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CDAO Gathering Info on Commercial Capabilities for CJADC2 Data Integration Layer
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CDAO Gathering Info on Commercial Capabilities for CJADC2 Data Integration Layer

The Department of Defense’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer has started soliciting information from industry on commercial technologies that could be used to help develop a data integration layer, or DIL, in support of DOD’s Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control initiative.

CDAO expects the DIL to provide U.S. warfighters and their partners the capability to conduct trusted data exchanges to support command and control and situational awareness and deliver data, insights and intelligence across a joint force to facilitate the execution of missions, according to a notice posted Tuesday on Tradewinds AI.

The DIL should also support the rapid development and deployment of artificial intelligence tools and other applications designed to operate across various data streams and provide access-based identity management and controls that could operate at all domains.

Interested stakeholders should provide a description of their platforms that can be used to build a data mesh platform, state their approach for developing fault-tolerant distributed software architectures and describe their solutions approach for data synchronization between cloud regions, cloud geographies, cloud providers and on-prem resources in connected and denied, disconnected, intermittent and limited environments.

Responses to the call for information are due Nov. 29.

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Sen. Chuck Schumer: Federal Involvement Needed in Development of AI Guardrails
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Sen. Chuck Schumer: Federal Involvement Needed in Development of AI Guardrails

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the federal government should encourage innovation in the field of artificial intelligence, allocate resources and play a role in the development of guardrails to ensure that the U.S. maintains its leadership in AI.

At a summit on Thursday, Schumer highlighted the importance of “explainability” in AI.

“In other words, when you use AI, when you ask a system to spit back something, they should explain where it came from,” he said.

“If we can really discover, figure out how explainability can be accessible to the average user, you can have major success in creating guardrails and giving the consumer great information as to what they need,” the senator added.

The lawmaker also talked about his AI Insight Forums, which look to address the potential impact of AI adoption on the workforce, finance, health care sectors, among others.

“So our forums are not to replace the committees but to augment the committees, to give them the information and the ask— and have them ask the right questions when they do the legislation, but we intend the actual legislation to be in the different committees,” Schumer noted.

Army Works on New Policies for Software Development, Acquisition
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Army Works on New Policies for Software Development, Acquisition

The U.S. Army is working to develop policies to accelerate the delivery of software capabilities developed from its nearly a dozen software pathway pilots, Federal News Network reported Thursday.

Young Bang, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, said during the recent AUSA conference that the service branch is working with cyber colleagues on “processes that enable us to get to releases faster.”

“That set us on a journey beyond just going to agile and to get to continue integration, continuous delivery,” Bang said.

Gabe Camarillo, undersecretary of the Army, said the service branch is set to release new policies in 2024 that will “fundamentally reshape” how it acquires and creates software platforms.

“There’s a couple of things that we’re looking at in that space. One of which is making sure that we formalized and standardize the way that we do those requirements for software development programs,” Camarillo said.

Army Acquisition Priorities: Balancing Readiness and Modernization Forum

Bang will discuss the Army’s acquisition efforts at ExecutiveBiz’s Army Acquisition Priorities: Balancing Readiness and Modernization Forum on Nov. 8. Click here to register.

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CACI’s Derick Trask Offers Insights on Leadership, Highlights Career Inspirations
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CACI’s Derick Trask Offers Insights on Leadership, Highlights Career Inspirations

Derick Trask, chief financial officer of CACI’s operations and support sector, began his career at Northrop Grumman, where he served in a number of senior leadership positions within the company’s intelligence and Department of Defense business units. Prior to assuming his current post, he held executive roles at Hexagon and Freedom Consulting Group.

Trask recently participated in an interview with the Potomac Officers Club, in which he discussed his leadership approach, highlighted his core values and shared his career inspirations.

In this excerpt from the interview, Trask offers his insights on what he sees as some of the most important elements of ensuring team success:

“Consistent success doesn’t happen by accident – it is imperative to execute deliberately and with intention and communicate frequently with candor. Effective communication occurs with timely direct feedback and transparency horizontally and vertically across the organization. I view one of my key responsibilities as a leader to be an enabler, clearing my team’s major obstacles.”

For more on Trask’s leadership strategy, read the full Executive Spotlight interview on the Potomac Officers Club website.

Interested in participating in your own Executive Spotlight interview? Potomac Officers Club members have exclusive access to this brand-building opportunity and many additional benefits. To explore our membership options and discover which one is right for you, click here.

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US Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro Highlights Defense Industrial Base Priorities in Strategic Guidance
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US Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro Highlights Defense Industrial Base Priorities in Strategic Guidance

U.S. Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro has revised his strategic guidance on the long-term transformation and modernization of the service branch.

The Navy on Wednesday published the updated guidance, entitled “One Navy-Marine Corps Team: Advancing Department of the Navy Priorities,” which includes details on enhancing partnerships in the Indo-Pacific and other strategic regions.

According to Del Toro, one of the branch’s top priorities is to strengthen its ties with the Defense Industrial Base. Since 2020, it has trained and onboarded over 4,500 personnel into the industrial base, created dedicated defense manufacturing pipelines and trade centers and bolstered labor recruitment in submarine shipbuilding.

