Biden Administration’s Proposed 2024 Budget Includes $842B for Defense, $21B for CHIPS Act
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Biden Administration’s Proposed 2024 Budget Includes $842B for Defense, $21B for CHIPS Act

The Office of Management and Budget has detailed President Joe Biden’s plans for the 2024 national budget, including $842 billion for the implementation of the National Defense Strategy. 

The Biden administration also allocated more than $24 billion for climate resilience, $4.5 billion for clean energy infrastructure, and nearly $21 billion for activities under the CHIPS and Science Act, according to the OMB fact sheet released Thursday.

Secretary of Defense and Wash100 awardee Lloyd Austin joined the president in submitting the budget. He noted that the requested defense funding, which was $26 billion more than what was granted in 2023, will help address threats from China and secure record pay increases for military and civilian employees.

OMB highlighted proposed discretionary spending for the CHIPS and Science Act, which includes $1.2 billion for the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships.

The administration followed through on its commitment to addressing climate change, requesting a historic $16.5 billion for climate science and clean energy research and development.

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Unanet ERP Offering Selected by Planate Management Group to Streamline Processes and Support Growth
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Unanet ERP Offering Selected by Planate Management Group to Streamline Processes and Support Growth

Planate Management Group has selected Unanet’s government contracting enterprise resource planning offering to support its anticipated domestic and international growth in the next year.

The service-disabled, veteran-owned small business chose Unanet’s ERP tool to replace its legacy, off-the-shelf accounting software with a product intended to integrate processes, minimize difficulties with data access and reduce project backlog, Unanet announced from Dulles, Virginia on Wednesday.

“Planate is poised for growth, and we decided we need an accounting and operations solution that will grow and scale with us, from a tech partner we’re confident will support us on our journey,” commented Stephen Lipman, the company’s chief financial officer.

Following a rigorous search for a new ERP software, Planate selected Unanet for its high ratings, customer service and training offerings. With Unanet, Planate aims to boost profitability by streamlining its separate time entry capture, accounting and project management programs so they are connected and able to more easily work together.

“We were impressed with the investments Unanet has made in its analytics and strategic reporting capabilities over the last several years, and with their customer service. Knowing that Unanet is going to be there through a complex implementation and training process, and for the long haul, is important to us,” Lipman said.

According to Unanet, government contractors are adopting its technologies primarily for growth management. The company’s Gauge Report, which identifies trends, best practices and business challenges in the GovCon industry, found that approximately 30 percent of small businesses in the field consider organic growth the most notable contributor to their financial difficulties.

In September of last year, McHenry Management Group, a growing systems and maintenance engineering enterprise, selected Unanet’s GovCon ERP platform to replace its former system to assist its project managers with financial decision-making.

Currently, over 2,000 contractors use Unanet ERP GovCon and the organization’s Unanet CRM program to balance accessibility and functionality to support expansion and scaling.

Unanet ERP Offering Selected by Planate Management Group to Streamline Processes and Support Growth

Unanet is sponsoring GovCon Wire’s 3rd Annual AF IT Modernization and Transformation Forum, which will connect prominent information technology experts to consider the priorities and challenges shaping the future of Air Force IT on March 21. To learn more and register to attend, please visit GovCon Wire’s events page.

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Kathleen Hicks Signs Pentagon’s Multiyear Cyber Workforce Strategy
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Kathleen Hicks Signs Pentagon’s Multiyear Cyber Workforce Strategy

Kathleen Hicks, deputy secretary at the Department of Defense and a 2023 Wash100 awardee, signed a multiyear strategy in February that establishes the principles for how DOD will develop a workforce that could help carry out the department’s cybersecurity missions.

The 2023-2027 DOD Cyber Workforce Strategy will identify and classify cyber workforce challenges using four human capital pillars: identification, recruitment, development and retention, DOD said Thursday.

The execution of the strategy seeks to accomplish four goals and the first two are implementing consistent capability evaluation and analysis processes to stay ahead of force needs and developing an enterprise-wide talent management program to better align force capabilities with future and existing requirements.

