The Department of Energy plans to invest $24 million in projects aiming to study dark matter in theoretical and technological aspects. DOE said Thursday that it will let grant recipients leverage DOE-supported facilities and technologies to pursue projects. Such technologies include particle accelerators and detectors at national laboratories.

“With new developments in the field over the past few years and the game-changing research being done in the American science community, the time is right for innovative efforts to tackle the problem of dark matter,” said Paul Dabbar, the department’s undersecretary for science.

DOE expects to allot $3 million in fiscal year 2019 as the first part of a potential four-year program. Interested parties may submit letters of intent through April 30, with final applications due May 30.

Gordon Bitko, chief information officer of the FBI, said at a recent AFCEA event that the agency seeks to improve data management through automation and personnel data literacy efforts, Federal News Network reported Friday.

As part of its overall data strategy, the FBI has several programs to assess new information technology capabilities and “understand what fits into our portfolio best, smartest and quickest,” Bitko said.

Bitko wants to migrate more of the agency’s tools and systems to a cloud environment to help investigators conduct operations with greater efficiency. Bitko cited other FBI data modernization initiatives including workforce training and recruitment, personnel aptitude testing on data analysis skills and the transition of the agency’s next generation identification biometrics platform to the cloud in line with the Justice Department’s IT strategy.

The USS Fitzgerald naval destroyer, also known as DDG 62, launched pier-side following a series of repairs and modifications at Huntington Ingalls Industries‘ Ingalls Shipbuilding shipyard facility on April 16. The company began restoration and maintenance in Jan. 2018 to reinforce the integrity of the vessel’s topside and hull structures after a collision incident in 2017, the U.S. Navy said Tuesday. 

The service branch noted that HII updated and repaired the ship’s combat system, command, control, communications, computers and intelligence platforms as well as its hull, mechanical and electrical components to bring the vessel back to warfighting capacity.

“This undocking is a step forward and brings us that much closer to getting Fitzgerald back out to sea – where the ship belongs,” said Cmdr. Garrett Miller, commanding officer of USS Fitzgerald.

The General Services Administration made several changes to three software-related special item numbers under the agency’s IT schedule 70 in an effort to keep up with marketplace demands.

Bill Zielinski, acting assistant commissioner of the GSA Office of Information Technology Category, noted in a blog post that the agency implemented the updates to better align IT schedule offerings with commercial software procurement procedures and streamline legal operations such as license transfers.

GSA revised SIN 132-32 to include software license definitions and differentiate software from software-as-a-service, which is covered by cloud SIN 132-40. The agency also renamed the software maintenance SIN 132-34 and added software identification and transferability terms to SIN 132-33 perpetual software licenses.

Other changes include revising commercial supplier agreements and including utilization limitations to SIN 132-32, -33 and -34 to cover ownership-related matters. Zielinski noted in his post that the SIN updates came as the federal acquisition community was leveraging legislation such as the 2015 Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act, the 2016 MEGABYTE Act and the Office of Management and Budget’s software licensing acquisition memo issued in the same year.

The Merit Systems Protection Board filed a bypass request with Congress seeking $46.8M in funds for 2020, reflecting a $4.6M increase from the president’s proposed budget. MSPB said in its congressional budget justification the president’s budget request of $42.3M represents a 10 percent cut to the board’s current funding level and would result in a workforce reduction if enacted.

The proposed budget cut will affect several MSPB operations and programs including the board’s information technology modernization efforts, average processing time for petitions for review and initial appeals and the board’s assessment of the Office of Personnel Management’s rules and regulations and actions.

The board cited some of its IT modernization initiatives that will be affected by the budget cut, including efforts to develop a new case management workflow system to process and monitor each PFR and initial appeal and upgrades of laptop computers and peripherals.

Another internal challenge MSPB faces is the lack of a quorum of board members. Mark Robbins’ term as vice chairman expired in February, and the president’s two nominees for chairman and member positions still await Senate confirmation, leaving the board with no members at the time of the request.

The Government Accountability Office released new recommendations on security and property measures that the General Services Administration must prioritize. GAO said Thursday that GSA must augment efforts to consolidate Department of Homeland Security headquarters, reduce lease costs, budget maintenance and operations costs of new buildings and boost federal infrastructure cybersecurity.

The accountability office released five priority recommendations between 2014 and 2018. GSA addressed two of these priorities via augmented security reviews and information-sharing protocols. GSA also identified federal security roles across the agency. The new recommendations, released this year, bring the GSA priority count back to five.