The Senate on Thursday voted 85-7 to approve a package of bills that would appropriate $854B in funds for fiscal 2019, Reuters reported Thursday.

Senate leaders on both sides of the aisle agreed to combine the appropriations bills for the departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Labor and Education in order to facilitate the passage of the package in the upper chamber as they work to avoid a government shutdown by the end of September.

Military Times reported the minibus measure would allocate $675B in fiscal 2019 funds for DoD, including approximately $68B for overseas contingency operations.

The defense appropriations bill would earmark $34.5B for the defense health program; $237B for readiness efforts; $24B for the U.S. Navy’s shipbuilding programs; $42B for 12 F-35 fighter jets; and $930 million for hypersonic programs.

The report said the House is expected to tackle its appropriations measure once it resumes legislative session on Sept. 4.

The FBI has launched two new programs that adopt artificial intelligence systems to track and counter insider threats, Federal News Radio reported Wednesday.

The agency’s Javelin initiative focuses on monitoring security violations, internal misconduct and internal espionage, while the Insider Threat Analysis Platform analyzes large volumes of data to identify potential threats.

“For us, AI is a little bit tricky, in the sense that we have to be able to fully explain our methodology,” said John Adams, executive assistant director of FBI’s information technology branch. He added that the agency is building “some machine-learning capability” into the insider threat system to identify suspicious activity.

The FBI is also employing lessons learned from its cyber investigations to boost its insider threat program.

Meanwhile, the organization is looking into expanding its IT workforce after securing funds to fill data analytics positions across its 56 field offices.

Adams noted that the FBI is working around challenges such as salary expectations to recruit more data scientists as the agency seeks to migrate its data to the cloud and streamline its data sharing operations.

He added that the agency is focusing on protecting its employees’ personally identifiable information as it leverages cloud services over the next few years.

Oklahoma Science and Technology Secretary Kelvin Droegemeier said he will boost potentially “transformative” government research efforts if he is confirmed to lead the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, FCW reported Thursday.

The nominee recently told the Senate Commerce Committee that he will work to ensure that America leads innovations in quantum computing and artificial intelligence, which are two of the White House’s research and development priorities for 2020.

Regarding regulatory hurdles and competition in science and technology efforts, Droegemeier said there is a need for the government to form partnerships to ensure the U.S. remains the leader in technological development.

He added that he will ensure politics will not interfere with scientific operations and integrity.

President Donald Trump announced in early August that he will nominate Droegemeier, also vice president for research and meteorology lecturer at the University of Oklahoma, as OSTP’s director.

The meteorologist previously served on the National Science Board for 12 years.

Matt Goodrich, director of the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, has been appointed head of the General Services Administration’s office of products and programs, MeriTalk reported Thursday.

Goodrich will lead the office that oversees cloud, data services, information technology delivery, innovation portfolio and public experience.

He has been leading FedRAMP since 2009 and works to address barriers to cloud adoption across federal agencies.

Prior to GSA, he previously worked at the Office of Management and Budget and started his government career as a Presidential Management Fellow.

Ashley Mahan, FedRAMP evangelist, will succeed Jay Huie as director of GSA’s secure cloud portfolio.

Mahan oversees FedRAMP’s customer experience, agency engagement and outreach efforts and serves as a liaison between cloud service providers and agencies as a program evangelist.

The leadership moves came after GSA named Kelly Olson as acting director of the Technology Transformation Service.
 

The Defense Department’s Defense Acquisition Regulations System has announced the issuance of a new rule making it easier for major contractors to be reimbursed for costs incurred when conducting independent research and development activities.

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DARS said Friday in a document posted on the Federal Register that it was amending Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement subpart 231, removing a subsection requiring major contractors to first conduct and document a “technical interchange” with government representatives about IR&D efforts in order for their attendant costs to be deemed allowable.

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The pertinent DFARS provision affects IR&D projects carried out from fiscal year 2017 onwards.

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DARS described the regulation to be potentially “significantly burdensome” for contractors seeking to include R&D costs in their billing and said its removal “will result in freeing contractors to pursue IR&D projects without including the Government in those preliminary decisions.”

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DARS pointed out, however, that the new rule “only removes an unneeded requirement” and “does not impose any new requirements on contracts at or below the simplified acquisition threshold and for commercial items, including commercially available off-the-shelf items.”

Margaret Weichert, deputy director of management at the Office of Management and Budget, has said the proposed Government Effectiveness Advanced Research Center will initially focus on data management and workforce modernization efforts, Federal Times reported Friday.

Weichert noted during an Aug. 23 call that the GEAR Center will retrain employees for modern jobs and commercialize federal data to accommodate the public and private sectors and academia.

The OMB proposed the establishment of the public-private partnership center as part of the Trump administration’s government reorganization plan.

The applied research site would house various research entities to develop ways to help the government streamline its service delivery processes.

Weichert added that the OMB is still anticipating industry feedback regarding the potential objectives, authority hierarchy and budget of the GEAR Center.

The U.S. Army has not defined its final plans for a joint training program for cyber mission force personnel, C4ISRNET reported Friday.

Col. Steve Rehn, cyber capability manager within the Army Cyber Center of Excellence, said during the 2018 AFCEA TechNet Augusta event that the service is aware the persistent cyber training environment will be a “constant evolution” concept despite the current lack of final objectives.

The Army previously developed a prototype for the PCTE to lay out initial requirements and determine how to temporarily bring cyber training capability to cyberwarriors before the 2020 roll out.

The service also recently launched a three-week user assessment program to seek feedback from offensive, defensive and support CMF personnel regarding PCTE, according to Col. Richard Haggarty, project manager for instrumentation, targets, threat simulators and soft training systems within Program Executive Office Simulation, Training and Instrumentation.

Haggarty also said the Army is focusing on cyber capabilities instead of on contracts and single vendors.

The Army is jointly operating the PCTE with the U.S. Cyber Command.