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George Jon Selects Datadobi to Provide Standard Data Migration Tool; Jordan McQuown, Carl D’Halluin Quoted
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George Jon Selects Datadobi to Provide Standard Data Migration Tool; Jordan McQuown, Carl D’Halluin Quoted

George Jon Selects Datadobi to Provide Standard Data Migration Tool; Jordan McQuown, Carl D’Halluin Quoted

George Jon has selected Datadobi as its standard data migration tool based on performance, Datadobi announced on Tuesday.

“In searching for best-of-breed migration technology, we evaluated a number of vendors and Datadobi not only provided the most accomplished and powerful set of capabilities, but we have been working very effectively with their team to provide George Jon clients with excellent service,” explained Jordan McQuown, VP of Technology at George Jon. “We look forward to building on the success of projects already completed and building a long-term relationship.”

With the selection, Datadobi will provide faster data transfer rates, simplify use and enable monitor migration activity from a centralized console, saving time for the George Jon team and its customers. Datadobi’s comprehensive reporting capabilities will support George Jon’s ability to simplify file management throughout the migration process.

The George Jon eDiscovery platform will enable scalable, performant and cost-effective discovery, governance and investigation platforms for eDiscovery users worldwide. By taking a highly complicated, mission-critical data discovery program and making it easier, less expensive and faster, Datadobi’s solution will drive bottom-line value and allow users to focus on core business.

The announcement has followed the recent launch of Datadobi DobiMigrate 5.8, which will deliver an enhanced chain of custody that will prove every document, file or electronic object as an exact copy of its counterpart on the source system at the time of cutover, enabling organizations to move or merge unstructured data between platforms.

“George Jon are innovative leaders in their field and it’s a great vote of confidence in Datadobi that they have selected our technology,” said Carl D’Halluin, CTO of Datadobi. “Data migration is a key requirement for many of their clients who need the reliable, fast, and accurate transfer processes we provide as part of their eDiscovery strategy.”

Datadobi has continued to expand its technology offerings, becoming a leader in the technology sector. In addition to its selection by George Jon, the company has been added to the federal government’s list of technology vendors on the Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement vehicle, the company reported in April 2020.

The governmentwide acquisition contract is authorized by the Office of Management and Budget and managed by NASA to guide how the agencies purchase technology offerings. Datadobi’s SEWP-authorized status will enable the company’s entry into the federal information technology market. The program is designed to inform the process for customers to procure IT equipment and services from authorized providers and resellers.

The company designed its software to help users manage the large-scale migrations that come with system refreshes and noted it seeks to help customer agencies to address IT modernization goals.

“Through SEWP, we have the opportunity to make our software available to federal government resellers for consideration of technologies needed for their projects. This strengthens our competitiveness in the federal verticals and makes available to agencies and contractors the Datadobi enterprise-class software they’ll need as they transition to new storage technologies,” said D’Halluin.

About Datadobi

Datadobi, a global leader in data management and storage software solutions, brings order to unstructured storage environments so that the enterprise can realize the value of their expanding universe of data. Their software allows customers to migrate, archive, and protect data while discovering insights and putting them to work for their business. Datadobi takes the pain and risk out of the data storage process, and does it ten times faster than other solutions at the best economic cost point. Founded in 2010, Datadobi is a privately held company headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, New York, and Melbourne.

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AWS Launches Region in Italy to Expand Cloud Global Footprint; Peter DeSantis Quoted
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AWS Launches Region in Italy to Expand Cloud Global Footprint; Peter DeSantis Quoted

AWS Launches Region in Italy to Expand Cloud Global Footprint; Peter DeSantis Quoted

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced the opening of the AWS Europe, Milan Region, marking the sixth AWS Region in Europe alongside Dublin, Frankfurt, London, Paris, and Stockholm, the company reported on Tuesday.

“Cloud technology has been a key part of the transformation of industries across Italy – from automotive and utilities, to manufacturing and retail, and so much more. With the new AWS Milan Region we look forward to supporting even more customers as they grow their organizations and innovate for their users across virtually all industries,” said Peter DeSantis, Senior Vice President of Global Infrastructure and Customer Support, Amazon Web Services.

The developers, startups, and enterprises, as well as government, education and non-profit organizations will be able to run applications and serve end-users from data centers located in Italy and leverage advanced AWS technologies to drive innovation.

The AWS Milan Region has three Availability Zones. Each zone has independent power, cooling and physical security and is connected via redundant, ultra-low-latency networking. AWS customers focused on high availability will be able to design applications and run in multiple Availability Zones to achieve even greater fault-tolerance.

Customers building applications that comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) have access to another secure AWS infrastructure region in the European Union (EU) that meets the highest levels of security, compliance and data protection.

