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Government Technology/News
Mark Munsell on NGA’s Technology Strategy, Tech Focus Areas
by Jane Edwards
Published on August 28, 2020
Mark Munsell on NGA’s Technology Strategy, Tech Focus Areas

Mark Munsell, chief technology officer at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), said NGA’s two documents on technology focus areas and tech strategy will help the agency address “enduring” analytical and tech challenges, Federal News Network reported Thursday.

“We are looking for industry to take a look at those and propose ideas and technologies that might address those enduring needs,” Munsell said on the network’s Ask the CIO. “We have the technology strategy that focuses on the processes and how we’d like to change. While the tech focus areas focus on the actual what we are looking for, the technology strategy focuses on how we’d like to act, how we’d like to behave and the processes we’d like to change.”

In April, NGA released a document listing data management, advanced analytics and modeling, modern software engineering, artificial intelligence and future of work as its five technology focus areas this year. Munsell said the tech strategy provides information on how NGA wants companies to collaborate with the agency.

“A company may have product that meets the technological need of NGA, but the way they do business, the way they bring that product in and the way NGA adopts it, is really critical,” he said. “We want them to use the cloud. We want them to use DevSecOps. And we want to use product management as a way to manage that instead of the traditional program management.”

Government Technology/News
Space Force Conducts First Article Test for Anti-Jamming Tech
by Matthew Nelson
Published on August 27, 2020
Space Force Conducts First Article Test for Anti-Jamming Tech

The U.S. Space Force concluded the third increment of a first article test (FAT) for an anti-jamming technology designed for the service branch's Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) system. 

The Mitigation and Anti-Jam Enhancement capability underwent adaptive nulling and detection tests and cleared 165 requirements during the FAT. , the U.S. Air Force said Wednesday.

The adaptive nulling test validated MAJE's capacity to suppress interference while the detection test gauged its ability to trace simulated interferers. The team performed the tests virtually for 10 days in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

MAJE is slated to undergo FAT-4 in the fall to test the technology's geolocation feature. USSF will then perform multi-capability and end-to-end trials for the platform as part of FAT-5.

The WGS system is designed to deliver high data rate and long-haul communications capabilities to warfighters, the U.S. State Department, the White House and international partners.

Government Technology/News/Press Releases
Jason Gray on Education Dept’s Cloud Consolidation, Workforce Goals
by Brenda Marie Rivers
Published on August 27, 2020
Jason Gray on Education Dept’s Cloud Consolidation, Workforce Goals

Jason Gray, chief information officer of the Department of Education, said the department is working to consolidate its operations through a multicloud environment while ensuring that personnel have the necessary tech skills. 

Gray told attendees at the SNG Live: Cloud Smart event that the Education Department recently updated more than 700 of its systems as part of a “tech refresh” effort on cybersecurity, processing power and memory functionalities.

He noted that consolidating cloud environments will help the department reduce its information technology footprint while requiring a smaller amount of certified cloud experts.

“For a future state of where we’re going, I would love for it to be simpler because otherwise you’re having to make sure that people get trained on this skillset and on that skillset,” said Gray.

Government Technology/News/Wash100
Reps. Will Hurd, Robin Kelly to Introduce Legislation on AI Research, Ethics
by Brenda Marie Rivers
Published on August 27, 2020
Reps. Will Hurd, Robin Kelly to Introduce Legislation on AI Research, Ethics

Reps. Will Hurd, R-Texas and two-time Wash100 Award winner, and Robin Kelly, D-Ill., plan to introduce legislation focused on driving research into artificial intelligence and its impact on ethics, national security and the workforce, Federal News Network reported Wednesday.

Hurd told attendees at a Bipartisan Policy Center virtual event that the legislation is based on approaches detailed by the Cyberspace Solarium Commission.

He noted that agencies should partner with industry to establish a “cyber National guard” to improve cybersecurity and promote the good use of AI.

Eric Schmidt
Eric Schmidt

Eric Schmidt, chairman of the Congress-mandated National Security Commission on AI, said the U.S. needs to “place some big bets” on AI research over the next five years to stay ahead of adversaries like China.

“There are things that the federal government is the only potential funder of,” he noted. “We need more money, because money does drive the signals around hiring, building organizations, making experiments and so forth.”

