The U.S. Army intends to conduct a service-wide Strategic Portfolio Analysis and Review to rank approximately 820 equipment programs in order of importance to the service branch’s warfighting mission.

SPAR 20 seeks to evaluate the efficiency of the Army’s resource spending and cover assessments on all resource allocation programs including Army aircraft, combat vehicles and Soldier-worn equipment, the service branch said Wednesday.

The SPAR process will help the Army decide whether allocated limited modernization resources for each program should be accelerated, sustained, reallocated or divested to other projects.

The service branch noted it aims to prioritize programs that are eligible to receive allocations from the procurement and research, development, testing and evaluation budgets.

“Once again we will work through each portfolio to prioritize within that portfolio [and] look for opportunities where we can take risk to free up resources, by either cancelling programs [or] scaling down procurement objectives,” said Lt. Gen. John Murray, deputy chief of staff at the Army G-8.

“We will put together an ends, ways and means strategy for certain critical combat systems in order to make sure we understand exactly when we run out of physics… on incremental upgrades and when the Army must begin to invest in next-generation systems.”

The Government Accountability Office has found that officials at federal agencies tend to limit their expenditures early in the fiscal year due to continuing resolutions, sequestration and other budget uncertainties.

GAO said Wednesday the finding is based on the assessment of its testimonies and reports on agency budgets from 2009 through 2016.

The report showed that agencies operating under CR deferred contracts and recruitment as well as transitioned grant cycles and contracts to the latter part of the fiscal year to prevent repetitive work.

GAO also evaluated the effects of an appropriations lapse in 2013 and found that agencies experienced programmatic and budget delays as a result of the government shutdown.

The congressional watchdog also cited legal controls that affect how agencies can spend the obligated funds throughout the fiscal year and one of those is the availability period of funds and other fiscal characteristics.

An agency’s inability to appropriate the current budget to address requirements in future fiscal years is also listed as one of the legal constraints.

GAO also found that the Antideficiency Act and the Impoundment Control Act are examples of laws that require agencies to avoid “both over-obligating and under-obligating funds” appropriated for the fiscal year.

The Energy Department has unveiled a new program that aims to help companies develop lightweight materials that could withstand harsh environments.

DOE said Tuesday industry participants in the High Performance Computing for Materials Program will have access to computational resources and assets at department-funded national laboratories.

The HPC4Mtls program will also offer tools designed to simulate, model and predict materials behavior as well as expertise in the additive manufacturing, computational fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, kinetics and materials modeling areas.

DOE will screen interested companies through a two-phase competitive process and ask participants to cover at least 20 percent of project costs.

The department plans to host a workshop on Oct. 12 in Pennsylvania to discuss the program with commercial, academic and government stakeholders.

The program is sponsored by the DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and part of the department’s HPC4 Energy Innovation Initiative.