The Department of Homeland Security’s science and technology directorate is extending the 30-day comment period for a planned set of testing standards that will allow interoperability for digital land mobile radio systems and standardized LMR components. The agency said Thursday that it will accept comments on a draft compliance bulletin under the Project 25 Compliance Assessment Program through March 31.

DHS S&T will finalize the bulletin after it completes the review and integration of the submitted comments. The initiative intends to help communications equipment firms showcase their products’ compliance via tests at authorized laboratories. DHS also noted that it plans to broaden the program’s testing scope to add other types of equipment.

Valerie Browning, director of Defense Sciences Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, said DARPA will continue building smarter artificial intelligence-based tools to improve man-machine teaming across the Pentagon, Nextgov reported Friday. DARPA has launched the AI Next and AI Exploration campaigns to build technologies with human-like communication, logical reasoning and accelerate the application of machine learning in the field.

Under AI Next, the agency seeks to automate scientific processes, create computers with common sense, study tech implications of insect brains and link military systems to the human body. 

“The grand vision for the AI Next campaign is to take machines and move them from being tools but really to be trusted, collaborative partners,” Browning told Nextgov. 

The official added that DARPA may find new applications for the technology into military operations within months of the AI Exploration program, which provides rapid funding for high-risk, high-reward efforts to develop AI tools. Browning also said the Trump administration’s $2 billion commitment for AI programs over the next five years is helping fund DARPA’s tech efforts. 

“The funding level that has been allocated for that is allowing for us to roll out programs at an appropriate rate for the community to respond,” she said.

Christopher Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and 2019 Wash100 Award winner, said the initial years of the newly-established agency will focus on protecting U.S. critical infrastructures and network, increasing stakeholder engagement and maturing the organization, CSO reported Wednesday. The Department of Homeland Security established CISA in November from the agency’s National Protection and Programs Directorate to secure the country’s critical infrastructures.

To mature the agency, Krebs said efforts over the next two years would include flattening CISA’s organizational structure, implementing cyber and physical security functions and improving how the agency coordinates with its stakeholders. Protecting the U.S. supply chain is a top priority of the agency. Krebs also said he wants to boost efforts to deter China and Russia from hacking U.S. systems.

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.

The Government Accountability Office said the Federal Trade Commission needs a new internet privacy law that would expand the agency’s authority to protect consumer data from unfair and deceptive trade practices. A GAO report published on Thursday highlighted the outdated regulations that the commission uses to govern the collection, use and sale of consumers’ personal information.

Existing regulations for internet privacy only focus on the financial sector and children. Any new legislation should establish new and specific standards to include wider consumer privacy, the report stated.

The FTC needs to implement traditional notice-and-comment rulemaking and carry broader civil penalty authority to further protect consumer data, according to the report. Some stakeholders and consumer advocates called on the government to create a new data protection agency under the FTC.

However, industry representatives interviewed by the GAO said enforcing new regulations could delay innovation and that the commission’s authority already provides flexibility.