The Department of Energy (DOE) has launched a solicitation for projects to mature and commercialize technologies under the DOE fiscal 2021 Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF). DOE said Wednesday its TCF program aims to further develop laboratory-made energy technologies then eventually transition them into the commercial sector.

The opportunity is open to DOE laboratories and organizations interested in partnering with commercial companies for the technology transition effort.

“We are always looking for new and updated models to streamline the tech-to-market process, and we’ve found that when both partners have some skin in the game, the outcomes can be truly incredible,” said Conner Prochaska, chief commercialization officer at DOE.

Interested parties may submit applications through Dec. 15. The department plans to announce selections in spring of next year.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has commenced an effort to update a weather forecasting system used by the National Weather Service (NWS).

NOAA said Wednesday its Global Ensemble Forecast System now features a Finite-Volume Cubed-Sphere or FV3 core that increases individual forecast input from 21 to 31 and boosts resolution, allowing for more accurate, detailed forecasts.

The agency also plans to boost the system's forecast length to 35 days, a difference of over twice the original number.

GEFS' new update allows NWS to provide numerical weather forecasts up to four weeks earlier. The service uses GEFS to forecast on hurricanes, extreme temperature changes and other significant weather events.

“This significant upgrade to GEFS – the first of its kind in five years – will improve probabilistic weather model guidance for public safety, quality of life and business decisions that drive U.S. economic growth,” said Neil Jacobs who serves as NOAA's administrator on an acting basis.

SAP SE has announced that Terumo Americas Holding (TAH) has integrated SAP S/4HANA and several other solutions across multiple sites, as part of a digital transformation initiative to assist with healthcare operations.

"SAP S/4HANA is the foundation of our company's digital transformation and part of our overall strategy and commitment to better serve our customers across the globe," said Hiroshi Nagumo, president and CEO of TAH. "Integrating vital business processes on one common platform means greater efficiencies, allowing us to continue bringing physicians and their patients the highest quality products and services as we grow."

TAH implemented has SAP offerings including SAP S/4HANA, the SAP Master Data Governance application, SAP Ariba solutions, the SAP Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain solution, the SAP Extended Warehouse Management application, SAP SuccessFactors solutions and SAP Concur solutions running on SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud. 

SAP HANA is a high-performance in-memory database that accelerates data-driven, real-time decision-making and actions and supports all workloads with the broadest advanced analytics on multi-model data, on premise and in the cloud.

The database management system has helped companies develop intelligent and live solutions for quick decision-making on a single data copy. With advanced analytics, the software can support next-generation transactional processing.

The adoption will support future growth as part of Terumo's global IT initiative. TAH has combined remote and socially distanced in-person activities, since leveraging SAP’s offerings.  TAH's implementation was required to meet the industry's stringent regulatory compliance mandates.

With SAP, TAH will gain greater efficiency and a scalable order-to-delivery process. The company's healthcare customers have improved visibility into their orders, from initial acknowledgement through tracking notifications and delivery. TAH can also virtually manage its in-hospital product inventories more effectively, ensuring customers receive devices when needed.

"SAP is a great partner for our digital journey, effectively collaborating with our teams and other important partners to bring our business into a single source of truth," said Rick Larrieu, vice president of Global IT Applications and Infrastructure at TAH. "With these investments, we can better serve our customers and their patients, while increasing our operational efficiency."

Unanet has reported significant customer growth in the first-half of the year due to investments in new software enhancements for its government contractor (GovCon) and architecture and engineering (A/E) customer bases, increased brand awareness and the company's commitment to industry-leading customer support.

"When we go head-to-head with the biggest names in ERP, we win the vast majority of the time because of our commitment to customers, our superior product, and our knowledgeable staff," said Craig Halliday, CEO of Unanet. "We continue to delight them with enhancements to our purpose-built software, and more importantly, a commitment to our people-first customer service."

Unanet has expanded its customers by 56 percent over the previous quarter, and has won major awards, such as A/E firm Mesa Associates. Unanet has also been recognized as a high performer in dozens of categories for its A/E and GovCon solutions in G2's Fall Report 2020. 

In 2020, Unanet has made significant investments in its marquee product lines, including analytics tools for its GovCon customers that seamlessly integrate into existing ERP data for predictive modeling, specialized reporting and better clarity on how to manage resources including cash flow, revenue and costs.

The company has also acquired Clearview Software, which has been integrated into Unanet's product suite. With the purchase, Unanet has expanded CRM to help customers improve sales tracking and nurture their customer relationships, while managing job costs and tracking the entire lifecycle of a project on any device.

In addition, Unanet has hired new executive talent, including a chief product officer, chief customer officer, chief sales officer and chief marketing officer, which has driven Unanet's increased brand awareness, innovation and customer-first approach to the market.

"Our focus on delivering value for our customers is paying off, and we have every reason to believe our customers will reward us with continued growth through the rest of the year, allowing us to welcome even more new customers to our family," continued Halliday.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is recommending for the Department of State to involve more agencies in the development of a new bureau focused on emerging technologies and cybersecurity.

The State Department informed Congress of its intent to create the Bureau of Cyberspace Security and Emerging Technologies (CSET) in 2019 to better address foreign threats to the critical infrastructure and trade operations of the U.S. and its allies, GAO said in a report published Tuesday.

CSET is also meant to streamline international cyber policy resources while promoting government coordination, the watchdog noted. According to GAO, representatives from six agencies that coordinate with the State Department on cyber diplomacy issues reported that the department “did not inform or involve them” in the planning process for CSET.

The watchdog said that the State Department must obtain the views of these six agencies to better identify risks in the establishment of CSET. 

“Without involving and communicating with agency partners on its reorganization plan, State lacks assurance that it will effectively achieve its goals for establishing CSET, and it increases the risk of negative effects from unnecessary fragmentation, overlap, and duplication of cyber diplomacy efforts,” the report states.

Federal agencies covered by the report include the departments of Defense, Energy, Homeland Security, Justice, Commerce and the Treasury.

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has created a cloud practice to make informed telework decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to the cloud practice, OPM facilities spent two to three hours a day scraping data on COVID-19 cases from state and federal websites. 

The time it took to scrape data caused delays in consolidating and analyzing data on the COVID-19 pandemic. OPM called upon the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Cloud Adoption Center of Excellence (CoE) to develop a faster solution for the facilities team.

“I really jumped on that with the help of the CoE team because I just thought it was such a great, tangible use case to drive business value,” said Akanksha Sharma, senior advisor to OPM’s chief information officer (CIO). “So within three weeks, we were able to create a dashboard for them.”

With the help of GSA, OPM custom-developed an open-source Python application, as opposed to commercial off-the-shelf solution, to expedite development. The dashboard has been displayed using JavaScript and HTML libraries.

To make the dashboard easily accessible, OPM procured a cloud instance, which is currently in the process to be integrated agency-wide. The agency has also planned to configure the instance to enterprise settings. 

OPM has also worked with its cybersecurity team to streamline the authority to operate processes and create a playbook for adding additional apps to the cloud in the future. Since the dashboard only contains publicly available information, OPM will next work with its security and privacy teams to clear Federal Information Security Management Act. 

“The next major step is for us to create a procurement strategy that allows us to actually scale the cloud,” Sharma said. “Since we needed something quickly, I think we did it on a purchase card, so you really can’t put too many high-performing applications on there.”