House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has appointed Tom Graves, R-Ga., as vice chair of the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, McCarthy’s office said Monday in a press release.

“Technology has unquestionably improved House productivity, but we must aspire to do better when it comes to connecting with and serving the American people. Achieving that will require leadership that is forward-thinking and bold,” McCarthy said.

The announcement comes after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., appointed Derek Kilmer, D-Wash., to serve as the committee’s chairman. Previously, Kilmer worked as a business consultant for the Washington-based management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. The Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress is a bipartisan group that focuses on issues such as updating the government’s technological infrastructure, promoting staff diversity and addressing human resources issues.

U.S. Navy Secretary Richard Spencer has signed a memorandum creating a Naval University System to maintain U.S. military edge, the Department of Defense said Tuesday. The service branch is seeking to establish a Naval Community College system to cover masters degrees for unrestricted line and general officers focusing on strategic studies.

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Navy officials expect to roll out the program by 2020, along with online learning options catering to sailors and Marines in remote locations. The memo will also direct the appointment of a chief learning officer by June. The senior executive service civilian will oversee education strategy development which needed to be established by December. Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, leads the reorganization efforts to establish a director of warfighting development.

“We have to make sure we are getting the best people and that we are training them and educating them to be agile and adaptable so they can deal with uncertainty in a better way,” said Navy Undersecretary Thomas Modly.

A Navy panel based the proposed education system on the Marine Corps University as well as similar models used by the Army and Air Force.

The U.S. Navy has completed acceptance trials of the 10th Independence-variant littoral combat ship. LCS 20 or the future USS Cincinnati underwent performance evaluations of its propulsion plant, ship-handling and auxiliary systems last Friday in the Gulf of Mexico, the service branch said Tuesday. The Austal USA-built ship is moving to its designated homeport in San Diego after commissioning, joining other littoral combat ships.

“She’s well into her journey to be delivered to the Navy this summer and will provide needed and cost-effective warfighting capability to the fleet and the nation,” said Capt. Mike Taylor, LCS program manager at the U.S. Navy.

The branch’s Board of Inspection and Survey is preparing to conduct further assessments with the ship following the acceptance tests, leading to the vessel’s scheduled commissioning in May.

The Department of Energy plans to launch a three-year, $66M grant program for research on plants and microbes to find potential sources of bioenergy and bioproducts and to understand growth of potential bioenergy crops. The agency said Tuesday that it will provide $30M to support research projects focusing on gene function in plants to be grown for bioenergy and bioproducts.

DOE also wants to explore how microbes affect nutrients in soil and the environment to gain new insights into soil processes impacting growth and yield of potential bioenergy crops. The initiative will receive $36M in funding.  

“Insights gained from this research will ultimately help us better understand and model the Earth system and may also enable us to improve the performance of crops grown for bioenergy,” said Sharlene Weatherwax, DOE’s associate director for science for biological and environmental research. 

Both initiatives are open to academia, industry and non-profit research institutions. DOE said each funding will be awarded through a competitive process, with the first grant expected to be released in fiscal year 2019.