/
DLA Holds 3rd Digital-Business Transformation Senior Exec Service Offsite in Michigan
Published on
DLA Holds 3rd Digital-Business Transformation Senior Exec Service Offsite in Michigan

The Defense Logistics Agency held a two-day senior executive service offsite in Battle Creek, Michigan, as part of its Digital-Business Transformation program aimed at gathering senior leaders to discuss how to advance the adoption of emerging technologies to improve operations and processes.

The third D-BX SES Offsite kicked off on Sept. 13 at the Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center in Battle Creek, DLA said Monday.

“In my view, this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the whole agency to come together and recapitalize how we do our business processes… That’s the purpose of our presence here, and our success hinges on active senior leader engagement, not only at the enterprise headquarters but also within the major support commands and every other facet of our organization,” said DLA Vice Director Brad Bunn.

D-BX is composed of 20 initiatives that intend to advance the development of foundational technologies to back operational procedures and enhance efficiency.

DLA is launching a digital core of information technology platforms to foster collaboration, improve security, automate processes and increase scalability. The digital core comes with a single sign-on portal meant to enhance supplier interactions and provide agency users with real-time access to lead times and engineering data.

/
2023 Edition of NSF Materials Research Program to Receive $73M in Funding
Published on
2023 Edition of NSF Materials Research Program to Receive $73M in Funding

The National Science Foundation will release $72.5 million to finance 37 projects under the 2023 edition of the Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future program.

DMREF aims to facilitate the development and use of novel materials through experimentation. The program also aims to build up a workforce in materials research and development.

According to Sethuraman Panchanathan, director of the NSF, DMREF works to open up new avenues for materials R&D and helps address various environmental, technological and health-related needs of the United States.

The 37 projects for 2023 encompass 161 researchers across multiple universities and private and government organizations, including Purdue University, Johns Hopkins University, Microsoft Research, Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, the Air Force Research Laboratory and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

The solicitation for DMREF 2023 was issued earlier this year, with the submission window closing on March 13. According to that solicitation, each award could be worth between $1.5 million to $2 million with a duration of four years.

/
FBI’s Christopher Wray Highlights Importance of Public-Private Partnerships in Countering Cyberthreats
Published on
FBI’s Christopher Wray Highlights Importance of Public-Private Partnerships in Countering Cyberthreats

FBI Director Christopher Wray said the U.S. government depends on “collaborative, public-private” efforts to detect and stop cyberthreats, CNBC reported Monday.

Wray noted that the federal government has increased its reliance on the private sector to ensure the security of U.S. infrastructure as it faces difficulty in discerning between cybercriminal activities and state-backed hacking efforts.

“We know the private sector hasn’t always been excited about working with federal law enforcement,” he said Monday at a conference in Washington, D.C. “But when you contact us about an intrusion, we won’t be showing up in raid jackets.”

The bureau’s chief also cited the use of artificial intelligence and other technologies by cybercriminals and hostile governments alike in hacking operations.

In August, the FBI and its international partners took down Qakbot, a botnet infrastructure used by cybercriminals to perform financial fraud, ransomware and various criminal activities.

/
Dan Jacobs Named Acting CTO at OPM
Published on
Dan Jacobs Named Acting CTO at OPM

Dan Jacobs, an information technology and cybersecurity specialist, has assumed the role of acting chief technology officer at the Office of Personnel Management, he announced in a LinkedIn post.

The executive will leverage his skills and experience in digital services, innovation management, IT governance and low-code development as he serves as the agency’s CTO on an interim basis.

Jacobs joined OPM as principal solutions architect in 2022.

Prior to OPM, he spent five years at the General Services Administration, where he served as director of cloud adoption and cybersecurity and cybersecurity coordinator.

His government career includes time as a senior security architect at the State Department, director of cybersecurity at the Defense Media Activity and deputy director and information assurance division chief at the U.S. Army.

Jacobs’ military involvement extends to a five-year stint in the U.S. Marine Corps. In the private sector, Jacobs was a security systems analyst at Northrop Grumman and tactical communications engineer at CACI International.

