The U.S. Department of Agriculture has opened applications for a pilot program aimed at establishing modern broadband infrastructure for rural communities. USDA said Tuesday it will allot a minimum of $600M for the first round of the ReConnect Rural Broadband Pilot Program. A third of the initial funds will cover grants, while the remaining fraction will be equally split for loan-grant combinations and low-interest loans.

Applications for grants-only packages will run through May 31. Interested parties may also apply up to June 21 for loan-grant combination deals, and up to July 12 for low-interest loans. The department will announce the program’s succeeding waves later in 2019.

Employees from the Department of Veterans Affairs developed concepts for platforms that help streamline agency operations through the open-source Light Electronic Action Framework web application, FCW reported Friday. A panel of judges selected pitches from VA health centers in South Carolina, Tennessee and Florida as winners in the business management, employee onboarding and scheduling topic areas as part of this year’s LEAF conference in Virginia. 

The conference also included a “hackathon” which saw participants develop concepts for streamlining human resources operations such as credentialing, telework and family leave requests. The VA-developed LEAF platform is accessible via the agency’s firewall and designed to enable non-technical and on-the-ground employees to share forms and create websites within minutes.

Blake Henderson, innovation coordinator for the VA, said the “rudimentary app store” is slated for migration into an Amazon Web Services cloud environment to expand the types of data and projects it can support. LEAF is currently deployed at more than 100 VA medical centers, according to Henderson.

The Defense Logistics Agency is planning to deploy at least 75 platforms that run on robotic process automation to help personnel in menial tasks by the end of September, Federal News Network reported Friday. John Lockwood, RPA manager for the DLA, said at a recent Carahsoft and UiPath event that the agency has around 20 bots in operation and 30 more in production.

The bots are currently run by human operators on a secured network through a common access card. DLA plans to develop “unattended bots” that have the capacity for 24/7 operation and access to CAC-restrictive sites. Lockwood noted that the agency aims to coordinate with customers every week and deliver the bots every two weeks.

“It’s a production run, it’s a factory line, and it’s a different way of thinking,” he said.

The Government Accountability Office has listed 26 recommendations to help the Department of Homeland Security boost government operations save costs and address high-risk concerns.

The recommendations include the procurement of an electronic health records tool for the U.S. Coast Guard, adoption of a cybersecurity platform from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and cost analysis for future southwest border segments, GAO said on April 19.

Additionally, the Transportation Security Administration has decreased the funds for the Behavior Detection Program as part of GAO’s recommendations to validate supporting proofs on the utilization of behavioral indicators for threat detection.

GAO noted that DHS has implemented four of the recommendations in the list to update the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services as well as the U.S. Border Patrol’s operations.

The Department of Defense’s office of the chief management officer issued an initial plan to reform DoD’s enterprise business operations on Friday. 

OCMO set up three reform teams – human resources, supply chain and logistics and category management – to “establish a culture of continuous improvement focused on results and accountability” and oversee four activities cited in Section 921 of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2019, according to the report.

The HR reform team is developing three reform efforts related to civilian resources management and those are regulatory reform, civilian hiring improvement and HR service delivery. The team also supports force lethality and readiness through workforce planning and management initiatives.

The logistics management activity under FY 2019 NDAA falls under the supply chain and logistics reform team, which intends to build sustainment, maximize buying power and increase materiel visibility. The team advances munitions readiness, maintenance work packages and strategic sourcing of sustainment or commodity procurement reform initiatives in coordination with the Defense Logistics Agency.

The category management reform team handles services contracting and real estate management activities and is working on a cross-agency procurement process designed to achieve savings and efficiencies across the department.

The report noted that OCMO is carrying out effectiveness and efficiency assessments of DoD field activities or DAFAs and defense agencies to determine shared services that are duplicative or similar in support of “Fourth Estate” reform efforts.

The Office of Management and Budget released a memorandum Friday to advance the adoption of shared services to improve government operations’ efficiency and meet the cross-agency priority goal for sharing quality services in the President’s Management Agenda.

“The memo establishes the new model for identifying, planning and operating government-wide shared services,” Suzette Kent, federal chief information officer and 2019 Wash100 Award winner, said in a statement published Friday.

The memo calls for the government to implement an integrated approach to shared services through the development of interagency priorities and standards for shared services, creation of shared governance, centralized capabilities and performance expectations and continued efforts to speed up the adoption of existing quality services.

The document also establishes a process for designating agencies as quality services management offices, creates an accountability and governance model to enable QSMO performance excellence through the Business Standards Council and Shared Services Governance Board and requires all CFO Act agencies to name a senior accountable point of contain to coordinate initiatives with regard to shared services implementation.

Emily Murphy, head of the General Services Administration and a 2019 Wash100 Award recipient, said GSA and OMB have worked together in the past year to establish an implementation framework for governmentwide shared services.

“GSA is excited to continue the administration’s focus on shared services, both in our leadership role and as one of the initial agencies selected to implement this strategy,” said Murphy.