The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program has launched a new pilot program as part of efforts to enable agencies to quickly gain access to the latest security features to existing cloud service offerings and eliminate the challenges facing cloud service providers when it comes to bringing such improvements to market.

According to a blog post published Wednesday, FedRAMP will use the data from the Agile Delivery pilot program to help inform changes aimed at streamlining existing change management processes.

“Our long-term goal is to shift the FedRAMP process to one that is based on continuous assessment rather than assessing point-in-time snapshots,” the blog post reads.

Cloud providers that have new security features they plan to launch before Dec. 31 are encouraged to participate in the pilot. They should have change management and automated configuration management processes.

FedRAMP is interested in new opt-in features and is eyeing around 20 pilot participants, which should provide self-assessment artifacts and go through independent testing by the end of January.

“Additionally, changes to the fundamental underlying architecture, or new security control implementations that apply to the entire offering, will be excluded from the pilot,” the blog post states.

The program will accept applications through July 26 and select pilot participants by Aug. 16.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate has selected six startups to develop technologies capable of ensuring user privacy through digital credentials.

The awardees—namely, Credence ID, Hushmesh, Netis, Procivis, SpruceID and Ubiqu—will identify, develop and implement digital wallet technologies to enhance the privacy and security of U.S. residents, DHS said Monday.

Each of them will receive nearly $200,000 in funding to deliver innovative tech that could potentially provide immediate impact to DHS. Their selection is part of the first phase of DHS S&T’s Silicon Valley Innovation program, according to the department.

Anil John, technical director of S&T’s SVI program, said the selected startups will use globally recognized standards to develop capabilities that can store credentials securely and safeguard the privacy of individuals.

DHS awarded the contracts through its Privacy Preserving Digital Credential Wallets & Verifiers solicitation, which underscores the department’s resolve to improve its services while protecting privacy and increasing ease of use.

The U.S. Army plans to deploy a cloud-based recruitment platform under the second iteration of the Accessions Information Environment as part of a push to help the military branch’s recruiters generate leads in a mobile application, streamline the enlistment process and implement electronic check-ins for military trainees.

Col. Matthew Paul, project manager for Integrated Personnel and Pay System-Army, or IPPS-A, said in a statement published Wednesday the AIE 2.0 initiative includes implementing Agile best practices, adopting a new contracting strategy, advancing Salesforce out-of-the-box capabilities and promoting competition.

“We are maximizing commercial out-of-the-box solutions to the extent practical and trying to avoid one-off customizations wherever we can,” Paul said. “And when we do need to customize, we are going to do so smartly, deliberately and responsibly.”

According to Paul, the service branch has a direct contractual relationship with Salesforce and is transitioning to a multivendor environment and to an “Agile, continuous integration, continuous deployment methodology.”

Multiple-Award IDIQ Contract

In May, the Army Program Executive Office Enterprise Information Systems released a draft solicitation for a potential 10-year, $267 million multiple-award indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract to develop and sustain the cloud-based AIE platform.

“We are going to onboard multiple vendors that can meet our requirements, and those industry partners are going to compete at the task-order level,” Paul said.

According to the draft performance work statement, task areas include agile program management; Salesforce solution design, configuration, development and test; DevSecOps; architecture; training material development; and production operations transition.

The IPPS-A project manager noted that the service branch will act as a release train engineer to establish priorities and monitor the performance of vendors.

“We are not buying specific products,” Paul said. “We are buying capacity that is capable of going fast in a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe 6.0) model.”

The service expects the AIE platform to support more than 25,000 users at Army Cadet Command, Army National Guard and other components.