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Raj Iyer Announces Departure from US Army CIO Position
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Raj Iyer Announces Departure from US Army CIO Position

Raj Iyer, the first civilian U.S. Army CIO and a two-time Wash100 Award winner, has announced that his contract is expiring and he will be stepping down from the role in the near future.

In a LinkedIn post published Wednesday, Iyer detailed his efforts to upgrade Army technology while holding the position, which centered around six major strategies intended to change the branch’s culture and drive engagement with the plan.

“It was clear to me that the sense of urgency was strong and transforming the Army was an imperative. Adopting technology at scale to transform and innovate seemed like a distant dream to many when even basic IT didn’t meet their requirement,” Iyer said.

The first three pillars of Iyer’s initiative focused on leadership. First, Iyer had Army Secretary Wormuth sign his plan to “send the right message to the Army.” Second, he took steps to ensure CIO collaboration with every decision-making entity to harness the bureaucratic nature of the federal government. Third, he built relationships with Army leaders to establish trust.

Pillars four, five and six were centered around communication. Iyer said he traveled to international locations to explain the plan and its impact on warfighting to those serving in the military branch and encouraged soldiers and civilians to reach out to have their voices heard. He additionally partnered with DOD CIO John Sherman and other military CIOs to create a team based around joint objectives.

“We enabled the Army’s largest and most aggressive transformation in its history in just two years. But I can take very little credit for this success because the execution was truly at all levels in the Army,” Iyer described.

“Every one of the initiatives could be completed in two years if only we all pulled in one direction,” he added.

During Iyer’s time as CIO, the Army also reportedly changed the way it interacts with the private sector.

“We sent a strong message to software vendors, you are either our strategic partner or we will find others who want to be,” he stated.

Reflecting on his time in the role, Iyer said that the Army is now on a “strategic sustainable path” to advance in the future and his job as the Army’s first CIO has concluded.

“We have established irreversible momentum at a scale where there is no going back. More importantly, we have shown that we can do this in a budget-neutral fiscal environment and never used funding as an excuse for not getting things done,” Iyer stated.

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Maxar Secures 2 NGA Awards for Geospatial Intelligence Services & API Development; Tony Frazier Quoted
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Maxar Technologies has been awarded two contracts with a combined value of $35.8 million by the National Geospatial-Intelligence agency.

Under the two awards, Maxar is expected to supply the agency with geospatial intelligence data and an improved application programming interface, the Westminster, Colorado-based company announced on Wednesday.

“Maxar is proud to continue partnering with NGA on enduring missions such as foundation geospatial intelligence, land cover and intelligence support, as well as to help spur innovation in new areas like automation,” commented Tony Frazier, executive vice president and general manager of public sector earth intelligence at Maxar and a five-time Wash100 Award winner.

The first award has a one-year period of performance and a potential value of $22.5 million, of which an initial $11.3 million will be funded under NGA’s Janus Geography program.

This award expands Maxar’s long history of efforts to provide NGA with foundational geospatial intelligence data by characterizing land cover at high resolution over various areas that are currently unmapped.

Maxar will be responsible for providing a modernized API under the second contract, which is valued at $13.3 million and has a base period of six months with four option years. The API is intended to support computer vision, machine learning and artificial intelligence applications.

Capabilities to be included in the interface include querying, discovering and downloading Maxar products from the organization’s 125-petabyte, high-resolution commercial imagery archive. Moving away from legacy dissemination methods, the API will supply content to the end user’s cloud account.

Also offered in the API are options for third-party content integration, full business analytics and increased production capacity.

“Public-private partnerships such as this represent the U.S. government’s ongoing commitment to commercial space and geospatial analytics technology,” emphasized Frazier.

Maxar is currently supporting the NGA under an ongoing $60 million contract awarded in 2021, through which the enterprise is continuing to develop and operate a classified big data analytics platform that utilizes geospatial tools to quickly interpret data.