Government Technology/News/Potomac Officers Club/Wash100
Bruce Jette on U.S. Army’s Efforts to Address Supply Chain Gaps Amid COVID-19
by Brenda Marie Rivers
Published on August 27, 2020
Bruce Jette on U.S. Army’s Efforts to Address Supply Chain Gaps Amid COVID-19

Bruce Jette, the U.S. Army’s acquisition chief and a 2020 Wash100 awardee, has said the service branch is looking at ways to ensure the resiliency of the supply chain amid crises like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jette, who serves as assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, told National Defense Magazine in an interview published on Wednesday that the Army’s acquisition strategy includes enlisting alternative suppliers and advanced manufacturing concepts.

Jette added that he and Hon. Ellen Lord, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment and a fellow 2020 Wash100 Award winner, collaborated with local authorities as well as contractors to expedite payments, especially to small businesses.

According to Jette, the defense industrial base has experienced over 150 closures since March but the impacts of the pandemic were “not insurmountable.”

“Our top priority has been the health and safety of the workforce whether uniformed or non-uniformed, government or civilian,” he said. “Through the use of working from home we quickly implemented [Microsoft Office 365] Teams as part of how we do business.”

Jette added that the Army is continuing its support and “doing the primary bulk of the contracting” for the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed vaccine development campaign.

Bruce Jette on U.S. Army's Efforts to Address Supply Chain Gaps Amid COVID-19

If you missed Thursday’s event, check out Potomac Officers Club’s Event Archive to watch the 5th Annual 2020 Army Forum, featuring Bruce Jette as the keynote speaker, as well as all recent POC events of 2020. Click here to find all of POC’s recent events.

Cybersecurity/Executive Moves/Government Technology/News
BG Paul Stanton Becomes Deputy Commanding General of Operations for Army Cyber Command
by Sarah Sybert
Published on August 27, 2020
BG Paul Stanton Becomes Deputy Commanding General of Operations for Army Cyber Command

BG Paul Stanton has been appointed to serve as the deputy commanding general of operations for U.S. Army Cyber Command, the Department of Defense (DoD) reported on Thursday. In his new role with Army Cyber Command, Stanton will support the agency’s missions and intitatives under division’s chief, Lt. Gen. Stephen Fogarty.

Fogarty recently outlined the Army Cyber Command’s 10-year plan to focus on multi domain operations and information warfare, including maturing emerging and new units to support tactical commanders on the battlefield.

Stanton currently serves as the deputy director of operations, J-3 at U.S. Cyber Command. He was appointed to the position on October 15, 2018. Stanton is responsible for advising the director of operations and the commander regarding the global and dynamic employment of Cyber Mission Forces and the daily operations of DoD networks.

Prior to his position with the Cyber Command, Stanton commanded the U.S. Army Cyber Protection Brigade, where he was responsible to train, man, equip and employ the Army’s Cyber Protection Teams in the global defense of the nation’s, Army’s and Geographic Combatant Commander’s cyber priorities.

Stanton also helped the unit mature and onboard cloud computing systems such as the Big Data Platform, Unified Platform and planning tools such as Project IKE. BG Stanton was commissioned as a U.S. Army officer in the infantry upon graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from the United States Military Academy in 1995.

In 2012, BG Stanton transitioned to support cyber operations, serving as the Army Cyber Command senior technical advisor. In this capacity, he worked to develop the concept for employing Big Data technologies in support of network operations and cyber defense.

Stanton has also served as the deputy director of the Capabilities Development Group for the U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM), where he led efforts associated with the Unified Platform and data analytics. Stanton transitioned to become a cyber officer (CY17) in 2015.

BG Paul Stanton Becomes Deputy Commanding General of Operations for Army Cyber Command

If you missed the event, check out Potomac Officers Club’s Event Archive to watch the 5th Annual 2020 Army Forum as well as all recent POC events of 2020. Click here to find all of POC’s recent events.

Government Technology/News
AWS Launches io2 for Amazon EBS; Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec, Paul Constantinides Quoted
by Sarah Sybert
Published on August 27, 2020
AWS Launches io2 for Amazon EBS; Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec, Paul Constantinides Quoted

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced the general availability of io2, the next generation Provisioned IOPS SSD volumes for Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), the company reported on Tuesday. 

