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DOD Awards Magellan Federal Potential $300M Contract for Financial Counseling Services; Anna Sever Quoted
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DOD Awards Magellan Federal Potential $300M Contract for Financial Counseling Services; Anna Sever Quoted

Magellan Health’s federal subsidiary has won a potential five-year, $300 million contract award from a Department of Defense office for veteran and active warfighter financial management services.

Under the contract, Magellan Federal will assist military families by offering financial literacy education and organization resources through the Personal Financial Counselors program, the Frisco, Texas-based company said Thursday.

Anna Sever, president of Magellan Federal, said the company is sympathetic to the burdens that financial stress can place on service members, thus affecting their ability to complete their important missions.

“We believe in supporting the whole-person wellbeing of our service members and that includes addressing financial wellness. Our goal is to help reduce the risk of financial challenges to enhance individual performance and total force mission readiness,” Sever commented.

Made up of more than 370 counselors across the world, the PFC program works with members of the military and their families to establish and maintain plans and goals that will ensure financial stability. Their advisory services are applicable to people in a wide range of income levels and tax brackets.

The DOD Office of Financial Readiness contract has a one-year base period worth an estimated $60 million, with four additional option years. Magellan will deploy the PFC to over 270 military and civilian locations. They will make financial counseling and education available to members of all five major service branches (Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Space Force), as well as members of the National Guard and Reserve, veterans and their immediate family.

In February, the company landed a six-month, $10 million bridge contract from the Defense Health Agency to support the Department of Defense’s Recovery Coordination initiative, which aids service members who have sustained major injuries or illnesses.

Sever was appointed president of Magellan Federal in January.

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NREL Study: US on Track to Install 1.2M Public Chargers by 2030
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NREL Study: US on Track to Install 1.2M Public Chargers by 2030

The U.S. could keep pace with the increasing demand for electric vehicles by installing a network of 1.2 million public chargers by the end of the decade, according to a study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

The 2030 National Charging Network study expects the U.S. to have approximately 1 million Level 2 charging ports that could be accessed by the public to meet their needs on a daily basis, the White House said Tuesday.

The development of a publicly accessible charging infrastructure by 2030 will require a cumulative investment of between $31 billion and $55 billion, according to the report.

NREL worked with the Department of Energy’s vehicle technologies office and the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation on the study.

The White House said nearly $24 billion has been committed to the development of public charging infrastructure through the end of the decade, enabling the Biden administration to reach its goal of having 500,000 public chargers in place.

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GMU Links with DOD Cyber Crime Center to Address Challenges in Vulnerability Disclosure Program
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GMU Links with DOD Cyber Crime Center to Address Challenges in Vulnerability Disclosure Program

The Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center partnered with George Mason University to help address challenges in the full-scale launch of its Vulnerability Disclosure Program.

The collaboration was made possible through the National Security Innovation Network Capstone program, which is comprised of entrepreneurs and student technologists with innovations that are potentially beneficial to the DOD, the defense agency said Tuesday.

VDP began in 2016 as a pilot program with the Defense Industrial Base and was was designed to cast a wider net of protection for the DOD Information Network. Although the pilot proved successful, it faced scalability obstacles such as a larger workforce to meet higher demand for services.

A team from George Mason University Information Systems and Operations Management analyzed the lessons learned from the program and made recommendations to help resolve its labor-intensive challenges. Among the suggested solutions was the creation of a cloud-based portal to support DIB companies going through the VDP onboarding phase.

After eight weeks, the recommendations led to a 50-hour reduction in labor hours spent on the program, as well as a decline in onboarding processing time from eight hours to one hour per company. VDP expanded its DIB companies from 50 to 1,000 for the same operational budget.

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GSA Begins Market Research for Post-Quantum Cryptography
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GSA Begins Market Research for Post-Quantum Cryptography

The General Services Administration has released a request for information on vendors that could provide post-quantum cryptography products and services.

GSA has asked several questions regarding PQC-related tools and services that companies offer and risks and impacts to organizations’ information technology systems as they support federal, state, local and tribal entities, according to a notice published Tuesday.

The agency wants information on the changes and updates made by companies to address an Office of Management and Budget memorandum regarding the migration to PQC.

Interested stakeholders can also share the additions and changes they have implemented to comply with a 2021 cybersecurity executive order and national security memos issued in 2022 in relation to PQC.

Responses to the RFI are due July 11.

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Report: US Eyes New Restrictions on AI Chip Exports to Geopolitical Rivals
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Report: US Eyes New Restrictions on AI Chip Exports to Geopolitical Rivals

The U.S. Department of Commerce could introduce new restrictions by July that would prohibit the shipment of chips used in artificial intelligence applications to customers in China and other geopolitical rivals in response to concerns that adversaries could use such AI chips in weapons development and cyber hacking campaigns, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

Sources said the restriction on AI chips developed by NVIDIA, Advanced Micro Devices and other manufacturers would be part of the final rules meant to codify the export controls on advanced semiconductors announced by the Commerce Department in October.

According to individuals familiar with the matter, the Biden administration is also considering imposing a restriction on the leasing of cloud computing services to Chinese AI firms, which have used such approaches to circumvent export control measures on advanced chips.

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Vince Dickens Appointed Procurement Chief for NASA’s Space Launch System
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Vince Dickens Appointed Procurement Chief for NASA’s Space Launch System

Vince Dickens, a former senior contracting officer at U.S. Army Contracting Command, has been named procurement chief for NASA’s Space Launch System vehicle.

