CGI Brings 700 New Jobs to Louisiana’s Acadiana Region with Lafayette Onshore Delivery Center; William LaBar Quoted
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CGI Brings 700 New Jobs to Louisiana’s Acadiana Region with Lafayette Onshore Delivery Center; William LaBar Quoted

CGI has created over 700 jobs at its U.S. Onshore Delivery Center, a facility located in Lafayette, Louisiana that is dedicated to offering technology employment opportunities for local and former residents of the Acadiana region as well as others nationwide.

The center, which was established in 2014, has built a workforce that supports both public and private sector clients with digital modernization initiatives, the Montreal, Canada-based company said Thursday.

Don Pierson, secretary of Louisiana Economic Development, noted that this number significantly exceeded the predicted 400 jobs.

“CGI is a shining example of higher-education partnerships, business assistance programs and specialized workforce training combining to fuel technology sector expansion. The result is a rapidly diversifying state economy that is empowering our citizens with high-paying jobs, new skills and new opportunities for professional and personal success,” said Pierson.

Lafayette Economic Development Authority President and CEO Mandi Mitchell said that the jobs created by CGI have had a “transformative impact” on the wider Acadiana region by serving to uplift and “diversify the local business base.”

Within CGI’s hiring endeavors, approximately 35 percent are selected through a college recruiting program and over 25 percent have relocated to the area from outside Louisiana. The enterprise has identified over 60 open positions at the center in which new payroll has passed projections for the eighth consecutive year.

Alongside these efforts, the Lafayette center has cultivated a partnership with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, which includes CGI’s Project Based Learning Program. The course provides real-world learning opportunities for the university’s computer science and informatics students by tasking students with finding a technical solution for a business outcome.

Under the initiative, which represents Louisiana’s first software developer apprenticeship program, CGI provides three to five months of technical training before a one-year period of on-the-job experience. The completion of 2,000 apprenticeship hours paves a pathway for many graduates to pursue consulting positions at the organization.

“Additional collaborations between the University and CGI have strengthened and advanced our mission of research and innovation and have created extraordinary opportunities – and definite results – for the broader region we are both fortunate to serve,” said Joseph Savoie, president of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

William LaBar, vice president of consulting services at CGI, highlighted the company’s enduring commitment to grow the job market in Acadiana and maintain its standing as a positive workplace for local students and professionals.

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Gen. Chance Saltzman Talks 3 Priorities for Space Force at Senate Subcommittee Hearing
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Gen. Chance Saltzman Talks 3 Priorities for Space Force at Senate Subcommittee Hearing

Gen. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations at the U.S. Space Force, said he will prioritize the deployment of combat-ready forces, amplification of the Guardian Spirit. He also said he will prize efforts to strengthen partnerships to enable the service branch to develop a warfighting culture, outpace adversaries and preserve stability in space.

Saltzman, a 2023 Wash100 awardee, shared Tuesday in his prepared remarks before the Senate Armed Services Committee’s strategic forces subpanel that the service branch is launching initiatives to advance the first line of effort, which is to build up combat-credible space forces.

These initiatives include accelerating the transition to resilient satellite constellations, networks, ground stations and data links; experimenting with organizational constructs that seek to improve readiness by strengthening connections between operations and acquisition activities; developing Operational Test and Training Infrastructure; and creating strategies, tactics and concepts that will allow space agencies to carry out full spectrum operations against adversaries in the emerging threat environment.

To amplify the Guardian Spirit, Saltzman said the service is working to attract the best talent by broadening digital recruitment efforts, advancing the Space Force University Partnership Program, implementing an annual Guardian Field Forum and integrating the Air Force Reserve space element into the military branch as a single component to help enhance its talent management system.

For the third line of effort, the general said the service “will strive to eliminate barriers to collaboration, including over-classification, so the Space Force can build enduring advantages with our partners.”

He told lawmakers that the Space Force is establishing relationships with the intelligence community, NASA, departments of State and Commerce and other federal agencies to meet national security requirements, building partnerships with the commercial sector and developing and carrying out training, educational courses and exercises with allies.

Executive Mosaic Congratulates DOD’s David McKeown & Salesforce’s Rob Stein on Debut Wash100 Awards
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Executive Mosaic Congratulates DOD’s David McKeown & Salesforce’s Rob Stein on Debut Wash100 Awards

Executive Mosaic spotlighted two recipients of its 2023 Wash100 Award — the Department of Defense’s David McKeown and Salesforce’s Rob Stein — with individual profiles on Thursday to celebrate their accomplishments and recognize their impact in the government contracting landscape.

The annual Wash100 list is composed of the best and brightest executives working in the GovCon sector. Every year, recipients are selected to receive the forward-looking accolade based on their achievements, commitment to government missions, innovation initiatives, vision and more.