The Milan Region will also add to AWS’s ongoing investment in Italy. AWS first established a presence in the country in 2012, with the launch of an AWS Edge location in Milan, followed by an AWS office in the city in 2014 and Rome in 2016.

The facilities have added significant and growing teams of account managers, business development managers, customer services representatives, partner managers, professional services consultants, solutions architects, technical account managers and more to help customers of all sizes as they move to the cloud.

In addition,  in 2016, AWS acquired Asti-based company NICE Software located in Piedmont. In 2017, an Edge location was opened in Palermo and in 2019, an AWS Direct Connect endpoint launched in Milan, helping customers establish a dedicated network connection from their premises to AWS.

Later in 2019, AWS launched two additional Edge locations in Milan and one in Rome. These investments are in addition to the thousands of permanent jobs and over €4 billion of investment from Amazon, since 2010.

“AWS customers in Italy are among the most creative and innovative organizations that we support anywhere in the world, and we are always inspired by the work they do with our technology,” DeSantis added.

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.

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King County Dept. Natural Resources, Parks, SWD Selects Jacobs to Provide Siting, Architectural, Engineering Services; Ron Williams Quoted
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King County Dept. Natural Resources, Parks, SWD Selects Jacobs to Provide Siting, Architectural, Engineering Services; Ron Williams Quoted

King County Dept. Natural Resources, Parks, SWD Selects Jacobs to Provide Siting, Architectural, Engineering Services; Ron Williams Quoted

Jacobs was selected by the King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks, Solid Waste Division (SWD), through a competitive procurement process, to provide siting, architectural and engineering services, the company announced on Tuesday.

“Siting, designing and constructing a transfer facility is an inherently complex process which must account for operational needs, site constraints and the needs and concerns of the service-area and neighboring communities,” said Jacobs People & Places Solutions Buildings & Infrastructure West Region Senior Vice President Ron Williams.

Jacobs will provide support for a new Recycling and Transfer Station in the northeast part of King County, Washington, including but not limited to the areas in or around the cities of Sammamish, Kirkland, Redmond and Woodinville.

In accordance with the King County Strategic Climate Action Plan and the King County Green Building Ordinance, the planning and design of the new Northeast Recycling and Transfer Station (NERTS) facility will incorporate climate change impacts and sustainable development practices.

Adhering to NERTS, Jacobs will provide practices with a goal of achieving sustainability certifications such as the Living Building Challenge (LBC) or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED).

Jacobs siting process will also include equity and social justice considerations that are responsive to the values and priorities of residents and stakeholders such as taking transit-oriented design into account to facilitate employee commutes and providing project communications that meet the language needs of the community.

King County has provided garbage transfer, disposal and recycling services for approximately 1.3 million residents and 660,000 employees. The solid waste system has served a large unincorporated area and 37 of the 39 cities in King County.

In 2019, the County’s eight transfer stations and two drop boxes received 840,000 tons of garbage. At the transfer facilities, many small loads have been combined into larger loads for transport to the County’s Cedar Hills Regional Landfill. The use of transfer stations has lowered collection costs and reduced overall traffic and associated air pollution, fuel consumption and road wear.

“But that challenge is one that we’re well suited to deliver on, as Jacobs and our teaming partners have developed more than 150 recycling and transfer station facilities throughout the U.S. and globally,” Williams concluded.

In addition to Jacobs work with King Country, the company was selected by the Sacramento County Department of Waste Management and Recycling (DWMR) to provide consulting and design services for a new commercial waste building at the county’s North Area Recovery Station (NARS) in Jan. 2020.

Jacobs will develop critical infrastructure for DWMR to address the waste increase in the greater Sacramento region, and help the department meet requirements of California Senate Bill (SB) 1383, which requires organizations to reduce greenhouse gases and increase organic waste recycling.

The company will also assist DWMR design new commercial waste building while supporting infrastructure. Specifically, Jacobs will develop the geotechnical design of ramps and a trench adjacent to the new facility, a trench drain storm sewer design, and the design of an air filtration system to treat odors from the building.

About Jacobs 

At Jacobs, we’re challenging today to reinvent tomorrow by solving the world’s most critical problems for thriving cities, resilient environments, mission-critical outcomes, operational advancement, scientific discovery and cutting-edge manufacturing, turning abstract ideas into realities that transform the world for good.

With $13 billion in revenue and a talent force of more than 55,000, Jacobs provides a full spectrum of professional services including consulting, technical, scientific and project delivery for the government and private sector.

