House lawmakers plan to call on President Trump to grant a $733B budget for the Department of Defense in fiscal year 2020 to restore the U.S. military’s readiness.

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Cutting DoD’s budget lower than the proposed figure “will have disastrous consequences for our military readiness, as was proven by sequestration,” Rep. Mike Turner, Ohio-10, said in a letter signed by 70 lawmakers. Turner, chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces, cited a Congressional report warning that the U.S. has been losing the ability to defend its allies, partners and interests due to budget cuts during the Obama Administration.

“We’ve seen the devastating effects on readiness when our military is forced to make arbitrary cuts as our adversaries continue to aggressively invest in their national security operations,” said Turner. 

The House members plan to send the letter to Trump by the end of next week. Turner said Trump should review Congressional decisions in recent fiscal years when DoD secured $700B to $716B in funding to address problems with the U.S. military readiness.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has issued a draft green paper outlining how the government should improve investments in commercializing products built in federally-funded research and development projects. 

The document provides five strategies initially proposed in the Lab-To-Market Cross Agency Priority Goal of the President’s Management Agenda, NIST said Thursday.

To introduce government-backed R&D projects to the market, the institute suggested: \n

• Reducing regulatory and administrative burdens for such projects.
• Increasing engagement with private sector experts and investor.
• Promoting entrepreneurship in R&D.
• Supporting new tools and services for technology transfer.
• Improving understanding of global science and technology.

\nWalter Copan, director of NIST and under secretary of commerce for standards and technology, said such actions will utilize agile partnerships to further promote federal R&D investment.

He added granting intellectual property rights for licensing and commercial development of federal research will also encourage innovation and more private sector investment in such projects. 

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross also said the proposals would also help drive competition in technology development across the U.S.  

NIST crafted the paper based on public inputs, stakeholder engagement sessions and review of reports and studies related to federal R&D technology transfer. 

The institute will accept additional feedback on the green paper through Jan. 9 and plans to issue a final version in early 2019.

The U.S. Army has launched the latest iteration of its future operating concept that presents potential measures to counter adversaries’ layered stand-off.

The service said Thursday “The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028,” also known as MDO Concept 1.5, aligns with interagency efforts and offers recommendations based on experimentation.

Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander of Army Training and Doctrine Command, said the service leaders could implement the principles of convergence, multidomain operations and calibrated force posture should deterrence fail against layered stand-off.

“Convergence achieves the rapid and continuous integration of all domains across time, space and capabilities to overmatch the enemy,” Townsend wrote in the document’s preface.

“Multi-domain formations possess the capacity, endurance and capability to access and employ capabilities across all domains to pose multiple and compounding dilemmas on the adversary.”

He noted that calibrated force posture seeks to merge position with the capability to across distances.

The military branch said Army Futures Command will carry out the concept and will work to come up with a new fighting concept, MDO Concept 2.0. 
 

Top federal officials have said the government will continue to integrate legacy systems with the cloud in 2019 as part of continued modernization efforts, and that in the same year agencies may start introducing more hybrid cloud infrastructures, FedScoop reported Wednesday.

The officials made the remarks at the recent VMware Public Sector Innovation Summit in Washington, D.C.

Francisco Salguero, deputy chief information officer at the Department of Agriculture, opined that a hybrid cloud can help close the gap in modernizing the government’s IT infrastructure. He said agencies currently face challenges in adopting the cloud as legacy applications were not built for such platform. 

To address the problem, the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program is among the offices promoting hybrid cloud adoption for network compatibility and faster migration.

FedRAMP Director Ashley Mahan said her office plans to increase the number of cloud products with FedRAMP authorization in 2019, with up to 65 tools including hybrid cloud products being authorized for federal use.

“I truly believe that cloud is becoming that new normal across the board,” Mahan said. “I’m hearing a lot of hybrid cloud approaches, strategy from some different government organizations, as well as some multi-cloud approaches.”

Maria Roat, CIO at the Small Business Administration, said her agency already started efforts to utilize the hybrid cloud to modernize its IT infrastructure.

Rod Turk, acting chief information officer at the Department of Commerce, has said the policies, budget authorities and funding vehicles provided by the White House and Congress in recent years have already been helping federal agencies modernize their networks, MeriTalk reported Wednesday.

The government is now approaching the “tipping point” in IT modernization, he said at a recent event organized by the American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council. 

Turk highlighted the 2014 Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act contributed to the progress by providing CIOs with more authority to manage their agencies’ acquisition and implementation of IT. 

“FITARA has been a significant driver in the world of the CIO” as the law helps promote awareness on IT issues across agencies, Turk noted. 

Commerce’s CIO office also utilizes enterprise management and contracting skills, outsourced IT functions and shared services to modernize its IT infrastructures, with current efforts focused on credential management, access control issues and integration of Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation technologies, according to Turk. 

He added the agency is approaching a $3B annual budget for its IT, and the funding may support future projects to develop new systems.

Turk also suggested the use of artificial intelligence to help CIOs predict security threats and speed up decision-making.