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ITI Releases Recommendations on National AI Strategy Development
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ITI Releases Recommendations on National AI Strategy Development

The Information Technology Industry Council has submitted a list of recommendations to the Office of Science and Technology Policy on developing a national strategy to advance the development and use of artificial intelligence technologies.

ITI said Friday it has recommended that the Biden administration ensure that the National AI Strategy incorporates a comprehensive approach to AI risk management to ensure that the development and deployment of the emerging technology do not jeopardize the public’s rights and safety.

“The administration can accomplish these goals by outlining a whole-of-government, risk-management based approach that considers all facets of the AI ecosystem, which will support AI innovation and promote economic growth,” Courtney Lang, vice president of policy at ITI.

In its comments submitted to OSTP, the global technology trade association also underscored the importance of implementing transparency measures to create accountable and trustworthy AI systems.

ITI also suggested that the White House address U.S. AI workforce gaps, collaborate with international partners to ensure that AI policy approaches are aligned and interoperable and allocate additional funding for AI research, development, testing and evaluation efforts.

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McKinsey Vet Giulia Siccardo Joins DOE
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McKinsey Vet Giulia Siccardo Joins DOE

Giulia Siccardo, formerly a partner at McKinsey & Company, has been appointed director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains.

She was among the nine DOE appointees announced on Friday who will work alongside U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to address the Biden administration’s national climate goals and energy infrastructure investments.

The office under Siccardo oversees department-backed programs meant to expand clean manufacturing and workforce capabilities throughout the country as well as engages with the private sector to sustain energy supply chains.

Siccardo previously led McKinsey’s green growth service line and its Frontier carbon removal partnership with several other companies under a $1 billion advance market commitment. The nearly 11-year company veteran has worked with business clients to help them implement low-carbon systems and value chain strategies.

Before McKinsey, she was Adobe Systems’ global sustainability coordinator focused on initiatives to procure clean energy and reduce data center emissions.

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Theodore Tanner Jr. Joins BigBear.ai as Chief Technology Officer
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Theodore Tanner Jr. Joins BigBear.ai as Chief Technology Officer

BigBear.ai has welcomed Theodore Tanner Jr. as its new chief technology officer.

The company newcomer will bring over three decades of experience across a variety of technology companies to the role, BigBear.ai announced from its Columbia, Maryland headquarters on Monday.

Mandy Long, CEO of BigBear.ai, highlighted Tanner’s long history of architecting AI technologies and managing related profit and loss. She said that his “extensive experience and expertise will be instrumental” to the organization’s work to provide its technology offerings to leaders in the public sector, manufacturing and warehouse operations and healthcare and life sciences.

“We are thrilled to welcome another seasoned leader to our executive team with Ted as our chief technology officer,” said Long.

Prior to joining BigBear.ai, Tanner was CTO and chief architect at Merative, formerly IBM Watson Health. Earlier in his career, he held architect roles at Microsoft and Apple.

Tanner has co-found multiple startups, including BeliefNetwork — one of the earliest machine learning and natural language processing as a service organizations on Amazon Web Services — and PokitDok Inc., which was later acquired by Change Health. 

Throughout his career, Tanner has received several patents related to blockchain, semantics, machine learning, signal processing and signal protection.

Currently, Tanner sits on the Industry Advisory Board for the University of South Carolina Computer Science Department and the Center for Intelligent Systems and Machine Learning at the University of Tennessee. He also serves as an industry member of the Association for Computing Machinery and is a published author.

Tanner said that BigBear.ai is “perfectly positioned” to deliver advanced AI algorithms and offerings to the intelligence community, Department of Defense and other federal entities as well as the private sector.

“I am excited to be working with this stellar team immediately bringing all of my platform, operating system and algorithm experience architecting groundbreaking AI solutions that will provide a higher form of decision intelligence for our customers as our industry transitions into the Age Of Artificial Intelligence.” said Tanner.

Theodore Tanner Jr. Joins BigBear.ai as Chief Technology Officer

BigBear.ai is sponsoring ExecutiveBiz’s Trusted AI and Autonomy Forum on September 12. To learn more and register to attend the event, which will bring together notable AI leaders to consider the implications of trust in AI, click here.