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Space Systems Command Launches Weather Imaging CubeSat Technical Demonstration
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Space Systems Command Launches Weather Imaging CubeSat Technical Demonstration

Space Systems Command has launched a small satellite onboard the SpaceX Transporter-6 mission to showcase the capability of space-based electro-optical/infrared weather systems to provide weather imagery data from low Earth orbit.

The demonstration, which was launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, will last for one year, the command announced on Tuesday.

According to Lt. Col. Joe Maguadog, EWS materiel leader and program manager, the EWS CubeSat technical demonstration will collect space-based environmental monitoring data to inform the U.S. Space Force’s movement toward a more resilient weather constellation.

SSC said Orion Space Solutions manufactured and delivered the weather imaging CubeSat prototype used in the demonstration under a contract awarded in February 2022.

General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems Group was also selected to produce a second EO/IR SmallSat prototype to deliver operational data by 2025.

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GSA Adds ‘Interested’ Feature to eBuy Acquisition Platform
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GSA Adds ‘Interested’ Feature to eBuy Acquisition Platform

The General Services Administration has added a new feature to the acquisition tool, eBuy, that allows contractors to inform agency customers they are interested in a request for quote or request for information.

The “interested” feature will reportedly enable eBuy vendors to identify and filter quotes they have not submitted and potentially help government buyers to get an idea of the number of quotes they expect on an RFI or RFQ and determine whether to extend the closing date of their requests, GSA said Tuesday.

The new feature could also allow government buyers to view the quote status of “Interested” on the details page of RFQ in the acquisition platform.

GSA also outlined the steps for vendors on how to use the “Interested” function on eBuy.

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Regulatory Agencies Warn Banking Organizations of Crypto-Asset Risks
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Regulatory Agencies Warn Banking Organizations of Crypto-Asset Risks

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency have released a joint statement highlighting risks associated with crypto assets to banking organizations.

Some of these risks include misleading or inaccurate disclosures and representations by crypto-asset companies; significant volatility in crypto-asset markets; susceptibility of stablecoins to run risk; and contagion risk within the crypto-asset sector stemming from interconnections among certain crypto-asset participants, according to the joint statement published Tuesday.

The agencies said they are taking a “careful and cautious approach” with regard to activities related to crypto assets at each banking organization and are continuing to evaluate whether such activities can be carried out in a way that addresses consumer protection, legal permissibility, safety and soundness and compliance with regulations and laws.

The Federal Reserve, FDIC and the OCC will continue to closely track exposures of banking institutions to crypto-asset risks and collaborate with other authorities on matters associated with crypto assets.

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DARPA Launches Crop Protection Research Program; Molly Jahn Quoted
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DARPA Launches Crop Protection Research Program; Molly Jahn Quoted

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has unveiled a new program that seeks to advance threat detection and warning capabilities for protecting crops such as corn, rice and wheat from damage.

The Foundational Security for Food Systems program will be an 18-month, two-phase research effort to test the feasibility of a pathway-based approach in determining crop damage.

“Similar to how a person can have any one of thousands of viruses long before certain common symptoms present, we’re interested in finding the earliest signs those pathways are active before symptoms show up in cereal crops,” explained Molly Jahn, FS2 program manager in DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office.

“FS2 will investigate the ability to create detection and warning protocols based on pathways with observable plant-level effects including signatures that are detectable remotely,” Jahn continued.

DARPA is expected to release the full FS2 program details and instructions for interested proposers on SAM.gov before a virtual information session about the program on Jan. 17. The agency will award $1 million in total funding to the winning party.

FS2 is part of DSO’s Disruptioneering initiative, which seeks to accelerate scientific discoveries by focusing on smaller, targeted projects and issuing awards less than 90 days after solicitation.

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Maj. Gen. Telita Crosland Named Director of Defense Health Agency
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Maj. Gen. Telita Crosland Named Director of Defense Health Agency

Army Maj. Gen. Telita Crosland assumed leadership of the Defense Health Agency during a transfer of authority and responsibility ceremony held Tuesday at DHA headquarters in Falls Church, Virginia.

