Vice President Kamala Harris has announced that the Department of Labor is issuing a new rule to boost wages and protections for workers on federally funded or assisted construction projects.

The rule will update the prevailing wage standards issued under the Davis-Bacon and Related Acts to ensure fair wages for over 1 million construction workers, the White House said Tuesday.

The legislation requires payment of locally prevailing wages and any fringe benefits to workers on $200 billion government-funded infrastructure projects.

The administration expects the number of workers covered by the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage regulations to increase with new projects under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.

LIFT, the manufacturing innovation institute of the Department of Defense, is slated to develop a pilot line for electrochemical separators in a bid to reduce the cost of energy storage and conversion at its operations.

The Detroit-based project will make LIFT the first U.S.-based producer of such instruments, the organization said Monday.

Electrochemical separators are the main components of energy storage and conversion devices. They have shown promise as a lightweight alternative to corrosion-resistant separators, which are necessary for isolating chemical reactants and waste heat from energy systems.

LIFT’s plan is to make test units from the pilot line, transition to full production after two years and support activities to find a permanent owner and operator of the line.

The program “will secure the supply chain of a critical component of energy systems, it will lower costs, and it will create an enduring research tool for separators in general,” DOD Program Manager Kevin Cronin remarked. “All of these benefits lend to providing the warfighter the best technology we can get them.”

Sponsored by the Manufacturing Science and Technology Program under the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the project is expected to be operational in the third quarter of 2025.

Air Combat Command and Air Mobility Command have designated a Kessel Run-managed application as their standard installation command and control tool.

The two U.S. Air Force major commands have each released “concept of employment” directives to standardize the operational use of the Command and Control Incident Management Emergency Response Application across their installations, Kessel Run announced Tuesday.

C2IMERA gives a common operating picture of installation resources and features tools for planning and coordinating base operations and communicating C2 data in real time.

The application has been implemented throughout several Air Force installations and forward operating bases to streamline planning, reporting, emergency management, force generation and C2 monitoring and execution.

Virtru has achieved Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program approval for its Data Security Platform.

Through the process, which was sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the software received Authorization to Operate at the Moderate level, Virtru announced from its Washington, D.C. headquarters on Wednesday.

“Federal organizations are realizing the urgent need for data-centric security, embracing strategies that enhance rather than impede the mission by prioritizing control and secure access to data at a granular level first, while also protecting the systems and networks that store and transmit it,” said Virtru Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer Will Ackerly.

He highlighted the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which recently shared its goal of establishing a data-centric framework, as one of these organizations.

Virtru Data Security Platform, he said, provides public sector organizations with a foundation to “execute against advanced data-centric cybersecurity strategies.”

The system hosts a suite of data protection tools to help users scale data-centric security across sensitive data workflows. Since receiving its first FedRAMP ATO at the Moderate level in 2019, Virtru has diversified the platform’s set of capabilities to offer its users secure encryption, access controls and key management capabilities.

One expansion made to the system is the addition of the Virtru Secure Share encrypted file-sharing tool, which enables organizations to send and receive sensitive data securely while allowing data owners the option to remove access at any time.

Ackerly said that as a sponsor, the CDC used Virtru’s Data Security Platform to handle sensitive data at rest and in motion.

“Virtru’s FedRAMP Moderate ATO could not have come at a more critical time for our nation, and we look forward to our continued technology deployments for our federal customers,” he said.

Along with meeting FedRAMP standards, Virtru applications comply with FIPS 140-2, an encryption security requirement for cryptographic modules used by both agencies and contractors.