Amid U.S. Navy Secretary and 2019 Wash100 Award recipient Richard Spencer’s call to reinforce the capabilities of the service branch, the Naval Supply Systems Command plans to update its business practices to address supply chain gaps. NAVSUP will foster relationships with partners through the use of key performance indicators and executive forums to share information on supply chain concerns and develop strategic efforts through the Strategic Supplier Relationship Management program, the Navy said Friday.

“Through more proactive and collaborative sharing of information, bottlenecks and vulnerabilities can be avoided,” said Karen Fenstermacher, executive for strategic initiatives at NAVSUP.

In addition, the command utilized qualitative and quantitative methods to validate potential partners including Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin.

Cheri Caddy of the NSA, Keith Nakasone of GSA, Daniel Kroese of DHS’ NRMC, Don Davidson of Synopsys and Tina Kuhn of Cybercore Technologies will be featured as panelists during Potomac Officers Club’s 2019 Secure Supply Chain Forum on July 18th with Jill Singer of AT&T, 2019 Wash100 Award recipient, serving as the panel’s moderator. Kristen Baldwin of DoD will serve as the keynote speaker for the forum as well.

Don’t miss out on Potomac Officers Club’s 2019 Secure Supply Chain Forum on July 18th. Register now for the forum right here.

The Office of Management and Budget released a memo on Wednesday calling on agencies to implement phase one of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018. OMB urges agencies to deploy a four-step approach to implementing the Evidence Act which “mandates a systematic rethinking of government data management to better facilitate access for evidence-building activities and public consumption.”

As part of the four-step plan, agencies must be able to regularly develop learning agendas, promote open data access and management, foster access to such data for statistical applications and conduct program evaluations to meet the Evidence Act’s requirements for ongoing and iterative guidance efforts.

Implementing such practices will enable agencies to transition away from low-value activities and better manage programs while fostering engagement and transparency, according to OMB. The Evidence Act was signed into law on January 14 of this year.

Congress members are expressing growing interest to address the risks of foreign cyber attacks against the U.S. electric grid, The Hill reported Sunday. Lawmakers’ interest on the issue has been growing in response to infrastructure-related cyber attacks from Iran and cited threats from China and Russia, the report noted.

“We know our enemies are rapidly developing new techniques to compromise and attack our grid, so it is vitally important that the federal government and the electric industry remain vigilant in ensuring the grid is secure,” Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said in a hearing. He chairs the House Energy and Commerce.

Karen Evans, assistant secretary of the Department of Energy’s cybersecurity focused office, cited a national intelligence report that Russia is studying the U.S. critical infrastructure for potential openings. “The frequency, scale and sophistication of cyber threats continue to increase,” Evans said.

President Trump issued an executive order directing agencies to provide “the maximum assistance permissible” to the Commerce Department to ensure the accuracy of citizenship records relevant to the 2020 decennial census on Thursday. The directive comes after the Supreme Court ruled in Department of Commerce v. New York that the decision to include a citizenship status element in the 2020 decennial census was “substantively invalid”.

According to President Trump, the lack of accurate citizenship data poses problems on establishing annual expenditure plans for public benefits programs such as Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and State Children’s Health Insurance Program in which aliens have limited eligibility.

He noted that the move will provide a more accurate citizenship database than currently available and “has nothing to do with enforcing immigration laws against particular individuals.”

Sens. Ted Cruz, Roger Wicker, Krysten Sinema and Maria Cantwell have collaborated to create a bill to help NASA direct its human spaceflight activities, SpaceNews reported Friday. The unnamed legislation follows a filed Mars exploration bill in 2017 and will support commercial space initiatives for manned Moon missions by 2024.

Sen. Cantwell said that the bill may also address concerns on the usage of a 24-gigahertz band for 5G services. NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration advised that the frequency may interfere satellite measurements of atmospheric water vapor and compromise weather forecasts.

“We have a challenge that we’re trying to help NASA with, which is not to give away spectrum that allows them and NOAA to have the best forecasting information,” said Cantwell.

The Senate also unveiled the One Small Step to Protect Human Heritage in Space Act to protect Apollo 11 and lunar landing sites.

Intelligence officials discussed the threat posed by China to U.S. intellectual property, technology secrets and consumer data during the Defense One Tech Summit , C4ISRNET reported Friday. John Demers, assistant attorney general for national security at the Department of Justice, said China is homing in on IP across artificial intelligence, agriculture, high-speed rail and other technology areas.

“Ninety percent of our espionage cases that [are] the theft of intellectual property or state secrets on behalf of the state itself involve China,” said Demers. “If you want to know where they’re looking, look at the main China 2025 plan. If your company has technology that falls into any of those areas of advanced technology … then you have a risk.”

William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, also discussed China’s efforts to steal data and its potential risks to the U.S. as the latter advances the 5G network technology and AI capabilities.

“If we’re developing AI here in the U.S., we have to find data sharing agreements to test a lot of these algorithms. The People’s Republic of China does not have to do that because they have petabytes upon petabytes upon petabytes of stolen data … that they can use,” said Evanina.