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SBA Seeks Comments on 7(a) Working Capital Pilot Program
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SBA Seeks Comments on 7(a) Working Capital Pilot Program

The Small Business Administration has started soliciting insights on a new pilot program within the 7(a) Loan Program that seeks to enable participating 7(a) lenders to make working capital lines of credit through transaction-based and asset-based lines of credit as part of efforts to address the need of small companies for working capital.

According to a notice published Monday in the Federal Register, loans under the 7(a) Working Capital Pilot program may be approved up to $5 million and used to back international and domestic transactions.

Under the WCP program, lenders may authorize a loan term of up to 60 months and must pay a guarantee fee to SBA for each loan made.

In addition to other common uses for asset-based lines, loan proceeds under the program may be used to provide a temporary advance against state and federal tax credits or rebates.

“The purpose for allowing WCP loan proceeds to be used to provide a temporary advance against Federal and or state tax credits and/or rebates is to provide immediate access to a portion of the funds once they are earned by the business and have been confirmed by the Lender,” the notice reads.

SBA said it expects to approve about 270 WCP loans worth approximately $337 million combined in fiscal year 2025. The WCP program is set to take effect on Aug. 1 and expire by the end of July 2027.

Comments on the program are due Aug. 14.

SBA first announced the pilot program in June.

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DOD Soliciting Proposals for AI Resource Portal Development & Promotion Strategy
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DOD Soliciting Proposals for AI Resource Portal Development & Promotion Strategy

The Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office has issued an open call for proposals for the development and implementation of an artificial intelligence assurance portal and an accompanying branding and digital marketing strategy for the portal’s promotion.

Solicitation Objectives

The portal will serve as a central platform and resource for various types of information concerning the Department of Defense’s AI systems, including their performance, security and ethical implications, according to the open call posted Friday on Tradewinds AI.

The portal is expected to address not only the issue of a lack of a central AI resource platform but also difficulties accessing and sharing AI-related resources across DOD entities and projects as well as the limited opportunities for collaboration among AI assurance professionals within the DOD.

The purpose of the branding and marketing strategy is to promote the importance and use of the portal.

Selection Process

The open call will feature a multiple-round, competitive process to assess submissions. During the first round, proposals will be evaluated by the CDAO and subject matter experts. Participants with the most promising proposals will be given an opportunity to pitch their ideas during the second round.

Project awards, if any, will be issued in the third round. The awards will take the form of other transaction agreements.

Interested parties have until July 27 to submit proposals.

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LogicMonitor’s Justin Fessler Shares Thoughts on US Government Tech Transformation
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LogicMonitor’s Justin Fessler Shares Thoughts on US Government Tech Transformation

Justin Fessler currently serves as vice president of public sector at LogicMonitor, a role in which he guides the company’s efforts to provide its artificial intelligence tool to government agencies. Prior to joining LogicMonitor, he held leadership roles at Salesforce.

Fessler recently participated in an interview with the Potomac Officers Club, in which he discussed his background and weighed in on the technological changes he has seen throughout his career journey.

In this excerpt from the interview, Fessler considers the ways the public sector has transformed to embrace modern technologies:

“What I know for sure is that the government is ever-evolving with its technological requirements and policy adjustments to keep up with industry and new technologies. I’ve been at the forefront of many of these technological transformations – especially when it comes to AI and natural language processing within the constantly evolving market of large language models – and have watched how the federal market has changed to adopt these technologies. While many believe that the government is ‘five to 10 years behind industry,’ there have been a lot of forward-thinking government leaders who have emerged to make changes to acquisition and technology adoption policies to allow the government to leverage these new, innovative technologies early on.”

For more of Fessler’s thoughts, read the full Executive Spotlight interview on the Potomac Officers Club website.

Do you want to participate in your own Executive Spotlight interview? This brand-building opportunity is exclusively available for Potomac Officers Club members, so head on over to the POC website to browse our membership options and sign up today!

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NSF Starts Building Leadership-Class Computing Facility at University of Texas
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NSF Starts Building Leadership-Class Computing Facility at University of Texas

The National Science Foundation has started building the Leadership-Class Computing Facility at the University of Texas in Austin.

Set to operate under UT Austin’s Texas Advanced Computing Center, LCCF will serve as a computational facility to support scientific and engineering breakthroughs, the NSF said.