Leidos Selects Rancher Government Solutions as Member of Partner Network Program; Derrick Pledger Quoted
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Leidos Selects Rancher Government Solutions as Member of Partner Network Program; Derrick Pledger Quoted

Rancher Government Solutions has been chosen to join the Leidos Alliance Partner Network — a program designed to drive collaboration between Leidos and select organizations — as an Emerging Technology Partner.

The company’s entry into LAPN will allow the two organizations to tackle the application modernization, containers and Kubernetes-related security and operational needs of the public sector together, Leidos announced from its Reston, Virginia headquarters on Monday.

“Leidos is pleased to welcome Rancher Government Solutions to the Leidos Alliance Partner Network,” said Leidos Chief Information Officer Derrick Pledger. 

Pledger said that the companies have collaborated to develop edge-to-cloud architectures, execution patterns and secure Kubernetes methodologies, which he said will support rapid capability deployments and at-scale systems modernization within defense, intelligence and health agencies.

“We look forward to driving continuous modernization as well as helping our shared customers deliver mission outcomes on behalf of the nation,” he added.

Sima Shahin, regional vice president of federal system integrators at RGS, said that the organization is honored to be selected as part of the LAPN.

RGS’ inclusion in the program, she said, exemplifies its dedication to providing the U.S. government with secure, interoperable, open-source Kubernetes and cloud native technologies “in a validated way that has paid off.”

“Together with Leidos, RGS will continue to advance mission success through digital transformation and application modernization,” said Shahin.

RGS recently expanded the availability of its Kubernetes technologies with the release of Rancher Kubernetes Engine 2 and Rancher Manager on Amazon Web Services GovCloud, which offers public sector customers the option to immediately procure these tools.

The combined product is a push button, no-code deployment of Rancher tailored to meet the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Security Technical Implementation Guides for SUSE Linux Enterprise 15, Rancher Manager and RKE2.

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US Fulfills Commitment to Chemical Weapons Convention Treaty; William LaPlante Quoted
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US Fulfills Commitment to Chemical Weapons Convention Treaty; William LaPlante Quoted

The U.S. government has reported the destruction of the final munition in the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in the Hague, the Netherlands.

The milestone suggests that the U.S. met its commitment to the Chemical Weapons Convention treaty ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline, the Department of Defense said Friday.

“We have a national security imperative and moral obligation to work toward eliminating the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction,” said William LaPlante, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment.

“This is the first time an international body has verified destruction of an entire category of declared weapons of mass destruction — reinforcing the United States’ commitment to creating a world free of chemical weapons,” added LaPlante, a 2023 Wash100 awardee.

A joint venture of Bechtel and Parsons destroyed the final nerve agent-filled M55 rocket on Friday, July 7, at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky.

Christine Wormuth, secretary of the Army and a fellow 2023 Wash100 Award recipient, said the service is proud to have played a role in the U.S. chemical demilitarization program.

In June, Bechtel also completed the destruction of mustard agent-filled munitions at the U.S. Army Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado.

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OPM Guidance Lists Federal AI Skills & Competencies
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OPM Guidance Lists Federal AI Skills & Competencies

The Office of Personnel Management has released guidance outlining key competencies and skills that federal agencies can use when assessing, selecting and training talent for artificial intelligence-related positions.

The guidance was issued in accordance with the AI in Government Act of 2020, according to the memo issued by OPM Director Kiran Ajuha on Thursday.

OPM, in collaboration with the Office of Science and Technology Policy, identified the federal AI competencies and skills after conducting a governmentwide AI workforce survey and an environmental screening of AI work and holding focus groups with human resources and technical experts.

The agency listed 44 general competencies, including accountability, contracting and procurement, digital collaboration, mathematical reasoning, modeling and simulation, project management and reasoning.

The document also identified 14 technical competencies, including application development, AI and machine learning, data analysis, emotional intelligence, software engineering and systems design.

OPM also intends to release an AI competency model to support federal agencies in their talent acquisition initiatives.