David McKeown serves as the DOD’s ​​senior information security officer and deputy chief information officer for cybersecurity. This year marks McKeown’s first year of Wash100 recognition, which he garnered for his outstanding leadership in helping the department achieve its zero trust objectives. Read McKeown’s full Wash100 profile here.

McKeown will be speaking at the ExecutiveBiz Cloud Security Forum next week — register here to join the timely conversation on cloud and zero trust.

Rob Stein, senior vice president of the North American public sector business at Salesforce, also won his first Wash100 Award this year for spearheading his company’s information technology sales strategy and expansion in the federal market. Stein has been with Salesforce for over three years, and prior to his current role, he held leadership positions at NetApp for more than a decade. 

Click here to read Stein’s Wash100 profile.

Don’t forget to participate in GovCon’s most thrilling race and vote for these two first-time Wash100 winners! Visit Wash100.com to cast your votes before April 28.

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Oracle’s Glen Dodson Takes Us Inside Zero Trust in New Video Interview
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Oracle’s Glen Dodson Takes Us Inside Zero Trust in New Video Interview

As cloud migration is accelerating across the federal landscape, zero trust is emerging as the most effective and widely agreed upon cybersecurity approach today.

In a new video interview, Executive Mosaic explored the intersection of zero trust and cloud with Oracle Senior Vice President Glen Dodson as part of a series on the winners of the Department of Defense’s Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract.

Hear public and private sector experts discuss cloud and zero trust during the ExecutiveBiz Cloud Security Forum sponsored by Oracle on March 22. Register here. 

Zero trust, Dodson said, “is really all about taking the position that your network is already compromised and can’t be trusted.”

“The concept of zero trust security has really grown over the last few years, and for a number of reasons. But two big reasons are just the growth of public cloud itself and also the threat of not just external actors, but also internal actors on the network,” Dodson revealed in conversation with Executive Mosaic’s Summer Myatt.

Dodson lauded the DOD’s “strong posture” with zero trust in light of the department’s new zero trust security program management office and the release of their first zero trust strategy.

Oracle has submitted its target and advanced controls to the National Security Agency and the DOD CIO office for review, and the company is now moving into the test phase for its zero trust security operations and posture, Dodson said.

“Oracle really has a long history of protecting the Department of Defense’s most sensitive data. We have always taken a security first design principle in anything that we build or design or innovate. That principle extends into our cloud and second generation cloud offerings that we’ll bring to market and for the department inside of JWCC,” he shared.

Hear more of Dodson’s thoughts on zero trust and how it’s changing the cybersecurity paradigm — watch the full video interview here.

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DARPA Picks 3 University Teams for Program to Explore Space-Based Biomanufacturing
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DARPA Picks 3 University Teams for Program to Explore Space-Based Biomanufacturing

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has selected three university teams to help tackle a program that seeks to mitigate risks associated with biomanufacturing in space.

Groups of researchers from the University of Florida, University of Texas at Austin and Washington University in St. Louis will work on DARPA’s Biomanufacturing: Survival, Utility and Reliability beyond Earth program, the agency said Tuesday.

The team from University of Florida will collaborate with Rhodium Scientific and subcontractors from NASA’s Ames Research Center, University of California in Berkeley and University of Delaware on a project to collect data and assess the performance of biomanufactured microorganisms in space’s low gravity conditions.

The University of Texas at Austin will partner with Signature Science, University of Washington and University of Wisconsin-Madison to study the effects of different levels of radiation and species on the production of microbial molecules.

Washington University will team up with researchers from NASA’s Ames Research Center and North Carolina State University to identify alternative feedstocks that can be given to host organizations.

DARPA will announce the fourth team for the B-SURE program by early summer.

“There is a critical Department of Defense (DoD) need for the continued development and future expansion of orbital manufacturing to enable and ensure supply chain resiliency, sustained technological superiority, and asset security and repair for current and future operations,” said Anne Cheever, B-SURE program manager at DARPA.

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SBA Provides New Data on Small Business Exporters in US
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SBA Provides New Data on Small Business Exporters in US

The Small Business Administration detailed in a new report that there are approximately 1.3 million U.S.-based small businesses that export products, a nearly five-fold increase over previous estimates.

The study on the Total Addressable Market of small business exporters in the U.S. shows that the main export products are in manufacturing, medical equipment, wholesale, plastics and chemicals and computer systems design industries, SBA said Tuesday.

Exporting small businesses also include architectural and engineering, management consulting, legal and software service providers.

“SBA’s new research gives insight into the broader impact and opportunity for America’s small business exporters, with findings showing significantly more small businesses exporting than previously reported,” said SBA Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman.

According to Guzman, data from the report will enable the agency to help small businesses “grow and diversify their revenue through trade.”