The project will also provide education and public outreach plans to advance the skills of future science and engineering workforce, the foundation added.

According to NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan, LCCF will support transformative research across science and engineering areas.

“This facility will provide the computational resources necessary to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time, enabling researchers to push the boundaries of what is possible,” he explained.

LCCF, which is scheduled to commence operations in 2026, will deploy Horizon, a supercomputer equipped with accelerators to support advanced artificial intelligence research and simulation-based inquiries.

To complement Horizon, the facility will also provide large-scale data storage systems and interactive computing capabilities.

In addition, the project will offer software and services that scientists and engineers can use for several applications.

According to the NSF, LCCF will work with four distributed science centers across the United States to leverage the expertise within the country’s cyberinfrastructure ecosystem and ensure that U.S. researchers can access the facility’s resources and services.

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House Lawmakers Propose Measure Incorporating Cybersecurity Requirements Into NASA Spacecraft Manufacturing Contracts
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House Lawmakers Propose Measure Incorporating Cybersecurity Requirements Into NASA Spacecraft Manufacturing Contracts

Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost of Florida’s 10th congressional district and Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia’s eighth congressional district have proposed legislation that would require manufacturers seeking to build spacecraft for NASA to provide a plan detailing the protections that would be put in place to safeguard the spacecraft from cyber attacks.

The proposal, titled the Spacecraft Cybersecurity Act, mandates that NASA revise its spacecraft acquisition standards to incorporate cybersecurity requirements. The space agency would have 270 following the bill’s enactment to prepare a plan for the acquisition policy update, Frost’s office said Wednesday.

The lawmakers put forward the legislation amid cyberattacks being directed at NASA by various adversaries. Such attacks, if aimed at spacecraft, might not only result in mission failure but also national security data theft or even a fatal loss of spacecraft control.

“As we enter a new era of cyber threats, establishing a reasonable timeline for NASA to incorporate cybersecurity measures into their acquisition process is more important than ever. The Spacecraft Cybersecurity Act would safeguard NASA’s space missions and continue to advance our country’s leadership in space exploration that contributes to our economy, security, and understanding of space,” Frost commented.

For his part, Beyer said, “Our legislation will ensure that NASA has comprehensive, high quality cybersecurity measures in place to protect sensitive information related to vital space infrastructure and secure the continuity of space operations.”

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CISA Issues 2023 SILENTSHIELD Red Team Activity Report
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CISA Issues 2023 SILENTSHIELD Red Team Activity Report

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has released a report regarding a SILENTSHIELD red team activity conducted in 2023 meant to assess the cybersecurity posture of an unnamed federal civilian executive branch organization.

During such assessments, red teams simulate the behavior of sophisticated threat actors without notifying the target FCEB organization in order to achieve a more realistic cyber evaluation, CISA said Thursday. Findings are subsequently shared with the target organization to help them address weaknesses as well as strengths.

The recent report discusses the lessons that the target organization learned from 2023 activity. These lessons include an insufficiency in controls for the detection and prevention of malicious activities; poor network log collection, retention and analysis; ineffective detection approaches; and network defenders being hindered by bureaucratic processes.

To address similar cybersecurity risks, the report recommends the adoption of multiple mitigations, including the application of defense-in-depth principles; the use of network segmentation; and the establishment of network traffic, application execution and account authentication baselines in lieu of aiming to deny known indicators of compromise.

The report also calls on software developers to adopt Secure by Design principles to protect customers, noting that insecure software contributes to the issues identified in the red team activity.

In 2023, Eric Goldstein, who was then CISA’s executive assistant director for cybersecurity, testified before Congress about the results of his agency’s preemptive cyber initiatives, including SILENDSHIELD. Read about what he told lawmakers during that hearing.

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Pentagon Selects First Awardee for Distributed Bioindustrial Manufacturing Program
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Pentagon Selects First Awardee for Distributed Bioindustrial Manufacturing Program

The Department of Defense has selected the first awardee to contribute to the Distributed Bioindustrial Manufacturing Program, a.k.a. DBIMP.

Biotechnology company Debut will be given $2 million to deliver business and technical plans that outline the construction of a U.S.-based bioindustrial manufacturing production facility, the Pentagon said Wednesday. The facility’s construction would be funded via the Defense Industrial Base Consortium Other Transaction Agreement.