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New Joint Cybersecurity Advisory Warns Against Truebot Malware Infecting US & Canadian Organizations
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New Joint Cybersecurity Advisory Warns Against Truebot Malware Infecting US & Canadian Organizations

U.S. and Canadian authorities are alerting organizations to watch out for new malware variants of the robot network Truebot, which are increasingly infecting the IT systems of private and public entities in both countries.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on Thursday published a joint cybersecurity advisory co-authored by the FBI, Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center and the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security.

Truebot, known to some as Silence.Downloader, is being used by cyber threat actors including the CL0P Ransomware Gang to plant malicious redirect hyperlinks in e-mails and steal information from target organizations. CISA noted an increase in malware incidents involving Truebot since May 31 of this year.

The cybercriminals exploit a vulnerability in the Netwrix Auditor software for cloud-based and on-premises auditing. To mitigate this risk, the agencies are urging organizations to apply vendor patches to the software and require all personnel and services to implement phishing-resistant multifactor authentication.

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Andrea Fletcher Appointed Chief Digital Strategy Officer & Director of CMS Digital Service
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Andrea Fletcher Appointed Chief Digital Strategy Officer & Director of CMS Digital Service

Andrea Fletcher, director of the Digital Service at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services since July 2022, has assumed the chief digital strategy officer role at CMS Digital Service.

Fletcher announced her new role in a recent LinkedIn post and will work to unify digital transformation efforts across the agency while building a digital service team.

Prior to joining CMS, Fletcher was a digital service expert at the U.S. Digital Service within the Executive Office of the President.

Her industry career includes time as a lead data strategist at technical assistance firm Cooper/Smith and a project manager and senior program analyst at mobile data collection application developer Dimagi.

Public Spend Forum CEO Raj Sharma Discusses Progress in SBIR, STTR Program Investments
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Public Spend Forum CEO Raj Sharma Discusses Progress in SBIR, STTR Program Investments

The Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs made more investments in Phase II research projects than Phase 1 feasibility studies from 2018 to 2022, Raj Sharma, co-founder and CEO of Public Spend Forum, said in an interview on Federal News Network.

The market intelligence organization released a report on the impact and effectiveness of SBIR and STTR programs, which could inform the Biden administration as it works toward equitable business growth across the United States, according to Sharma.

Public Spend Forum collated data from different sources to provide an in-depth analysis of the programs’ investments by sector and region.

It found that SBIR Phase I funding essentially remained the same, from $592 million in 2018 to $581 million in 2022. However, Phase II funding grew from $1.9 billion in 2018 to $2.6 billion in 2022. STTR Phase I investments totaled $115 million in 2018 and rose to $196 million in 2022, but Phase II investments increased from $244 million to $336 million.

“I think that’s a good sign that phase 2 has grown by 37%, that means more of those technologies are being funded to grow and to further develop,” Sharma commented.

The programs also granted 38 percent of their awards to biotechnology and medical technology projects, while advanced manufacturing and computing accounted for the second and third highest investments during the period.

Sharma and his team will focus next on Phase III funding, which companies often fail to reach due to commercialization challenges and lack of government contract follow-through.

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Navy Projects LCS Combining Gear Repairs to Cost $8M to $10M Per Ship
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Navy Projects LCS Combining Gear Repairs to Cost $8M to $10M Per Ship

A new U.S. Navy report estimates that repairing the faulty combining gear on Freedom-class littoral combat ships could cost between $8 million and $10 million per ship, reaching a total of $56 million to $70 million for the vessels listed in the report, Breaking Defense wrote on Thursday.

According to the Navy report, the overall projected costs exclude vessels that are being delivered to the service branch with the fix implemented and earliest LCS units that have not yet been approved to undergo repairs.

Lockheed Martin and the service branch will each pay 50 percent of the cost for fixing the combining gear, which links the ship’s diesel engines to gas turbines that generate additional power.

The Navy submitted the report to Congress in June in accordance with a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2023.

A spokesperson for Lockheed told the publication that the defense contractor “continues to work with the U.S. Navy on cost allocation in accordance with the provisions of the contract for the delivered ships (LCS 5-19).”

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