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Maxar Technologies Secures $20M in Contracts with NGA to Deliver Classification, Detection Services; Tony Frazier Quoted
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Maxar Technologies Secures $20M in Contracts with NGA to Deliver Classification, Detection Services; Tony Frazier Quoted

Maxar Technologies Secures $20M in Contracts with NGA to Deliver Classification, Detection Services; Tony Frazier Quoted

Maxar Technologies has announced that it signed $20 million in contracts with the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to deliver land cover classification and change detection services through a combination of the Janus Geography program and the General Services Administration’s (GSA) IT Schedule 70, the company announced on Tuesday.

“We are proud to be a prime contractor on NGA’s Janus Geography program, demonstrating how industry can deliver innovative solutions that satisfy NGA’s unique needs. As an industry leader in the geospatial community, Maxar has provided world-class commercial GEOINT solutions to NGA since 1999,” said Tony Frazier, Maxar’s four-time Wash100 Award Recipient and Executive Vice President of Global Field Operations.

Under the contracts, Maxar will produce updates and enhancements through the company’s change detection model and deliver land cover and classification solutions in support of NGA’s needs. Automated change detection will visually expose areas of important change and enable effective intelligence gathering across thousands of images from multiple sources.

Maxar will also provide land cover classification to produce a global view of the current landscape by applying machine learning to perform automated spectral, spatial and temporal classification. Land cover will enable a better understanding of how specific regions of Earth are being used on a micro scale.

Janus Geography has provided near real-time access to commercially created geospatial data, enriched content and community-sourced information in a cost-effective manner to improve decision-making timelines.

As a prime contractor, Maxar will lead a team of industry and university partners with proven production capacity and innovation to deliver content management of topographic and human geography data from a variety of sources.

The GSA’s IT Schedule 70 will enable government customers to shorten procurement cycles, ensure compliance and get the best value for over 7.5 million innovative IT solutions from over 4,600 pre-vetted vendors.

“Maxar is constantly evolving our analytic capabilities and GEOINT solutions to empower customers to more quickly ingest intelligence for a breadth of defense and intelligence missions,” added Frazier.

About The Wash100

This year represents our sixth annual Wash100 Award selection. The Wash100 is the premier group of private and public sector leaders selected by Executive Mosaic’s organizational and editorial leadership as the most influential leaders in the GovCon sector. These leaders demonstrate skills in leadership, innovation, achievement, and vision.

Visit the Wash100 site to learn about the other 99 winners of the 2020 Wash100 Award. On the site, you can submit your 10 votes for the GovCon executives of consequence that you believe will have the most significant impact in 2020.

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Laura Stanton Named Acting Assistant Commissioner for GSA’s IT Category
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Laura Stanton Named Acting Assistant Commissioner for GSA’s IT Category
Laura Stanton
Laura Stanton

Laura Stanton, deputy assistant commissioner for the information technology category at the General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service, will serve as acting assistant commissioner of ITC in June, Federal News Network reported Monday.

She will take over the responsibilities of Bill Zielinski, who will step down from his role on June 5 after three decades of federal service to serve as a chief information officer of a large city on the west coast. Prior to GSA, Zielinski held leadership positions at the Office of Management and Budget, Social Security Administration and the Office of Personnel Management.

Stanton has been with GSA for over two decades and has been overseeing category management and e-commerce platform programs. She previously led the development of an acquisition gateway for vendors and agencies.

Vera Ashworth, a vice president at CGI Federal, will join GSA on May 26 to serve as deputy assistant commissioner for ITC. Her government career included time at the Environmental Protection Agency.

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OMB Updates Shared Services Strategy; Suzette Kent Quoted
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OMB Updates Shared Services Strategy; Suzette Kent Quoted
Suzette Kent
Suzette Kent

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has issued a memo that updates the government’s shared services strategy in an effort to enhance service delivery and accountability, reduce duplication and costs and improve customer satisfaction.

The strategy directs the government to come up with interagency standards and priorities for shared services, develop shared governance, centralized capabilities and performance expectations as well as continue to accelerate the adoption of existing quality services, according to the memo.

OMB Acting Director Russell Vought wrote in the document that the office will designate agencies to serve as quality service management offices. QSMOs will have several responsibilities such as overseeing a marketplace of platforms for common services and technology, guiding the long-term sustainability of services and establishing a customer engagement and feedback model.

The strategy requires the General Services Administration’s office of government-wide policy to carry out initial evaluation of QSMO implementation plans and serve as the central office for overseeing the governance process.

“This Memorandum requires agencies to begin planning the new approach for delivery of mission support services by shifting resources to higher value work and reducing duplication across agencies,” Vought wrote in the memo. “Parent agencies of those providing impacted services should conduct human capital planning activities for implementation in the next 24-36 months.”

FedScoop reported that OMB designated the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency as one of the four QSMOs.

