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White House: HHS to Allocate $300M for Head Start Programs Nationwide
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White House: HHS to Allocate $300M for Head Start Programs Nationwide


Head Start stockThe Department of Health and Human Services will allocate nearly $300 million in fiscal year 2017 funds for Head Start programs nationwide in an effort to expand early learning services for children, the White House reported Monday.

Roberto Rodríguez, deputy assistant to the president for education; and Sharon Parrott, Office of Management and Budget associate director for education, income maintenance, and labor programs; said the funds will look to provide learning time to 135,000 children.

According to the White House, more than 32 million children have been assisted through Head Start supported by a $4 billion investment in the program.

The White House also noted that the funds look to maximize the program’s assistance to school readiness and development of nearly one million participating children.

Head Start looks to guide early learning — including language and literacy, cognition and general knowledge, approaches to learning, physical development and health and social and emotional development — progress, health and family well-being of children from birth to age five as well as well as supporting the children’s comprehensive development.

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Luke McCormack: DHS Seeks ‘Ready Access’ to Tech Through Agile Development, Open Source Buys
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Luke McCormack: DHS Seeks ‘Ready Access’ to Tech Through Agile Development, Open Source Buys


DHS - ExecutiveMosaicThe Department of Homeland Security is looking at agile development and open source software approaches for its technology acquisition and implementation initiatives, Federal News Radio reported Friday.

Jason Miller writes DHS has kicked off five pilot programs for the Citizenship and Immigration Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Immigration and Custom Enforcement and the Transportation Security Administration agencies that seek to apply the agile and open source methodologies.

“We need to have ready access to a variety of technologies, cloud technologies, software development technologies, security technologies, and this is where the close partnership with the procurement organization comes into the fold,” Luke McCormack, DHS chief information officer, told the station.

McCormack and Soraya Correa, DHS chief procurement officer, worked together over the past six months to initiate the pilot projects through the Acquisition Innovations in Motion initiative that sets priorities for engagements with industry, Miller reports.

AT Kearney’s Jeff Sorenson, Christian Hagen, Anshuman Jaiswal Outline New Model for Gov’t IT
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AT Kearney’s Jeff Sorenson, Christian Hagen, Anshuman Jaiswal Outline New Model for Gov’t IT


DataCenterExecutives at A.T. Kearney have said in an FCW article published Friday that government agencies should work to reduce information technology spending by adopting a model that aims to provide fact-based visibility into IT operations.

Jeff Sorenson, a partner and vice president for the aerospace and defense practice at A.T. Kearney, co-wrote the opinion piece with Christian Hagen, a partner in A.T. Kearney’s strategic information technology practice; and Anshuman Jaiswal, manager at the consulting firm’s strategic IT practice.

“Strong IT leaders need to coordinate visibility into data-driven optimization opportunities across organizational subcomponents to implement effective enterprise-wide decisions,” they said.

Sorenson, Hagen and Jaiswal noted that IT operations should be assessed based on what they call “six lenses” — the organization’s operating model, service management, complexity management, outsourcing or offshoring, sourcing and technology foresight or lifecycle management.

Oversight on IT functions using the six lenses will work to pinpoint areas of potential value for agencies as well as others that need adjustments or overhaul to facilitate cost savings and efficiency, the authors wrote.

“As leaders, [CIOs] need to challenge, and when needed carefully push back on, IT demand in order to use budget resources more efficiently and, where warranted, transition their organizations to a low-footprint IT vision,” they said.

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GSA to Release RFPs for Alliant 2, Small Business Track in June
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GSA to Release RFPs for Alliant 2, Small Business Track in June


GSAThe General Services Administration plans to release the request for proposals regarding the Alliant 2 governmentwide acquisition contract and its small business component sometime in the second half of June.

GSA said Thursday that Alliant 2 and Alliant 2 Small Business contracting officers could also release two separate presolicitation announcements on the Federal Business Opportunities website at least 15 calendar days before the RFPs’ release.

The unofficial statement on the program schedule seeks to facilitate transparency in communication with industry and other interested parties and respond to various questions regarding the pending procurement.

Both GWACs are currently going through a review process as required following the release of the most recent draft RFP in October 2015, GSA said.

GSA notes that seven requests for information and two draft RFPs have been issued throughout the three-year procurement program along with market research, industry trade group appearances, face-to-face and one-on-one meetings, email questions and answers and other discussions.

He indicates further question-and-answer opportunities for industry will follow after the release of the official RFPs and before the receipt of submitted proposals.

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Joe Dunford: US Should Update C2 Strategies Amid Changed ‘Character’ of War
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Joe Dunford: US Should Update C2 Strategies Amid Changed ‘Character’ of War


Marine Corps Gen_Joe DunfordThe chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said the U.S. military should address the emergence of cyber, space and ballistic intercontinental missiles as factors that changed the “character” of war, DoD News reported Sunday.

Jim Garamone writes that U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford suggested updates in the Defense Department‘s current command-and-control strategy to be able to confront the changes.

