtual conference, Illuminate, to help customers harness the power of real-time the continuous intelligence needed to build, run and secure modern applications and accelerate digital business transformation. The company will support executives across the public sector to improve Agency DevSecOps workloads Sumo Logic's virtual conference will be held on Oct. 6th and 7th.    

Attendees at the Illuminate user conference will learn from Sumo Logic customers who  are accelerating digital business transformations. The event will also offer certification opportunities. Illuminate will provide deeper knowledge through customer and expert led technical and thought leader sessions, various levels of certifications, expert speakers and discussions with Sumo experts and peers in a virtual experience.

A leader in the cloud sector, Sumo Logic has received the AWS Public Sector Big Data Partner Award for 2019. Additionally, Executive Mosaic has recognized Sumo Logic for its position on the Forbes’ Cloud 100 list, marking the fifth consecutive year the company has been recognized for this honor.

Cloud 100 recognizes influential company’s emerging technologies from small startups to private-equity-backed giants, from Silicon Valley to Australia and Hong Kong. The companies on the list are selected for their growth, sales, valuation and culture, as well as a reputation score derived in consultation with 43 CEO judges and executives from their public-cloud-company peers.

“Five years ago, when Sumo Logic first hit the Forbes Cloud 100 list, we defined a new category of software called continuous intelligence and companies were in large part just starting their cloud journey,” said Aaron Feigin, chief communications officer of Sumo Logic, in regards to the 2020 award. “Today, the world is firmly cloud-first and Sumo Logic, along with our community, is working hard to help every business from every industry digitally transform and thrive in the Intelligence Economy.”

Lt. Gen. David Thompson, vice commander of the U.S. Space Force, said the service plans to establish a new command focused on acquisition programs in 2021, C4ISRNET reported Thursday.

“We anticipate standing that up in 2021, probably sooner rather than later. We’re working on those final details,” Thompson said Thursday of Space Systems Command (SSC) during a Defense One event.

The service announced in June 2020 that it will be composed of three field commands and one of those is Space Systems Command. Space Systems Command will be responsible for the development, acquisition and sustainment of platforms for the Space Force and provide oversight for the Space Rapid Capabilities Office and Space and Missile Systems Center. 

The Space Development Agency (SDA) is also set to transition to Space Systems Command by October 2022. Thompson said the new acquisitions command will serve as a unifying entity, address unnecessary duplication and promote competition in some areas.

“We’re not going to duplicate, but we’re certainly interested in the energy that comes from competing ideas and competing designs and competing approaches to a problem,” he added.

President Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday to declare a national emergency to help address the threat posed by the country’s dependence on critical minerals from foreign adversaries to U.S. national security, economy and foreign policy.

The executive order directs the secretary of the Department of the Interior to work with other secretaries with other federal agencies to investigate the country’s reliance on critical minerals from adversaries and submit a report on the investigation within 60 days.

The report should “recommend executive action, which may include the imposition of tariffs or quotas, other import restrictions against China and other non-market foreign adversaries whose economic practices threaten to undermine the health, growth, and resiliency of the United States, or other appropriate action, consistent with applicable law,” the document reads.

The secretary of the State Department should hand over to the executive branch a report that details planned and existing initiatives and policy options to establish resilient critical mineral supply chains, reduce the country’s vulnerability to the disruption of those supply chains and promote responsible minerals sourcing, business practices and labor.

The policy also calls for the secretary of the Department of Energy (DOE) to come up with guidance “clarifying the extent to which projects that support domestic supply chains for minerals are eligible for loan guarantees pursuant to Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005."

Cynthia Mendoza, chief architect at the intelligence community, said the reference architecture framework (RAF) seeks to be a “cradle to grave” model that could enable IC to implement information technology programs through standard integration and business approaches, Federal News Network reported Thursday.

“Today, the RAF has advanced interoperability and safeguarding in three foundational areas. I like to call these the bedrock: Collaboration services, identity, credential and access management and the data reference architecture,” Mendoza said on the network’s Ask the CIO. 

“These foundational architectures provide collaboration capabilities and tools across our community shared space. The RAF success in the IC has been promulgated globally to the Five Eyes enterprise with our international partners as well.”

She cited the importance of building trust across the community’s IT enterprise and described RAF as a people process.

“It begins with developing a stakeholder engagement strategy that is inclusive of all the key enterprise stakeholders and together we focus on a gap,” she said of the framework.