“By designating CISA as QSMO for cyber services, the federal government will be able to leverage their expertise, contracts and solutions to offer a robust marketplace of cybersecurity capabilities that will benefit all agencies,” said Suzette Kent, federal chief information officer and a 2020 Wash100 Award recipient.

About The Wash100

This year represents our sixth annual Wash100 Award selection. The Wash100 is the premier group of private and public sector leaders selected by Executive Mosaic’s organizational and editorial leadership as the most influential leaders in the GovCon sector. These leaders demonstrate skills in leadership, innovation, achievement, and vision.

Visit the Wash100 site to learn about the other 99 winners of the 2020 Wash100 Award. On the site, you can submit your 10 votes for the GovCon executives of consequence that you believe will have the most significant impact in 2020.

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Maj. Gen. Michael Guetlein: NRO Seeks to Feed Data Into Joint All-Domain C2 System
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Maj. Gen. Michael Guetlein: NRO Seeks to Feed Data Into Joint All-Domain C2 System
Michael Guetlein
Michael Guetlein

Maj. Gen. Michael Guetlein, deputy director of the National Reconnaissance Office, said the NRO is working on new interface standards to facilitate the flow of data to warfighters through the Department of Defense’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control system, C4ISRNET reported Monday.

“The data that we are collecting and the data that we are processing, we are distributing it more widely than we’ve ever done before, and we are partnering with the standup of JADC2 as well as a couple of other C2 systems to make sure that as those systems come online, our data can seamlessly flow into those C2 systems and be able to make it directly from the sensor to the shooter,” Guetlein said Friday at a Mitchell Institute-hosted webinar.

The Air Force and the Space Force are building JADC2, a data architecture that will allow systems from all service branches to get and integrate data from sensors in support of warfighters’ operations.

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GAO Issues Report on FCC’s Efforts to Improve Electronic Comment Filing System
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GAO Issues Report on FCC’s Efforts to Improve Electronic Comment Filing System

GAO Issues Report on FCC's Efforts to Improve Electronic Comment Filing System

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found that the Federal Communications Commission fully implemented 85 out of 136 recommendations for resolving security deficiencies in the FCC’s platform for processing public comments on proposed rule amendments.

GAO said in a report released Friday that the FCC fully implemented 63 percent of the recommendations for the Electronic Comment Filing System as of November. However, the latter only partially implemented 10 recommendations and is yet to implement the remaining 41.

The watchdog noted that it issued a report to the FCC in September detailing its recommendations for ECFS’s improvement after 22 million public comments disrupted the interface in 2017. Among the vulnerabilities that GAO cited are deficiencies in core security functions as well as detection, response and recovery procedures.

According to GAO, the FCC has since “bolstered the capacity and performance” of ECFS and implemented technical controls and information security programs. FCC is slated to implement GAO’s remaining recommendations by April 2021, the report states.

NIST Launches Registration Portal for ‘CHARIoT’ Public Safety Tech Sprint
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NIST Launches Registration Portal for ‘CHARIoT’ Public Safety Tech Sprint
NIST Launches Registration Portal for 'CHARIoT' Public Safety Tech Sprint

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has opened its registration portal for the augmented reality and internet of things increments of the CHARIoT Challenge.

NIST first announced the effort last week and plans to award over $1 million to participants that can demonstrate AR and IoT technologies for emergency response applications.

According to the challenge’s website, NIST will select up to 15 finalists for the AR increment to receive business acceleration support, in-person training and mentorship opportunities with entities in the public safety community.

Technologies under the AR track may include holographic interfaces and heads-up displays to visualize information for first responders.

Under the IoT track, participants may submit concepts for data streaming based on “smart city” concepts to optimize agency resources and accelerate response time.

Selected participants will showcase their IoT capabilities at the 2020 International Wireless Communications Expo and four finalists will be downselected for the culminating live event.

Interested parties may submit concept papers and mock-up videos until May 6.

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Census Bureau Offers COVID-19 Data Resources
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Census Bureau Offers COVID-19 Data Resources

Census Bureau Offers COVID-19 Data Resources

The U.S. Census Bureau has published a data resource page designed to support organizational decision making amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

CB said Thursday its new resource page features demographic, business and economic information that federal agencies, commercial firms and local communities may use to address the effects of the crisis.

The data hub’s features also allow users to search across dashboards, leverage statistical content for mapping, access detailed mapping data and navigate through categories of census datasets.

The agency consolidated data from the County Business Patterns program and the American Community Survey into the resource page that also provides access to content from the Centers for Disease Control.

Periodical updates of the page will occur as the Census Bureau gathers user feedback and observes changes related to the pandemic. Environmental Systems Research Institute or Esri helped the agency create the data hub.

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