An industry advisory committee wants to make changes to NOAA’s proposal to revise regulations for commercial satellite imaging systems. The Advisory Committee on Commercial Remote Sensing argued the agency’s plan may create new burdens for the industry, SpaceNews reported Tuesday. 

NOAA wants to streamline the process to provide licenses for satellite systems to address the growing number of applications. However, ACCRES raised concerns that some of the changes in the process could actually lead to challenges in securing approval. 

The committee held a meeting on Tuesday at the Department of Commerce to discuss NOAA’s proposal. Among the topics at the meeting was the agency’s idea to classify license applicants as either “low-risk” or “high-risk” prior to approval. 

ACCRES said that satellite makers may struggle to achieve a “low-risk” status as majority of commercial systems are high risk. The group also opposed restrictions and conditions for “non-Earth imaging,” which may significantly limit their services and delay responses to anomaly. 

ACCRES plans to conduct another meeting on July 11 to discuss recommended changes to NOAA’s proposal. The agency will accept public comment on the new regulations until July 15.

Sens. John Thune, R-S.D., and Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, are reintroducing legislation to speed up infrastructure assessments for small cell network access ahead of the planned 5G rollout. Thune’s office said in a press release published Monday that the “Streamlining the Rapid Evolution And Modernization of Leading-edge Infrastructure Necessary to Enhance Small Cell Deployment Act” revises the Communications Act of 1934 to include emerging requirements and better address challenges faced by small municipalities with less than 50,000 residents.

The STREAMLINE Small Cell Deployment Act enables applicants to receive action on their equipment collocation requests within 60 days and allows the Federal Communications Commission to issue a 30-day waiver for requests by state and local entities.

“Developing and deploying the next generation of wireless technology will provide more Americans with access to the internet while giving us the chance to continue our global leadership and create millions of new jobs,” Schatz noted.

Thune serves as the chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet. Schatz is as ranking member of the subcommittee.

The Office of Management and Budget and three other agencies released the draft action plan for the Federal Data Strategy to leverage data as a strategic asset. The document consists of 16 steps categorized into shared, community and agency-specific actions needed to implement the strategy.

Shared actions include the establishment of an OMB data council by November, creation of a data science training and credentialing catalog by the General Services Administration by February 2020 and development of a data ethics framework by November 2020.

For community actions, federal agencies should launch efforts to enhance data resources for artificial intelligence-related research and development by February 2020 and improve geospatial data standards by August 2020. The action plan also calls for agency-specific actions such as constituting a data governance body and assessing data and related infrastructure maturity.

Acting OMB Director Russell Vought also issued a memorandum detailing the mission statement, principles and best practices under the Federal Data Strategy. OMB will accept comments on the draft action plan through July 5.

The House Appropriations Committee released a draft bill that allots $35 million for the 2020 Technology Modernization Fund, exhibiting a $10 million boost from 2019’s TMF allotment, Nextgov reported Monday. The proposed amount under the Financial Services and General Government draft bill, however, is below the Trump Administration’s requested budget of $150 million.

Agencies use TMF funds for information technology projects approved by the Technology Modernization Board. The fund began in fiscal year 2018 with an initial allotment of $100 million. The government has used $90M of the funds for projects with multiple agencies and federal components including the departments of Energy and Agriculture.

The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command will operate under a new name as Naval Information Warfare Systems Command as part of increased focus on information warfare. Adm. John Richardson, chief of naval operations, announced the name change during a recent Information Warfare Senior Leadership Symposium in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Navy said Monday. 

“This new name more accurately describes the full totality of the mission, supporting naval warfare — from seabed to space,” Richardson said. 

NAVWAR will focus on providing the Navy with new information warfare capabilities along with sustainment efforts to help in naval, joint, coalition and other national missions.

“In this era of great power competition, information is a fundamental element of warfare, an essential concept of the Navy’s strategy, and a warfare area that transcends the traditional domains of air, sea, land and space,” said NAVWAR Commander Rear Adm. Christian Becker. 

The Navy hopes renaming SPAWAR would help clarify the command’s mission and purpose for service members, stakeholders, industry partners, the information warfare community and the Naval Research and Development Establishment.