Some federal information technology leaders are warding off security fears by advancing the use of open-source tools like GitHub in software development, FCW reported Friday.

Yemi Oshinnaiye, deputy chief information officer at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, talked about other people’s skepticism about the security of open-source tools and the challenge of convincing colleagues to advance the use of GitHub.

"It was a fight. It wasn't easy, I think it took about a year and some change, but then we said we're starting to use GitHub," Oshinnaiye said. "Now I have a repository where I'm going to put scripts for infrastructure, scripts for development and scripts for security in one place. Now that's revolutionary. It's very simple, but it's revolutionary."

Ravyn Manuel, a senior application developer and DevOps engineer for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, cited open-source tools’ benefits.

"We're open source for the way we develop, and the Smithsonian actually has a GitHub account … so if your enterprise adopts it, that's like the No. 1 great thing," said Manuel. "And then for the tools, open source is free, so it's really cost effective."

The President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee scheduled an Aug. 12 vote on an upcoming report on the use of software-defined networking and its cybersecurity implications when it comes to protecting 5G networks, Nextgov reported Friday.

Ray Dolan, co-chair of the subcommittee on SDN, said at a teleconference Friday the report’s first draft will be available in April for preliminary feedback.

Josh Steinman, deputy assistant to the president for cybersecurity, and Bradford Willke, acting director of stakeholder engagement and cyber infrastructure resilience at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, were among the administration officials during the call that said SDN would be the primary option to ensure 5G network security.

Anil Cheriyan, director of the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services, said the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program is working to create a liaison to help coordinate with civilian agencies in order to improve understanding of FedRAMP, Federal Times reported Friday.

“Where FedRAMP … works really well in an agency is when there’s dedicated folks in the agency focused on getting through the process,” Cheriyan said Friday at a Center for Cybersecurity Policy and Law event.

Cheriyan said the agency is committed to increasing training by approximately 50 percent this year to help address confusion with regard to the reuse of FedRAMP authorizations.

He noted that there was a 50 percent growth in agency reuse of FedRAMP certifications from fiscal year 2018 to FY 2019 and about 60 new cloud service providers were approved under the program in 2019.

Cheriyan added that FedRAMP has initiated efforts to automate the authorization process to speed up approvals.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has selected an undisclosed company to prototype image scanning technology to support the agency’s efforts to digitize its geospatial mapping data, C4ISRnet reported Thursday.

Christy Monaco, chief ventures officer at the NGA’s Office of Ventures and Innovation, told the publication that it awarded an other transaction agreement to a small business that specializes in scanning technology.

NGA seeks to digitize its datasets including historical film-based images that may be used for the development of predictive analytics and automated target detection capabilities. The agency aims to complete digitization by 2030 before its historical films disintegrate.

According to Monaco, nontraditional acquisition approaches and partnerships with companies that don’t normally work with the government helps NGA drive a culture of innovation. Monaco, who also facilitates staff training on new procurement methods, said she seeks to help the NGA workforce “ better find new ways to think about the intelligence problems that they are working on in an unclassified way”.

NGA maintains over 170 million historical images from as far back as 1935.

NASA tapped five scientists to build automated plant-spacing methods and optimized water and nutrient delivery technologies that will cultivate crops during spaceflight. The scientists employed approaches in engineering and space biology science to create projects that will develop, assess and validate concepts for water and nutrient delivery subsystems, the agency said Friday.

They will also explore and test methods that could modify the spacing between growing crops and allow studies within cramped areas in a spacecraft. NASA will fund the projects through cooperative agreements and will be awarded $1.1 million from fiscal years 2020 to 2021 funds upon their implementation.

Click here to view the list of selected projects.

The U.S. Coast Guard plans to transform the way it manages data and has unveiled a strategy to pursue that goal, National Defense Magazine reported Thursday. The plan, titled the Tech Revolution Road Map, aims to have USCG's information technology updated and tailored for the modern era.

Adm. Karl Schultz, USCG commandant, said the service needs a reliable, integrated information system to support missions. USCG currently employs technology from the 1990s, he added. The strategy highlights goals for the service's decision-making data, collaborative software and cloud tools, cyber readiness and infrastructure for command, control, communications, computers, cyber and intelligence.

“This year we actually got funding in the budget to be able to work on some [command, control, communications, computers/information technology] enhancements,” Master Chief Jason Vanderhaden told National Defense Magazine.

Vanderhaden serves as USCG's senior enlisted member and principal advisor to the commandant. He added that the service will replace a large amount of hardware infrastructure.