OMB to Begin MAX Community Transition to USDA Connect
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OMB to Begin MAX Community Transition to USDA Connect

The Office of Management and Budget is transitioning MAX system users to the Department of Agriculture Connect from Nov. 27 until Dec. 4, when the USDA site becomes the official repository for the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program’s document storage and collaboration needs.

FedRAMP said Monday that MAX.gov users can still access their data but cannot upload new information on the website during the transition. Users can log into USDA Connect using their MAX user ID and password.

MAX.gov is a government-wide suite of authentication and collaboration tools and services designed to enable secure sharing of information and business intelligence among 200,000 users across 180 federal agencies.

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Janice Starzyk, Gabriel Swiney Take Leadership Roles at NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce
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Janice Starzyk, Gabriel Swiney Take Leadership Roles at NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has appointed space industry veteran Janice Starzyk as deputy director of the Office of Space Commerce and space law practitioner Gabriel Swiney as head of OSC’s Space Advocacy Division.

Starzyk will bring decades of industry experience to the role as she oversees the operations of OSC with the guidance of Director Richard DalBello, NOAA said Thursday.

She previously served as an adviser at United Launch Alliance and held executive management roles at Virgin Orbit, Bryce Space and Technology, International Launch Services and Futron.

Swiney will lead a team which represents the Department of Commerce in space policy development and in talks with other countries over U.S. space commerce.

He is a lecturer at Harvard Law School who previously served as a staff attorney at the State Department and held senior policy roles at NASA.

DalBello said Starzyk and Swiney are space community leaders whose appointment will help the office execute its mission responsibilities and serve industry stakeholders.

OSC is also onboarding 20 full-time employees as authorized under the omnibus appropriations measure for fiscal year 2023.

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CISA Releases Updated Secure Tomorrow Series Toolkit for Critical Infrastructure Sector
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CISA Releases Updated Secure Tomorrow Series Toolkit for Critical Infrastructure Sector

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has released the latest version of its Secure Tomorrow Series Toolkit, a set of interactive products to identify and mitigate emerging risks in the critical infrastructure, or CI, sector.

CISA said Monday the updated toolkit provides access to game templates, facilitator and player guides and other resource materials to help CI stakeholders self-facilitate and conduct scenarios workshops, matrix games, cross-impacts sessions and threat timelines activity.

These strategic foresight activities focus on six topic areas: anonymity and privacy; trust and social cohesion; data storage and transmission; brain-computer interfaces; synthetic biology; and quantum technologies.

CISA’s National Risk Management Center collaborated with subject matter experts from the private sector, academia and national laboratories to develop the first edition of the toolkit in 2022.

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House Bipartisan Bill Seeks to Limit US Government’s Access to China-Linked Blockchain Tech
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House Bipartisan Bill Seeks to Limit US Government’s Access to China-Linked Blockchain Tech

Reps. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., and Zachary Nunn, R-Iowa, have proposed a bipartisan bill that seeks to protect national security by prohibiting the U.S. federal government from using blockchain network infrastructure and distributed ledger technology developed and owned by the Chinese Communist Party and other international competitors.

The proposed Creating Legal Accountability for Rogue Innovators and Technology, or CLARITY, Act would direct the federal government to take a coordinated approach to countering potential threats posed by adversarial threats to safeguard U.S. intellectual property and sensitive data, Spanberger’s office said Thursday.

The CLARITY Act would require the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of State and the Treasury to submit a congressional report that addresses risks associated with adversarial technologies.

Spanberger said she is proud to join Nunn in introducing the CLARITY Act to protect the federal government from CCP-owned blockchain and counter China’s influence on the global economy.

“Our bipartisan bill ensures that the federal government is not giving China a backdoor to access critical national security intelligence and Americans’ private information,” Nunn said.

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LANL Leads Formation of Open-Source, Cloud-Native Community for Supercomputing Management
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LANL Leads Formation of Open-Source, Cloud-Native Community for Supercomputing Management

Los Alamos National Laboratory launched the Open, Composable, Heterogeneous, Adaptable, Management Infrastructure, a.k.a. OCHAMI, a virtual community to improve the management of complex and scalable computing environments.

LANL revealed Tuesday that it formed the open-source community with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, the Swiss National Supercomputing Center, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.

OCHAMI members will share ideas on the architectural direction of the infrastructure, which was modeled in part after the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. The group’s paradigm is designed to ensure agility despite errors and bolster innovation in systems management.

“Open standards are imperative to driving innovation in supercomputing,” said Trish Damkroger, senior vice president and chief product officer of high performance computing, artificial intelligence and laboratories at HPE. “The HPC industry needs a modern, cloud-native data center infrastructure management interface with a simplified user experience that supports legacy tools but is flexible enough to adapt to modern and future features.

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Marlan Macklin Named Deputy Principal Director for Future G at OUSD(R&E)
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Marlan Macklin Named Deputy Principal Director for Future G at OUSD(R&E)

Marlan Macklin, former chief of the communications and electronics division for the U.S. Mission to NATO, has been named deputy principal director for future G at the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.

