Sen. Joe Manchin unveiled a bipartisan legislation to create water and energy usage standards for federal government buildings. The Federal Energy and Water Management Performance Act will formally establish the Federal Energy Management Program, an initiative to validate low-cost approaches in saving energy and water resources through partnerships with public and private sector organizations, the Department of Energy said Friday.

“With forty percent of our nation’s energy consumption attributed to buildings, and the federal government being the largest energy consumer in the nation, its common sense to authorize the Federal Energy Management Program at the Department of Energy to help our federal agencies operate in a more energy efficient manner,” said Manchin. 

Additionally, the bill hopes to help federal buildings reduce 54 percent in water usage and 2.5 percent annually in energy usage by the end of 2030. Manchin co-authored the bill with Sens. Rob Portman, Jeanne Shaheen, Lisa Murkowski, Cory Gardner and Mazie Hirono.

The Federal Aviation Administration intends to modify regulations on the attainment of permission for supersonic flight tests in a proposed rulemaking. Dan Elwell, acting administrator at FAA, said in a statement published Monday that the agency will establish an updated process and provide information to companies in securing approval for flight demonstrations. 

The agency noted it has partnered with the Department of Transportation to propose new policies in noise certification and special flight authorization for supersonic aircraft units. In addition, the proposed rules will not override existing regulations that prohibit flight speeds beyond Mach 1.

“The U.S. Department of Transportation and the FAA are committed toward the safe and environmentally-sound research and development of supersonic aircraft,” said Elwell.

The U.S. Army wants to explore “surgical” attacks as a new approach to demonstrating its electronic warfare capabilities, C4ISRNet reported Monday. Officials said it would make the service less detectable in the field unlike traditional EW strategies. 

The service is attempting to avoid the same attack launched by Russia against Ukraine, which used high-powered electronic jamming tools. Officials said the technology could expose the operation to the “entire world.” 

“We’re looking for much more discrete ways of conducting electronic attack,” said Col. Mark Dotson, capabilities manager for electronic warfare at the Army. “Using low power to affect the signal and to affect it in such a way that it may not even be detectable that you’re interfering with what they’re doing.”

Surgical attacks involve misleading adversaries by creating an image on their radar or targeting the command and control links of unmanned aerial systems. Dotson made the remarks after the Cyber Quest technology experiment at Fort Gordon in Georgia, where the Army tested technologies and concepts from industry.

The event focused on testing a new integrated electronic warfare and signals intelligence system and identifying other platforms that the service may acquire for its multi-domain task force.

The U.S. Air Force is planning to acquire XQ-58A Valkyrie unmanned aircraft from Kratos Defense and Security Solutions to conduct further drone prototyping and experimentation activities, Defense News reported Monday. 

Will Roper, the Air Force’s assistant secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics and 2019 Wash100 Award recipient, said at the Paris Air Show the service seeks funds to purchase around 20 to 30 of the unmanned aerial systems through a rapid procurement process. Kratos is working with the Air Force Research Laboratory to develop Valkyrie as part of the Low Cost Attritable Strike Demonstrator program focused on allowing teaming operations between manned and unmanned aircraft.

The Air Force also wants to integrate artificial intelligence as well as sensors and other weaponry into Valkyrie that will allow the UAS to autonomously respond to threats. The service plans to issue a decision on the Valkyrie development program by fiscal 2021 ahead of production and fielding operations. 

The Defense Information Systems Agency’s contracting arm will reduce the fee it charges to clients for enterprise procurement services by start of fiscal year 2020. DISA said Monday that the Defense Information Technology Contracting Organization will implement a 2.25 percent contracting fee for IT and telecommunication services starting Oct. 1, down from 2.5 percent. Fees for enterprise license agreements will remain at a rate of .25 percent.

“As a working capital fund organization, DITCO is required to charge its customers a fee to recover costs associated with their operating and capital budget activity,” said Angela Rule, defense working capital fund accounting operations chief at DISA. “These costs include all labor, non-labor, general, and administrative overhead costs.”

DITCO is a contracting organization providing IT, satellite bandwidth, telecommunications, combat support computing and enterprise procurement services to the Department of Defense and other non-DoD organizations.

The Department of Veterans Affairs’ Office of the Inspector General released results of an audit on VA’s information technology procurement vehicle. VA OIG said Thursday that it sought to verify the department’s compliance with federal regulations in managing the Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology Next Generation or T4NG contract. In addition, the audit worked to determine whether VA’s Technology Acquisition Center helped contractors meet requirements and awarded orders with respect to policy. 

Awarded in 2016, T4NG is a potential 10-year, $22.3 billion contract for a wide range of IT services including software engineering, cybersecurity and program management from across 28 awardees. VA awarded $9.8 billion in T4NG orders as of December 2018, according to the department’s electronic contract management system.

The audit identified multiple contracting deficiencies within VA’s procurement management and contracting processes for IT tasks and deliveries. Contracting officers did not consistently administer task orders, according to the audit.

VA OIG recommends TAC to list the requirements that contracting officer’s representatives would follow in conducting performance assessments and reviewing the acceptability of deliverables. The inspection office also advises TAC to take various actions in support of policy compliance and financial risk management.

Charles Phalen, director of the National Background Investigations Bureau, said NBIB reduced the security clearance backlog to 424,000, down from 725,000 in April 2018, Federal News Network reported Monday.

The figure represents a drop of 41 percent, or approximately 300,000, in pending investigative cases. Phalen said that decline can be attributed to the bureau’s technology adoption and efforts to hire more investigators. NBIB employed 2,000 more federal and contractor investigators in fiscal year 2018, conducted pilot programs that use robotic process automation and expanded the use of video teleconferencing to facilitate data collection for background investigations.

“Using this kind of technology to be able to reach out in a very rudimentary fashion really gave us the idea that this is something we can really leverage and expand on this,” Phalen said of VTC. “We’ve actually set up virtual hubs with investigators sitting at locations who are able to reach out within an agency or a company to their infrastructure.”

Phalen also discussed the bureau’s efforts to facilitate the security clearance transfer from the Office of Personnel Management to the Department of Defense by Oct. 1.

Shannon Sartin, executive director of digital service at the Department of Health and Human Services, said that expanding information technology may have positive and negative impact on the federal healthcare system, Nextgov reported Monday.

Having too many systems running within HHS could increase challenges to healthcare providers, such as additional administrative tasks, which could lead to impersonal, inefficient and expensive care, Sartin said. However, the director noted expanded IT may also offer benefits. It could give the public an increased control of their health and help doctors focus on treatment.

Sartin cited the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services utilizes IT modernization to serve over 100 million people across the U.S. CMS takes advantage of new healthcare technologies by updating IT infrastructure and making healthcare data accessible. Other modernization offers at HHS include the launch of the Blue Button 2.0 app interface that provides detailed health information on 53 million Medicare recipients. Sartin and her team also unveiled a new platform to accelerate payments to doctors as well as feedback on their services.