The Government Accountability Office has found that the Department of Energy is yet to develop plans for implementing electric grid security that fully address key factors such as threat actors, vulnerabilities and impacts.

GAO stated in its report that DOE based its risk assessments on outdated models and that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s grid security approval procedures failed to ensure full compliance with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s requirements. FERC’s methodologies also failed to “evaluate the potential risk of a coordinated cyberattack on geographically distributed targets,” GAO noted.

According to the watchdog, DOE’s guidance for resource allocation to mitigate security risks will “likely be limited” until the department provides a complete strategy for grid cybersecurity.

The U.S. Navy has attained an 80 percent mission-capable rate for the service branch’s aviation fleets of F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler aircraft. The Naval Aviation Enterprise worked to implement the Naval Sustainment System-Aviation initiative that allowed the Navy to achieve this goal, the service branch said Tuesday.

James Mattis, former secretary of defense, directed the Navy to reach 80 percent last year when the service branch’s MC rate was at about 50 percent. The NSS-A initiative builds on industry best practices that helped the Navy improve maintenance across aviation squadrons and fleet readiness centers.

Resulting reforms supported Navy aviation in the areas of engineering, policy, safety and supply chain management.

“This is the first year in some time that we have executed our allocation of flight hours completely,” said Rear Adm. Roy Kelley, commander of Naval Air Forces, Atlantic.

The Senate has passed a bill that aims to boost cybersecurity at all levels of government and the commercial sector.

The Department of Homeland Security Cyber Hunt and Incident Response Teams Act would order the establishment of permanent teams to prevent and address cyber threats, the office of Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who introduced the bill, said Wednesday.

The DHS-commissioned teams may also include experts from the private sector for added industrial insight.

Non-federal government entities may request for the teams’ help during the event of a cyber crisis.

“This bipartisan legislation will allow the best minds in cybersecurity to work together to better protect our digital infrastructure and to respond to attacks,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., who co-introduced the bill with Portman.

The bill now awaits approval from the House of Representatives.

Derek Tournear, acting director of the Space Development Agency, said SDA plans to issue before the end of this year broad area announcements to ask potential vendors to compete for technology demonstrations in support of the agency’s plan to develop “layers” of satellites, SpaceNews reported Wednesday.

SDA plans to issue the first BAA for the transport layer or a network of low-Earth orbit satellites designed to provide global communications and another BAA for the tracking layer, which will work to detect hypersonic missiles and other advanced weapon systems.

The agency expects the tracking and transport layers to move into the production phase in 2022 and be operational by 2024.

Tournear said SDA will oversee the deployment of the transport layer and will work with the Missile Defense Agency to develop and field the tracking layer. “Our vision is that MDA will build out the tracking layer in coordination with SDA to make sure it plugs into the overall architecture.”

He noted that the agency will use commercial components for the SDA transport layer, which will be a government-owned platform.

Other layers SDA plans to advance are the deterrence layer for cislunar space monitoring; custody layer for mobile target tracking in the battlefield; a navigation layer that will serve as a GPS alternative for positioning, navigation and timing; and a battle management layer that will transmit data to ground commanders using artificial intelligence.

A new Government Accountability Office center seeks to help lawmakers identify and analyze emerging technological trends and their potential implications in the future, Nextgov reported Wednesday.

James-Christian Blockwood, managing director of GAO’s Office of Strategic Planning and External Liaison, said he expects the new Center for Strategic Foresight can work with other GAO organizations to “provide that full picture of raising awareness, understanding broad trends, how it’s interacting with other trends, the implications, opportunities and challenges.”

“It’s more about convening the right level of expertise and providing a lens of foresight in terms of looking at, ‘What are the implications, challenges, opportunities or other parts of the trend or topic that we want to explore five, 10, 15 years from now,’” he said of the new center.

The Center for Strategic Foresight held its first conference in early September with a focus on deep space and deepfakes and Blockwood said he expects the center to make the conference an annual event to discuss other futuristic concepts.  

According to the report, the center intends to examine other emerging technologies and concepts including quantum computing, 5G, artificial intelligence, genome editing and acellular agriculture.

The General Services Administration has partnered with the Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center through the Centers of Excellence program to help JAIC accelerate AI adoption across DoD and the federal government.

“We are excited that JAIC will be leveraging GSA’s CoE expertise to strategically implement AI within DoD,” GSA Administrator and 2019 Wash100 winner Emily Murphy said in a statement published Wednesday.

JAIC and GSA have started assessing acquisition, strategy and technological challenges related to AI through the CoE initiative’s discovery sprint.

“As GSA builds its AI Center of Excellence, the addition of JAIC as our fifth partner agency helps us drive ongoing technology transformation in the federal marketplace. We’re proud to be seizing the opportunity with our newest partner, enabling AI to bolster the capabilities of today’s warfighter, and build a foundation to reuse our AI expertise to improve citizen experiences across government,” said Anil Cheriyan, director of GSA’s Technology Transformation Services.

Other agencies partnering with GSA to support IT modernization efforts through the CoE model are the departments of Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development, Office of Personnel Management and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.