The General Services Administration has introduced three initiatives under GSA’s Digital Communities that aim to increase the adoption of digital public services across the federal government.

Justin Herman, manager of governmentwide social media and digital engagement programs at GSA’s citizen services and innovative technologies office, wrote in an article published Wednesday the U.S. Digital Registry as well as artificial intelligence and virtual/augmented reality communities are designed for federal managers who seek new technology to help improve agency customer services.

He said the Federal AI for Citizen Services Community seeks to encourage agency managers to collaboratively explore technology advancements and share best practices on policy, security and privacy management.

The Federal Virtual/Augmented Reality Community is meant to serve as a collaborative tool for federal agencies to develop business cases and analyze pilot programs for virtual and augmented reality applications geared toward creating better citizen experience, Herman added.

He noted the U.S. Digital Registry includes a dashboard that will work to help users browse and export government data, languages, platforms or tags on federal government accounts and mobile apps.

“While designed for U.S. federal managers, we strive to transparently share and collaborate with all who are interested in these services, working together to discover opportunities, identify needs, and develop solutions that elevate programs across public services,” he wrote.

U.S. Navy Adm. Michael Rogers has identified talent and motivation as two key elements in the Defense Department’s effort to bolster the nation’s cyber infrastructure, DoD News reported Tuesday.

Rogers told a CyberMaryland 2016 session that human-related factors continues to challenge DoD’s cyber defense initiatives and attracting what he described as “a motivated and focused workforce with specialized training” remains “the greatest defensive strategy,” Amaani Lyle reports.

The head of U.S. Cyber Command, the National Security Agency and Central Security Service said NSA and Cybercom already have expanded their recruitment efforts to the private sector, academic world and internships, according to the report.

“Cyber is foundational to the future and everyone must have some baseline well of knowledge,” Rogers told the event.

He said the government’s cyber investments have gone past NSA to include a cyber curriculum that has become a mandatory component of many education and workforce development programs, the report says.

The Defense Department‘s public-private partnership MD5 National Security Technology Accelerator has announced winners of the inaugural hackathon event that brought together researchers, entrepreneurs, first responders and military personnel to develop disaster relief technology concepts.

MD5 said Wednesday winning teams include Squad Sanctuary, Squad EL Tags and Squad Visual Ops that will each receive up to $15,000 in funds and also partner with MD5, the U.S. Army‘s Strategic Studies Group and the New York Fire Department to test concepts.

DoD partnered with several U.S. research universities to establish MD5 in efforts to foster civil-military technology collaboration to support national security programs, ExecutiveGov reported Oct. 17.

Squad Sanctuary demonstrated a smartphone-based tool that works to connect civilians with first responders during disasters while Squad EL Tags created a system designed to provide floor-level tracking of firefighters in high-rise buildings and Squad Visual Ops developed a smartphone-based, team-planning system for disaster relief personnel.

The hackathon attracted 100 participants in 20 teams that received mentorship from FDNY, the Army and the New York City entrepreneur community, MD5 said.

Winners will work with MD5 to develop and mature their prototypes through development funds, technical resources, education and infrastructure.

MD5 noted venture capitalists and investors can help mature or scale the teams’ concepts.

The hackathon event at Brooklyn Navy Yard marked the official launch of MD5.

National Intelligence Director James Clapper has said the intelligence community believes Russia is not responsible for the internet outage that took down several websites in the U.S., DoD Buzz reported Tuesday.

Clapper points to a non-nation state actor as the culprit behind the so-called distributed denial-of-service attack that occurred on Friday across the country, Matthew Cox reports.

The attack affected servers of Dyn, a company that monitors internet traffic.

“The investigation is still going on; there is a lot of data that we have gathered here, but that appears to be preliminarily the case,” Clapper said during the Council on Foreign Relations’ live-streamed discussion, the report says.

Clapper said it remains unclear whether a nation state backed the hacker in the attack, the report says.