An additive manufacturing facility at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center-Division Keyport in Washington has remained operational during the COVID-19 pandemic and created personal protective equipment for local civilian medical workers.

NUWC Keyport said Friday its rapid prototyping team used the 3D printing process in efforts to accelerate the development and production of PPE as well as ship and submarine components.

"Each day the team is able to prototype new designs, develop new manufacturing processes, and deliver PPE hardware," said Bryce Weber, division technology manager at NUWC Keyport's rapid prototyping and fabrication technology division.

Weber added that the work center offers a lot of space between additive manufacturing printers, allowing workers to practice social distancing, and requires team communication to ensure compliance with cleaning protocols.

Michael Brown, director of the Defense Innovation Unit, said focusing more on stock prices and quarterly earnings than research and development could result in the U.S. losing its technological edge over China, FCW reported Friday.

"You're never going to win in a technology race with defense,” Brown said Friday at a Brookings Institution virtual event. “What do we do to reform our business thinking and our capital markets to move away from short-term thinking to be more long-term oriented.”

He said the U.S. government should provide incentives to U.S. firms to encourage them to focus on R&D efforts and long-term investments and such incentives could be in the form of tax advantages.

Suzette Kent, federal chief information officer and a 2020 Wash100 Award recipient, told Federal News Network in an interview published Friday that the designation of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) as a center for cyber shared services recognizes DHS’ role in overseeing the marketplace for new security offerings.

“It formalizes their role to ensure that the products and services that we use across the entire federal government in this space not only meet standards, but they are part of a customer-centric dialogue,” Kent told the network’s Ask the CIO program. “So it’s important for both clarity and pace. We expect we will be able to bring new services to the marketplace faster and have more visibility to meeting standards.”

The move is part of the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) updated shared services strategy, which directs the government to come up with interagency standards and priorities for shared services and designate agencies to serve as quality service management offices.

DHS will start offering vulnerability management standardization, security operations center standardization, domain name service resolver service as a QSMO. Kent said the QSMO could help agencies gain access to industry or federal shared services or implement tools that could help them comply with the standards.

“This construct will actually help ensure when we do offer something in the marketplace, it has been fully vetted against those standards and agencies can move quickly and with confidence for that reason,” she added.

The National Space Council, an office handling space-related policy, is talking with various agencies on policy to mitigate orbital debris, Space News reported Thursday.

This engagement responds to the Federal Communications Commission's proposal of requirements that include large fees satellite operators would have to pay for potential damages and failure to appropriately dispose of decommissioned satellites.

FCC now considers putting off and reviewing majority of these proposed regulations.

Michael O’Rielly, FCC commissioner, said in an April 23 meeting that U.S. regulations must not impose more expenses compared to those of other countries.

Scott Pace, the space council's executive secretary, said he accepts FCC's move to reconsider the regulations of concern.

“I think the commission is interested in trying to make sure that we don’t place undue burdens, but that at the same time we provide incentives for ensuring that the space environment remains sustainable for the long term,” Pace stated.

The Department of Labor (DoL) will begin to search for partnerships within industry to address challenges in processing unemployment benefits amid the current health crisis, the department reported Thursday.

Gundeep Ahluwalia, chief information officer (CIO) of the DoL, told the publication in an interview that Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia is working to establish a “response team” that will manage the department’s systems that may be overwhelmed during the pandemic.

Ahluwalia added that his office is working with the U.S. Digital Services as well as Federal CIO and 2020 Wash100 Award winner Suzette Kent in efforts to provide support to states in need of assistance with their unemployment systems.

The DoL is developing a plan to ensure that systems are "more organized over the next few years," Ahluwalia stated. The DoL’s systems, which are designed to handle over 200 claims per week, are now processing up to 1,200 claims every half hour, according to Ahluwalia.

“We built a network of vendors,” Ahluwalia said. “So can IBM come in? Can we bring in KPMG? Can we interact with Microsoft, Amazon Web Services? All these partners who have wonderful relationships not only at the federal level but also with the states. We tried to bring all of them together to help out.”