The Defense Innovation Board has published set of guidelines that will help the Defense Department and other program executive offices determine if agile development processes are being followed, GovernmentCIO Media reported Friday.

The document called Detecting Agile BS provides standards for identifying real or false claims of project teams in complying to agile development practices.

DIB found that the lack of communication between the software development team and the users of the system code, the priority to meet requirements first before developing an actual effective product and contractors acting autonomously are signs of a fraud agile project.

Other indicators of false agile development progress are the absence of end users throughout the development phase and the use of manual instead of automated processes in the development, security and operations culture.

The guide also noted that the use of tools such as repository hosting sites and modification tracking applications indicate that project teams are legitimately executing an agile development process.

Additionally, Detecting Agile BS provides the DoD with a set of questions it could ask customers and users and teams for programming, program management and leadership regarding their software development efforts.

The Department of the Navy has released its latest business operation strategy to serve as a guideline for the implementation of its business reform agenda. 

The business operations plan for fiscal years 2019-2021 will develop a long-term mission that seeks to make a shift in function from oversight to leadership and take the lead role in recruiting, training and equipping U.S. Navy and Marine Corps personnel, the department said Wednesday.

The plan aims to adhere to the tenets of the National Defense Strategy which include creating a more lethal force; boosting relationships with alliances and fostering new ones with other partners; and reorganizing the department’s business practices.

It also ascribes to the objectives outlined in the Fiscal Year 2018-2022 National Defense Business Operations Plan, which include renewing military readiness; investing in recapitalization, innovation and modernization strategies; boosting information technology and cybersecurity technologies; selecting appropriate counterintelligence, intelligence and security support contractors for Defense Department operations; beefing up recruitment strategies; streamlining administrative and regulatory processes; and conducting regular performance audits.

 

U.S. defense officials have said that a cyber operation aimed at deterring Russian interference in American elections is underway, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

Defense officials knowledgeable about the campaign have said that U.S. Cyber Command is going after individual Russian operatives, notifying them that they have been identified and are being monitored.

The officials, however, have refrained from revealing how many operatives are being targeted or how they are being contacted.

The cyber operation is only one of multiple initiatives being undertaken to safeguard U.S. elections from Russian influence.

USCYBERCOM has also sent teams to Europe to help allies defend their networks from Russian hacking.

Meanwhile, social networking services are in the process of removing fake users and accounts that spread misinformation.

Brian Hermann, chief of the Defense Information Systems Agency’s enterprise-wide service development division, has said the Defense Department needs to reform its processes to leverage commercial off-the-shelf products and services, Federal News Network reported Wednesday.

Hermann noted during a FedInsider-hosted event that changing DoD’s procurement process for commercial products is critical for the Defense Enterprise Operations Solutions contract, which remains in limbo because of a pending final request for proposal for a universal communications platform.

“DEOS has to remain non-developmental, and focused on actual existing commercial offerings,” he explained.

The DISA official recommended DoD to relax its requirements, expand its networks for new capabilities and assess privately-made systems for cyber resilience and their capability to adapt to defense networks.

Under the DEOS contract, DISA intends consolidate all communication tools in an single system to help different government agencies work with each other and save costs.

The contract will be awarded to a single vendor to enable interoperability between government departments.

The Government Accountability Office has called on the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide contracting officers with more training in implementing a program that aims to support veteran-owned small businesses through contract opportunities.

GAO said in a report published Wednesday that it interviewed 30 contracting officers and found that 12 of them encountered difficulty in making “fair and reasonable price” assessments of contract awards under the Veterans First program.

That is one of the two criteria, dubbed the VA Rule of Two, set by the Supreme Court in its 2016 decision.

The report showed that contracts set aside for veteran-owned small businesses rose from 20.8 percent in fiscal 2016 to 25.8 percent in fiscal 2017 following the Supreme Court decision.

GAO recommended that VA improve the way it oversees the compliance of such businesses with subcontracting limitations, such as ensuring the inclusion of the required clauses in contracts.
 

Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has said the creation of a “space force” as the sixth service branch is “absolutely necessary” to ensure the country’s superiority in space, Defense.gov reported Wednesday.

“The U.S. military is the best in the world in space, but our adversaries have taken note and are actively developing and fielding capabilities to potentially deny our usage of space in crisis or war,” he said Tuesday during the National Space Council’s fourth meeting at Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington, D.C.

He mentioned the Defense Department’s plan to submit in the coming weeks a legislative measure to establish the space force and efforts to form a space development agency.

“The effort now is on reconciling capabilities prioritized by the National Defense Strategy with the readiness of technology, anchored by our assumptions on how quickly we can scale,” Shanahan said of the new agency.

Vice President Mike Pence hosted the meeting, where he delivered a speech about the space force’s role in addressing the lack of accountability and centralized leadership over national security space programs.