/
FDA Seeks Comments on Draft IT Strategy
Published on
FDA Seeks Comments on Draft IT Strategy

The Food and Drug Administration has started soliciting feedback on specific goals and objectives outlined in its draft information technology strategy.

The FDA Information Technology Strategy has six goals: creating a shared OneFDA ecosystem; strengthening IT infrastructure; modernizing enterprise services and capabilities; sharing data for mission outcomes; adopting artificial intelligence and mission-driven innovations; and cultivating talent and leadership, according to a Federal Register notice published Tuesday.

Under the first goal, the strategy’s objectives include enhancing communication and collaboration, optimizing investments and promoting transparency.

To strengthen IT infrastructure, specific objectives include accelerating cloud adoption, implementing zero trust approach, ensuring service availability and providing flexible infrastructure offerings. 

FDA is asking interested stakeholders to describe how the IT strategy will impact their industry, identify gaps in the strategy’s goals and objectives and state the challenges and risks they foresee in implementing the strategy.

Comments are due Oct. 30.

/
Army’s Enterprise & Data Divisions Team Up for Unified Information Architecture
Published on
Army’s Enterprise & Data Divisions Team Up for Unified Information Architecture

The U.S. Army Program Executive Office Enterprise Information Systems is collaborating with the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army to move forward with the transition of the branch’s enterprise data architecture from fabric to mesh framework.

PEO EIS and the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Data, Engineering and Software are laying the foundations of the Unified Data Reference Architecture, which is expected to improve the management of massive amounts of information at the service branch.

The data mesh will provide a decentralized platform allowing teams across the Army to take control, ownership and responsibility of their respective data products.

The integrated architecture will serve as a layer connecting different systems and services, which will result in easier sharing, consolidation and virtualization of their information.

The project is led by DASA(DES) software systems architect Dan Andrew and PEO EIS Chief Information Officer Mike Chappell. Their plan is to share information between the two offices so that UDRA can produce real-world case studies, which can be beneficial to the Army acquisition workforce.

/
Core4ce CEO Talks Career Background & Leadership Strategy
Published on
Core4ce CEO Talks Career Background & Leadership Strategy

Jack Wilmer currently serves as CEO of Core4ce, where he works to deliver the company’s cybersecurity offerings to federal organizations. He has extensive experience in the public sector, having served within the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security and White House Officer of Science and Technology Policy, and has also held roles in additional private sector companies.

Wilmer recently participated in an interview with the Potomac Officers Club, in which he discussed his career background, reflected on his accomplishments and shared his core values.

In this excerpt from the interview, Wilmer details his approach for building a strong team:

“At Core4ce, we began with the relatively straightforward premise that we want to work with people whom we trust and respect, and we realized early on that valuing trust and respect internally would help us build stronger relationships with our customers. We really want to be that partner that our federal customers can rely on to deliver on our commitments, and I think we’ve succeeded in that. It is also really important for our team members to understand our vision as a corporation and their role in advancing the mission. We host quarterly all hands meetings to provide transparency into corporate performance, openly address any challenges and discuss pathways to growth within the organization. Because we have so many experts across a range of technical disciplines and at the corporate level, we’ve built an environment in which there are a lot of opportunities to learn from one another and for our team members to advance in their careers.”

To learn more about Wilmer’s leadership strategy and values, read the full Executive Spotlight interview on the Potomac Officers Club website.

Do you want to participate in your own Executive Spotlight interview? Join the Potomac Officers Club to take advantage of this brand-building opportunity and gain access to many more perks. To browse our membership options and discover which one is right for you, click here.

/
Metron Books DARPA Contract for Compact Radar Systems Development; J. Van Gurley Quoted
Published on
Metron Books DARPA Contract for Compact Radar Systems Development; J. Van Gurley Quoted

Metron, Inc. has received a $2.1 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Strategic Technology Office to help develop compact radar systems.

