The Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress accepted a set of five recommendations to increase the public transparency of the Congress’ internal activity. The committee said Thursday that it will document these recommendations into a report to serve as guidance for involved groups within congress.

Recommendations include the standardization of a legislation writing format and the allotment of resources needed to complete legislation comparisons on schedule. Another recommendation emphasizes the modernization of a lobbying disclosure system for simplified disclosure tracking.

The last two recommendations push for the development of electronic hubs to centralize information on reauthorization expiration dates and committee vote counts. U.S. citizens would be able to access these hubs and view corresponding information.

“These bipartisan recommendations are just the first step towards making the legislative branch more effective and accessible for the American people,” Reps. Derek Kilmer, D-Wash., and Tom Graves, R-Ga., said in a joint statement. Kilmer was appointed to chair the committee in January.

The Department of Agriculture is modernizing its services as part of the Trump administration’s 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act, Federal News Network reported Friday. The IDEA Act, signed into law in December 2018, directed agencies to establish a strategy to modernize their websites by June 20 and provide electronic access to all paper-based documentation by 2020.

Gary Washington, chief information officer of USDA, told attendees at an Adobe symposium in Washington, D.C. that the department wants to update its information technology infrastructure and consolidate call center operations by July to quickly address farmers’ loan applications. USDA also plans to modernize its Farmers.gov citizen services site and reduce the number of data centers from 38 to two under the General Services Administration’s Centers of Excellence program.

“I love the fact that people can get on their devices now, thanks to this legislation — or will be able to, once it’s fully implemented — and actually access government websites, and actually be able to navigate them,” noted Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, at the Service to the Citizen awards gala.

The U.S. Army issued a solicitation of industry feedback on the service’s plan to apply emerging technologies to modernize military bases, Federal News Network reported Friday. The service held an industry day to discuss the “installations of the future” concept, which aims to improve operations, maintenance and resilience of bases amid the growing threats of natural disasters, cyber attacks and other risks. 

“The National Defense Strategy states very clearly that the homeland is no longer a sanctuary,” said Richard Kidd, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for strategic integration. “We’ve been treating our military installations as if they were sanctuary cities for a very long time, immune from the effects of the adversary.”

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wants to bring predictive maintenance to military installations. USACE is exploring the Virtual Testbed Installation for Mission Effectiveness, a new artificial intelligence-based tool that provides predictive maintenance of facilities. Lt. Gen. Gwen Bingham, assistant chief of staff for installation management, said the Army should also invest in 5G wireless connectivity, biometrics, cloud-based platforms and connected sensors to better connect soldiers, equipment and facilities. 

NASA completed setting up the test vehicle for the demonstration of the abort system of its Orion spacecraft. The space agency will assess the system’s performance on July 2 at Cape Canaveral in Florida, NASASpaceFlight.com, reported Friday. The Ascent Abort-2 test will be the second and last for the Launch Abort System on the Lockheed Martin-built Orion spacecraft. NASA delivered the system’s test booster to the launch pad in April, followed by the test article and the Orion Crew Module in May. 

During the demonstration, the test article will transmit data to ground stations in real time, while onboard data recorders will be ejected from the Crew Module before the system falls into the Atlantic Ocean. Mark Kirasich, NASA’s Orion program manager, said the module will carry a tool that senses the acceleration of the abort system along with a separate component connected to an avionics box called the Attitude Control Motor Controller. 

“The computer in the Crew Module tells us which way to steer and then it’s the ACM controller which controls the pintles and the thrust of the pintles and steers it,” he said. 

NASA first conducted tests of Orion’s abort system in 2010. The agency plans to use the production version of LAS in Orion’s first planned crewed mission in 2023.