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Andy Lewandowski Appointed Chief Digital Experience Officer at Department of the Interior
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Andy Lewandowski Appointed Chief Digital Experience Officer at Department of the Interior

Andy Lewandowski has taken on the role of chief digital experience officer at the Department of the Interior’s Office of the Chief Information Officer.

Lewandowski announced his appointment on LinkedIn, saying he would strive “to improve public-facing services and customer experiences at the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Indian Affairs and Bureau of Indian Affairs” with the use of design and technology.

Lewandowski joined the federal government in 2018 after spending four years at technology consulting firm Excella Consulting. He says the move was meant to be “a one-year tour of public service with a plan to return to tech consulting” but has since stayed on.

From 2018 through 2021, Lewandowski served as a digital services expert at the U.S. Digital Service. He then moved to the Office of Management and Budget where he served as digital experience adviser to the federal chief information officer through to the end of 2023. His appointment to the Department of the Interior followed.

Lewandowski said he chose to continue pursing a career in public service “because I love this work.” He is also driven by the belief that government services and experiences that meet expectations can be delivered.

“The public deserves no less,” he added.

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AIA, Supply Chain Businesses Call on Congress to Pass Tax Relief for American Families & Workers Act
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AIA, Supply Chain Businesses Call on Congress to Pass Tax Relief for American Families & Workers Act

The Aerospace Industries Association and 31 small and medium-sized businesses have called on Congress to approve a bill that would foster innovation in the aerospace and defense sector through the restoration of research and development incentives.

In a Tuesday letter to congressional leaders, AIA and supply chain companies stated that the requirement to amortize R&D expenses over a period of five years has impacted their ability to invest in research and prompted some businesses to lay off up to 40 percent of their personnel.

“For these reasons, we fully support The Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act, particularly the restoration of full-year expensing for R&D expenditures, and request that you bring this legislation to the floor for a vote as soon as possible,” they noted.

The association and the companies stressed that adopting a tax code that supports small businesses, advances the development of new technologies and incentivizes job creation efforts is key to U.S. national security and economic competitiveness.

Last May, AIA’s 35 small business members urged Congress to act on two measures that would restore tax incentives for R&D work.

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NASA Plans to Gather More Info in Preparation for Fission Surface Power Project’s Phase 2
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NASA Plans to Gather More Info in Preparation for Fission Surface Power Project’s Phase 2

NASA is completing the initial phase of a project to develop concept designs of a 40-kilowatt nuclear fission reactor that could be used in future lunar technology demonstrations and plans to extend Phase 1 contracts awarded in 2022 to collect more information before moving the project to the second phase.

In June 2022, NASA and the Department of Energy awarded Phase 1 contracts to Lockheed Martin, Westinghouse and IX — a joint venture of Intuitive Machines and X-Energy — to develop design concepts of a small class fission power system as part of the Fission Surface Power Project.

“A demonstration of a nuclear power source on the Moon is required to show that it is a safe, clean, reliable option,” said Trudy Kortes, program director for technology demonstration missions at NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate.

“The lunar night is challenging from a technical perspective, so having a source of power such as this nuclear reactor, which operates independent of the Sun, is an enabling option for long-term exploration and science efforts on the Moon,” added Kortes.

Under Phase 2, the space agency will ask industry to design the final reactor for demonstration on the lunar surface. Open solicitation for this phase is expected to occur in 2025.

Lindsay Kaldon, Fission Surface Power project manager at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, said information gathered from three vendors under the initial phase will help inform the requirements for Phase 2.

After Phase 2, NASA expects the reactor to be available for launch in the early 2030s. The system should perform a one-year demonstration on the lunar surface and operate for another nine years.

DOD Issues Request for White Papers for Bioindustrial Manufacturing Investment Program
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DOD Issues Request for White Papers for Bioindustrial Manufacturing Investment Program

The Department of Defense is inviting potential vendors to submit white papers for a bioindustrial manufacturing funding opportunity.

The Distributed Bioindustrial Manufacturing Investment Program will leverage the Defense Industrial Base Consortium Other Transaction Agreement vehicle in an aim to boost domestic supply chains using biotechnology, DOD announced Wednesday.

The agency plans to select 30 proposals for establishing a bioindustrial production facility by May. Each awardee will receive $2 million to execute their technical and business plan.

“President Biden called on the Department of Defense to assess how the agency can use biotechnology to make our supply chains more resilient, create jobs at home, and strengthen America’s bioeconomy,” remarked Heidi Shyu, under secretary of defense for research and engineering. “These major investments will help answer his charge to harness the full potential and power of biotechnology to advance national and economic security,” the four-time Wash100 inductee added.

