Kevin O’Connell, director of the Office of Space Commerce, said his priorities for the space-based regulatory body include modifying space policy regulations and safeguarding national security by encouraging industry participation in the endeavor, SpaceNews reported Thursday.

“Our initial strategy for the Office of Space Commerce involves four basic elements: advocacy, moving regulatory barriers, industry engagement and improving our understanding [of the space industry’s benefits],” O’Connell said Monday during a speech at a space conference at Arizona State University.

O’Connell said the office will focus on instituting international and domestic reforms so that American companies can compete effectively in a free global market.

He also said that, as per Space Policy Directive-2, the office will likely turn into a “one-stop shop” for commercial space regulatory efforts.

The Commerce Department this May proposed to merge its Office of Space Commerce with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration‘s commercial remote sensing regulatory affairs office to streamline both offices’ duties. The new entity would become known as the Space Policy Advancing Commercial Enterprise Administration and report to the Secretary of Commerce.
 

The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration intends to partner with the Tennessee Valley Authority to down-blend highly-enriched uranium and support national security.

The effort would allow for the production of tritium, which serves as an important component of the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile, DOE said Thursday.

The partnership follows Secretary of Energy Rick Perry’s objective to allow NNSA’s continued transfers of enriched uranium from the department’s stock.

NNSA’s unobligated HEU would undergo down-blending into low-enriched uranium to address the needs of defense missions, given the lack of enriched uranium availability in the market.

The effort is part of NNSA’s plan to allocate a source of unobligated enriched uranium for the next seven years, while TVA will manage materials and provide logistics for storage through 2040.

Kelly Olson, chief of the General Service Administration’s Technology Transformation Service, has been chosen to serve as the organization’s acting director, FedScoop reported Wednesday.

The more than 20-year government sector veteran will succeed Joanne Collins Smee, who will leave TTS in late August.

Olson started working in the GSA as its director of strategic initiatives from 2010 to 2014, then director of innovation portfolio from 2015 to 2018.

Prior to joining the agency, she also held leadership roles with Atlantic Media, Connelly Works, American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council and Professional and Scientific Associates.

Olson’s appointment comes as the GSA’s technology acquisition arm begins implementing several modernization programs, including the IT Modernization Centers of Excellence which operates within the Department of Agriculture.

The CoE recently sought proposals for cloud adoption, IT infrastructure optimization and data and analytics for the second phase of USDA’s IT modernization initiative.

An official at the Department of Homeland Security recently said that intelligence and law enforcement agencies now approve unclassified versions of cyber threat indicators at a much faster rate, Nextgov reported Wednesday.

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The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 called for the development of procedures that would allow federal agencies to share cyber threat indicators – that is, any information related to any kind of cybersecurity threat – in their possession with other agencies, relevant organizations and even the public.

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This legal mandate gave rise to the DHS’ Automated Indicator Sharing initiative, in which government entities as well as industry partners submit threat indicators to the DHS’ National Cybersecurity and Communications and Integration Center.

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The NCCIC is responsible for preparing and disseminating alerts about the indicators, but when submissions from law enforcement or the intelligence community include classified information, the NCCIC and the source agency must first remove all sensitive components.

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The source agency ultimately has final say when the threat indicator is sufficiently de-classified for public release.

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The entire process takes time, but it has since been shortened due to the maturation of the NCCIC and the increase in cybersecurity threats in recent years, the DHS official noted.

La’Naia Jones, deputy chief information officer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, has said the intelligence community has started to direct its cybersecurity efforts against the use of ransomware by nation state-related threat actors, expansion of the information technology supply chain exploits and commoditization of breaching capabilities, MeriTalk reported Wednesday.

“These are key areas that we are focusing on and we’re trying to make headway as foundational to the overall cybersecurity and cyber imperative,” Jones said Wednesday at a Splunk-hosted cyber event.

She noted that IC works to investigate nation state-linked adversaries on a daily basis and cited security risks associated with open-source tools.

“Hackers are successfully infecting a wide range of users through official software distribution channels and also obfuscating their intended targets,” Jones said.

Jones said the procurement of services and exploits by cyber threat actors from various vendors on the dark web is an example of the commoditization of hacking capabilities.

Sylvia Burns, chief information officer at the Interior Department, is set to join the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on Sept. 7 to serve as deputy CIO for enterprise strategy, Federal News Radio reported Wednesday.

A spokesman for DOI said Burns has led efforts to restructure the department’s information technology reporting and management structure to comply with the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act since taking over as CIO in 2014.

Burns has held various roles since joining DOI in 2006 such as division chief for portfolio management within the department’s office of the CIO and director of information planning for the office of the assistant secretary for Indian affairs.

She is co-chairwoman of the CIO Council’s services, strategy and infrastructure committee.

Vice Adm. Richard Brown, commander of the Naval Surface Force Pacific, has said that four reorganized littoral combat ships may be ready for deployment by 2019, Defense News reported Thursday.

The planned deployments are part of the service’s LCS reorganization program, which the U.S. Navy initiated in 2016 to fix mechanical problems found on the Independence-class USS Montgomery and USS Gabrielle Giffords and Freedom-class USS Detroit and USS Little Rock ships.

The Navy also intended to address the concerns on reduced crew ownership of the ships, which was blamed for various accidents.

The Navy replaced the modular LCS program, wherein each LCS has a small crew and would switch between anti-surface, anti-submarine or mine warfare mission packages depending on the mission, with a blue-and-gold crewing model wherein mission packages are assigned semi-permanently.

Lockheed Martin heads the team working on the Freedom variant of the Navy’s LCS class and Austal USA leads the work on the Independence variant.

Lt. Gen. Bruce Crawford, U.S. Army chief information officer, has said the service should leverage the large volume of data through the use of artificial intelligence, enterprise cloud, identity management and other “data-driven technologies” as it works to upgrade its network, Fedscoop reported on Aug. 3.

“Any attempt to modernize this thing called the network must consider these factors, and the key factor being the data,” he said at an Association of the U.S. Army symposium.

Crawford said the service needs to address the “how” aspect of its network modernization effort by determining how it plans to build on some of the lessons learned to deliver an intuitive, resilient and reliable network that functions as a weapons system and how to adapt policies to the needs of warfighters.

“And last but not least, how do we intend to drive institutional change to promote sustained modernization that will enable the Army to adapt in response to the ever-changing environment?,” he added.