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NIST Soliciting Comments on Updated Digital Identity Guidance
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NIST Soliciting Comments on Updated Digital Identity Guidance

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is seeking public comments on a draft version of its updated digital identity guidance.

The draft Digital Identity Guidelines Special Publication 800-63 Revision 4 aims to ensure security, privacy and accessibility during the identity-proofing process for people accessing government services, regardless of the means by which a person chooses to prove their identity, NIST said Wednesday.

NIST incorporated feedback gathered in 2023 from private industry, federal agencies, privacy and civil rights advocacy groups, and members of the public into the updated guidance which, according to Office of Management and Budget deputy director for management Jason Miller, will help federal agencies better defend against evolving threats while providing critical benefits and services to the American people.

“These improved guidelines are intended to help organizations of all kinds manage risk and prevent fraud while ensuring that digital services are lawfully accessible to all,” said NIST Director Laurie Locascio.

Comments on the latest guidance will be accepted until Oct. 7. NIST will hold a webinar on Wednesday to discuss the draft publication.

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DIU Taps 3 Contractors to Solve Electromagnetic Interference on Drone Communication
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DIU Taps 3 Contractors to Solve Electromagnetic Interference on Drone Communication

The Defense Innovation Unit has selected contractors Auterion, ModalAI and Neros to prototype hardware and software solutions to electromagnetic interference, or EMI, on small unmanned aircraft systems’ communication.

The three companies’ prototype demonstration and testing will start two months after their contract awards, with completion expected after nine months, the DIU said Wednesday.

The Department of Defense’s innovation arm added that electromagnetic interference project drew proposals from 99 companies, with the awardees chosen through a competitive process.

According to the DIU, the three winning contractors are tasked to provide a resilient baseline solution enabling drone operators’ rapid response in electromagnetically contested environments.

The EMI initiative follows the NATO-Ukraine Defense Innovators Summit in Krakow, Poland, in June, which highlighted how electromagnetic interference impacts the battlefield. It supports the Blue UAS program that the DIU initiated in 2020 for rapid assessment of commercial drones for potential DOD use.

The program’s cleared list of drones includes the sUAS platforms of Blue Halo, Wingtra, Ascent AeroSystems, senseFly and Freefly Systems. The DIU’s Blue UAS cleared list updated May 2024 identified drone platforms from 14 companies.

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Army Unveils 2 Initiatives Under 500-Day AI Implementation Plan
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Army Unveils 2 Initiatives Under 500-Day AI Implementation Plan

The U.S. Army launched two initiatives under two hashtags, #BreakAI and #CounterAI, as part of its 500-day implementation plan for artificial intelligence, Breaking Defense reported Wednesday.

Young Bang, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, said the Break AI initiative seeks to test algorithms through the government’s verification and validation and testing and evaluation processes to ensure that the AI tools are free of flaws and fully operable before they reach the warfighters.

“It’s really about as we move towards AGI [artificial general intelligence], how do we actually test something that we don’t know what the outcome or the behaviors are going to be?” stated Bang, a 2024 Wash100 awardee.

He cited the need for industry’s help to advance the implementation of the Break AI initiative, particularly with building tools to evaluate its AI technologies.

The Counter AI initiative, meanwhile, focuses on defending against adversaries’ use of AI tools.

Jennifer Swanson, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for data, engineering and software, said the Counter AI initiative intends to make “sure our platforms and our algorithms and our capabilities are secure from attack and from threat.”

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GAO Reviews Evidence-Building Capacity Assessment Processes of Federal Agencies
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GAO Reviews Evidence-Building Capacity Assessment Processes of Federal Agencies

A Government Accountability Office has reviewed the assessment process of 23 federal agencies for collecting and using evidence and found that most are having difficulties in understanding Office of Management and Budget guidance for conducting the assessments.

Agencies are required to assess aspects of their statistics, evaluation, research and analysis efforts every four years under the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 to improve the collection and use of evidence, such as data and the results of studies, that help federal decision-makers determine whether federal programs and activities are achieving intended results, GAO said Tuesday.

According to GAO’s report, agency officials face challenges in identifying appropriate approaches for conducting the activity and understanding how the assessments would be used.

The government watchdog pointed to the use of different methodologies at the agencies in assessing their evidence-building capacity as a cause of such difficulties.