Dickens announced his new position in a LinkedIn post published Tuesday and will support the Office of Procurement’s Spacecraft/Payload Integration and Evolution organization in the development of the SLS rocket’s launch vehicle stage adapter, interim cryogenic propulsion stage and Orion stage adapter.

Prior to joining NASA, Dickens held various contract management roles at ACC, including as contracts manager for the fixed-wing special electronic mission aircraft contracting organization and contracting operations manager for procurement systems and innovative solutions.

He also served as the command’s representative on a team organized by the Office of the Secretary of Defense to analyze the Department of Defense’s Modular Open Systems Approach.

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Biden Admin Releases Cybersecurity Priorities for FY 2025 Budget Submissions
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Biden Admin Releases Cybersecurity Priorities for FY 2025 Budget Submissions

Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management Budget, and Kemba Walden, acting national cyber director, have sent a memo to department and agency heads outlining the Biden administration’s cybersecurity priorities for the fiscal year 2025 budget.

According to the document, budget submissions must be consistent with the five pillars of the National Cybersecurity Strategy, which are to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure, combat cybercrime, shape market forces to drive security and resilience, invest in a resilient future and build coalitions with international allies and partners.

To defend the critical infrastructure sector, agencies must prioritize investments that lead to the development of long-term technologies that are “secure by design,” the memo said.

Agency investments must achieve progress in zero trust deployments and meet the goals of the Federal Zero Trust Strategy.

The guidance also directs agencies to prioritize technology modernization efforts to ensure that government systems meet standards for security and customer experience requirements.

OMB will work with the Office of the National Cyber Director to review agency submissions to determine whether they adequately address the priorities and are consistent with overall cybersecurity strategy and policy.

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NIST Collaborates With Raytheon BBN & Universities to Create Quantum Computer Toggle Switch
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NIST Collaborates With Raytheon BBN & Universities to Create Quantum Computer Toggle Switch

A research team that includes the National Institute of Standards and Technology has developed a device that enables quantum computers to switch connections between quantum bits and readout resonator circuits for faster processing.

The study also involved Raytheon’s BBN subsidiary, the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and the University of Colorado Boulder, NIST announced Monday.

Existing quantum computer designs are often afflicted with external or internal noises due to defective materials in the equipment. The noises can cause errors in quantum bit, or qubit, calculations.

The scientists created a toggle switch that can either isolate the qubits and resonators, connect the qubits to enable calculations, or link the qubits and the resonators to retrieve results.

“The goal is to keep the qubits happy so that they can calculate without distractions, while still being able to read them out when we want to,” said Ray Simmonds, NIST physicist and co-author of the study. “This device architecture helps protect the qubits and promises to improve our ability to make the high-fidelity measurements required to build quantum information processors out of qubits.”

The findings were published in Nature Physics, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

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CISA Finalizes Cloud-Based Data Security Guidance Documents; Eric Goldstein Quoted
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CISA Finalizes Cloud-Based Data Security Guidance Documents; Eric Goldstein Quoted

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has published the Extensible Visibility Reference Framework Guidebook to help public and private organizations strengthen the defenses of their cloud-based services.

CISA on Tuesday also released a Technical Reference Architecture document as part of its Secure Cloud Business Applications project.

The agency requested public comment in 2022 on SCuBA, a program that aims to guide federal agencies in protecting data in their cloud business application environments, as well as the platforms themselves. The feedback CISA received is incorporated in the new guide materials.

The eVRF Guidebook is intended to help organizations navigate the EVR Framework for identifying products and services that provide visibility data. It is also expected to help pinpoint process gaps and minimize threats.

The TRA document, on the other hand, is meant to help entities make sound decisions in adopting cloud services, zero trust architecture and other related technologies and strategies.

“These resources will help organizations address cybersecurity and visibility gaps that have long hampered our collective ability to adequately understand and manage cyber risk,” said Eric Goldstein, CISA’s executive assistant for cybersecurity.

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Col. Chris Anderson on Project Linchpin’s Role as Army’s AI Pipeline
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Col. Chris Anderson on Project Linchpin’s Role as Army’s AI Pipeline

Col. Chris Anderson from the U.S. Army’s Program Executive Office Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors said the service wants Project Linchpin to serve as an artificial intelligence pipeline that would enable program managers to facilitate the integration of machine learning and AI capabilities in their portfolios, Defense One reported Monday.

Anderson, program manager for intelligence systems and analytics at PEO IEW&S, told the publication in an interview that Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node will be the first program to use Project Linchpin, which is expected to become a program of record by 2026.

“So as we looked at our problem within my portfolio, and then the PEO looked at it across the board, we realized we had to have some sort of AI pipeline to create these models and algorithms to deploy to all our platforms,” Anderson said of the rationale behind Project Linchpin.

“The other thing we realized: it was going to be prohibitively expensive in both dollars and people to try for every PM shop to build their own AI pipeline. So we just sort of centralized it under [intelligence systems and analytics], focusing on Titan initially and then expanding to the rest of the PEO portfolio,” he added.

The colonel said the Army has issued two requests for information and received over 100 responses with plans to release another RFI in the summer and hold an industry day by September.

Anderson said the service expects to release a request for proposals by early fiscal year 2024 and start awarding contracts on a larger scale by the first quarter of FY 2024.

“But what I’ve been messaging the industry is it’s not just going to be one RFP. This will probably be a series of contracts to do different parts of the pipeline, whether that’s data labeling, verification and validation, training models. It’s going to take multiple industry partners and multiple contracts to do that,” he added.

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