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PEO Digital Brings Flank Speed Data Protection to Navy Nuclear Propulsion Information Community
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PEO Digital Brings Flank Speed Data Protection to Navy Nuclear Propulsion Information Community

The Department of the Navy’s Program Executive Office for Digital and Enterprise Services has deployed Flank Speed’s Microsoft Purview Information Protection to secure U.S. Navy community of interest data and enable the transition of such information from legacy systems to a collaborative, cloud-based environment.

The MPIP offers security features that enable users to add sensitivity labels to their data to control who can access their files, PEO Digital said Friday.

Flank Speed is a permanent, single Navy enterprise solution for daily work, offering a secure environment for collaboration, cloud storage for files and documents, and Microsoft Office 365 productivity tools.

PEO Digital begins the MPIP implementation within the Navy Nuclear Propulsion Information—or NNPI—community, which has more data protection requirements compared to other COIs.

The NNPI community is now working to migrate its data from on-prem Navy Marine Corps Intranet servers to Flank Speed, with the first step focused on modernizing legacy capabilities to protect files and emails.

With MPIP, the NNPI security group can prevent people not connected to a Navy network port or through a virtual private network from accessing unclassified NNPI data from the internet to securely share information within the Flank Speed tenant and with external partners in the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program.

The MPIP will also enable the development of an automated workflow to notify stakeholders when they need to provide input or a signature on a document, rather than relying on legacy processes.

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Dawn Messer Named Interim Chief of Defense Acquisition Regulations System
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Dawn Messer Named Interim Chief of Defense Acquisition Regulations System

Dawn Messer, chair of the Defense Acquisition Regulations Council, has been appointed acting director of the Defense Acquisition Regulations System.

In this capacity, Messer will oversee all operations and activities of the Defense Pricing, Contracting and Acquisition Policy/DARS office for 180 days.

John Tenaglia, principal director of the Defense Pricing, Contracting and Acquisition Policy—or DPCAP—at the Department of Defense, announced Messer’s appointment in a memo he digitally signed on Aug. 16.

Tenaglia noted that Kimberly Ziegler, who has served as acting director in the past six months, will transition to the role of deputy director of DARS.

Messer most recently served as deputy director of DARS and as a senior procurement analyst within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment/DPCAP Contract Policy.

The Defense Acquisition Corps member has over 23 years of experience in contractor logistics support, contracting for major weapons systems sustainment and engineering services and base level support.

DARS is responsible for the development and maintenance of acquisition guidance and rules to facilitate the acquisition workforce as they purchase the goods and services DOD needs to support U.S. warfighters.

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AETC to Establish New Learning CoE With Eye Toward Great Power Competition
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AETC to Establish New Learning CoE With Eye Toward Great Power Competition

The Air Education and Training Command is working to establish the Enterprise Learning Engineering Center of Excellence, whose overall aim will be to develop airmen and guardians possessing the competencies required by great power competition.

The ELE CoE will be led by a director who will oversee a 24-member cross-functional team comprising learning professionals, researchers, analysts and military leaders, according to an article posted Wednesday on the AETC website.

The center of excellence will be structured to feature interdisciplinary standing teams, which will be focused enduring missions and requirements, and task teams, which will remain established only for a fixed duration to address an emerging mission or task.

The center will employ learning engineering, which AETC Chief Learning Officer Wendy Walsh described as an interdisciplinary approach that seeks to optimize learning experiences and outcomes by applying principles from various domains, including education, engineering, technology, data analytics and cognitive science.

The center will also collaborate with centers of excellence in the Second Air Force and the Nineteenth Air Force as well as other partners, including private industry, to not only ensure learning outcomes but also integrate new technologies and inform potential acquisitions.

The ELE CoE’s core functions include experimenting with and field-testing learning technologies and methods; developing and integrating cross-functional and interdisciplinary learning and training tactics, techniques and procedures; determining capability gaps and science and technology interoperability; and handling learning data management, analysis and integration.

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Gulfstream Aerospace, Fives Machining Join NASA Composite Aircraft Manufacturing Project
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Gulfstream Aerospace, Fives Machining Join NASA Composite Aircraft Manufacturing Project

Gulfstream Aerospace and Fives Machining Systems are the newest members of the Advanced Composites Consortium, which supports NASA’s Hi-Rate Composite Aircraft Manufacturing, or HiCAM, project.

