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Janine Davidson Begins Work as Navy Undersecretary, Chief Mgmt Officer
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Janine Davidson Begins Work as Navy Undersecretary, Chief Mgmt Officer


Janine Davidson
Janine Davidson

Janine Davidson has began work as the U.S. Navy chief management officer and an undersecretary of the service branch after being sworn in to her new duties on March 22.

The Navy said Monday Davidson’s new role will add to her almost three-decade experience in academic research, national security policy and military operations.

Davidson served as the Defense Department‘s deputy assistant secretary for plans from 2009 to 2012 and headed the creation of military war plans and policies for the U.S. forces’ global force posture.

She was also the founding director of the Center for Complex Operations within the Office of Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, where she was director for stability operations.

She was a member of the National Commission on the Structure of the Air Force and Reserve Forces Policy Board.

During her work in the academe, Davidson has authored articles on defense issues and taught political science and national security policy at Georgetown University, George Mason University and Davidson College.

Davidson joined the U.S. Air Force as a commissioned second lieutenant in 1988 and became the first woman to pilot a C-130 aircraft.

Jonathan Woodson: DoD Needs Enterprise Approach to Military Healthcare Management
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Jonathan Woodson: DoD Needs Enterprise Approach to Military Healthcare Management


Jonathan Woodson
Jonathan Woodson

Jonathan Woodson, assistant defense secretary for health affairs, has said the Defense Department should overhaul its system for managing the care workforce and medical services across the U.S. military, DoD News reported Wednesday.

David Vergun writes Woodson told audience at a CJ Reddy Leadership Course program held last week at the Pentagon he believes an enterprise strategy is needed to address military healthcare management challenges.

He added adopting the approach means “providing common medical platforms [and] common business tools that allow us to do our jobs more effectively.”

He also urged DoD to rethink how its military care teams work, eliminate processes that hamper efficiency and identify methods to increase collaboration with other agencies.

“We have to adjust our medical posture to provide care wherever men and women are being asked to go in harm’s way,” Woodson noted.

Defense News: US Army to Permanently Station Three Armored Brigades in Europe
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Defense News: US Army to Permanently Station Three Armored Brigades in Europe


ArmyChopperThe U.S. Army will deploy three armored brigade combat teams to Europe on nine-month deployments to train with Eastern European allies and address Russian activity along NATO’s eastern border, Defense News said Wednesday.

Andrew Tilghman writes that the combat teams will add to the two brigades already stationed permanently in Europe as part of the Pentagon’s European Reassurance Initiative.

Gen. Philip Breedlove, U.S. European Command commander, said that the move aims to build up the Army’s rotational presence and add to its current arsenal in Europe, according to the report.

Defense News said that the Army plans to add more armored, airborne and Stryker brigade teams by the end of 2017.

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Robert Work: Deep-Learning Tech Can Help Pentagon Target Islamic State Network
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Robert Work: Deep-Learning Tech Can Help Pentagon Target Islamic State Network


Robert Work
Robert Work

Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said at a Washington Post-hosted forum Wednesday he believes the Defense Department can better understand and monitor the network of Islamic State militants through the utilization of deep-learning machines.

“The momentum against ISIS is more than any other time in our campaign,” he told columnist David Ignatius during an onstage interview at the Post’s Securing Tomorrow event.

Work, an inductee into Executive Mosaic‘s Wash100 for 2016, explained that a Silicon Valley-based company has developed a deep-learning technology that works to extract large amounts of data.

The firm was able to show images of the downing of a Malaysia Airlines MH17 plane over Ukraine in July 2014 and a Russian surface-to-air missile vehicle near the shootdown incident with its technology, he added.

He said DoD collaborates with U.S. partner nations as part of the department’s strategic campaign against adversaries like the Islamic State militant group.

Army Study Aims to Prevent Gastrointestinal Illness Among Soldiers; Philip Karl Comments
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Army Study Aims to Prevent Gastrointestinal Illness Among Soldiers; Philip Karl Comments


HealthThe U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine has started a study on methods to prevent gastrointestinal illnesses among deployed warfighters and improve gut health.

Researchers began to gather volunteers in June 2015 from the Natick, Massachusetts area to complete a set of tasks as part of the study, the Army said Tuesday.

Half of the volunteers will eat Meals, Ready to Eat for 21 days and the other half will retain their normal diet.

“What emerging science suggests is that the bacteria living in our gut can have a large impact on physical, mental and general health, not only in our warfighters but in everyone,” said Philip Karl, USARIEM’s principal investigator of the study.

“A recent explosion in technology now allows us to study the trillions of bacteria living in our gut in ways we never have been able to before,” added Karl.

The volunteers will meet research staff at Natick Soldier Systems Center three times a week for the collection of fecal, blood and urine samples.

“We use these samples to assess if the MRE is impacting bacteria and whether that interaction influences health,” Karl said.

