The U.S. Marshals Service launched a project focused on using software to identify needs for correction in agency procedures, Federal News Netowrk reported Friday. Donald Washington, director of the Marshals Service, told attendees at a Department of Justice event that software developers will team with operational personnel to map out agency operations and pinpoint inefficiencies as part of the “capture project”. 

Washington noted that the project comes as part of efforts to implement new ideas to organizational procedures and “determine how best to run the agency going forward.” The Marshals Service is also working on other personnel expansion initiatives such as adding more classes to its academy to speed up the entry of trainees into the workforce.

A joint report by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the General Services Administration shows that the number of federal agency-backed prize competitions listed on Challenge.gov has increased from 744 to 875 since the 2016 study, FCW reported Friday. 

The challenges authorized under the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 have led to the emergence of startups and offered agencies a mass of examples to launch their own initiatives, according to the report. OSTP Director Kelvin Droegemeier said Friday at GSA’s Open Innovation Summit freeing up data is “foundational” to federally sponsored competitions and data science that CitizenScience.gov and Challenge.gov present.

Jennifer Shieh, assistant director of entrepreneurship at OSTP, said the report marks the first time to assess crowdsourcing activities. The study includes data on 86 crowdsourcing and citizen science efforts reported by 14 federal agencies. Droegemeier said citizen science and crowdsourcing initiatives that leverage government data are instrumental in driving tech research and development. 

The Department of Defense intends to implement new cybersecurity standards for government contractors by January 2020, FedScoop reported Friday.

DoD will work with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute to develop the proposed standards – Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification.

The department will tap third-party companies to assess the contractors’ compliance with the standards and establish a cyber education and training center. The proposed five-level standards will merge the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s cyber guidance with industry and academic organizations’ recommendations.

Once implemented, the level of cybersecurity will be specified on all solicitations for contracts.

Katie Arrington, special assistant to the assistant secretary of defense acquisition for cyber, announced the proposed standards on Thursday during a Professional Services Council conference and called on the industry to collaborate with the government to ensure data security.

President Trump signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to assess the functions of advisory committees established under the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The administration aims to remove at least one third of existing committees across the government, according to the directive issued Friday. 

Agencies should evaluate each committee based on accomplished objectives, current primary functions and cost of operations. The Office of Management and Budget will oversee the evaluation. The order requires OMB to collect plans from agency leaders on their committees by Aug. 1 and to submit a recommendation to White House in September.

Agencies can request a waiver from OMB to retain certain advisory committees. The director of OMB should grant a waiver if a committee appears necessary to support essential services, for program delivery or based on public requirements. Trump wants to retain not more than 350 advisory committees. 

Federal information technology officials said that agencies should promote small progress in their cloud initiatives to encourage larger adoption of the technology, Nextgov reported Thursday.  During the Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit in Washington, panelists highlighted that confidence and trust would play a significant role in how agency leaders utilize the cloud. 

“Right away start trying to get early wins on the board,” said David Catanoso, director of Veterans Affairs Enterprise Cloud Solutions Office. “Try to go out and identify low hanging fruit or high-value things that you can migrate to demonstrate that capability and build on that—that’s key.”

Catanoso oversees VA’s apps migration to the AWS GovCloud. He cited that recent progress at the agency helped encourage other officials to consider learning and working with the cloud. “As we demonstrated that it would work, we started to build credibility and momentum and confidence that ‘you know what, we can actually do this as a team,” Catanoso said. 

Stephanie Shutt, director of the Multiple Award Schedules program management office at the General Services Administration, said GSA is set to release a request for information on a plan to reduce the special item numbers by the end of June as it works to implement a unified schedule contract, FCW reported Thursday.

Shutt said the agency asked the acquisition centers to assess their SINs for consolidation opportunities in order to address duplication. GSA issued on Friday, June 7, an RFI for the proposed schedule consolidation and expects to have a unified contract in place by Oct. 1.

“There won’t be any surprises,” she said of the consolidated schedule at a Professional Services Council conference Thursday. “You’re not going to see anything new. No new terms and conditions.”

GSA announced plans to combine 24 schedules into a single procurement vehicle to simplify the buying process for client agencies in November.Â