HiCAM partners with the private sector, academia and regulators to address an aviation industry need for more rapid production of composite aircraft that delivers improved performance to meet increasing global demand for lightweight air transport vehicles and secure U.S. competitiveness in the commercial aircraft industry, NASA said Thursday.

Lightweight composite airframes are also expected to contribute to NASA’s Sustainable Flight National Partnership by reducing fuel consumption and carbon emissions to improve air quality.

With the addition of Gulfstream and Fives, the consortium now has over 20 members with significant and unique expertise in aircraft design, manufacturing, certification, testing and tool development.

Competition among the organizations is ongoing to determine what composite aircraft concepts have the greatest impact on manufacturing rates.

Selected proposals will be demonstrated at full scale.

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CISA’s Clayton Romans Touts Accomplishments of JCDC, Looks Forward to Future Contributions to Cybersecurity
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CISA’s Clayton Romans Touts Accomplishments of JCDC, Looks Forward to Future Contributions to Cybersecurity

Clayton Romans, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency‘s associate director for the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative, marked the anniversary of JCDC in a recent article where he touted the organization’s accomplishments through its three-year existence.

Established by CISA in 2021, JCDC is a public-private cybersecurity collaborative that aims to work with various stakeholders, including those from industry, to share cyber defense-related insights, implement defensive cyber operations, bolster those operations by supporting exercises and design and implement cyber defense plans.

The collaborative’s initial partners included Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft and Verizon but their ranks have since expanded to over 340, Romans said in an article posted Wednesday on the CISA website. Those partners have contributed actionable insights and expertise to inform most of the cybersecurity advisories, guides, white papers and fact sheets issued by CISA in the past three years.

JCDC has also helped coordinate cyber defense plans for three ongoing geopolitical conflicts and collaboratively executed multiple other cyber defense plans like the Pipelines Cyber Defense Planning Effort and the Remote Monitoring and Management Cyber Defense Plan.

JCDC’s other cybersecurity contributions include a rapid response to the Log4Shell vulnerability, efforts against the Daxin malware and, more recently, a tabletop exercise that sought to develop responses to security incidents involving artificial intelligence.

Romans went on to express gratefulness for the contributions of all the parts of JCDC and said he was excited about JCDC’s potential to promote collective cyber defense.

“We’re not homogenous, and it’s not always harmonious, but it is the collective willingness to unify and operate with clarity of purpose that empowers JCDC to tackle today’s sophisticated cyber threat challenges,” Romans said.

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NRC Appoints Jennifer Golder, James Corbett to Executive Roles
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NRC Appoints Jennifer Golder, James Corbett to Executive Roles

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has appointed Jennifer Golder and James Corbett as chief human capital officer and director of the office of administration, respectively.

The agency said Wednesday the appointments will take effect on Sept. 8. 

As leader of the office of the chief human capital officer, Golder will oversee NRC’s human capital planning, policy and program development. Corbett, meanwhile, will manage the agency’s centralized services, including acquisitions, facilities and security, property management and administrative service.

Golder joined NRC in 1999 starting as a program analyst in the office of the chief financial officer before her promotion to deputy director of information and records services division under the office of information services. She also served as director of planning, budgeting, and program analysis staff under the office of federal and state materials programs.

She continued to climb up the ladder becoming budget director, associate director of HR operations and policy, chief learning officer and deputy chief human capital officer. Prior to her latest promotion, Golder held the director of the office of administration position and was acting chief financial officer.

Corbett has been with NRC for more than 22 years. He started as the chief of computer operations and telecommunications branch then deputy director of infrastructure and computer operations division.

Other leadership positions Corbett held at NRC include director of the business process improvement and applications division, director of the acquisition management division and deputy director of the Office of Administration since 2019. He briefly served as acting chief performance officer at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and worked in the financial industry before joining NRC.

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DARPA Unveils 5 Regional Commercial Accelerators to Help Scale Early-Stage Tech
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DARPA Unveils 5 Regional Commercial Accelerators to Help Scale Early-Stage Tech

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has selected five regional Commercial Accelerators from across the U.S. to rapidly commercialize and scale early-stage technologies for economic and national security.

DARPA said Thursday the Commercial Accelerators will work with DARPA-backed companies that develop early-stage tech platforms to help facilitate access to commercial talent and investor networks, provide additional training and mentoring support and leverage demonstration sites, laboratories and other unique regional capabilities.