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Report: Ashton Carter, Industry Execs Hold ‘Closed-Door’ Forum
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Report: Ashton Carter, Industry Execs Hold ‘Closed-Door’ Forum


PentagonDefense Secretary Ashton Carter and several industry executives met Tuesday to discuss how companies and the Defense Department can increase their collaboration, DoD Buzz reported Tuesday.

Brendan McGarry writes more than 30 members of the Aerospace Industries Association, Professional Services Council and National Defense Industrial Association participated in the “closed-door” forum with Carter at AIA headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.

McGarry said the meeting likely covered topics such as DoD’s innovation efforts, fiscal 2017 budget and spending plan and key acquisition programs.

“The Secretary’s participation in this forum serves to reaffirm our sustained, ongoing commitment to modernization, and the technological superiority that has been the foundation of our national security advantage for the past several decades,” DoD spokesman Jeff Davis told the publication in an email.

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Anne Rung, Tony Scott: OMB Seeks to Improve Mobile Device, Service Acquisition Through New Policy
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Anne Rung, Tony Scott: OMB Seeks to Improve Mobile Device, Service Acquisition Through New Policy


Anne Rung
Anne Rung

The Office of Management and Budget has released a policy that seeks to improve the way federal agencies acquire and manage mobile devices and related services in compliance with the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act.

OMB drafted Category Management Policy 16-2 in an effort to improve pricing and reduce duplication of contracts for mobile devices and services, Federal Chief Acquisition Officer Anne Rung and Federal CIO Tony Scott wrote in a memorandum.

Tony Scott
Tony Scott

The proposed policy will require agencies to report pricing and usage data for such devices and services to the Integrated Data Collection office by May 31, adopt a governmentwide strategy on procurement to consolidate contracts and improve demand management practices.

The memo also recommends the implementation of a broker model in which the General Services Administration acts on behalf of agencies in the procurement of wireless devices and services, wrote Rung and Scott, both inductees into Executive Mosaic’s Wash100 for 2016.

OMB also calls on agencies to ensure accountability for mobile service contracts through the appointment of a category lead who will oversee the mobile contract inventory, recommend policies to the agency CIO and determine contract consolidation opportunities.

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DISA Releases Update to DoD CIO’s Cloud Security Guide for Service Providers
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DISA Releases Update to DoD CIO’s Cloud Security Guide for Service Providers


cloudThe Defense Information Systems Agency has published an updated version of the Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide by the Defense Department chief information officer in response to feedback from industry and mission partners.

DISA said Monday the CC SRG v1r2 release also includes a revision history and a comment matrix, which work to facilitate understanding of the changes among cloud service providers and enable them to provide immediate feedback.

“The new version fittingly represents the evolution we are going through to refine our processes and better position the department to enable secure options to migrate systems and data to the cloud,” said John Hickey, DISA chief information officer and risk management executive.

The update applies feedback to CC SRG v1r1 document released in January and provides guidance on DoD security objectives to CSPs that provide cloud computing technologies and services to the department, DISA said.

The agency added that the updated guide aims to help public and private stakeholders manage cloud service authorization policies and requirements.

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NASA, NSF Partner on Exoplanet Discovery Instrument Dev’t; Paul Hertz Comments
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NASA, NSF Partner on Exoplanet Discovery Instrument Dev’t; Paul Hertz Comments


deep_spaceNASA has teamed up with the National Science Foundation in an effort to develop an instrument that can detect exoplanets by measuring the “wobbling” of stars caused by the gravitational pull of a nearby planet.

The NASA-NSF Exoplanet Observational Research program aims to utilize the future NN-EXPLORE Exoplanet Investigations with Doppler Spectroscopy instrument to be built by a Pennsylvania State University research group , the space agency said Wednesday.

Suvrath Mahadevan will lead the research group, which will work to build NEID through 2019, NASA added.

Paul Hertz, NASA astrophysics division director, said NEID along with the WIYN telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory could support the search for new planets and lead to other future discoveries.

NASA said the instrument could also follow-up on ongoing planet-hunting missions such as the Kepler/K2 and complement the James Webb Space Telescope and Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope for other potential discoveries.

The exoplanet exploration program office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the NEID project.

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FedRAMP PMO to Revamp Program’s Cloud Tech Assessment Process
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FedRAMP PMO to Revamp Program’s Cloud Tech Assessment Process


CloudA Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program office plans to add a “readiness capabilities assessment” to the FedRAMP process in an effort to help vendors demonstrate their cloud technology and service offerings early on.

The revamped process will require cloud service providers who seek a FedRAMP Ready status to complete a system evaluation with a third-party assessment organization rather than going through documentation reviews by the FedRAMP’s program management office, according to an announcement published Monday.

The program aims to help “CSPs and agencies to achieve FedRAMP authorizations faster without negatively impacting risk and quality of security packages.”

The FedRAMP PMO has also started to gather industry comments on draft versions of the FedRAMP Readiness Assessment Report Template and the FedRAMP Readiness Assessment Guidance.

CSPs and 3PAOs can submit their input for those documents through April 29.

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