“The DIBC OTA helps enable more rapid execution of Defense Production Act funding and can also allow for other federal agencies with similar investments to separately or jointly invest in projects awarded by DoD,” said William LaPlante, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment and three-time winner of the Wash100 Award.

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Space Force Eyes On-Orbit Refueling, Propulsion Systems to Achieve Mobility Goals
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Space Force Eyes On-Orbit Refueling, Propulsion Systems to Achieve Mobility Goals

U.S. Space Force officials said the service branch’s mobility and logistics plans involve the procurement of satellites that can be refueled and propulsion systems that can be buckled in to existing spacecraft that have run out of fuel, Breaking Defense reported Wednesday.

Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, program executive officer for Assured Access to Space, said the Space Force seeks to fill the immediate demand signal by acquiring an engine “jetpack” that could connect with an existing satellite to give it more propulsion.

“We’re taking our cues from Space Systems Command,” Panzenhagen said. “So that’s where prioritizing on-orbit refueling is coming from as the immediate need.”

Meanwhile, Col. Joyce Bulson, director of Space System Command’s Servicing, Mobility and Logistics Office, said her office is working to “answer those demands from US Space Command as well as our other mission partner partners.”

Bulson said the technologies the Space Force is looking at are based on what other Department of Defense agencies have already started doing but noted that “we are not trying to duplicate the efforts that are being done.”

“So, it’s definitely a community of all of us coming together with these great activities and projects that have been started, but putting that together into a roadmap so that our efforts are aligned from what we’ve seen with our past engagements with our partners,” Bulson said.

POC - 2024 Space Summit

Join the Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Space Summit on March 5 to learn how new technologies, commercial investments and adversarial threats are shaping the future of space. Click here to register!

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Jen Easterly Talks CISA’s Efforts to Counter Critical Infrastructure Cyberthreats Posed by China
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Jen Easterly Talks CISA’s Efforts to Counter Critical Infrastructure Cyberthreats Posed by China

Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and a 2024 Wash100 awardee, said CISA has initiated actions to protect U.S. critical infrastructure from cyberthreats posed by China, including its use of JCDC or the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative to advance collaboration across government and industry to identify Chinese malicious cyber activities and prevent intrusions.

CISA is providing guidance, resources and services for critical infrastructure operators and owners to detect and mitigate risks posed by cyberthreat actors from China. It is also seeking assistance from subject matter experts and advisers to help strengthen the resilience of such infrastructure, Easterly said Wednesday in her testimony before the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.

During the hearing, Easterly called on technology companies to develop, test and deliver products that are “secure by design” to prevent Chinese cyber actors from exploiting defects in such products.

“We must drive toward a future where defects in our technology products are a shocking anomaly, a future underpinned by a software liability regime based on a measurable standard of care and safe harbor provisions for software developers who do responsibly innovate by prioritizing security,” she told lawmakers.

The CISA director called on critical infrastructure entities to work with their local CISA team and enroll in the agency’s Vulnerability Scanning program and other services to address vulnerabilities, exercise the continuity of critical systems and use the joint advisories with the FBI and the National Security Agency to drive investments in cyber hygiene.

POC - 2024 Cyber Summit

Join the Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Cyber Summit on June 6 and hear cyber experts, government and industry leaders discuss the latest trends and the dynamic role of cyber in the public sector. Register here.

AFWERX Unveils Prime Program to Develop, Test Emerging Autonomous Technologies
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AFWERX Unveils Prime Program to Develop, Test Emerging Autonomous Technologies

The Department of the Air Force’s innovation arm has begun seeking new technologies and capabilities designed to fulfill the requirements of a new Prime program that aims to develop and implement autonomous systems for national security applications.

AFWERX, a division within the Air Force Research Laboratory, has launched the innovative capabilities opening, or ICO, for Autonomy Prime to facilitate partnerships with the private sector to enable rapid testing and deployment of commercially developed emerging autonomous technologies, AFRL said Wednesday.

The ICO will include several autonomy topic calls in the future to address key technology gaps identified by AFWERX.

“Stemming from the successes of Agility Prime, we surveyed emerging tech markets and created a new Prime focused on autonomy because we recognized a need across the Department of the Air Force,” said Lt. Col. Bryan Ralston, AFWERX Autonomy Prime branch chief.

Autonomy Prime centers around four lines of effort to achieve its objectives, starting with establishing a proving ground at Duke Field, Florida, dedicated to testing and experimenting with autonomous technologies and capabilities.