To resolve the issues, GAO recommends that OMB leverage the Evaluation Officer Council responsible for sharing information and helping agencies with Evidence Act implementation to identify agency officials’ needs for additional guidance on capacity assessments and address them accordingly.

GAO also recommended identifying, documenting and sharing lessons learned on capacity assessment methods.

OMB neither agreed nor disagreed with the recommendations and stated that it would take them into consideration moving forward.

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Roger Baird Appointed Associate Director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
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Roger Baird Appointed Associate Director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center

Roger Baird has been appointed as associate director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

NASA said Tuesday Baird will oversee the center’s business operations ensuring execution and integration of mission support enterprise functions and budget management. He will also be a senior adviser focused on advancing the center’s future direction.

In his new leadership role, Baird will be responsible for leading around 7,000 civil service and contract employees while also managing Marshall’s $5 billion annual budget. He will also offer his guidance and expertise to the center’s mission support areas and various human spaceflight, science and technology programs, which are vital to NASA’s missions.

Joseph Pelfrey, director of Marshall Space Flight Center, described Baird as an “excellent addition” to the center’s executive team.

“His dedication to NASA’s missions has helped shape Marshall into a powerful technical solutions provider for the agency and our industry partners. Roger’s leadership will be invaluable in this new era of space exploration,” Pelfrey said.

Prior to his appointment, Baird served as the associate director for operations at Marshall’s Directorate from 2020 to 2024, having been detailed to the position since 2019. In this role, Baird managed a team of 2,500 people and a yearly budget of $550 million. They were responsible for the planning and execution of engineering project management and integration activities for the center’s programs, including evaluating spacecraft, payloads and launch vehicle systems.

The Birmingham, Alabama native first joined NASA in 1990 and has been with the agency for 34 years now. He started out with Marshall’s Astrionics Laboratory as an avionics engineer before serving in various leadership roles in different departments. He eventually became the manager of the Engineering Resource Management Office in 2018.

Baird graduated from the University of Alabama in Birmingham with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering.

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FAA Issues NPRM to Enhance Airplane, Engine & Propeller Cybersecurity
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FAA Issues NPRM to Enhance Airplane, Engine & Propeller Cybersecurity

The Federal Aviation Administration seeks to improve the cybersecurity of transport category airplanes, engines and propellers by making changes to Code of Federal Regulations Title 14 and has issued a notice of proposed rulemaking for the effort.

The FAA’s proposal involves shielding the equipment, systems and networks of transport category airplanes, engines and propellers from intentional unauthorized electronic interactions—or IUEI—by introducing type certification and continued airworthiness requirements, according to the NPRM posted Wednesday on the Federal Register.

Under the proposal, those applying for design approvals must identify, assess and mitigate hazards brought about by IUEI. Applicants must also work to ensure continued protections to airplanes, engines and propellers once they are in service by developing instructions for continued airworthiness.

The requirements would also affect the future operators of those products.

Changes will affect 14 CFR Part 25, 33 and 35.

The FAA is calling for public feedback regarding the proposed rules. Interested parties have until Oct. 21 to respond.

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DOE Advances AI Tool Development to Speed Up Federal Reviews of Historical Environmental Documents
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DOE Advances AI Tool Development to Speed Up Federal Reviews of Historical Environmental Documents

The Department of Energy is investing nearly $20 million in a project that seeks to develop and test artificial intelligence-based tools designed to help government employees expedite the permitting process and accelerate the construction of clean energy infrastructure, Nextgov/FCW reported Tuesday.

The DOE-backed Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is working on a project, PolicyAI, to build AI-powered software to improve federal assessments of proposed projects under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA.

Under NEPA, agencies are required to review the environmental impacts of major projects and other actions, including the issuance of permits.

Sai Munikoti, PNNL data scientist and co-principal investigator for the PolicyAI project, said DOE is testing prototypes and has developed a data lakehouse of historical NEPA documents, which contain information on a project’s potential environmental impact.

Federal environmental impact assessments between 2012 and 2023 are now stored in the lakehouse, which is expected to add more environmental reviews and categorical exclusions.

According to Munikoti, the project team has equipped the data lakehouse with a generative AI-based semantic search capability that can find relevant environmental documents and create summaries of search results.

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IC Agencies Warn Against Iran’s Election Influence Efforts
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IC Agencies Warn Against Iran’s Election Influence Efforts

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have released a joint statement informing the public of Iran’s efforts to influence the U.S. election process.