The other two goals are facilitating a cultural shift to optimize department-wide personnel management activities and promoting collaboration and partnerships to improve capability development, operational effectiveness and career-broadening experiences.

An implementation plan will be circulated by the department that outlines a list of activities to meet the goals of the strategy and key performance indicators for use in assessing the impact of the activities outlined in the strategy.

The department’s chief information officer developed the strategy in collaboration with the other component heads within the office of the secretary of defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Cyber Command and service branches to align cyber-linked human capital efforts with the 2022 National Defense Strategy.

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Private Sector Leaders Bill Monet & Bob Genter Held Up in Recognition of 2023 Wash100 Award Wins
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Private Sector Leaders Bill Monet & Bob Genter Held Up in Recognition of 2023 Wash100 Award Wins

On Friday, Executive Mosaic highlighted the tremendous achievements of 2023 Wash100 Award winners Bill Monet and Bob Genter, two private sector executives who have shown success in growing the reach of their organizations through contract awards.

The 10th anniversary Wash100 class represents the highly acclaimed award’s continued commitment to recognizing the most consequential figures in the vast government contracting space. Monet and Genter are prime examples of the leadership prowess the annual award seeks out during its selection process.

A four-time Wash100 Award winner, Monet, who currently serves as president and CEO of Akima, continued to drive the company’s presence further into the federal market last year.

Under Monet’s guidance, Akima’s infrastructure and logistics business arms as well as its subsidiaries Compass Point and RiverTech were selected for various awards throughout 2022. In December, Akima’s accomplishments culminated in a $333.9 million contract win with partner Amentum. To read Monet’s full profile, click here.

Genter, president of SAIC’s defense and civilian sector, earned his first Wash100 Award for his strong leadership in expanding SAIC’s defense and civilian business.

As a result of Genter’s impressive efforts to strengthen SAIC’s relationship with the defense community, the enterprise won a $200 million task order from the U.S. Army and later, a $757 million contract to support the Army Enterprise Service Desk. Genter’s work additionally secured SAIC awards from the Navy and other federal organizations. Click here to read his full profile.

In a spirited celebration of the incredible 2023 Wash100 class, Executive Mosaic is letting you choose your favorite winner in the annual Wash100 popular vote contest! To cast a vote for Bill Monet and Bob Genter and your other favorite honorees, please visit Wash100.com.

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NIST Seeks Public Input on Draft Adversarial Machine Learning Report
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NIST Seeks Public Input on Draft Adversarial Machine Learning Report

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has started soliciting public comments on an initial draft report on the terminology in the field of adversarial machine learning and taxonomy of mitigations and attacks.

NIST said Wednesday the terminology and the taxonomy seek to inform future practice guides and other standards for evaluating and managing the security of artificial intelligence systems through the establishment of a common language.

The agency is seeking insights on the latest attacks that threaten the current landscape of AI models, latest mitigations that are likely to withstand the test of time and new terminology that needs standardization.

Interested stakeholders could also share about the latest trends in AI technologies that intend to transform the industry or society, potential vulnerabilities related to such technologies and possible mitigations that could be developed to address such vulnerabilities.

Comments are due Sept. 30.

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GSA Begins Demand Data Sharing Initiative
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GSA Begins Demand Data Sharing Initiative

The General Services Administration will share demand data through a new initiative to improve delivery efforts.

GSA said Thursday demand data allows the agency to leverage transactional data through the identification of top products procured across the GSA Global Supply, Multiple Award Schedule and retail operations, among other business lines.

According to the agency, sharing the 25,000 top-selling products could enable vendors to tailor the price list to items that agency customers are likely to buy, provide opportunities to understand where product availability is important and offer reduced turnaround times for changes if there are fewer products on price lists.

Demand data will be updated every three months and GSA said it will include additional product categories in future updates.