Under the Beyond Linear Processing award, Metron will experiment with new, nonlinear and iterative signal process approaches to create radar systems that are lighter, smaller and more cost effective than their predecessors, the Reston, Virginia-based company announced on Tuesday.

“Metron is proud to be supporting DARPA’s efforts to deliver cutting-edge innovations for next-generation radar solutions,” said J. Van Gurley, president and CEO of Metron.

“We are pleased to continue our collaboration with DARPA to deliver innovations that enable greater capabilities for the operating forces,” he added.

The BLiP project is divided into two phases, the first of which includes the development, analysis and evaluation of end-to-end radar signal-processing chains in a software test bed that allows end-to-end detection, localization and tracking for multiple targets in complicated environments. Metron will work alongside Duke University and Azure Summit Technology to deliver algorithms, theoretical analysis and the software testbed for this first stage of evaluation.

Phase 2 centers full-scale field implementations, and will use an operational civil radar for real-time testing. During this portion of the process, Metron will work to transition the testbed prototype into a high-performance computing implementation using GPU computational hardware for field testing.

“We are excited to provide our team’s technical expertise in the areas of sensing, signal processing, tracking and software development to accelerate DARPA’s goals for the BLiP program,” stated Dr. Kristine Bell, a distinguished fellow at Metron.

She said that improvements in radar system performance enabled by advanced signal processing and high-performance computing will pave a path for the use of smaller radar packages across air, sea and land applications.

//
DHS Garnering Public Feedback on Scientific Integrity Directive
Published on
DHS Garnering Public Feedback on Scientific Integrity Directive

The Department of Homeland Security has made a draft version of its Scientific Integrity Directive available to the public for review and comment, according to Daniel Cotter, senior adviser and scientific integrity official at the DHS Science and Technology Directorate.

Cotter said in a column posted on the DHS website that the release of the draft is the third step in a process prescribed by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to help various agencies formulate their own scientific integrity policies in line with the Biden administration’s efforts to restore public trust in government by basing policymaking on the best available science and data.

Cotter explained that work on the directive began in 2021, with an interim draft being submitted just this past March to the OSTP for review. According to Cotter, the current commenting phase is critical because it allows the public to help ensure the accountability of government agencies.

The DHS official went on to say that comments will be accepted through Oct. 20 and that the final version of the directive will be released in fiscal year 2024.

DHS Garnering Public Feedback on Scientific Integrity Directive

The Potomac Officers Club will host the 2023 Homeland Security Summit on Nov. 15. You can view the speaker lineup and agenda by clicking here and register for the event by clicking here.

/
DOD to Establish Energy Storage Systems Campus; Laura Taylor-Kale Quoted
Published on
DOD to Establish Energy Storage Systems Campus; Laura Taylor-Kale Quoted

The Department of Defense will establish an energy storage systems campus aimed at accelerating the transition and development of next generation batteries to support an enlarged domestic capacity for critical materials.

The Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy, through its Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment Prioritization office, selected the University of Texas at Dallas for the three-year, $30 million project, DOD said Monday.

Establishing the campus is among DOD initiatives under the Scaling Capacity and Accelerating Local Enterprises program, which was launched to drive commercial investment and create sustainable technology markets to support national security efforts.

“The SCALE initiative is built on robust research that indicates market pull is needed to transition innovative technologies into new domestic industrial base capability and capacity,” said Laura Taylor-Kale, assistant secretary of defense for industrial base policy. “Our approach of aggregating demand across national security and commercial markets will generate that market pull, drastically reducing timelines to transition and scale emerging technologies.”

The energy storage systems campus has three complementary objectives. Aside from the earlier mentioned goal of advancing next-gen battery development and production, it seeks to optimize current lithium ion-based battery performance and ensure the availability of battery’s raw materials.

It is expected to stimulate more than $200 million in private capital and bring together businesses, universities and trade schools to generate jobs and upskill domestic workforce.

1 … 503 504 505 506 507 … 2,657