The regional Commercial Accelerators are Austin-based Capital Factory, CIMIT at Massachusetts General Hospital, FedTech, SRI International and the Wireless Research Center of North Carolina.

“With these regional accelerators, we can ensure more DARPA-funded teams can recruit top talent, develop robust go-to-market strategies, raise capital, and scale operations, turning groundbreaking technology into high value for national, economic, and societal impact,” said Sha-Chelle Manning, chief of commercial strategy at DARPA.

DARPA expects the accelerators to help improve and scale the Embedded Entrepreneur Initiative pilot program, which offers funding to link a performer’s technical team to commercialization experts.

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Army’s G-Invoicing System Set to Go Live in November
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Army’s G-Invoicing System Set to Go Live in November

The U.S. Army expects to launch an online government invoicing platform in November to comply with the Department of the Treasury’s requirement to modernize the management of intragovernmental buy and sell transactions as part of efforts to improve the transparency and accuracy of sales and procurement.

“G-Invoicing is the future of intragovernmental transactions. Successful implementation of the tool will only occur through steadfast collaboration and mutual support across federal agencies,” Wes Robinson, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for financial operations and information, said in a statement published Thursday.

In fiscal year 2021, the Army purchased intragovernmental goods and services worth approximately $70.2 billion and recorded over $110 billion in revenue from the intragovernmental sale of goods and services. The service said intragovernmental transactions accounted for nearly 35 percent of its annual budget.

According to the Army, G-Invoicing has four key steps that are consecutive and must be met before transitioning to the next process or step: general terms and conditions, orders, performances and funds settlement.

The military branch noted that the G-Invoicing system implementation will require the Army to maintain consistent communication with trading partners to ensure that both parties monitor the changes associated with the implementation.

The Army highlighted the need to record lessons learned to enhance transaction processing and reporting and maximize G-Invoicing’s benefits.

“I am thrilled about this capability and strongly advocate for cross-agency collaboration to harness our collective experiences and lessons learned,” said Robinson. “Together, we are implementing a solution that will ensure the stability and advancement of our Army’s financial operations.”

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BluePath Labs Secures Contract for DOE Office Administrative Support Services
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BluePath Labs Secures Contract for DOE Office Administrative Support Services

Washington, D.C.-based management consulting company BluePath Labs will extend administrative support to the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management under an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with a potential $4.5 million value over a five-year period.

The contract permits EM to issue firm-fixed-price and time and materials task orders from Aug. 22, 2024 to Aug. 21, 2029, the DOE said Thursday.

In December 2021, BluePath Labs, an 8(a) certified Service Disabled Veteran owned small business, secured an IDIQ contract to provide business management, communications and analytical services also to EM. The contract, which supports the DOE office’s Washington headquarters and its unit at Germantown, Maryland, covers three years, with a potential value of $4 million.

BluePath Labs was also among the 14 companies that secured positions on a potential 10-year contract awarded in March for the development and operation of DOE data collection programs and systems. The award is valued up to $900 million, with other companies securing spots including Accenture’s Federal Services, Booz Allen Hamilton, Crown Consulting, Edgewater Federal Solutions, Peregrine Technical Solutions and Redhorse Corp.

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DOD Selects Anduril to Join 2nd Tranche of Replicator Initiative
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DOD Selects Anduril to Join 2nd Tranche of Replicator Initiative

The Department of Defense has selected Anduril’s Dive-LD autonomous underwater vehicles to participate in the second tranche of its modernization initiative dubbed Replicator, the DefenseScoop reported last week.

Anduril will join Replicator 1.2, an effort to advance industrial output capacity and the military’s implementation of autonomous systems in numerous combat environments.

Kathleen Hicks, deputy secretary of defense and a 2024 Wash100 Award recipient launched the first tranche of the initiative in August 2023. 

During her keynote at the National Defense Industrial Association Emerging Technologies for Defense Conference and Exhibition on Aug 7th, Hicks said, “Although we have lots more work to do, we are on track to meet Replicator’s original goal of enabling ‘multiple thousands in multiple domains in 18-24 months’ — that is, by the end of August 2025.”

According to Anduril’s website, the Dive-LD drone can “conduct missions for up to 10 days with an architecture that scales for multi-week missions.” PMS 394, the Navy’s program office for advanced undersea systems, proposed the underwater vehicle alongside several other technologies.

Sources say the Dive-LD systems are selling for around $2.5 million each.

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