Some federal agencies are seeing changes in job functions and starting to recognize the need for its workforce to acquire new skill sets as the government advances the use of data to support missions, Federal Times reported Monday. 

Kris Rowley, chief data officer at the General Services Administration, said sharing data analysis on a common platform by GSA’s data professionals is a “good disruptive mentality,” which could cause agencies to reassess the role of managers and need for data literacy among staff.

“What we really need them to do now is look at what are the types of algorithms and methodologies being applied to this data … what types of prediction is it showing, and with your years of experience, is there anything missing from this type of analysis and recommendation? This is a different work stream for the manager level and we’re starting to see this evolve now,” he said Monday at the Professional Services Council Tech Trends conference.

Margaret Weichert, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, discussed the need for training and reskilling programs to advance the government’s digital modernization effort.

The U.S. Army invites university students to submit concepts on unmanned aerial vehicles for a chance to win up to $35K, Army Times reported Friday.

Wichita State University organizes the C3 Converge/Collaborate/Create Challenge that allows college and graduate students to pitch Army UAV ideas to defense and industry experts.

Steve Cyrus, manager of technology collaborations at the university’s FirePoint Innovations Center, said the C3 program aims to build the next generation of technology makers for the Army, and to foster collaboration between the service branch and universities.

Interested students from any U.S. university may submit applications through Oct. 18.

Ryan Cote, chief information officer at the Department of Transportation, has said that the department has a three-year plan to modernize its IT processes, Federal News Network reported Friday.

According to Cote, “safety, infrastructure and technology innovation” are the three key factors in the undertaking. In the end, the plan aims to have the office of the CIO handle the department’s projects, instead of those responsibilities being divided between several different officers.

Starting with the most important ones, systems will undergo a cybersecurity evaluation, and those found lacking will be replaced. In addition, the currently 60 government grant platforms will be consolidated into a single platform.

“There are 100 more things like that, that we need to do,” said Cote.

The Defense Innovation Unit is in talks with the U.S. Navy to implement the use of predictive maintenance in the service branch, FCW reported Friday.

Mike Madsen, director of strategic engagement at DIU, said at a recent industry event that the unit and U.S. are planning to award a contract on predictive maintenance within fiscal year 2020.

DIU is looking streamline its approach to transition technologies, such as predictive maintenance, into fully approved programs of record, he said Thursday at the Dell Technologies Forum on Real Transformation.

Predictive maintenance is an approach that uses artificial intelligence to determine and manage repair schedules.

The Navy’s use of predictive maintenance would follow the U.S. Air Force’s and U.S. Army’s adoption of this AI-driven approach.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy has allocated a total of $110M in federal funding to aid various research and development projects focused on carbon capture, utilization and storage. 

DOE said Friday it selected 13 projects to receive approximately $75M through two funding opportunity announcements issued earlier this year and approved roughly $35M for cost-shared R&D projects under a new FOA. 

Projects selected under the first FOA will support front-end engineering design studies for commercial-scale carbon capture systems on coal and natural gas power plants, while the second initiative will help accelerate CCUS deployment.

DOE said the third FOA aims to bolster wide-scale deployment of CCUS technologies by performing carbon capture assessment and storage site characterization. 

“CCUS technologies are vital to ensuring the U.S. can continue to safely use our vast fossil energy resources, and we are proud to be a global leader in this field,” said Energy Secretary Rick Perry.

The National Energy Technology Laboratory will manage the selected projects.

Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, director at Joint Artificial Intelligence Center and 2019 Wash100 Award winner, spoke about the use of commercial artificial intelligence technology, C4ISRNET reported Friday. 

He cited the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regimen’s plan to use AI in predicting future maintenance requirements of their H60 aircraft. Based on the regiment’s needs, JAIC developed its first analytics model of a possible “failure mode,” which they sent to the 160th SOAR in March.

JAIC is also in the process of developing an AI-developed model for predicting fires for use in emergency response applications. Road blockages and floods are also on its list of possible situations to which such models can be applied.

According to Lt. Gen. Shanahan, he has “not seen in any case yet [where] you just take a commercial capability and immediately apply it to a military problem,” he said. “You might have a narrow solution to a narrow slice of an overall problem, but what we’re interested in doing is understand how does it fit into DoD systems, DoD workflows.”

When asked about the future, Lt. Gen. Shanahan replied, “We just started on cyber. We’ve got three lines of effort, but we expect to expand that very quickly based on requirements from Cyber Command and others.”

Gen. David Goldfein, U.S. Air Force chief of staff, said the U.S. military must shift its hardware-focused purchasing approach to one that emphasizes more on software, he wrote in a commentary posted Friday on Defense News.

Goldfein noted the importance of software in connecting mission systems across land, sea, air, space and cyber domains in the modern, multidomain battlefield. Multidomain operations rely on software systems that integrate data and support decision-making efforts of commanders, he said.

The general also stated that commanders would need fortified versions of navigational mobile apps, such as Google Maps, to gain real-time information about enemy locations across multiple domains. The U.S. military would offer American industry the opportunity to aid in creating a network and multiple software that would link multidomain weapons together in one integrated system.