U.S. Army Undersecretary Ryan McCarthy has said in an interview that the Army Futures Command comes at a time when the military needs to keep pace with advancements in technology and formalize its business relationships.

McCarthy explained that the Futures Command was established to initiate formal collaborations to speed up the delivery of information and results, the service said Friday.

He added that having a military-industry relationship enables contractors to help the Army solve problems and informs those vendors about what the service seeks in a product or service.

“Clearly we want them to be successful, but we have to communicate to them what exactly we want. And we have to be consistent so they can invest in their products and services, allow them to evolve and bring the cost down,” McCarthy said.

The Army official also noted that the organization ultimately intends to bring capabilities critical to the priorities of the service’s Chief of Staff through the Army Capabilities Integration Center and the Research, Development and Engineering Command.

Lastly, McCarthy believes that creating a cost-efficient lifecycle plan is important in developing weapons systems.

“Getting a life-cycle plan in place that’s not only cost-efficient for managing and upgrading these systems over time, but also keeps operational rates up, is absolutely critical,” he said.

Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie has said VA will work closely with the Defense Department over the next decade in efforts to deploy and ensure interoperability of their updated electronic health record systems., FedScoop reported Thursday.

Wilkie said at the American Legion National Convention that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis instructed him to make VA’s electronic health care system work to continuously record the medical data of U.S. warfighters during and after military service.

As part of its health IT modernization effort, VA awarded Cerner a potential 10-year, $10 billion contract in May to help the department adopt the same EHR system as DoD.

VA’s Office of Electronic Health Record Modernization, led by Genevieve Morris, will oversee the preparation, deployment and maintenance of the platform and support tools.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has begun to revise two guidance documents meant to help organizations manage the cybersecurity posture of mobile applications, MeriTalk reported Thursday.

NIST representatives said during an Advanced Technology Academic Research Center-hosted forum the updated Special Publication 800-163 will suggest protocols for agencies to identify vulnerabilities when evaluating apps.

Michael Ogata, computer scientist at NIST’s applied cybersecurity division, said initial guideline lacked information from other parts of agency or partner security infrastructure, as well as definite statements on application security requirements that should be considered during the vetting process.

The updated SP 800-163 will be open for public comment beginning on Sept. 9.

Gema Howell, computer scientists at NIST’s applied cybersecurity division, said the agency will also update its SP 800-124 guideline to include additional management technology characteristics and elaborate on new deployment considerations, mobile ecosystem threats and threat mitigation processes.

The revised SP 800-124 is scheduled for publication in 2019.

James Paul Gfrerer, the White House’s nominee for the role of assistant secretary for information and technology at the Department of Veterans Affairs, is scheduled on Sept. 5 to appear before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee for his nomination hearing, Federal News Radio reported Wednesday.

The confirmation hearing comes amid the resignation of Ash Zenooz as chief medical officer and Genevieve Morris as chief health information officer at VA’s electronic health record modernization office.

Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), chairman of the House Veterans Affairs’ technology modernization subpanel, wrote a letter to VA Secretary Robert Wilkie expressing concern about the “rudderless leadership” of the department’s EHR modernization initiative.

Banks called on Wilkie to pick a chief medical officer from the Veterans Health Administration and appoint a permanent chief health information officer to oversee the EHR program.

The lawmaker asked VA to submit by Sept. 7 an organizational chart that details the federal officials and contractors responsible for the EHR modernization project.

David Berteau, president of the Professional Services Council, has said one of the programs that contractors are on the lookout for in the fiscal 2019 appropriations bills is the Defense Department’s “Deliver Uncompromised” initiative, Federal News Radio reported Wednesday.

“The premise of Deliver Uncompromised, and some accompanying comments that DoD has made both in testimony and in public speeches, has indicated a big shift — and probably an appropriate shift — to spending more time on the security,” Berteau told Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

“Not only the security of systems, but the security of data, the security of communications, a broad array of, I would say, more than cybersecurity even,” he added.

Berteau said contract deliverables under the Defense Security Service’s Deliver Uncompromised program should be protected from cyber hacking, data contamination and inappropriate data sharing practices.

He noted that the initiative serves as a new approach to integrate security into contracts and suggests that the government has a process to measure security.