Federal information technology officials said that agencies should promote small progress in their cloud initiatives to encourage larger adoption of the technology, Nextgov reported Thursday.  During the Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit in Washington, panelists highlighted that confidence and trust would play a significant role in how agency leaders utilize the cloud. 

“Right away start trying to get early wins on the board,” said David Catanoso, director of Veterans Affairs Enterprise Cloud Solutions Office. “Try to go out and identify low hanging fruit or high-value things that you can migrate to demonstrate that capability and build on that—that’s key.”

Catanoso oversees VA’s apps migration to the AWS GovCloud. He cited that recent progress at the agency helped encourage other officials to consider learning and working with the cloud. “As we demonstrated that it would work, we started to build credibility and momentum and confidence that ‘you know what, we can actually do this as a team,” Catanoso said. 

Stephanie Shutt, director of the Multiple Award Schedules program management office at the General Services Administration, said GSA is set to release a request for information on a plan to reduce the special item numbers by the end of June as it works to implement a unified schedule contract, FCW reported Thursday.

Shutt said the agency asked the acquisition centers to assess their SINs for consolidation opportunities in order to address duplication. GSA issued on Friday, June 7, an RFI for the proposed schedule consolidation and expects to have a unified contract in place by Oct. 1.

“There won’t be any surprises,” she said of the consolidated schedule at a Professional Services Council conference Thursday. “You’re not going to see anything new. No new terms and conditions.”

GSA announced plans to combine 24 schedules into a single procurement vehicle to simplify the buying process for client agencies in November.Â

The National Security Agency prepares to launch the annual Codebreaker Challenge to attract students to consider taking cybersecurity careers in the federal government, Federal News Network reported Thursday.

This year’s event aims to gather over 330 schools and 2,600 students. The 2019 Codebreaker Challenge may focus on challenges facing mobile security. In particular, the threats to Android operating systems, according to Eric Bryant, a technical director in the crypto analysis organization at NSA. 

The agency unveiled the challenge in 2013 to increase partnerships between the government and academia. The event hopes to introduce students to technology and develop reverse-engineering or low-level code analysis skills to address cyber challenges. 

“We are doing the high touch and personal approach to educate and attract students,” said Kathy Hutson, senior strategist for industry and academic engagement at NSA. “Through the Codebreaker Challenges, we are using a non-traditional approach, which also teaches good fundamental skills for NSA as well as the nation.” 

Army Secretary and 2019 Wash100 Award recipient Mark Esper said the service is making changes to its personnel system to keep up with adversaries amid the “war for talent,” National Defense Magazine reported Thursday. The service wants to implement a new approach to organize, train and retain forces. 

“We must make the best use of all of our talent if we are to stay ahead of our very capable adversaries,” he said at the Women In Defense annual conference in Arlington, Va. “The current system — as effective as it has been in the past — simply will not allow us to optimize the potential of our workforce going forward.”

The Army intends to prioritize the skills, knowledge, behavior and preferences of future workforce to better attract and retain talent. The current personnel system lacks focus on talent and personal preferences of people, the secretary said. 

“Oftentimes, only rank and military specialty are all that are used in most cases to determine a person’s next to assignment,” Esper said. “Such rudimentary management of our people is no longer sufficient for today’s generation.” 

The proposed changes to the Army’s personnel management include increased transparency, expanded opportunities for officers, noncommissioned officers and civilians, career flexibility, reduced frequency of change of stations and new parental leave and on-base child care policies. 

The House Armed Services Committee voted to create a “Space Corps” to serve as a new military branch under the Department of the Air Force, Defense News reported Thursday.

Space Corps will have a civilian secretary, its own acquisition procedures and a commandant to serve as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In addition, the provision mandates the defense secretary to submit a report on the service branch’s organizational requirements by 2021.

“It is not a $13 billion expenditure, a gold-plated plan like had been proposed to us by the secretary of the Air Force. It is instead a reorganization so that space professionals can be properly recognized for their skill and ability and promoted,” said Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala.

The House and Senate haven’t reconciled language differences between their respective versions of the fiscal 2020 defense policy bill before it passes Congress.