The General Services Administration plans to issue a playbook to guide the agency and potentially the entire government in automating digital tasks, FCW reported Wednesday.

GSA wants to utilize robotic process automation bots, which can automate various tasks, such as data manipulation, data entry, email handling, data reconciliation and extracting data from documents. To help the government implement RPA, the agency plans to establish a community of practice in January to connect federal employees and officials who work on the technology.

The community will also help GSA create a government-wide playbook to guide other agencies in automating daily tasks. The Trump administration expects five percent of federal occupations to be entirely automated, while 60 percent of jobs could be partially automated. GSA is automating some internal processes with RPA, including the agency’s financial system and invoices.

The agency may soon include data entry in their efforts among other larger “higher value” applications, according to GSA’s RPA Program Director Ed Burrows. The federal government launched its first process automation bot in 2017.

Margaret Weichert, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, said the Trump administration aims to integrate workforce efforts through executive councils and agencies in 2019, Federal News Network reported Wednesday.

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Weichert noted that the government will focus on the collaboration of agencies in workforce initiatives such as reskilling federal personnel, fostering employee engagement and shortening hiring procedures. A fourth quarter update posted on Performance.gov states the administration is slated to develop a reskilling strategy to re-deploy existing federal staff by the end of March.

“Agencies were widely interested in using automated career paths and leveraging technology platforms to make career paths accessible to employees,” according to the update.

OPM and the Office of Management and Budget, where Weichert concurrently serves as deputy director for management, have begun collaborating with other agencies to study data on federal workforce operations and potential ways to address the need for reskilling and redeployment.

The Trump administration will hold an industry day in January to assess career-pathing strategies used by the private sector.

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan held his first national security meeting informing senior military officials about his plans as head of the Department of Defense, SpaceNews reported Wednesday.

At the Pentagon, he told secretaries and undersecretaries of military services and other defense officials that he will continue the efforts set by former Secretary Jim Mattis under the national defense strategy. Shanaha also called on the officials to keep their focus on China’s growing threats to the U.S.

The call comes as the 2018 National Defense Strategy identifies Beijing as well as Russia among the biggest threats to the U.S. military due to their rapid development of new weapons and defense systems. However, the acting secretary did not mention Moscow in his discussion about “great power competition.”

Prior to taking office as DoD acting lead, Shanahan expressed interest in modernizing the military and investing in advanced space technologies and hypersonic weapons to deter foreign threats, particularly China. He is leading reorganization efforts at the Pentagon to establish President Trump’s proposed Space Force.

Lt. Gen. Bruce Crawford, chief information officer of the U.S. Army, said the service will continue to focus on cloud migration, workforce development and data security in its information technology modernization efforts in 2019, C4ISRNet reported Sunday.

The Air Force has been updating its tactical network over the past 18 months, according to the CIO. Crawford said this year’s IT modernization efforts will include identity and access management to protect military data, increasing mobility of soldiers, increasing resiliency of apps from industry, leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning and reducing data centers. 

The official noted the Army plans to expand access and survivability of data for soldiers to coordinate anywhere in the field. The service branch also wants to work with industry partners to achieve total asset visibility, reduce the number of tools used by soldiers, cut enterprise license agreements and expand cybersecurity. Crawford hopes to explore talent across industry to help the Army in its modernization efforts through 2020s.

Future Congress released a white paper guiding technology vendors, civic hackers and individual developers in offering products helping Congress manage, update and maintain its information technology infrastructures, Fed Scoop reported Monday.

The paper provides information on the governance structure, technical policies and acquisitions processes for IT in the House, Senate and other legislative branch entities. Future Congress also included recommendations for how Congress can “facilitate a better and more effective IT landscape.” The list includes establishing a Congressional Digital Services, increasing the ceiling on staff pay to attract more IT talent and providing dedicated help desks to coordinate tech vendors and other civilians.

The Senate and House currently use “formal procurement,” authorized acquisition or unauthorized processes to buy technologies. Formal procurement enables officials to buy products for the institution as a whole, while authorized acquisition allows them to enter deals only with vendors approved by their chamber’s IT governance overseer. However, some procurement officials can also use software services that are non-compliant with the Congress’ IT governance rules through unauthorized acquisition.

The Office of the Chief Administrative Officer manages procurement for the House. The Senate relies on its Office of the Senate Sergeant at Arms for such process. Future Congress serves as “resource hub” composed of bipartisan advocacy organizations, academia and private companies that guide Congress in improving science and technology expertise.

The Office of Management and Budget is launching the government’s first cyber reskilling academy to train employees who aren’t in the information technology field to become cyber defense analysts, Government Matters reported Sunday.

Jason Gray, chief information officer at the Department of Education, said the Federal Cybersecurity Reskilling Academy will provide participants with the latest cyber practices and problem-solving skills to protect their networks. The department began registration for the program in late November and plans to name 25 participants from across the government by end of January. Gray said over 700 people have applied for the pilot cyber training program.

Alan Paller, founder and director of research at the SANS Institute, said FCRA would also teach participants the “language” to understand IT processes. 

“You can’t train someone to be a cyber person if they don’t have the language,” Paller said. “It would be like training a surgeon who doesn’t know anatomy. There’s networking, the internals of the computers, Linux, Python; if you don’t know how to do that, all you can do is talk about security.”