“By employing a trusted ‘sandbox’ environment, we will be able to accelerate emerging technologies more rapidly because we won’t have to go through a test approval process every time we discover a bug in an algorithm,” Ralston said.

Will 2024 Be the Year of AI for DOD?
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Will 2024 Be the Year of AI for DOD?

Artificial intelligence adoption across the federal government has been iterative and cautious — for good reason. Concerns about the responsible and ethical use of AI have slowed the technology’s deployment, but new milestones are laying the groundwork for 2024 to be a year of accelerated AI adoption.

Will 2024 Be the Year of AI for DOD?

Learn more about the future of AI in the government, military and industry at one of the largest AI events of the year. Join the Potomac Officers Club’s 5th Annual AI Summit on March 21 to meet government officials, network with AI leaders and unlock business opportunities. Register here to save your spot. 

AI Executive Order Sets Groundwork for Adoption

In October 2023, President Biden issued an executive order that set new safety standards for safely and effectively adopting AI technologies.

“The executive order aspires to set up guardrails for agencies to understand how to implement generative AI while mitigating associated risks,” commented GovCon Expert Kevin Plexico, senior vice president of information solutions at Deltek and a 2024 Wash100 Award winner.

“We also have to make sure privacy controls are in place so that AI technology is not compromising personal or citizen data,” he told Executive Mosaic.

Project Maven to Begin Contracting

The Pentagon’s flagship AI effort Project Maven may potentially begin contracting in 2024, according to 2024 Wash100 Award winner Rachael Martin, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s Maven office director.

“We’ve hit our milestones and you’ll start seeing as we look to the next few months a lot more activity from the Maven office in terms of contracting,” Martin said in November.

Hear Rachael Martin speak at POC’s 5th Annual AI Summit on March 21. Register now.

DOD Launches AI Bias Bounty

The Department of Defense’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office launched a crowdsourcing effort to identify bias in AI large language models.

CDAO’s AI Bias Bounty, which aims to find unknown risks in open-source chatbots, is being carried out in partnership with ConductorAI, Bugcrowd and BiasBounty.AI.

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Matt Tait & Venice Goodwine Named to 2024 Wash100 List
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Matt Tait & Venice Goodwine Named to 2024 Wash100 List

ManTech President and CEO Matt Tait and Department of the Air Force Chief Information Officer Venice Goodwine were celebrated on Thursday as winners of Executive Mosaic’s prestigious 2024 Wash100 Award.

The coveted Wash100 Award honors the 100 most influential leaders working in the government and government contracting sectors. Each recipient is recognized for their outstanding leadership, vision, innovation, reliability and achievement. These executives are the ones to watch in the coming year!

Tait earned his second consecutive Wash100 Award for spearheading company growth, appointing key talent to the leadership team and booking new contracts. Executive Mosaic CEO Jim Garrettson said of Tait’s win, “In less than two years as CEO, Matt has proven to be a worthy recipient of the Wash100 Award and the ideal successor to uphold and continue ManTech’s legacy.”

Read Matt Tait’s full Wash100 profile here.

This year marks Goodwine’s first to be recognized as a Wash100 winner. Goodwine is honored for her dedication to elevating the service branch’s information technology investment strategy and embracing emerging technologies across the enterprise.The DAF CIO assumed her current role in August and oversees a $17 billion IT portfolio. Learn more about why Goodwine was selected for this year’s Wash100 — read her full profile here.

Don’t forget to vote for Matt Tait and Venice Goodwine in the annual Wash100 popular vote competition! Cast your ten votes today at Wash100.com.

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NIST NCCoE Offers Draft Guide on Monitoring Internet Data on TLS 1.3
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NIST NCCoE Offers Draft Guide on Monitoring Internet Data on TLS 1.3

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence has released a new draft practice guide to help organizations monitor incoming internet data for evidence of malware and insider threats while using the latest version of the TLS protocol.

NIST said Tuesday the document aims to help companies in finance, healthcare and other industries implement the TLS 1.3 encryption protocol update while maintaining compliance with network monitoring and auditing regulations.

“TLS 1.3 is an important encryption tool that brings increased security and will be able to support post-quantum cryptography,” explained Cherilyn Pascoe, director of the NCCoE.

The document was developed over the past several years at the NCCoE in collaboration with the Internet Engineering Task Force to provide technical methods for auditing incoming internet traffic while using TLS 1.3.

“This collaborative project focuses on ensuring that organizations can use TLS 1.3 to protect their data while meeting requirements for auditing and cybersecurity,” Pascoe said.

Comments on the draft practice guide are due April 1.

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