A package of fiscal 2019 appropriations bills passed by the Senate would earmark $60.3M in funds to support the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s health IT interoperability efforts, Meritalk reported Monday.

The upper chamber passed on Aug. 23 the minibus measure that would appropriate $854B in funds for the departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Labor and Education.

The report said the Small Rural Hospital Improvement Grant Program would receive $15.9M in funding to facilitate health IT adoption.

The Senate measure would allocate an $85M budget for the Social Security Administration’s IT modernization effort and $20.77M for the Labor Department’s technology investment initiatives.
 

The Department of Homeland Security’s procurement innovation lab has a list of nine contracting methods that federal agencies can use when choosing a contractor for a task order issued under the General Services Administration’s $50B Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions contract, FCW reported Monday.

Eric Cho, project lead for DHS’ PIL, said one of the techniques agencies can adopt is asking potential vendors to discuss their offerings through oral presentations and raising follow-up questions following such presentations.

Agencies can also add a “twist” by presenting a specific scenario and asking vendors how they plan to address the situation, Cho said Monday at a meeting of the American Council for Technology-Industry Advisory Council.

In August 2017, GSA awarded 10 companies spots on the potential 15-year EIS contract for telecommunications support services.
 

The National Archives and Records Administration has found in a recent study that almost all federal agencies are preparing to completely adopt a digital record-keeping process, Federal News Radio reported Monday.

The agency said in its 2017 Federal Agency Records Management report that 98 percent of agencies claim they are on track to leave behind traditional means of managing records to implement a modernized procedure.

The effort is part of a joint directive from the Office of Budget and Management and NARA, as well as the Trump administration’s reorganization plan, which was announced in June.

The White House noted in the reorganization plan that electronic records will help streamline processing times and search operations for missing information.

The plan also mentions the need for agencies to review their current inventory of electronic records to save costs and lost records, as well as avoid deficient practices and services for paper records.

In 2015, NARA launched the Federal Electronic Records Modernization Initiative to help government organizations transition to electronic records and develop new service policies to keep up with changing trends in electronic records management.

NARA also partnered with the General Services Administration in 2016 to set requirements that agencies should follow to organize their e-records.

Brig. Gen. Roy Agustin, director of logistics, engineering and force protection for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa, told  Defense News in an interview published Monday that USAFE has invested in deployable air base systems for use in operations across its 104-nation theater.

He said an effort to procure DABS — a package of military shelters, vehicles and construction equipment — is still in the early stage and received initial funds in the current fiscal year.

“I see it more as the ability to be more agile in our basing,” he told the publication.

Agustin added the systems can support strategic positioning in a given geographic location to accelerate movement of forces who conduct humanitarian assistance efforts or address kinetic threats, as well as support mobility of troops who work with allies.

He noted that the strategy of placing DABS at Poland’s 31st Air Base, which is the location of the first DABS proof-of-concept exercise held from July 16 to Aug. 14, helped U.S. air forces deliver war reserve materiel they had from their site in the West – Luxembourg, Germany or the U.K. – to their base in Poland.

The Department of Homeland Security has allocated over $1.6B in fiscal 2018 funds to preparedness grant programs that seek to help state, local, territorial and tribal agencies respond to disasters and other emergencies.

These allotments comprise more than $1.3B in non-competitive grant funding earmarked by the DHS in June and $345M in competitive grant funding that the department announced Friday.

“The DHS grant programs are flexible by design and purposed to help address our evolving risk environment. Response and recovery to catastrophic events strain our communities’ logistics, supply chains, communications and staffing capacities,” DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said.

“That is why our preparedness grant programs build and sustain critical capabilities today, so we will be ready tomorrow,” said Nielsen, a 2018 Wash100 recipient.

To help mitigate terrorism-related activities, the DHS will allot more than $1B for the Homeland Security Grant Program, $402M to the State Homeland Security Program, $580M to the Urban Area Security Initiative and $85M to Operation Stonegarden.

The department will also provide funds for law enforcement terrorism prevention activities, including more than $350M for the Emergency Management Performance Grant Program, $10M for the Tribal Homeland Security Grant Program, $60M for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, $10M for the Intercity Passenger Rail-Amtrak Program, $100M for the Port Security Grant Program, $88M for the Transit Security Grant Program and $2M for the Intercity Bus Security Grant Program.

Defense Department Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy has said DoD is examining the science behind artificial technology and its potential application to the Pentagon’s various missions.

“Our knowledge of what AI does better than humans will ultimately lead to a robust human-machine partnership,” Deasy told audience at the DoDIIS Worldwide conference held earlier this month, according to FedScoop.

He noted that collaborating with AI systems could help warfighters obtain an “asymmetric” advantage as they work to address current and emerging threats.

Deasy also urged government, commercial and academic organizations to support the Joint AI Center.

DoD established the center last month to establish a set of AI standards, reusable technology, processes and shared data for use across the department.