Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, announced that the upper chamber’s version of the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act includes 13 of his key priorities.

One of those priorities is the creation of a pilot program at the Department of Defense to form artificial intelligence data libraries to support the development of intelligence software and related technologies and ensure that companies have access to accurate data necessary to meet DOD requirements, the Senate panel said Wednesday.

Portman also introduced measures that would propose technical improvements to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s authorizing statute and facilitate sharing of cybersecurity and counterintelligence data between the executive branch and Congress.

The defense authorization bill includes a provision that would ensure that products funded by the Department of Homeland Security’s science and technology directorate are produced in the U.S.

“At a time when our country faces significant security threats from around the world, these provisions will help to ensure our local, state, and federal government has every resource needed to detect and deter risks, whether they be from cyberattacks, terrorism and violent extremism, or weapons of mass destruction,” Portman said.

“In addition, the legislation included will ensure that government products funded by American taxpayers are made in the United States, ensuring good-paying jobs for American citizens,” he added.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will hold a proposers day on Oct. 28 to discuss with industry a new program that aims to develop advanced radar signal processing techniques.

The event will provide information on the Beyond Linear Processing program, which seeks to create non-linear and iterative signal processing techniques to improve the performance of smaller radar platforms, according to a notice posted Tuesday.

BLiP will develop, analyze and test the signal processing chains in a laboratory setting before conducting real-time implementation and field testing.

The proposers day will take place at Strategic Analysis Executive Conference Center and interested parties must register for the event on Oct. 21.

During the event, DARPA will answer industry questions and allow participants to present their capabilities for teaming agreements.

A multi-country survey conducted by Accenture indicated that public service customers want digitized processes to be simple, intuitive and secure to ensure privacy protection.

The company, which announced its findings on Wednesday, found that more than 40 percent of respondents still prefer telephone or in-person government transactions due to limited access to the Internet.

Accenture conducted the study among 5,500 consumers and 3,000 public service workers in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany, Japan, Australia, France, Italy, Singapore and Spain.

In the consumer survey, 39 percent of respondents answered that they wanted more digital government interaction. However, 53 percent of the respondents expressed frustration in online public services. They listed “ease of use” and “more confidence in data security and privacy” as top priorities in considering the use of digital government portals.

“The best step forward to improve customer experiences is to establish simple and secure processes so people can get what they need on the first try,” said Eyal Darmon, global public sector customer engagement lead at Accenture.

The report also showed that only one-third of government workers underwent cyber and data security training, even if 94 percent said they were confident in using new computerized tools.

“Continuous education and training on cyber-security could help increase government workers’ and customers’ confidence in digital government services,” Darmon added.

Mark Kitz, program executive officer for the U.S. Army’s intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, said the service is soliciting industry insights to determine ways to field intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance payloads on high-altitude unmanned aircraft systems, Breaking Defense reported Wednesday.

The Army is focus on “programs at high altitude above 60,000 feet and how we can get after stratospheric sensing technologies, and then how we build sensor technologies that are resilient to this future environment,” Kitz said Monday at an annual conference.

He noted that the military branch is interested in assured positioning, navigation and timing, navigation warfare and “our ability to have trusted space and trusted sensors in our future.” 

Lt. Gen. Laura Potter, Army deputy chief of staff for intelligence (G2), said that high-altitude drones are part of the service’s “multi-layered sensing strategy.”

“Our strategy has three layers and a foundation: the space layer, optimizing what we can get from government or commercial things on orbit; an aerial layer that includes manned and unmanned platforms from the stratosphere to the mid- to high-altitude layer that is optimized with sensors for a high-end adversary to the ground layer; and the terrestrial layer where we need sensing at echelon,” she said.