The Congressional Budget Office has said a House bill that would bar the Government Publishing Office from producing free printed Federal Register copies could save GPO as much as $1 million per year.

According to a CBO report published Wednesday, the House’s Federal Register Printing Savings Act would not impact direct spending or on-budget deficits in any of four consecutive 10-year periods from 2028.

CBO noted that as many as 1,000 printed copies of the Federal Register, worth $4.50 each in production and distribution costs, are produced by GPO daily.

The H.R. 195 bill would allow GPO to print such document only upon request of a government employee or a member of Congress.

The 300-page Federal Register covers thousands of executive orders, notices, presidential documents, rules and regulations from federal departments and agencies.

CBO added the legislation does not contain intergovernmental or private-sector mandates defined under the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act.

Aaron Snow, senior adviser of the General Services Administration‘s Technology Transformation Service and founding member of GSA’s 18F organization, will leave the agency at the end of the month, Federal News Radio reported Wednesday.

Jason Miller writes Snow said in an email obtained by the station that “family and other events” influenced his planned departure from government service.

TTS commissioner Rob Cook told Federal News Radio in an interview that Snow’s four-year renewable term at GSA is slated to end soon.

Snow co-founded 18F and previously held the roles of director of delivery, deputy executive director and executive director at GSA’s digital services unit.

He began his federal career as a presidential innovation fellow at the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Before he joined OSTP in 2013, he served as co-founder and vice president of engineering at Daring Software and a program manager at Microsoft.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has obtained accreditation from the Institute for Credentialing Excellence’s National Commission for Certifying Agencies for two GEOINT professional certification programs.

NCCA issued the five-year accreditation to NGA’s Imagery Analysis and GEOINT Fundamentals certification programs on Jan. 31 after the agency met and complied with the commission’s standards, NGA said Feb. 16..

Kurt Savoie, a program director, said the implementation of GPC programs for military and civilian staff across the Defense Department aims to advance continuous personnel development in support of the GEOINT mission.

The GEOINT Fundamentals certification program is required for all GEOINT analysts at DoD, while the Imagery Analysis program is one of the 10 full performance-level initiatives designed for the GEOINT community at the Pentagon.

The accreditation for the two programs comes after NCCA accredited NGA’s Aeronautical Analysis certification in August 2016.

The agency, which has granted more than 7,200 certifications to GEOINT professionals, plans to seek NCCA accreditation for its other eight certification programs in the next 18 months.

The Naval Research Laboratory has teamed up with the Naval Air Systems Command and Air Force Research Laboratory to further develop a software system that works to guide  unmanned aerial vehicles in simulated air combat missions.

NRL said Wednesday that the U.S. Navy‘s Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence will support ongoing work on the Tactical Battle Manager platform designed to streamline cross-platform coordination of air combat teams that operate in contested environments.

TBM works to help human operators manage UAVs on air combat teams that include autonomous agents tasked to utilize sensors for environmental observation.

Autonomous agents are equipped with a “Goal Reasoning” system that operates each unit to self-select and pursue mission objectives.

“The main idea here is if the UAV/wingman is left to its own devices, it has the ability to recognize when or how to change its goal or objective as the mission scenario unfolds,” said David Aha, head of the adaptive systems section at  NCARAI.

“While some systems allow users to insert new goals or pre-program the selection of new goals, goal reasoning agents can dynamically select new goals to pursue that are not pre-programmed,” Aha added.

Pilots apply AFRL’s Analytical Framework for Simulation, Integration and Modeling in conjunction with NAVAIR’s Next Generation Threat System to virtual training and testing systems.

The Government Accountability Office has called on the Customs and Border Protection to implement training efforts and update its guidance on collection of mission data associated with the use of Predator B unmanned aircraft systems.

CBP should work to update its processes for data collection related to aerostat asset assists and record coordination procedures for UAS-related activities in all operating locations, GAO said in a report published Feb. 16.

GAO made the recommendations after it evaluated CBP’s use of Predator B, Tethered Aerostat Radar System and tactical aerostats for border security operations between fiscal 2013 and fiscal 2016 and found that the agency lacks instructions on how to record mission data.

The congressional budget watchdog also found that CBP has not made any updates to its information collection guidance in order to include new data components identified since 2014 and that the agency’s asset assist-related data collection for seizure of narcotics and apprehension of certain individuals does not differentiate tactical aerostats from TARS.

“Data that distinguishes between support provided by tactical aerostats and support provided by TARS would help CBP collect better and more complete information and guide resource allocation decisions, such as the redeployment of tactical aerostat sites based on changes in cross-border illegal activity,” GAO noted.