Aprille Ericsson, assistant secretary of defense for science and technology, said this award is a big step forward in fulfilling the vision that Deputy Secretary of Defense and 2024 Wash100 Award winner Kathleen Hicks first conceived last year.

“By making these investments in domestic bioproduction infrastructure, we are making a significant move toward fortifying the American industrial base,” Ericsson said. “The DoD is committed to leveraging biotechnology to secure our competitive advantage and keep pace with the demand for next-generation capabilities for our warfighters and allies.”

Dr. Laura Taylor-Kale, assistant secretary of defense for industrial base policy, said the award shows the DOD’s growth toward expanding the domestic yield of capabilities for U.S. national supply chains. (The production center would output precursor substances necessary for producing manufacturing ingredients, materials, resins, polyesters and thermosetting resins.)

“This award marks an important step — the first of many — for the DIBC OTA, and shows the progress we are making toward building more resilient supply chains, growing our manufacturing workforce, and using more flexible acquisition authorities,” said Taylor-Kale.

If Debut’s plans are approved, the company could be awarded up to $100 million to move on to the next face of DBIMP. More award selectees will be announced later this month.

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FedRAMP Launches Website to Offer Guidance on Digital Authorization Packages
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FedRAMP Launches Website to Offer Guidance on Digital Authorization Packages

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program has unveiled a new website designed to serve as a technical documentation hub for cloud service providers as they develop, validate and submit digital authorization packages.

According to a blog post published Thursday FedRAMP’s automation website will also serve as guidance for governance, risk and compliance application developers that produce and use digital authorization package data.

The open source-based site provides detailed technical documentation, guidance and best practices for developing and managing digital authorization packages with the Open Security Controls Assessment Language, or OSCAL.

According to FedRAMP, the site will help improve the user experience for stakeholders that are implementing OSCAL-based packages and tools and establish a collaborative workflow that supports community contributions for enhancements to the documentation.

“We plan to expand the website over time as we bring new capabilities online, and it will eventually include details of how to integrate with FedRAMP’s package repository and submission processes,” the blog post reads.

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Lt. Col. Keith Jordan on Army’s United Network Operations Initiative
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Lt. Col. Keith Jordan on Army’s United Network Operations Initiative

Lt. Col. Keith Jordan, product manager for Tactical Cyber and NetOps within the U.S. Army’s Program Executive Office Command Control Communications-Tactical, or PEO-C3T, said a recent draft request for proposals marks a key step in the military branch’s plan to build an agile, software-defined network through the United Network Operations initiative, Federal News Network reported Thursday.

Jordan told FNN in an interview that responses to the draft RFP for the multiple-award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract will help inform the Army’s long-term plans for leveraging cloud services and bringing in commercial technologies in support of the new network under UNO.

Responses to the draft solicitation are due July 17.

According to the report, PEO-C3T expects to release a final RFP for the IDIQ contract in early 2025 and make awards in early 2026.

According to the lieutenant colonel, the military branch will soon award “several” other transaction agreements to assess prototypes for the future network.

“The Army acquisition executive last year decided that UNO would utilize the software acquisition pathway. … This really is a revolution of thinking in the Army of how we recognize that software is different than hardware and it needs to be procured differently,” Jordan said.

With the new pathway, the Tactical Cyber and NetOps project manager noted that software capabilities can be delivered on an incremental basis.

“The whole idea is we’re able to rapidly make these updates versus in the past where it may take a really long time to make an update. We want to update very often based on feedback in whatever theater we might be operating in,” Jordan added.

GAO Calls On Agile DOD Software Developers to Comply With Required Metrics & Management Tools
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GAO Calls On Agile DOD Software Developers to Comply With Required Metrics & Management Tools

The Government Accountability Office has found that multiple Department of Defense IT business programs actively developing software via Agile and iterative approaches have failed to use metrics and management tools in line with the GAO Agile Assessment Guide and mandated by the DOD.

GAO said in a report issued Thursday that it had assessed 10 Defense Department programs involved in software development and found four to be non-compliant, resulting in the risk that the DOD does not possess sound information concerning its Agile software development efforts.

To correct the issue, GAO recommended that the DOD chief information officer and the undersecretary of Defense for acquisition and sustainment work to ensure that requisite tools and metrics are used by relevant IT business programs.

The assessment was carried out in compliance with provisions within the fiscal year 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, which call for an annual GAO audit of DOD IT programs through March 2026. A total of 21 programs were audited for the report.

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