The General Services Administration and the Office of Management and Budget unveiled two online tools to support the Biden administration’s goal of improving equity and diversity in procurement.

The Procurement Equity Tool is operated by OMB and available to users with government accounts, and the Supplier Base Dashboard is available on the GSA website, GSA said Monday.

The online procurement equity database provides information on small, disadvantaged businesses, including their business type, location, as well as Product Services and North American Industry Classification System codes. Government customers can select from new or experienced SDBs that are registered on SAM.gov.

The Supplier Base Dashboard displays graphical data on new, recent and established vendors, as well as the number of small businesses by socio-economic category. The reports are in compliance with OMB’s memos on advancing procurement equity and increasing small business entrant participation to boost supplier diversity.

“By providing our federal partners with more information when they make procurement decisions, we’re better able to set ourselves up to achieve our contracting goals and create more equity in the marketplace for everyone,” GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan said.

GSA will be the focus of GovCon Wire’s annual GSA Forum on May 23. The virtual event is still open for registration.

President Biden has announced his intent to nominate former prosecutor Deborah Robinson to serve as the intellectual property enforcement coordinator responsible for harmonizing the development of the administration’s IP policy and strategy, the White House announced Monday.

Robinson is an attorney with more than two decades of experience in global intellectual property protection covering television, music, digital and consumer products.

She was head of intellectual property enforcement at Paramount Global, formerly ViacomCBS, where she established and supervised a global content protection group and developed and implemented anti-piracy protocols and strategies.

Before joining Paramount, Robinson served as regional counsel at the Recording Industry Association of America and as an assistant district attorney for the city of Philadelphia.

In her time as a prosecutor, Robinson supervised a unit of 35 attorneys and oversaw the litigation of 65,000 cases annually.

Established in 2008, the IPEC works with department and agency heads to coordinate the development of a Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement, which serves as a roadmap for the U.S. government to protect IP critical to the U.S. economy.

The U.S. Navy has placed into active service its 12th Freedom-class littoral combat ship, manufactured by Lockheed Martin and Fincantieri Marinette Marine, during a commissioning ceremony held at Pier 88 in New York, New York.

Dubbed LCS 23, USS Cooperstown (LCS 23) is the first naval ship to bear the name of Cooperstown, New York, and is the latest vessel to join the Navy’s LCS fleet that operates in near-shore environments, Lockheed said Monday.

The ship also honors 70 Major League Baseball Hall of Fame players who served in the U.S. military during wartime.

LCS 23 was launched in January 2019 and christened in February 2020. It completed acceptance trials on Dec. 14, 2020, and was delivered to the Navy on Sept. 20, 2022.

Following the commissioning ceremony, the combat ship will sail from New York to its homeport of Mayport, Florida.

Cubic‘s mission and performance solutions division will begin issuing a standard five-year warranty on new core devices developed by its DTECH Mission Solutions unit for military, first responder and commercial applications.

“No matter the mission, the platform needs to survive and be reliable. The new warranty is based on a proven track record of high reliability for all DTECH families of systems to include M3-SE, M3X, Vocality and XD,” Anthony Verna, senior vice president and general manager of the DTECH business unit, remarked in a statement published Monday.

DTECH devices work to allow users to analyze and combine mission-critical data at the tactical edge in any environmental conditions.

The software-defined storage technologies provide computing and networking capabilities and optimize size, weight and power to support low-footprint locations.

The small form factor enclaves can be operated directly in a transit case or a backpack, reducing network setup and teardown.

“Cubic’s DTECH Edge Compute and Networking platforms are trusted, scalable and intuitive technologies built for a decisive advantage,” Verna said.

The Government Accountability Office reiterated its recommendation that Congress create a sustainable fiscal plan in order to prevent public debt from surpassing gross domestic product.

The government watchdog on Monday released its annual fiscal health report, which showed a $1.4 trillion federal budget deficit in fiscal year 2022, the fourth largest in U.S. history.

Federal debt held by the American public in 2022 totaled $24.2 trillion, $2 trillion higher than the previous year. It is projected to be equivalent to 105 percent of the GDP in 10 years, and more than 200 percent of the GDP by 2051.

GAO urged Congress to adhere to its recommended fiscal plan components to address fiscal sustainability. The agency called for improvements in rules and debt-to-GDP targets, as well as a regular assessment of primary deficit drivers.

Lawmakers should also develop alternatives to debt limit approaches, such as giving the Department of the Treasury authorization to propose borrowing limit changes, GAO said.