SBA estimated that approximately 264,000 small businesses exported goods from the U.S. in 2020, excluding overseas shipments valued at less than $2,500.

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NSA Report Suggests Ways to Help National Security System Operators Mature ICAM Capabilities
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NSA Report Suggests Ways to Help National Security System Operators Mature ICAM Capabilities

The National Security Agency has issued a cybersecurity information sheet offering recommendations to help system operators and owners mature identity, credential and access management capabilities to prevent cyberattacks.

“Malicious cyber actors increasingly exploit gaps and immature capabilities in the identity, credential, and access management of our nation’s most critical systems,” Kevin Bingham, critical government systems, zero trust lead at NSA, said in a statement published Tuesday.

“Our report provides recommendations that will help system operators strengthen identity protections to limit the damage of future compromises,” added Bingham.

The CSI titled “Advancing Zero Trust Maturity throughout the User Pillar” discusses how ICAM capabilities integrate into a comprehensive zero trust framework and outlines steps national security system operators should take to further develop access and identity security controls and operational practices when it comes to authorizing users to access key resources and establishing digital identities.

NSA said it will release additional guidance to help system operators streamline the integration of zero trust principles into enterprise networks.

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Navy-Johns Hopkins APL Partnership Equips USS Bataan With Hybrid Metal 3D Printer
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Navy-Johns Hopkins APL Partnership Equips USS Bataan With Hybrid Metal 3D Printer

A hybrid metal 3D printer was installed on a U.S. Navy ship for the first time through the collaboration of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, the Naval Surface Force Atlantic and Naval Sea Systems Command Technology Office.

The additive and subtractive 3D printing system placed on the USS Bataan produces 316L stainless steel, a critical component in U.S. Navy ships, Johns Hopkins APL said Tuesday.

The equipment features Haas Automation’s TM-1 CNC milling machine and Meltio’s 3D wire-laser metal print head. It is capable of layer-by-layer material addition as well as selective material subtraction. It can also make ready-to-use parts or their prototypes using a Markforged X7 polymer-based printer installed by the team.

Engineers designed a data acquisition system to monitor the vessel’s movement or vibrations, which could affect production success. The printer also comes with a digital manufacturing environment that receives technical data packages developed by NAVSEA.

“The metal hybrid system installed on Bataan will improve ship self-sufficiency and enable the sailors to fabricate parts to keep systems operational,” said Scott Storms, NAVSEA 05T deputy program manager supporting the unit’s Additive Manufacturing Research and Development program. 

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Air Force Global Strike Command’s Innovation Lab Unveils Counter-Small UAS Competition
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Air Force Global Strike Command’s Innovation Lab Unveils Counter-Small UAS Competition

Air Force Global Strike Command’s innovation arm has launched a new competition to develop technology designed to counter threats posed by small unmanned aerial systems.

STRIKEWERX said Tuesday it is seeking submissions from private companies, academia and small businesses for the Mobile C-sUAS Swarm Defeat Challenge, which aims to protect mobile transport systems against drone swarms.

Russ Mathers, director of STRIKEWERX, said the command is encouraging businesses, educators and inventors to bring all ideas to the table to help its government partners “learn about the latest and greatest technology available.”

“This challenge will discover the newest developments in industry to address threats and maintain the command’s commitment to nuclear deterrence,” said Donna Senft, chief scientist at AFGSC.

STRIKEWERX has scheduled a special workshop on May 4 and 5 at the Cyber Innovation Center in Bossier City, Louisiana, to provide further details about the challenge to approximately 50 industry, academia and government experts.

The command will then open an eight-week solution submission period.

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State Department to Advance CHIPS Act ITSI Fund Projects in Semiconductor, ICT Sectors
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State Department to Advance CHIPS Act ITSI Fund Projects in Semiconductor, ICT Sectors

The U.S. Department of State has revealed plans to implement the International Technology Security and Innovation Fund to help ensure the expansion and security of the semiconductor supply chain and information and communications technology in compliance with the CHIPS and Science Act.

The department said Tuesday the CHIPS Act of 2022 authorizes $500 million over five years to implement new programs under the ITSI Fund.

The department will allocate $100 million in fiscal year 2023 funding for CHIPS Act ITSI Fund projects under the semiconductor and ICT sectors.

For the semiconductor area, ITSI funding will support initiatives aimed at securing critical material inputs, strengthening international policy coordination, expanding and diversifying downstream capacity in the Indo-Pacific and the Americas and protecting national security.

The State Department will also use ITSI funding to support the deployment of secure ICT infrastructure and defend ICT ecosystems against malicious cyber activities. Additionally, they intend to provide capacity-building training and technical consulting support to promote risk awareness and adoption of regulatory frameworks and policies in support of secure ICT ecosystems.

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