House lawmakers want to retain the 18,000 military medical billets that the Pentagon plans to close to transfer personnel to other operational and modernization priorities, Federal News Network reported Monday. The House Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee issued its marks of the 2020 defense authorization bill to prevent the Department of Defense from reducing or realigning military medical personnel. 

Lawmakers expressed concern that the agency is cutting the billets too soon. Through the defense bill the personnel subcommittee wants to require DoD to study the manpower and availability of healthcare services in local areas before approving the realignment plan. However, DoD already started reducing military medical billets, with 2,000 areas already left vacant in April. The agency intends to move the remaining 16,000 into other non-medical areas in early 2020s. 

“We’re working with our personnel command to identify those that have got critical impact to the fleet and to remote areas and put personnel in those locations as we work through this,” said Vice Adm. Forrest Faison, surgeon general of the Navy. 

The Department of Commerce is set to publish in the Federal Register a request for public comments on the draft action plan for the Federal Data Strategy on Tuesday. The department said in the notice that the strategy seeks to help agencies leverage mission-support, statistical and program data as a strategic asset to promote transparency, facilitate oversight, build up the economy and increase the effectiveness of the federal government. 

Using data as a strategic asset is one of the cross-priority goals in the President’s Management Agenda. The agency wants stakeholders to identify additional measures to implement the strategy that are not cited in the draft action plan, determine actions that would complement current federal data programs, pinpoint actions in the draft plan that should be omitted and offer information about implementation resources needed to ensure the success of action steps.

The notice marks the third phase of the comments request. The department sought feedback for the strategy’s draft principles and draft practices in 2018. Officials with the Office of Management and Budget told Nextgov the draft action plan is expected to be released this week.

Navy Vice Adm. Robert Sharp, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, appeared Monday at the GEOINT Symposium to discuss the four strategic goals – people, partnerships, mission today and mission tomorrow – of NGA’s Strategy 2025. Sharp talked about NGA’s efforts to recruit, develop and retain talent as well as its focus on inclusion and diversity.

Sharp said the agency is onboarding 300 employees this year. He noted that the agency is advancing data interoperability and international partnerships through several initiatives including the International Program for Human Geography and the TanDEMx High Resolution Elevation Data Exchange program. For the strategy’s Mission Today goal, Sharp discussed the agency’s use of technologies in its Enterprise Engine – Notice to Mariners initiative to speed up data analysis. 

“It now uses translation algorithms and optical character recognition to read documents in different formats, and it puts maritime symbols, numbers, and words into a GIS-enabled workspace,” he said. “That means analysts don’t need to scrutinize pages of source data and charts by hand anymore — they have electronic records that are way easier to work with than manually annotated hard copy records.” 

To achieve the Mission Tomorrow goal, Sharp asked interested stakeholders to partner with NGA on projects related to artificial intelligence, automation and augmentation. “Our goal is to partner with machines so that we can make best use of the exponential growth in volume and source of data, letting machines do what machines do well and analysts do what analysts to even better — think critically and solve problems,” Sharp added.

The U.S. Army is seeking new ways to utilize near-Earth orbit and medium-Earth orbit satellite communications technology to establish a tactical satcom network, C4ISRNET reported Friday.

The Army has launched initiatives like the Expeditionary Signal Battalion-Enhanced pilot program, which involves the deployment of small to medium-sized terminals to support satellite constellations in closer orbits. Such satellites have the capacity to potentially speed up communications and improve network performance.

Rich Williams, associate vice president at LinQuest, said the smaller terminals designed for MEO and low-Earth orbit have reduced footprints and require less power due to their proximity to Earth. According to Todd Harrison, senior fellow and aerospace security project director at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, the Army also needs to address emerging threats like jamming and spoofing that can compromise the satcom network’s cybersecurity.

“They will need to work with these commercial companies to build that security into their satellites and their ground stations,” Harrison noted.

The U.S. Air Force and the Federal Aviation Administration launched a new initiative to increase partnerships with industry to address the national aircrew shortage. The collaboration intends to promote aviation across the country and increase the number of pilots joining the military, the Air Force said Friday.

“This collaborative effort will enable the Air Force and the FAA to work with industry partners to share best practices and find ways to get more people to fly,” said Air Force Secretary and 2019 Wash100 Award winner Heather Wilson. 

FAA will also assist the service branch in utilizing new technologies and techniques to improve pilot training. Initial joint efforts of FAA and the service would focus on attracting more people to take aviation professions, promote efficiency in training and improve partnerships with federal agencies, the Department of Defense, academia and industry.

Benjamin Huebner, privacy and civil liberties officer for the CIA, told attendees at a Brookings Institution event in Washington, D.C. that the agency is working on over 100 artificial intelligence initiatives, Nextgov reported Friday.

Huebner said the CIA seeks to incorporate new data analytics and machine learning methods in AI development while also covering ethical issues like biases and privacy measures. He added that the agency intends to implement “explainability” into its AI technology, which will provide users with insight into “how the algorithm actually got to the answer it did.”

“The algorithm that’s pushing that data out is a black box and that’s a problem if you are the CIA,” he said.