Robert Daigle, director of the Department of Defense’s cost assessment and program evaluation office, will step down from her post in May, Foreign Policy reported Monday.

In his role, Daigle manages an independent analysis group that assists the DoD secretary to develop long-term decisions for the agency’s $700 billion annual budget. The report added that President Trump may permanently assign Patrick Shanahan, acting DoD secretary and 2019 Wash100 Award winner, to his current position. David Norquist, a fellow 2019 Wash100 Award winner has also assumed the role of acting deputy secretary in addition to his post as comptroller.

Heather Wilson, secretary of the U.S. Air Force and another 2019 Wash100 Award recipient, has also announced her departure from her role next month.

About the Wash100

The Wash100 award, now in its sixth year, recognizes the most influential executives in the GovCon industry as selected by the Executive Mosaic team in tandem with online nominations from the GovCon community. Representing the best of the private and public sector, the winners demonstrate superior leadership, innovation, reliability, achievement and vision.

Visit the Wash100 site to learn about the other 99 winners of the 2019 Wash100 Award. On the site, you can submit your 10 votes for the GovCon executives of consequence that you believe will have the most significant impact in 2019.

Sens. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and John Thune, R-S.D., are urging the Federal Aviation Administration to publish a proposed rule on remote identification of drones to prevent the entry of unauthorized drones in critical areas. Markey and Thune sent a letter to the Department of Transportation calling for action on the rule that would permit authorities and the public to remotely track unmanned aircraft systems and their operators during flight, Markey’s office said in a statement released Monday.

The senators stated that the rule would help address the series of drone sightings in safety-sensitive areas like airports and large gatherings that have been reported in recent months.

“Remote identification will enhance safety, security, and privacy, and serve as a critical tool for law enforcement to respond to and address reports of illegal and unauthorized drone operations,” they said. Remote identification is also essential for developing a traffic management system for unmanned aircraft, which is “imperative to achieving the safe and efficient integration of UAS operations in the airspace,” the senators noted.

Markey and Thune currently serve as members of the Senate committee on commerce, science and transportation. 

NASA Administrator and 2019 Wash100 Award winner Jim Bridenstine said the agency needs to ramp up efforts to detect and identify near-Earth objects that could pose an impact risk, SpaceNews reported Monday.

“We’re only about a third of the way there and the law that has been passed says that NASA is required to be able to detect, track and characterize not just one third but 90 percent of them, which means we have to use our systems, use our capabilities, to ultimately get a lot more data, and we have to do it faster,” he said Monday during his keynote speech at the Planetary Defense Conference in Maryland. “We want more international partners that can join us in this effort. We want more systems on the face of the Earth that can detect and track these objects.”

Following his speech, Bridenstine said that he supports the idea of having a dedicated line for planetary defense missions in NASA’s budget request. Other topics he discussed at the event are the Near Earth Object Camera mission and the agency’s plan to bring astronauts to the moon by 2024 using the Space Launch System.

About the Wash100

The Wash100 award, now in its sixth year, recognizes the most influential executives in the GovCon industry as selected by the Executive Mosaic team in tandem with online nominations from the GovCon community. Representing the best of the private and public sector, the winners demonstrate superior leadership, innovation, reliability, achievement and vision.

Visit the Wash100 site to learn about the other 99 winners of the 2019 Wash100 Award. On the site, you can submit your 10 votes for the GovCon executives of consequence that you believe will have the most significant impact in 2019.

NASA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are planning to conduct an asteroid impact simulation with international partners. The two agencies will take part in a simulated tabletop exercise through which they will work to identify critical aspects and issues of disaster response for a possible asteroid impact, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said Wednesday.

JPL’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies or CNEOS developed a fictional asteroid impact scenario for the exercise that would take place next week at the 2019 Planetary Defense Conference. Attendees, consisting of space organizations from around the globe, will examine the scenario to determine requirements for an effective disaster response.

“These exercises have really helped us in the planetary defense community to understand what our colleagues on the disaster management side need to know,” said Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer of NASA. “This exercise will help us develop more effective communications with each other and with our governments,” Johnson added.

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.