The Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service is transitioning from a traditional enterprise data warehouse into a cloud-based “data lake” to support the bureau’s call center operations, Federal New Network reported Monday. The data lake serves as an inventory of raw data which the call centers will use to assist people who want to settle delinquent debts.

Tony Peralta, data architect for the Fiscal Service, said the data lake intends to transcribe voice files and get sentiment analysis from that information. He added that the traditional data inventory system resulted in some inefficiencies due to limits in configuration and hard-drive space. 

The data lake is based on the Workforce Community Cloud shared-service infrastructure which handles the voice transcription and sentiment analysis operations. The cloud architecture was provided by the Treasury’s Office of the Chief Information Officer.

A new Defense Intelligence Agency report concludes that the U.S. should continue to develop space-based capabilities to keep its advantage in the space domain, the Department of Defense reported Monday.

The “Challenges to Security in Space” report deals with the efforts of Russia and China to challenge the ability of the U.S. and other countries to use space. Those efforts include the development of space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance services, cyber space and jamming capabilities, ground-based anti-satellite missiles, directed energy weapons and space surveillance networks. To challenge militaries, North Korea and Iran are developing space-based services with jamming capabilities.

“Iran and North Korea maintain independent space launch capabilities, which can serve as avenues for testing ballistic missile technologies,” the report noted.

DIA officials told reporters at the Pentagon on Monday they’re anticipating countries such as Russia and China to develop technologies designed to counter U.S. space capabilities.
 

Max Everett, chief information officer at the Department of Energy, has said the department will be moving email systems to the cloud with a $15M loan from the Technology Modernization Fund Board, Federal News Network reported Friday.

In late 2018, DOE received an initial $4M from TMF to start the cloud migration and has moved nearly 6,000 email accounts to the platform. The department operates 64 email systems that support over 184,000 mailboxes. DOE said it requested the load last year supporting the plan to place 19 of its 45 on-premise email systems to the cloud. 

The TMF loan is expected to support future migration of the department’s remaining 26 on-premise email systems. DOE said the extra funding would help “accelerate the implementation of the DOE enterprise cloud email” and lead to “large scale operational benefits and costs savings.” TMF also provided loans to the departments of Labor and Agriculture and the General Services Administration. 

The Department of Energy is investing $30M to fund research on data science applications in the chemistry and materials science areas. The effort, under the department’s Basic Energy Sciences program, is seeking projects that apply data science to uncover mechanisms behind the chemical and material aspects of energy, DOE said Friday. 

DOE will award three-year grants to compliant entities that the department will decide on via peer review. The department invites industry, academia, nonprofits and national laboratories to submit pre-application proposals through March 8, with final applications due on May 15.

Secretaries of the U.S. Air Force, Army and Navy said the ongoing reforms across the military should focus on force modernization, more lethality and readiness. Army Secretary Mark Esper, Navy Secretary Richard Spencer and Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson discussed their reform efforts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, the Department of Defense said Friday. 

The three officials praised the first agency-wide audit of DoD in 2018, saying the process will serve as an important reform tool in the coming years. They also agreed that the military needs a cultural shift as well as efforts addressing leadership issues to boost innovation and accelerate development and fielding of new technologies. 

Esper cited that the new Army Futures Command is helping the service with its modernization priorities. Wilson said the Air Force’s Warfighting Integration Center is also providing the same support. Spencer said the Navy is collaborating with the two other services to modernize its fleet. The three secretaries expect to continue the reforms as the military secured adequate and on time funding in fiscal year 2019 from Congress.