The Department of Health and Human Services has introduced its fourth Open Government Plan that aims to make government more transparent to the public as well as discover new ways to collaborate and partner with the department’s stakeholders.

HHS Acting Deputy Secretary Mary Wakefield wrote in a blog post published Thursday the department has worked to identify projects, policies and perspectives on new methods to connect with stakeholder organizations that the department will focus on in the next two years.

HHS seeks to share data and information products with “underserved” communities to support the development of new approaches on food supply safety, early child development and disease prevention.

Wakefield noted that the plan highlights the utilization of the Open Payments program, use of new applications and data services to streamline the delivery of health data to Medicare beneficiaries and the application of the Precision Medicine Initiative that aims to boost the future of biomedical research.

She added HHS works to create a public comment database for the Physical Activity Guidelines update process that will remain open for comment over the next two years.

David Saltiel, former chief economist of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, has joined the Securities and Exchange Commission as associate director of the office of analytics and research within SEC’s trading and markets division.

He will lead the office that analyzes market structure, new products and rule filings by exchanges as well as provides support in portfolio and risk management, trading and quantitative data analysis, SEC said Thursday.

Prior to MSRB, Saltiel worked at the Treasury Department‘s Bureau of the Fiscal Service as chief financial economist and director of data management and analytics as well as acting deputy assistant commissioner for debt management.

He also served as deputy director at the Atlantic Council of the U.S. and manager of federal affairs and analysis at AREVA as well as director of strategy and economic analysis for the nuclear power company’s North American operations.

Saltiel also held positions at the Energy Department and DOE-funded Sandia National Laboratories.

NASA has made little progress on future Mars missions beyond a 2020 rover in an effort to replace aging spacecraft currently in orbit around the planet, Space News reported Friday.

The space agency has prioritized the establishment of an orbiter that will work to relay communications for spacecraft on Mars’ surface and carry high-resolution cameras and others instruments, Jeff Foust writes.

“It’s a difficult environment to get new missions into the program right now, and so we continue to work hard to try to build the advocacy necessary to get some missions.” said Jim Watzin, director of the agency’s Mars Exploration Program.

“Somewhat disappointingly, we are still in a situation where we have no missions beyond 2020 on the books that are approved or budgeted,” he added.

The Mars 2020 Rover is under development at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

L. Wayne Brasure, acting director of the domestic nuclear detection office at the Department of Homeland Security since May, has been nominated by President Barack Obama to serve in the role on a full-time basis.

Brasure also has been deputy chief of DNDO since 2014, the White House said Thursday.

DNDO oversees the implementation of U.S. nuclear detection initiatives and integration of nuclear forensic programs as well as development and coordination of nuclear detection and reporting framework with federal agency partners, private sector and international governments.

Brasure previously served as chief of the U.S. Air Force’s office of scientific research before he moved to DHS in 2014.

He worked at the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center as executive director between 2010 and 2014 after two years as stockpile sustainment manager at the National Nuclear Security Administration within the Energy Department.

He spent almost three decades at the military branch and held several management and leadership roles, such as director of the Air Force High Power Microwave Program and stockpile systems division chief at the service branch’s nuclear weapons and counterproliferation agency.

The General Services Administration and the Office of Management and Budget have selected the Agriculture Department to serve as a shared services provider of CGI’s financial management platform.

OMB and GSA’s office of unified shared services management gave USDA’s financial management services division approval to offer CGI’s Momentum software to other government agencies after USDA passed a committee-based assessment process, GSA said Friday.

USDA’s selection comes days after the Department of Veterans Affairs picked the former to serve as VA’s federal shared services provider and replace the agency’s current financial management system.

GSA said the adoption of a shared services model seeks to help federal agencies perform their mission functions, build up cybersecurity and facilitate the decision-making process through data access.

CGI’s Momentum commercial off-the-shelf software is a certified financial shared services offering that works help federal agencies perform financial, budgeting and procurement functions.