DLA Debuts New Tool to Coordinate Interagency Financial Agreements
Published on
DLA Debuts New Tool to Coordinate Interagency Financial Agreements

The Defense Logistics Agency is set to roll out a new ServiceNow tool that is designed to serve as a single storage location for interagency financial transactions.

The DLA Information Operations developed the tool as a “one-stop shop” for the Department of the Treasury’s government invoicing program, memorandums of understanding, financial agreements and other documents, the agency said Wednesday.

Max Walens, head of DLA’s G-Invoicing Center of Excellence, said the new ServiceNow capability will capture “the evidentiary matter all in one place for DLA” and coordinate financial agreements in the system.

With the tool, DLA will “have the ability to coordinate agreements in the system instead of working them through email or DLA’s Task Management Tracker,” Walens said.

DLA will initially deploy the cloud-based platform as a management tool for developing agreements on the G-Invoicing side.

The announcement comes four months after DLA announced it is working toward completing the implementation of the G-Invoicing platform to standardize intragovernmental buy and sell transactions.

Hanscom AFB Weather Branch Signs MOA to Use DIU’s Commercial Solutions Opening Pathway
Published on
Hanscom AFB Weather Branch Signs MOA to Use DIU’s Commercial Solutions Opening Pathway

The Weather Systems Branch of the Digital Directorate at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts signed a memorandum of agreement to gain access to the Defense Innovation Unit’s Commercial Solutions Opening process.

The CSO pathway will enable the branch to shorten its technology procurement timeline and reach a more diverse pool of vendors, including previous commercial partners, the U.S. Air Force Materiel Command said Wednesday.

DIU’s collaboration with the Weather Systems Branch has so far resulted in five contracts awarded within 122 days of solicitation. Tomorrow.io, a weather technology company, was selected to provide three months of observational weather data, design a prototype featuring numerical data assimilation algorithms and test it through simulation experiments.

DIU also appointed Nirav Patel, its senior scientist and remote sensing program manager, to oversee the MOA and provide CSO procedure training to the Digital Directorate.

/
CDC’s Nonprofit Arm Calls for Multi-Sector Collaboration to Modernize Public Health IT Systems
Published on
CDC’s Nonprofit Arm Calls for Multi-Sector Collaboration to Modernize Public Health IT Systems

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s fundraising organization aims to bring together government and industry stakeholders to drive the formation of public health information technology modernization partnerships.

The CDC Foundation said Wednesday it will co-host Industry Days on Feb. 27 and 28 for companies to learn about opportunities to help the agency update national infrastructure used to collect, analyze and disseminate critical health information.

“COVID-19 emphasized the need to have reliable, actionable data in near real time to ensure the delivery of rapid and equitable health care during a pandemic,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said.

Private sector attendees at the foundation’s joint event with CDC and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology will have the chance to share offerings with agency representatives.

Additionally, the nonprofit will launch its President’s Council soon and form a group within that council to recommend models for driving collaboration in the public health IT field.

“These partnerships open new pathways for technology, people and policies to gather and analyze data. The resulting intelligence will improve health and assure thriving and prosperous communities,” said Judy Monroe, president and CEO of the CDC Foundation.

Congress established the foundation in 1995 to help CDC gain access to philanthropic and private resources that can advance the agency’s public health mission.

/
Federal IT Officials Cite Need for Collaboration, Better Tools to Detect & Prevent Fraud
Published on
Federal IT Officials Cite Need for Collaboration, Better Tools to Detect & Prevent Fraud

The prevalence of pandemic relief fraud is driving federal information technology leaders to look for ideas across agencies to protect IT systems and public programs from fraud, Federal News Network reported Wednesday.

Federal Chief Information Officer Clare Martorana said at a symposium Tuesday that CIOs should work with chief financial officers, across agencies and with the oversight community to address the challenge associated with fraud detection and prevention.

“This is a critical moment for all of us,” noted Martorana, a previous Wash100 awardee. “This is a combination of the need based on what we have seen occur during the pandemic and the pandemic relief. But we’re also on a really important journey from a cybersecurity perspective, where the federal government, we have put out some really great policies.”