“Customers rely on highly durable AWS block storage to keep their business-critical applications running at any scale,” said Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec, VP, Block and Object Storage, AWS. “Today, we are excited to announce new high durability io2 volumes, that provide existing customers 100x higher volume durability than io1 at no additional cost.”

AWS’ io2 volume will provide higher volume durability when compared to io1 Amazon EBS volumes, which will reduce storage failures and make data more resilient. The enhancements will provide better application availability. 

“For new customers where five nines of storage durability is critical to migrate on-premises business critical applications to AWS, io2 brings together performance, durability, and agility all in a single EBS volume,” Bukovec added. 

With io2, customers can drive 10x higher input/output operations per second (IOPS) from provisioned storage to improve storage and reduce cost. AWS io2 will support performance-intensive, business critical applications, including ERP, CRM,and online transaction systems. 

AWS io2 will be able to run on databases such as SAP HANA, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2, Apache Cassandra, MySQL and PostreSQL. 

Customers can create new io2 volumes or upgrade existing volumes to io2 volumes using Elastic Volumes, which customers use to modify the volume type without any downtime for applications running on their Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances.

“Our commitment to our core value of customer success includes ensuring Salesforce applications are available whenever our customers need them,” said Paul Constantinides, EVP of Engineering, at Salesforce. “Delivering an always-on experience requires highly reliable storage. With AWS and EBS new io2 volumes designed for five nines durability, we will continue to meet and exceed our customers' expectations.”

About Amazon Web Services

For 14 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AWS offers over 175 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 76 Availability Zones (AZs) within 24 geographic regions, with announced plans for nine more Availability Zones and three more AWS Regions in Indonesia, Japan, and Spain. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs.

Government Technology/News/Press Releases
Unanet Partners with Mesa to Simplify Business Management; Reggie Headrick, Matt Pantana Quoted
by Sarah Sybert
Published on August 27, 2020
Unanet Partners with Mesa to Simplify Business Management; Reggie Headrick, Matt Pantana Quoted

Unanet A/E, the company’s project-based ERP software purpose-built for the architecture and engineering (A/E) sectors, partnered with Mesa Associates under a new agreement to integrate Unanet’s solution across their business, Unanet reported on Thursday.

“The Unanet team took the time to listen and understand our business, and then developed solutions that met our requirements, rather than trying to force a one-size-fits-all solution on us,” said Reggie Headrick, senior vice president of Mesa Associates. “The features Unanet A/E offers, coupled with their outstanding service and support teams, will give us an ERP system that we can rely on to be a single source of truth, accurate and up-to-date.”

Under the agreement, Mesa will be able to simplify its business management and provide enhanced service to its customers. Mesa will gain access to robust reporting and analytics with real-time, interactive insights across the organization through Unanet A/E.

Mesa will also leverage Unanet A/E’s mobile features including time, expense and approvals to gain efficiencies throughout their teams, enabling Mesa to perform on schedule and within budget. Unanet A/E will enable Mesa to transition from disparate systems to advance business operations.

“Mesa is a leader in its field and has delivered some of the best projects in the entire region, primarily due to its strong relationships and care it provides its customers,” said Matt Pantana, SVP of Product for Unanet A/E. “Unanet A/E’s mission to serve customers aligns with Mesa, and both of us are trusted advisors in our respected fields. We’re thrilled to have the honor of working with Mesa.”

About Unanet

Unanet is a leading provider of ERP solutions purpose-built for Government Contractors, A/E, and Professional Services. More than 2,000 project-driven organizations depend on Unanet to turn their information into actionable insights, drive better decision-making, and nurture business growth. For more information, visit www.unanet.com. Follow Unanet at @UnanetTech on Twitter and Unanet-Technologies on LinkedIn.

Contract Awards/Government Technology/News
Battelle Wins Task Order to Support Defense Supply Chain; Tom Bergman Quoted
by Sarah Sybert
Published on August 27, 2020
Battelle Wins Task Order to Support Defense Supply Chain; Tom Bergman Quoted

Battelle has been awarded a $16.6 million task order contract under the Microelectronics and Embedded Systems Assurance (MESA) IDIQ contract vehicle to mitigate risk within the national defense supply chain, the company reported on Thursday. Battelle will serve as a prime contractor and the task order will continue through 2022.

“We’re excited to continue our collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) Sensors Directorate developing innovative trust and assurance solutions to enhance the security and reliability of DoD systems,” said Tom Bergman, cyber program manager at Battelle.

