David Bernhardt, acting secretary of the Department of the Interior, has been confirmed by Congress to serve in the role on a permanent basis, The Hill reported Thursday. Congress voted 56-41 confirming Berhardt, who will manage energy production efforts offshore and in publicly owned U.S. land that spans around 500 million acres. 

Previously, Bernhardt served as solicitor for the Interior Department and held various roles at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP, which represents a range of clients such as Sempra Energy, Halliburton Energy Services and the Westlands Water District. 

President Trump announced his intent to nominate Bernhardt as Interior secretary in February. 

The Small Business Administration’s inspector general issued the evaluation report highlighting that SBA needs to improve how it handles risk management, security, data mobility and information technology investments as well the adoption of federal standards to efficiently move data to the cloud and reduce disruption during migration, according to the IG report published Tuesday.

The federal watchdog analyzed SBA’s cloud systems inventory and migration efforts and oversight from fiscal year 2017 to 2018. The IG recommends that the agency improve its cloud inventory and monitoring controls, data ownership portability and interoperability and documentation of cloud cost savings and service level requirements to support and secure its migration efforts. 

SBA Inspector General Hannibal Ware said the agency agreed with all recommendations. Top SBA officials have yet to submit a report on the implementation of final actions to improve cloud migration.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology released new direct hiring authorities to allow federal hiring managers to skip some steps in the process to employ new information technology managers, general engineers and general physical scientists. 

“The expanded direct-hire authority will allow NIST to simplify and expedite hiring for managers in mission critical occupations,” according to a notice issued Thursday. NIST marked top-level scientific and engineering positions in Pay Band III through V as “critical shortage.”

Under the new authority, hiring managers could bypass certain laws governing eligibility preferences, including section 3309 through section 3318. Such laws are used to identify prospective candidates who should receive preference in hiring decisions, such as veterans and former federal employees.

NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate will fund 18 early-stage studies on space technologies for the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, the agency said Wednesday. The selected NIAC studies cover a range of topics including low-cost small satellites, flexible telescopes, heat-withstanding materials and capabilities designed for mining ice in the Moon’s south pole.

“We are supporting high impact technology concepts that could change how we explore within the solar system and beyond,” noted Jason Derleth, program executive for the NIAC effort.

NASA will allocate around $125,000 for 12 projects under the NIAC initiative’s first increment. Researchers will conduct work for nine months and proceed to the second phase if the studies are successful. The agency will select five studies for phase two and provide up to $500,000 for participants to embark on a two-year research effort.

The third phase, introduced for the first time this year, will involve the operational transition of one NIAC study with “the highest potential impact to NASA, other government agencies or commercial companies.” NASA expects to award a maximum of $2 million for researchers to perform work for up to two years.

NASA conducted peer reviews to select proposals for phase one and two based on technical viability and innovation.

The Department of Defense’s recently established Space Development Agency is slated to release a request for information on low Earth orbit small satellite capabilities by summer of this year, Space News reported Wednesday.

Fred Kennedy, director of the SDA, told reporters that he intends to launch SDA satellites into orbit by 2022. The agency plans to issue its first RFI in July ahead of a draft solicitation by Sept. 30.

“I will do demonstrations to make sure that I’m ready to go, but I intend to put real hardware on orbit that does real work,” he noted.

The SDA head wants to focus on LEO-based platforms to operate on the space sensor layer designed for missile-tracking satellites. He added that the agency is monitoring new smallsat offerings and developments by legacy providers as well as contractors like Lockheed Martin.

Kennedy noted that he seeks to expand SDA’s operations through a reprogramming request for the DoD’s $150 million fiscal 2020 budget proposal that is still subject to congressional approval.

James Gfrerer, the Department of Veterans Affairs chief information officer, said during the recent ACT-IAC Health Innovation Summit that the department intends to migrate 350 applications to the cloud by 2024, Fedscoop reported Wednesday. Gfrerer noted that the number of current and new applications to move to a cloud environment comprises half of the department’s portfolio.

According to the CIO, the VA’s cloud transition efforts will utilize existing commercial systems and be based on a private-sector approach. The migration is also intended to support the department’s adoption of bandwidth and resource-heavy technologies such as those needed for an updated electronic health record.

“When you look at the backlog and the ability to continue operations and rating schedules and processing claims, that’s a very important business outcome that flows from that,” Gfrerer said.