He announced his new post Tuesday on LinkedIn and assumed the role after serving on a diplomatic assignment leading the USNATO division coordinating forums related to consultation, command and control capabilities and enabling technologies.

Before that, Macklin was lead for installations, acquisition and logistics and the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition & Sustainment representative on the Department of Defense’s COVID-19 Task Force.

He previously oversaw the Pentagon’s armaments cooperation and acquisition activities with international partners in the Indo-Pacific, Europe and the Middle East as country programs manager at OUSD(A&S).

Macklin was also the regional desk officer for Asia Pacific and the Middle East for the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Defense Exports and Cooperation.

OMB’s OIRA Issues Revised Guidance on Regulatory Analysis
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OMB’s OIRA Issues Revised Guidance on Regulatory Analysis

The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs within the Office of Management and Budget has released its updated guidance designed to help government agencies analyze the impacts of their regulatory actions using the latest economic and scientific advances and knowledge.

The revised governmentwide Circular A-4 was issued in accordance with an executive order signed in April to modernize the U.S. regulatory review system, the White House said Thursday.

The updated Circular A-4 contains revisions related to discounting, distributional analysis, the spatial scope of analysis and non-monetized effects.

According to OIRA, the revised guidance document seeks to enable agencies to determine the distributional effects of regulations and recognize the importance of distributional analysis in improving estimates of a regulation’s costs and benefits.

OIRA noted that the updated circular marks its commitment to “ensuring that benefit-cost analysis keeps pace with the best understanding of economics and science.”

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Biden Administration Unveils National Spectrum Strategy
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Biden Administration Unveils National Spectrum Strategy

The Biden administration issued a memorandum to promote the radio frequency spectrum as an essential element of wireless technology modernization.

The White House on Monday unveiled the National Spectrum Strategy, which calls for private-public collaboration over spectrum access, management and research and development to keep the country at the forefront of global wireless technology.

The strategy includes four pillars focused on building a spectrum pipeline; devising long-term plans with cooperation among the Federal Communications Commission, National Telecommunications and Information Administration and industry stakeholders; fostering innovation; and elevating national awareness.

The administration also intends to create a nationwide dynamic spectrum sharing testbed in the next 12 to 18 months to advance research on the technology. The government will establish national spectrum R&D and workforce plans in support of the new strategy and its objectives.

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How Government-Industry Relationship Is Evolving: CGI’s Stephanie Mango Explains
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How Government-Industry Relationship Is Evolving: CGI’s Stephanie Mango Explains

The relationship between government and industry is shifting, according to CGI Federal President Stephanie Mango, and as a result, government procurements are changing. In a new video interview with Executive Mosaic, Mango spoke about how this change is rippling across the government contracting landscape.

Mango, a two-time Wash100 Award winner, said the government is now more willing to bring industry into the procurement process earlier on, making the collaboration and innovation more seamless, fast and efficient. The evidence Mango points to is proofs of concept.

“Let’s not just write a solution, you read about it and then we figure out what to do. Let’s sit in a room together, develop the proof of concept, apply the technology to the opportunity you have and then let’s see how it actually works. Then once we do that, if it does what we want it to do, then we can do a procurement to roll out the rest of it,” Mango told Executive Mosaic’s Summer Myatt in regard to the change she’s seeing on the government side.

The changing relationship between the public and private sectors is one of three major trends — along with an increasing pressure to modernize and budget uncertainties — that Mango sees as influencing the GovCon market.

“50 years ago, government was really the only investor in technology,” Mango explained of the evolving paradigm. “They were doing all of the R&D for technology. Well now, industry, because of how much the technology has evolved, are making just as many investments, and in some cases, more investments. And so you’re starting to see government and industry work together differently to drive that mission forward.”

Hear Stephanie Mango’s thoughts on how the GovCon market is changing, along with topics like artificial intelligence and generative AI — watch her full video interview here.

How Government-Industry Relationship Is Evolving: CGI’s Stephanie Mango Explains

For more expertise on the government R&D landscape, join the Potomac Officers Club’s 10th Annual Defense R&D Summit on Jan. 31. Decision makers from the Pentagon, government and industry will gather to discuss defense technology innovation. Register here.

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DOE to Finance Innovation Program Seeking ‘Outside the Box’ Energy Solutions
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DOE to Finance Innovation Program Seeking ‘Outside the Box’ Energy Solutions

The Department of Energy will provide up to $10 million in funding to support the Inspiring Generations of New Innovators to Impact Technologies in Energy 2024, or IGNIITE 2024, program.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy said Thursday that IGNIITE 2024, which it is leading, aims to empower early-career scientists and engineers in developing disruptive energy technologies.

Project proposals must address at least one of the goals of ARPA-E. Researchers must also explain how their project makes the generation, transport or utilization of energy more sustainable, economical and efficient.

ARPA-E Director Evelyn Wang said she and her organization seek to support early-career researchers in pursuing energy solutions that are “outside the box.”

Regarding IGNIITE 2024, Wang said, “I am optimistic that together, we can support a new generation of energy innovators and create a clean, sustainable energy future.”

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