“[War] changed because of cyber capabilities, space capabilities, ballistic missile capabilities, intercontinental missile capabilities,” said Dunford.

“The character of war has changed so we should adapt to the character of war, and by changing the organizational construct of the Joint Staff,” he added.

Dunford also noted that there are certain areas in which the defense secretary can delegate responsibility for joint integration to the CJCS.

The defense secretary holds responsibility for joint integration and the authorities to integrate the combatant commands under the current system, the report said.

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Sutherland’s Teresa Weipert: Cultural Adaptation Key for Customer-Focused Agencies
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Sutherland’s Teresa Weipert: Cultural Adaptation Key for Customer-Focused Agencies


Teresa Weipert
Teresa Weipert

Teresa Weipert, senior vice president of the government solutions business at Sutherland Global Services, has said she believes cultural adaptation is essential for agencies that aim to transform their delivery of public services.

She wrote in a guest piece published Friday on Nextgov that agencies should adopt a citizen engagement strategy that will cover technology, policies, best practices, feedback mechanisms and intra-agency and interagency cooperation.

“If agencies are to focus on the ‘new’ customer service, all employees must be engaged and committed, because it is a reflection on the department or agency,” she added.

According to Weipert, the Office of Management and Budget is working on a customer service playbook that can help government organizations to deliver services with digital technology.

She also urged agencies to consider adoption of avatar-based customer support technology and other call-avoidance methods that Weipert says can help government contact centers to save money.

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Lawmakers Seek to Address Federal Duplication Through Bipartisan Bill
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Lawmakers Seek to Address Federal Duplication Through Bipartisan Bill


CongressHouse and Senate lawmakers have introduced a bipartisan bill that would require federal agency executives to address redundancies uncovered by the Government Accountability Office, Federal Times reported Thursday.

Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) cosponsored the Getting Results through Enhanced Accountability and Transparency Act of 2016 with Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and Rep. Steve Russell (R-Okla.), Carten Cordell writes.

The GREAT Act would also require agencies to inform the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on how they would address duplication and coordinate resources.

The proposed legislation comes a week after GAO Comptroller General Gene Dodaro released a report that detailed 92 actions and 37 areas where agencies could reduce duplication and eliminate waste, Cordell reports.

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NASA Eyes ‘Quiet’ Supersonic X-Plane Demonstration in 2020
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NASA Eyes ‘Quiet’ Supersonic X-Plane Demonstration in 2020


QueSSTNASA aims to build a supersonic aircraft that can generate a thump-like sound rather than a boom and begin flight tests of that technology by 2020.

The agency said Friday it also seeks to demonstrate what it calls a “three-legged stool” of aviation research through the Quiet Supersonic Transport X-plane development project.

An industry team led by Lockheed Martin was awarded the preliminary QueSST design contract in late February as part of NASA’s New Aviation Horizons initiative.

NASA launched the program to create and fly multiple X-planes over the next decade in a move to help aviation companies accelerate their adoption of green technologies.

“If we can build some of these X-planes and demonstrate some of these technologies, we expect that will make it much easier and faster for U.S. industry to pick them up and roll them out into the marketplace,” noted Ed Waggoner, integrated aviation systems program director at NASA.

The agency also seeks to provide QueSST flight data to the Federal Aviation Administration and its foreign counterparts so they can use the information to establish noise-related policies for commercial supersonic airliners.

NIH Review Aims to Address Quality Control Concerns Over Clinical Drug Production
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NIH Review Aims to Address Quality Control Concerns Over Clinical Drug Production


HealthThe National Institutes of Health has partnered with two companies to evaluate agency facilities that produce sterile or infused medicines for clinical research use.

NIH said Tuesday preliminary findings of the assessment identified quality and safety compliance problems at a cell-therapy production laboratory and a radiopharmaceutical compound production facility.

The agency suspended operations at the facilities and halted enrollment of patients for clinical trials of the affected experimental drugs.

NIH formed a working group in December to develop management strategies for the agency’s Clinical Center Pharmaceutical Development Section and its affiliated labs and production hubs after the Food and Drug Administration found serious quality-control problems within PDS.

The Clinical Center Working Group was scheduled Thursday to submit its recommendations to NIH.

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Report: HASC to Consider Potential Elevation of Cybercom to Unified Command Structure
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Report: HASC to Consider Potential Elevation of Cybercom to Unified Command Structure


CyberStockThe House Armed Services Committee could tackle the possibility of elevating the status of the U.S. Cyber Command to a unified combatant command level as part of the panel’s markup of the fiscal year 2017 defense authorization bill, Breaking Defense reported Friday.

Colin Clark and Sydney Freedberg Jr. write the committee also plans to ask the Defense Department to study if it is feasible for Cybercom and the National Security Agency to have separate leaders.

Lt. Gen. James McLaughlin, deputy commander of Cybercom, told Breaking Defense last week the organization currently uses a centralized approach to manage operations of the DoD Information Network and that existing combatant commands have cyber defense tools.

“We are now working specifically…. to clarify how we actually [work with] the combatant commands and how our command integrates directly into those commands,” he added, the publication reports.

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