Battelle will leverage its expertise in cyber hardware trust and assurance to develop and validate quantifiable assurance tools and approaches to reduce the threat of counterfeit and untrustworthy integrated circuits and embedded systems within the military’s supply chain. 

Under the task order, Battelle will develop and validate techniques for quantifiable assurance of microelectronics devices and systems to accelerate technical activity for the customer, including new lines of effort supporting verification and validation tool development and demonstration.

The contract builds on Battelle’s experience in conducting basic and applied research on technologies designed to address the threat of counterfeit microelectronics and integrated circuits, as well as untrusted fabrication of critical microelectronics. 

All modern defense weapon systems are inherently reliant on microelectronic devices and embedded systems for their operation. Threats to the integrity of these components could result in significant harm to operations, people and systems.

About Battelle

Every day, the people of Battelle apply science and technology to solving what matters most. At major technology centers and national laboratories around the world, Battelle conducts research and development, designs and manufactures products, and delivers critical services for government and commercial customers. 

Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio since its founding in 1929, Battelle serves the national security, health and life sciences, and energy and environmental industries.

Contract Awards/Government Technology/News/Press Releases
STS Partners with Google to Enhance US Navy Modernization; Mike Daniels, Aaron Kilinski Quoted
by Sarah Sybert
Published on August 27, 2020
STS Partners with Google to Enhance US Navy Modernization; Mike Daniels, Aaron Kilinski Quoted

Google Cloud and Simple Technology Solutions (STS) will work with the U.S. Navy to modernize the maintenance and repairs inspection process for Navy vessels and facilities, STS reported on Thursday.

“The manual inspection of Navy ships and vessels is a time-intensive, costly process that can drive up costs and slow down deployment,” said Mike Daniels, vice president of Global Public Sector for Google Cloud. “We’re proud to work with the U.S. Navy and empower them with Google Cloud technology to transform corrosion inspections for greater efficiency and safety.”

The work was awarded to STS as a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project due to the technology innovation and potential for commercialization. Under the agreement, STS will leverage Google Cloud artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies on inspection drone-captured images to detect, prioritize and predict maintenance requirements.

“We selected Google Cloud AutoML because it allows our engineers to train and test high-quality models quickly. Google Cloud provides an unrivaled degree of specification to meet tough business objectives in compliance with FedRAMP High,” said Aaron Kilinski, chief technology officer for STS.

Under the project, STS will train Google Cloud AI and ML models on images to identify corrosion as part of the first phase with the Navy. Using imagery and Google AI/ML technologies, STS will reduce the labor and safety risk associated with maintenance inspections.

STS will utilize public domain and inspection drone images to build a high-quality AI/ML model using Google Cloud AutoML, which has enabled organizations to build custom vision models. The company will collaborate with the U.S. Navy corrosion subject matter experts to train data using Google Cloud’s AI Platform Data Labeling Service.

In addition, STS will iteratively train and validate the model using custom inspection drone flight data, which will be uploaded using Google Cloud Storage for processing. The models will continually improve and update themselves based on the newly ingested data.

“The initial goal for Phase I is to build a model that detects corrosion in drone images with a very high degree of accuracy. The ultimate goal, however, is to move from detection to prediction by expanding the subjects and sensors, and eventually integrating with Navy systems,” Kilinski added.

STS Partners with Google to Enhance US Navy Modernization; Mike Daniels, Aaron Kilinski Quoted

Potomac Officers Club will host its 2020 Navy Forum on September 30th. Click here to register for the event. James Geurts, Assistant Secretary for Research, Development, and Acquisition with the U.S. Navy and 2020 Wash100 Award recipient will serve as a keynote speaker during the event.

Geurts will discuss how the U.S. Navy has continually worked to decentralize, differentialize and digitize the service branch’s work as well as develop its talent in the field.

The Navy has also accelerated acquisition channels, modernized emerging technologies and increased research and development to become more effective in warfare. As the Navy continues to evolve to meet the growing demands, challenges still remain.

Join Potomac Officers Club’s 2020 Navy Forum to hear notable industry and federal leaders discuss the initiatives, efficiencies and challenges the service branch faces as well as how to join together to improve the future of warfare. Click here to register for the 2020 Navy Forum.

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