Deidre Harrison, acting controller at the Office of Management and Budget, said federal CFOs should not only focus on identifying and recovering funds lost to pandemic-related fraud but also on having better tools in place to detect and prevent fraud.

“Not ‘if,’ but when we have another event, we need to be better prepared,” Harrison said. “We need to make sure that we can prevent the fraud that we just experienced.”

USAF Launches 3rd BRAVO Hackathon to Explore Permissive Development Modeling of Weapon Capabilities
Published on
USAF Launches 3rd BRAVO Hackathon to Explore Permissive Development Modeling of Weapon Capabilities

The Department of the Air Force will host its third BRAVO hackathon, this time to test whether permissive development modeling using classified data is more cost-effective than traditional means in prototyping weapon capabilities, Space Force News reported Wednesday.

The competition will be held on March 20 to 24 at Hurlburt Field air base in Florida, and is open to applicants within and outside the department.

BRAVO was launched in 2021 to leverage real data from the Department of Defense in testing and validating military innovations. Interested participants may apply for one of three roles. Non-government applicants can try out for the hacker role if they have competencies in product management, data science, machine learning, software development and/or user interface/user design.

The subject matter expert and supporter roles are open to government applicants and government contractors that can share their knowledge or use case to the teams. They will also be responsible for event security and organization.

“BRAVO moves from the traditional DoD development model operating at the unclassified level where we push code up to protected environments, to a permissive development model on protected data, which we refer to as ‘Dev High,’” said Stuart Wagner, DAF’s chief digital transformation officer and hackathon organizer. “This enables developers to build weapons’ capabilities and calibrations directly with the data at lower cost compared to traditional prototyping pipelines and at a rate faster than an adversary is likely to build countering capability. This event will test how ‘Dev High’ scales to joint multi-domain use cases,” he explained.

Report: Federal Agencies Turn to Cloud Computing to Transform Public Service
Published on
Report: Federal Agencies Turn to Cloud Computing to Transform Public Service

The Partnership for Public Service has revealed in a new report the best practices federal government agencies employ to mobilize cloud computing to enhance operations and transform customer services.

The report, developed in collaboration with the IBM Center for the Business of Government, outlines five keys to a successful cloud strategy: planning and strategic collaboration; agile testing; zero trust architecture and data protection; workforce transformation; and cloud optimization.

In 2022, the partnership held a series of webinars to gain cloud computing strategy insights from agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Census Bureau, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

During the online events, the agencies shared how they planned and implemented cloud adoption strategies to transform service delivery, reduce cost and maximize performance.

“Carefully developed cloud environments, secure and optimized for performance, provide the foundation for a more modern federal government that offers better service to the public,” said Amanda Starling Gould, manager of Partnership’s Technology and Innovation.

/
Applied Research Laboratories Awarded $171M NGA Earth Science Support Contract Modification
Published on
Applied Research Laboratories Awarded $171M NGA Earth Science Support Contract Modification

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has awarded Applied Research Laboratories at the University of Texas at Austin a $171.3 million contract modification to continue to support research, development and testing of earth science systems.

Work under the indefinite-delivery/indefinte-quantity contract modification will run through Dec. 2026, according to an NGA business opportunity notice.

ARL:UT initially secured the earth science support contract in December 2021 to help NGA evaluate, operate and maintain earth science software, hardware and equipment for geophysical modeling and geodetic surveys.

The five-year, $54.6 million sole source contract also covers the maintenance of precise navigation and timing government-off-the-shelf operational capabilities.

ARL:UT is one of the university-affiliated research centers of the Department of Defense designated by the assistant secretary of defense for research and engineering.

/
Lawmakers Ask for Briefing on Domestic Violent Extremism-Related Threats to Critical Infrastructure
Published on
Lawmakers Ask for Briefing on Domestic Violent Extremism-Related Threats to Critical Infrastructure

Three House lawmakers have asked the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency for a briefing on threats posed by domestic violent extremists to the U.S. energy sector and other critical infrastructure.