With the appointment, she becomes the fourth director of the combat support agency that provides shared health and medical services to the armed forces and succeeds Army Lt. Gen. Ronald Place.

Crosland most recently served as deputy surgeon general of the U.S. Army and deputy commanding general for operations of Army Medical Command.

“I’m thankful for this opportunity and grateful to the team, excited about partnering with our surgeons general, our industry partners, our patients during a dynamic period in health care,” Crosland said.

Crosland joined the Army in 1993 as a medical corps officer and held various leadership roles during her nearly 30-year military service.

The new DHA director holds a medical degree, a master’s degree in public health from the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences and a master’s degree in national resource strategy from the Eisenhower School.

Army Eyes Unified Tech Platform for Enterprise Data Analytics
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Army Eyes Unified Tech Platform for Enterprise Data Analytics

The U.S. Army is exploring potential industry sources of a unified technology offering that could support enterprise-level data analytics work across the service branch.

A request for information posted Tuesday on SAM.gov indicates that the branch is eyeing a follow-on capability to Army Vantage, a cloud-based platform designed to help military users visualize and analyze data over classified and unclassified networks.

Specifically, the Army wants to determine available service providers, the implementation timeline, cost and staffing and management processes necessary to implement a new data platform that would cover both the business and warfighting mission areas.

The service is considering awarding a potential five-year contract, which includes four option years, in the government’s fiscal 2024 second quarter to address the aforementioned requirement.

Interested parties can respond to the RFI notice until Jan. 25.

Barbara McQuiston Elected as Chair of NATO DIANA Board; Heidi Shyu Quoted
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Barbara McQuiston Elected as Chair of NATO DIANA Board; Heidi Shyu Quoted

Barbara McQuiston, deputy chief technology officer for science and technology in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, has been elected as chair of NATO’s Defense Innovation Accelerator of the North Atlantic initiative’s Board of Directors.

As chair, McQuiston will help the new civil-military accelerator achieve initial operating capability, drive efforts to boost transatlantic cooperation on critical technology development and promote collaboration with non-governmental entities, the Department of Defense said Tuesday.

Heidi Shyu, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering and two-time Wash100 Award winner, said NATO DIANA “will have steady, expert leadership with Barbara at the helm.”

“In this critical role, she will be well positioned to put her extensive knowledge and experience to work and help put the Alliance’s innovation efforts on the right path for the future,” Shyu added.

McQuiston was appointed as the U.S. representative to the board of directors for the NATO DIANA initiative in October 2022 to work with other allied nations to set the program’s strategic direction.

DIANA aims to bring the defense community and NATO experts together to develop technologies in areas such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, big data processing and space and autonomy, among others.

NATO expects the program to be operational by 2023.

POC - 9th Annual Defense Research and Development Summit

Shyu is set to speak at the Potomac Officers Club’s 9th Annual Defense and Research Summit on March 23. Click here to register for the event, which will bring together experts in the field to discuss DOD innovation priorities in areas of AI, microelectronics, hypersonics and other emerging technologies.

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State Department’s New Office for Critical, Emerging Technology Begins Operations
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State Department’s New Office for Critical, Emerging Technology Begins Operations

The Department of State has begun operating its new Office of the Special Envoy for Critical and Emerging Technology to help develop and coordinate foreign policy on emerging and critical technologies.

Seth Center, a national security expert and historian, will serve as deputy envoy and oversee the buildout of the newly created office, the State Department said Tuesday.

State Secretary and Wash100 awardee Antony Blinken formed the new office as part of a modernization effort as critical and emerging technologies become part of the U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy amid the increasing competition to build and field new technologies.

The office will bring technological policy expertise, diplomatic leadership and strategic direction to the department’s work surrounding these technologies.

It will also collaborate with the department’s other offices and bureaus that are pursuing technology topics and work with international partners on artificial intelligence, advanced computing, biotechnology and quantum information technologies.

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