ODNI said Monday the joint statement cites Iran’s use of cyber operations to gain access to sensitive data associated with U.S. elections, particularly presidential campaigns, and influence operations targeting the American public.

The three agencies noted that they work closely with partners in both public and private sectors to facilitate information sharing, strengthen security and identify and disrupt threats.

CISA, ODNI and the FBI called on institutions to protect their online platforms through the use of strong passwords, software updates and adoption of multifactor authentication.

They also recommended organizations to use only official email accounts and avoid opening attachments or clicking on links from suspicious emails.

The bureau and CISA urged election infrastructure stakeholders to report to their local election crime coordinators any suspicious or criminal activity and cyber incidents related to election systems.

Register here to join the Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Intel Summit on Sept. 19 and hear top U.S. intelligence community officials and industry executives discuss the challenges, innovation initiatives, opportunities and technologies shaping the future of American intelligence.

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Defense Science Board Recommends Strategic Shift in DOD T&E Approach
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Defense Science Board Recommends Strategic Shift in DOD T&E Approach

The Defense Science Board has released a report addressing the role of test and evaluation as a key component of a structured systems engineering process needed to develop military systems that could be used in complex environments.

The report, which was cleared by the Department of Defense for publication on Friday, provides five major findings and recommendations that call for a strategic shift in DOD’s approach to T&E.

Those recommendations include improving T&E efficiency using continuous threat engineering and assessment, enhancing system performance through continuous testing and improving T&E speed and efficiency of software intensive systems.

The document also cites four enablers to achieving the needed strategic shift in T&E: improving the use of digital engineering for T&E, ensuring a trained T&E workforce, modernizing the T&E infrastructure and refining the DOD organizational oversight of the T&E enterprise.

To advance the use of digital engineering for T&E, recommendations include publishing best practices on digital engineering principles to realize the opportunity for improving developmental testing speed and efficiency and educating program offices to be prepared to execute T&E functions using such principles.

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NSWC Crane Holds Silent Swarm 2024 to Encourage Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations Experimentation
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NSWC Crane Holds Silent Swarm 2024 to Encourage Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations Experimentation

The Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division, the naval laboratory and a field activity of Naval Sea Systems Command, held Silent Swarm 2024 from July 15 to 26 at the National All-Domain Warfighting Center in Alpena, Michigan.

The NAVSEA said Monday the two-week electromagnetic spectrum operations experimentation event was sponsored by the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering’s Integrated Sensing and Cyber division.

A total of 50 different technologies were featured during the annual event, which is in its third year. Only 17 technologies participated in the inaugural event in 2022, but that number doubled the following year.

Silent Swarm 2024 not only saw the influx of more technologies, it also welcomed more international partners. Australia and the United Kingdom were active since the planning stage while four more partner nations participated during the execution of the event.

Robert “Ice” Gamberg, project lead for Silent Swarm, noted that the event has grown larger and more complex since the maiden event. “It’s been an evolutionary change. We have matured our processes and we have a more diverse collection of technologies across multiple domains and participants from industry, government research labs, and academia this year.”

The U.S. Navy veteran added that the event was structured to allow for innovative excursions and teaming. “Silent Swarm execution highlighted the power of a collaborative environment focused on a central hypothesis to drive technical and tactical experimentation objectives.”

Gamberg cited a particular development as proof of the benefits of collaboration between participating teams. The project involved an uncrewed surface vessel using an uncrewed air vehicle and an unmanned underwater vehicle with all three platforms delivering electromagnetic spectrum operations capabilities.

“The teams were iterating, trying new ideas and creating unique partnerships and platform, payload pairings in real time,” said Gramberg.

Sondra Laughlin, deputy project lead for Silent Swarm, highlighted the event’s unique testing environment for the participants, saying “The multi-domain component at NADWC adds a significant dynamic environment for live experimentation. Unmanned underwater, surface, airborne, and ground vehicles together in one event…it’s fascinating. Innovation and execution of that level of learning environment is central to the success of Silent Swarm.”

Laughlin also pointed out that the organizers wanted participants to interact and create possible collaborations. “We’ve put intention into how participants can network with each other at Silent Swarm. There’s space and planned structure in the planning workshops to help them find complementary technology partnerships that can experiment together at Silent Swarm.”

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NSWC Crane Holds Silent Swarm 2024 to Encourage Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations Experimentation
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