The legislators wrote a letter to Kenneth Wainstein, undersecretary for intelligence and analysis at DHS, and CISA Director and 2023 Wash100 Award recipient Jen Easterly about a joint intelligence bulletin issued by the FBI and DHS on racially- or ethnically- motivated violent extremists seeking to target critical infrastructure and a disrupted plot by neo-Nazis to attack electric facilities in Baltimore, Maryland.

The congressional members also want I&A and CISA to provide information on how they work together to ensure the security of critical infrastructure and assess potential threats to the energy sector and the role of RMVEs in perpetuating such threats.

“Additionally, we would like to understand evolving cybersecurity threats to the energy sector, such as the PIPEDREAM malware, and how domestic extremists might seek to exploit cyber vulnerabilities for ideological purposes,” the Feb. 17 letter reads.

The letter was signed by Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee; Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., ranking member of the House panel’s subcommittee on cybersecurity and infrastructure protection; and Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., ranking member of the subcommittee on counterterrorism, law enforcement and intelligence.

/
CBO: Navy’s Total Budget to Hit $290B Over 3 Decades Under Alternatives in FY23 Shipbuilding Plan
Published on
CBO: Navy’s Total Budget to Hit $290B Over 3 Decades Under Alternatives in FY23 Shipbuilding Plan

A Congressional Budget Office report estimates that the U.S. Navy’s total budget would increase to approximately $290 billion by 2052, up from the current $220 billion, as the fleet size expands to between 282 and 340 aircraft carriers, ballistic missile submarines and other battle force ships under the three alternatives in the service’s fiscal year 2023 shipbuilding plan.

CBO said Wednesday the Navy estimates that new ship construction under the alternatives in its 2023 plan would cost between $23 billion and $25.4 billion on average per year.

According to the report, the military branch would see the number of total missile cells reduced by 13 percent by 2031 before increasing by 6 percent over the next three decades under alternatives 1 and 2 and by 19 percent under alternative 3.

CBO estimates that the Navy’s total number of ships and submarines that could launch missiles would drop by 5 percent in 2026 before rising by 23 percent under alternative 1, 30 percent under alternative 2 and 36 percent under alternative 3 by 2052.

The office said keeping a force of 31 large and midsize amphibious warfare ships as mandated in the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act would require the service to make changes to ship procurement and retirements.

“Ship purchases would need to increase by 65 percent to 130 percent compared with the alternatives in the Navy’s 2023 plan,” the CBO report reads.

/
Retired USMC Lt. Gen. Dennis Crall Joins Sigma Defense Systems Board of Advisors
Published on
Retired USMC Lt. Gen. Dennis Crall Joins Sigma Defense Systems Board of Advisors

Retired United States Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Dennis Crall has been selected as a member of Sigma Defense Systems’ board of advisors, where he will serve alongside the organization’s co-founders and numerous former military officials.

Crall’s appointment follows his retirement from active duty in October 2022, when he stepped down from his last assignment as chief information officer and director of command, control, communications and cyber for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Sigma Defense announced from Perry, Georgia on Thursday.

Matt Jones, CEO of Sigma Defense, singled out a quote from Crall in which he emphasized the importance of outcomes for the warfighter, who must “live with” the results of industry efforts. He said that this line of thinking reflects the company’s philosophy.

“We are incredibly fortunate to have a leader with his insight and experience join our team. His depth of knowledge within C4 and his focus on connecting data and people at speed will help us deliver greater capabilities and better results for our customers across the Department of Defense,” said Jones.

Crall joined the USMC in 1987 and has since engaged in strategic capacities furthering C4, cyberspace operations, cybersecurity and data and artificial intelligence strategy. In his final position with the service branch as CIO of C4, Crall led the development of all C4 administrative and operational policy.

Before assuming the CIO role, Crall was the senior military advisor to the undersecretary of defense for policy, in which he advised the secretary of defense on cyberspace activities and cybersecurity while implementing DOD cyberspace critical vulnerability mitigations.

Throughout his time with the USMC, Crall accumulated over 350 flight hours and served in 34 combat missions.

1 … 615 616 617 618 619 … 2,620