The Biden administration established the Council on Supply Chain Resilience as part of more than 30 action items to strengthen the production and distribution of goods in the United States.

The council, which will be co-chaired by the national security and economic advisers, convened on Monday to discuss interagency coordination to monitor and prevent disruption of the supply chain.

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Among the actions pledged by the White House is the establishment of cross-governmental partnerships such as the Department of Commerce Supply Chain Center, which is task to conduct deep-dive analyses and risk assessments in areas such as clean energy stock.

The Department of Homeland Security also has its own supply chain resilience facility. “Conflict, political instability, and climate change could challenge our supply chains in the years ahead,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said. “The Supply Chain Resilience Center will help American businesses and the federal government anticipate these disruptions and play a key role in the Biden-Harris Administration’s work to prevent them,” the Wash100 awardee added.

Another initiative is the $275 million funding provided by the Department of Energy for the Advanced Energy Manufacturing and Recycling Grant Program. The grants authorized under the Defense Production Act aim to boost domestic production of clean energy technologies.

The council is scheduled to review its initiatives by Dec. 31, 2024, and update criteria for qualifying products and industries critical to national and economic security.

The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency hosted a virtual demonstration day to provide information on the latest National Background Investigation Services updates, DVIDS reported Tuesday.

The NBIS Demo Day convened more than 5,300 participants from federal agencies and industry and included discussions on the new eApp and the latest NBIS features and capabilities.

Scott DiStefano, NBIS training chief, said attendance for the NBIS Demo Day nearly tripled in size since the launch of the training sessions in 2020.

According to DiStefano, the NBIS Training program has provided live training to more than 6,000 users through over 200 live webinars and developed more than 135 training products.

The latest interactive session enabled participants to raise questions that NBIS experts answered in real-time via the Teams’ chat function.

“Our representatives from NBIS Training, Solutions, eApp, and Onboarding teams fielded over 1,000 questions from the audience and customers,” DiStefano said.

In late October, 100 federal agencies and 11,000 companies migrated to the NBIS eApp where they can submit requests for personnel background investigations.

Sens. Jon Tester, D-Mont.; Jerry Moran, R-Kan.; and Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, have introduced bipartisan legislation to advance the Department of Veterans Affairs’ emergency response and management capabilities.

The Advancing VA’s Emergency Response to Crises Act of 2023 would require the VA to implement a fully operational high-frequency emergency communications system to maintain communications across its medical facilities during disasters or emergencies without requiring external infrastructure, the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs said Tuesday.

“In the last few years, we’ve seen disasters strike all parts of this country, from the COVID-19 pandemic to massive flooding in my home state of Montana. Due to its size and reach, VA is in a prime position to respond to these crises,” said Committee Chairman Tester.

The bill would also require the VA to report to Congress on the current status of its Regional Readiness Centers, establish a tracking system to ensure that its emergency caches and emergency pharmacy vehicles are fully stocked with unexpired inventory and coordinate with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to analyze cross-agency coordination during emergencies.

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Defense Innovation Board officials pointed to efforts to streamline the acquisition process, rapid technology deployment and promotion of competition as some of the key challenges to modernization, GovCIO Media & Research reported Friday.

“The areas we’re looking at are everything from security processes, whether that is individual security clearances or secure facilities and their broad use, to the authority to operate in a secure ecosystem, to personnel practices, to the acquisition mechanisms themselves, everything ranging from the assets that we have or the data we need to receive,” Sue Gordon, a director at CACI International and a two-time Wash100 awardee, said during the board’s Nov. 14 meeting.

Thomas Sasala, deputy director of the Army’s Enterprise Management Office, cited the importance of data readiness during the board meeting.

“Without data readiness, you can’t have a ready military force. So we need to train our soldiers on data like we train them on the platforms and the weapons they use every day. The soldiers need to be comfortable with using data at the speed of mission to achieve that operational advantage,” said Sasala.

At its Jan. 26 meeting, the board expects to release results from two studies: “Lowering Barriers to Innovation” and “Building a DOD Data Economy.”