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DOE Launches R&D Competition on Microbatteries
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DOE Launches R&D Competition on Microbatteries

The Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory on March 8 started administering a prize challenge seeking individuals and teams that could help accelerate microbattery advancement and adoption in the United States.

NREL said Wednesday the two-phased Microbattery Design Prize will be an avenue to award a total of $1.1 million in federal funding and performance and safety testing services with DOE laboratories in support of the American-Made Challenges program.

Competitors will initially conceptualize technical designs for the first phase of the challenge. Idea phase winners will then compete in the second or test phase to create prototypes and undergo performance, safety and cost evaluation.

The grand prize winner will be awarded $300,000 while two other winners will receive $175,00 apiece.

“Supporting the prototyping and testing of more microbattery designs can provide the key link between potential system developers, users, and battery manufacturers to spur their adoption and increase manufacturing capacity for batteries of this size,” remarked Paul Syers, technology manager at DOE.

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Virginia Rone, USDA Assistant Inspector General, Becomes Executive Director of Pandemic Response Accountability Committee
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Virginia Rone, USDA Assistant Inspector General, Becomes Executive Director of Pandemic Response Accountability Committee

Virginia Rone, assistant inspector general for analytics and innovation at the Department of Agriculture Office of Inspector General, has been named executive director of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee.

She was selected by Mark Lee Greenblatt, chair of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, which oversees the committee, PRAC announced Wednesday.

The committee was established in 2020 to ensure proper spending of more than $5 trillion in funds under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, and related legislation. It is currently led by Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz as chair and NASA Inspector General Paul Martin as vice chair.

Rone joins PRAC after working for five years in USDA. She spent most of her 20-year career in government service, including as chief oversight advisor at the Office of Management and Budget. Prior to that, she was deputy assistant commissioner of debt management services at the Department of the Treasury’s Bureau of Fiscal Service.

“I look forward to working with the extraordinary PRAC staff and the oversight community to continue to conduct meaningful oversight, to enhance transparency, and to publish products that demonstrate the power of government analytics,” Rone remarked.

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NASA, DOE & UC Berkeley Collaborate to Devise Moon Pathfinder for Studying Dark Age
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NASA, DOE & UC Berkeley Collaborate to Devise Moon Pathfinder for Studying Dark Age

An experiment led by NASA and the Department of Energy is working toward a scientific pathfinder that can be used on the Moon’s surface at night to measure radio wave signals from the Dark Age of the universe.

DOE’s Office of Science and Brookhaven National Laboratory, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory collaborated for the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment – Night, NASA announced Wednesday.

The LuSEE-Night instrument is being developed to withstand harsh lunar nights, which can reach up to negative 280 degrees Fahrenheit. Scientists are depending on the pathfinder to obtain radio wave data and for the first time, gain an understanding of non-luminous matter that existed 380,000 to 400 million years after the Big Bang phenomenon.

The team plans to deploy the device on a commercial payload services flight to the Moon, avoiding radio interference from the Sun and other planets during signal measurements.

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IRS CIO Nancy Sieger to Join Treasury Department as Chief Technology Officer
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IRS CIO Nancy Sieger to Join Treasury Department as Chief Technology Officer

Nancy Sieger will step down from her role as chief information officer of the Internal Revenue Service on March 17 to assume the position of chief technology officer at the Department of the Treasury, Federal News Network reported Wednesday.

Sieger was selected to serve as CIO of the IRS in February 2021. She served in the role on an interim basis since June 2019.

As CIO, she led efforts to advance the use of technology in support of IRS employees and taxpayers, oversaw the implementation of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, managed upgrade work to the agency’s infrastructure to support remote work and led the development of the agency’s information technology strategic plan and IT workforce strategy.

Sieger’s four-decade career at the IRS included time as deputy CIO for filing season and tax reform, acting deputy CIO for operations and associate CIO for applications development.

Jeffrey King, who has been serving as the Treasury’s deputy CIO since September, will join the IRS to serve as acting CIO, according to FNN.

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