The Department of Defense is seeking a new budget category under research and development funding to focus on the software acquisition lifecycle, Fedscoop reported Tuesday. Jeff Boleng, special assistant for software acquisition at DoD, said at a Software Engineering Institute event that the Office of Management and Budget has supported the department’s intent to pursue pilot programs under the proposed Budget Activity 8.

Boleng noted that the Pentagon seeks to simplify the budget process while increasing visibility and accountability on the funding process. He added that the pilot projects would involve the entire software acquisition process from development to sustainment and that he encourages enterprise-based programs to avoid conducting repetitive procedures.

DoD plans to issue a legislative proposal by fall ahead of plans to launch pilot efforts in fiscal 2021. Ellen Lord, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment and 2019 Wash100 Award winner, said during a recent press conference that the Pentagon is calling on Congress to “provide explicit and specific authorities” for software acquisition.

The Department of Health and Human Services has awarded two grants tfor projects intending to boost the interoperability of health information technology systems. HHS said Tuesday that it released the awards under the Leading Edge Acceleration Projects in Health Information Technology or LEAP in Health IT program.

Awardees will work to address challenges related to the standardization and development of health IT. The awards’ corresponding solicitation called for projects to revolve around two topics.

The first topic is the implementation of the Health Level 7 international standard’s Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources. The second topic focuses on the development of patient engagement technologies.

San Diego Regional Health Information Exchange, the first awardee, will work to develop software and study policy with regard to community testing, production deployment, pilots, tutorials, population health and consent management.

University of Texas at Austin, the second awardee, will build a patient engagement platform that would support an environment of health care mobile applications.

John Zangardi, chief information officer at the Department of Homeland Security, said DHS believes a multicloud approach would be the best way to advance information technology modernization, Federal News Network reported Tuesday. He said savings on hardware is one of the major factors to consider with cloud technology.

“So our focus right now is within the HQ organization,” Zangardi said on Federal Drive with Tom Temin. “I’m going to start with training, we’ve held two cloud stand-down days, where we’re doing online training. And the initial phase of this is to focus on creating a general understanding of what cloud offers to my workforce.”

He said the second phase will focus on personnel performing the work and the last phase will deal with identifying the certification and training needs of people who will deliver the services.

Zangardi said his office provides standards to help DHS agencies oversee their components through the multicloud approach and that his primary concern is mission accomplishment and data security in the cloud environment. He also discussed the department’s data center consolidation and cloud migration efforts.

The Government Accountability Office released a report on Tuesday stating that the Department of Defense is yet to fully implement a pilot open-source software program as directed by the fiscal 2018 National Defense Authorization Act. Agencies are required by the Office of Management and Budget to establish a pilot program to designate 20 percent of new custom codes as open-source and create metrics for program performance.

GAO noted that DoD hasn’t issued a government-wide policy on using open-source code and has yet to fully conduct software analyses, secure data rights and facilitate the open-source community. In addition, the watchdog said that DoD components were unable to agree on how to manage cybersecurity for open-source activities.

Defense components said that an open-source pilot program would “potentially result in financial benefits and increased efficiency,” according to GAO.

The National Science and Technology Council released a supplemental report to President Trump’s budget request stating that the federal government intends to allocate $1B for nondefense artificial intelligence efforts in fiscal 2020, Nextgov reported Tuesday.

Michael Kratsios, U.S. chief technology officer and a 2019 Wash100 Award winner, told attendees at a Center for Data Innovation event that the report demonstrates the government’s “increased emphasis on AI” and helps inform future investments.

“The U.S. has pushed the boundaries for computational power, we have given our innovators the freedom to thrive, and today we can proudly say America continues to be the leader in artificial intelligence,” he said.

According to Kratsios, such insights on agencies’ future AI efforts will help the government foster partnerships between public, private and academic sectors. The figure stated in the report represents a significant increase from 2016.