The Energy Department is planning to allocate $24M for a four-year research project on the use of supercomputing technology and computer-based design to help accelerate scientific efforts, the DOE said Tuesday.

The DOE Office of Science will provide funding for the program which aims to utilize pre-exascale and emerging exascale systems to design and discover new materials for applications such as energy and electronics.

The department will select large teams to develop software applications and small teams to conduct research work on software functionality.

The project will focus on open-source software that will work on wide-bandgap semiconductors; transition metal oxides; topological elements; and magnetic, superconducting, photovoltaic, optoelectronic, and thermoelectric materials.

The DOE noted that software must be compatible with the department’s future exascale systems as well as its Leadership Computing Facilities supercomputers located at the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, Ill., and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Universities, nonprofit organizations and national laboratories may submit pre-applications through Dec. 21 and final applications through Feb.28, 2019.

The Government Accountability Office has released a report highlighting the Defense Department’s failure to properly assess and assign its over 241,000 medical personnel to military treatment facilities, which led to workforce challenges and poor patient care.

The GAO said Tuesday that five of six military hospitals have been struggling to treat the growing number of patients due to civilian hiring freezes and lengthy hiring and contracting processes.  

The watchdog report attributed the challenges to the DoD’s decision to not include the use of all of its medical personnel or the full cost of their deployment in planning for operational medical personnel requirements. 

The GAO added the Pentagon also failed to properly balance active and reserve component medical personnel in their deployment to MTFs.

The study on the DoD’s healthcare efforts comes as directed by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018.
 
The GAO recommended that the Defense Health Agency develop a strategic workforce plan to address the challenges; assess the suitability of federal civilians and contractors to provide operational medical care; and provide a full cost information for active and reserve component medical personnel. 

The DHA will soon assume control of DoD hospitals and clinics. 

A top U.S. Navy official has said the service intends to combine live, virtual and constructive training technologies to improve how it prepares service members for future deployment, National Defense reported Tuesday.

Adm. Christopher Grady, commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command, said the Navy looks to update its technology, integrate supporting infrastructures and create new procedures for the integration of training systems. 

LVC training will combine virtual reality, simulations and synthetic weapons to reduce the need to engage in high-risk, high-cost live training. 

The effort comes amid the changing battlefield that now includes space and cyber operations, Grady noted. 

“We have an imperative to transform how we train and prepare ourselves,” he said. “We need to adopt an innovative, aggressive approach to our warfighting development.”

The Navy currently uses LVC technologies enabling submarine crews to train in virtual battles to strengthen tactical abilities. 

Grady said such training also allows the service to train entire strike groups and provide fleet commanders with the ability to command forces in realistic conditions.

Top U.S. Navy officials have expressed confidence that the Pentagon and Congress will approve funding for the $100B Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarines program through a special account outside the service’s annual shipbuilding budget, USNI News reported Tuesday.

The service expects the extra funding to accelerate construction of the 355-ship fleet, slated to begin in fiscal year 2021. 

Vice Adm. Bill Merz, deputy chief of naval operations for warfare systems, said discussions between the Navy, Defense Department and lawmakers over the Columbia program are “becoming more active.” 

He noted recent meetings focused on the impact of the proposed special shipbuilding account. 

The Navy said an alternative funding for the Columbia-class ships will allow the service to focus its normal budget on growing its fleet of amphibious ships, attack submarines, and large and small combatants, among other assets.  

Navy acquisition chief James Geurts also noted that annual funding should remain stable to support naval personnel, maintenance and operations of public and private shipyards and other lifecycle costs.

David Berteau, president and CEO of the Professional Services Council, told Government Matters in an interview aired Tuesday about industry’s concerns once the Defense Department takes over the governmentwide program for security clearances from the Office of Personnel Management.

Berteau mentioned the volume of the clearance backlog, background investigation process, funding and reciprocity as some of those concerns.

“[An] element is reciprocity, you have been cleared in one instance but it doesn’t necessarily transfer to another agency or contract,” he told host Colby Hochmuth.

“That will still be a dispersed problem across the federal government.”

Berteau also cited continuous evaluation, cost reduction and increased security as some of the potential benefits from the potential transition of the clearance process to DoD.

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order that would authorize DoD to oversee the security clearance program. 
 

Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, deputy commander of Cyber Command, has said Cybercom has received authorities in the past six months to defend against threat actors, Fifth Domain reported Tuesday.

“We can no longer have policy that runs all the way to the very senior levels of our organizations before we can take action,” Stewart said Nov. 14 at the CyCon conference in Washington.

“We need the flexibility to act as we see emerging threats and opportunities in this space.”

Stewart also discussed how the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act clarifies actions the Defense Department should carry out in cyber space and how that bodes well for Cybercom when it comes to making preparations before an operation.

“It recognizes the fact that there [are] certain things you must do in order to prepare for operations and you can’t wait until the operations begin,” he told Fifth Domain.

“That’s freed us up to do some of the things, the operational preparation of the environment, that we were limited from doing outside of the counterterrorism mission and now can do much more broadly against all of our peers and competitors.”
 

The General Services Administration has announced plans to create a single governmentwide procurement vehicle that will integrate 24 existing government contract vehicles for products and service offerings.

GSA said Tuesday it aims to simplify the buying process for customer agencies at the federal, state and local levels through a Multiple Award Schedules consolidation effort as part of the agency’s Federal Marketplace strategy.

“This is an important step in addressing feedback we’ve received from our government and business partners,” said GSA Administrator Emily Murphy.

The MAS program serves a means for government buyers to select from more than 10M commercial offerings and order directly from Schedule contract holders or via the GSA Advantage shopping and ordering website.

Murphy added that reforming the schedules can make it easier for small businesses to participate in the program and reduce duplication for vendors.

GSA plans to host an industry day on Dec. 12 at the agency’s headquarters to provide further information about the MAS transformation initiative.