The branch is also continuing activities with allies and partners to secure supply chains and jointly develop technologies to gain mutual military advantage.

“As we look forward, we will continue to advance our three enduring priorities: Strengthening Maritime Dominance, Building a Culture of Warfighting Excellence, and Enhancing Strategic Partnerships,” said Del Toro, a Wash100 awardee. “Our objective is clear: we will continue to provide a Navy and Marine Corps that can deter high-end conflict with a rapidly improving peer competitor while simultaneously protecting and advancing the global maritime interests of the Nation.”

FY23 Bid Protests Show 22% Increase From Previous Year, GAO Report Finds
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FY23 Bid Protests Show 22% Increase From Previous Year, GAO Report Finds

Bid protests are up 22 percent from fiscal year 2022, according to a Government Accountability Office congressional report.

Released on Thursday, the report noted that the office received 2,025 total cases in FY 2023, which included 1,957 protests, 38 cost claims and 30 reconsideration requests.

The GAO sustained 31 percent of all protests, with the most common reasons for these decisions being unreasonable technical evaluation, flawed selection decision and unreasonable cost or price evaluation.

A considerable portion of the protests challenged a single procurement under the Department of Health and Human Services’ Chief Information Officer-Solutions and Partners 4 government-wide acquisition contract for information technology offerings.

Last year, only 1,658 protests were filed with the GAO, a 12 percent decrease from the previous year, in which the office received 1,897. This year’s increase is a step away from a years-long downward trend in the number of protests filed.

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DOJ Office Presents New Search Tool for FOIA Website
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DOJ Office Presents New Search Tool for FOIA Website

The Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy has updated the Freedom of Information Act website with a new search tool as part of efforts to improve user experience and meet one of DOJ’s commitments in the U.S. Fifth Open Government National Action Plan.

OIP conducted research and collected information from agencies and public users to develop the FOIA.gov search tool, which is designed to help users connect to the right agency to make FOIA requests and quickly find federal government documents using logic-based pathways and machine learning, DOJ said Tuesday.

According to DOJ, the updated FOIA.gov homepage now features three buttons to enable users to access the search tool, make a request with a particular agency and learn about the FOIA process.

OIP said it will use data analytics to understand how users interact with the search tool to improve the quality of the FOIA results.

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4 National Laboratories Upgrade to 400G Connectivity
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4 National Laboratories Upgrade to 400G Connectivity

The Energy Sciences Network has expanded the bandwidth at Argonne National Laboratory, National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to 400 gigabits per second.

According to ESnet Executive Director Inder Monga, 400G would enable collaboration between scientific researchers regardless of their location or the location of their equipment or data, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory said Wednesday.

ESnet is an unclassified network connecting 50 Department of Energy sites with the aim of supporting scientific research. The network is funded by the DOE’s Office of Science and overseen by Berkeley Lab.

400G is made possible by the installation of relevant circuitry following the launch of ESnet6 in 2022. The sixth iteration of the network was designed to enable collaboration between DOE researchers and international partners, facilitating high data traffic generated by a variety of sources, including artificial intelligence and imagery systems.

Many other national laboratories will be upgraded to 400G in the coming months. Meanwhile, upgrades at Berkeley Lab and CERN are almost complete.

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Former LANL Official Gina Fisk Named FAA Chief Information Security Officer
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Former LANL Official Gina Fisk Named FAA Chief Information Security Officer

Gina Fisk, formerly senior program manager at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, has been appointed chief information security officer at the Federal Aviation Administration, according to a recently published LinkedIn post.

Fisk previously held the CISO role at the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, where she established and maintained an enterprise cybersecurity strategy to protect information and scientific assets against advanced cyberthreats.

She held various roles of increasing responsibility at LANL, including global security program manager for cyber sciences responsible for implementing strategic cybersecurity initiatives for national security customers.

Before that, Fisk was LANL program manager for cyber research and development, senior cybersecurity leader and senior information technology project manager.

She was also assigned as senior adviser to the DOE Chief Information Officer and focused on integrating cybersecurity across the department.

DARPA Unveils Program to Increase Transparency in Critical Materials Sector
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DARPA Unveils Program to Increase Transparency in Critical Materials Sector

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, in partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey, has unveiled a new program to enhance supply chain resilience and national security by increasing transparency in the global critical materials market.

The Open Price Exploration for National Security program aims to develop technology that will serve as a transparent information source for critical materials producers and buyers, DARPA said Wednesday.

OPEN will analyze publicly available information on fundamental and observable input costs to formulate structural price predictions and create supply and demand forecasts using advances in machine learning, time series forecasting and economic modeling.

USGS will provide subject matter expertise in critical mineral extraction and refining to support the OPEN technology development effort.

The program will focus on two technical areas: TA-1 for estimating actual critical material input costs and TA-2 for forecasting supply and demand functions for essential materials.

DARPA will host a proposers day on Nov. 13 to provide details on OPEN’s objectives.

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