The General Services Administration is working to update the schedule catalog and plans to host industry days in the next few months to get insights on how to advance the effort, Federal News Network reported Friday.

Erv Koehler, assistant commissioner of the office of general supplies and services at GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, said the catalog should be based on a market basket at the item level.

“If I can get a smaller catalog that is easier for me to manage and easier for you upload and manage too, then I have to be faster on the modifications side,” he told FNN in an interview. “I want to use the order level materials authority to allow orders to process without being on schedule.”

Koehler noted that he is trying to employ existing authorities to make that happen and that he is open to other suggestions.

GSA also aims to reduce the number of listed products in the catalog as part of efforts to enhance E-Buy and the GSA Advantage.

“There’s a lot of things out there that we need to manage better. We realize there’s a little bit of risk associated with that, so we’re going to go through the analytics side of it and once we get the code cracked, we’ll be moving out [to whittle down the number of products in the catalog],” Koehler said.

He also talked about the efforts GSA has initiated to modify schedule contracts and adjust prices to keep up with inflationary changes.

The Department of the Air Force has begun seeking information from industry sources capable of advancing the capabilities of its Next Generation Information Technology system.

In a notice posted Friday on SAM.gov, DAF said it plans to award a contract between December 2023 and March 2024 to modernize the asset management system that supports its civil engineering community.

NexGen IT provides support to about 40,000 users across the Air Force and Space Force in areas of real property, energy, general ledger, operations and supply, space management with CAD and cost accounting.

The system’s components include the IBM-based integrated workplace management suite TRIRIGA, Oracle’s database management system, an authentication gateway service architecture and the AppDynamics application.

DAF is looking for companies with experience in the TRIRIGA application.

The selected contractor will provide operations support and sustainment of fielded NextGen IT capabilities and pursue agile development and deployment of new features.

Responses are due Feb. 9.

James Foggo, a retired U.S. Navy admiral and dean of the Navy League’s Center for Maritime Strategy, said shipyard optimization is a national security need and the service should see it as an opportunity to advance digital modernization.

In an opinion piece published Friday on Breaking Defense, Foggo proposed four recommendations that the Navy should consider when integrating digital adoption into the Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program. One is allocating three percent of the SIOP budget to digital efforts.

Another way is starting with operator challenges. The service should converse with maintainers about their struggle areas, provide the training that they need to address skill gaps and identify commercially available platforms that could be tailored to their requirements, according to Foggo.

He called on the Navy to help establish trust using existing and simulated datasets to demonstrate the capability of digital technologies like artificial intelligence.

Foggo additionally said the Navy should “avoid ‘rip and replace’ of major data systems and focus on problem-oriented solutions that can be seamlessly integrated.”

The retired admiral also discussed how state-of-the-art digital technologies could help the Navy achieve efficiency and speed when it comes to its maintenance lifecycle.

“Analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning tools can be deployed to uncover critical insights, make data-driven predictions in real-time, and seamlessly share critical information across shipyard teams,” Foggo noted.

The Potomac Officers Club will hold its 4th Annual Artificial Intelligence Summit on Feb. 16. Click here to register for this in-person event to hear notable leaders within the GovCon sector discuss key AI advancements achieved over the past year and cutting-edge development strategies for 2023 and beyond.

Max Peterson, vice president of Amazon Web Services’ worldwide public sector and a Wash100 Award winner, has listed his predictions for public sector technology trends in 2023.

Following conversations with global customers utilizing the cloud, Peterson identified five areas he expects to transform within governments globally in an AWS blog post published Monday.

“As we look toward the future, it’s clear that public sector organizations will need to continue to adapt and innovate to successfully navigate the constantly-evolving global landscape and changing needs of their end users and constituents,” he wrote.

According to Peterson, areas of potential expansion include artificial intelligence and machine learning, the cloud as it relates to citizens’ interactions with government agencies, digital twins and large-scale simulations, quantum computing and the commercialization of space.

With cloud technologies growing in popularity, Peterson anticipates the integration of AI and ML into these platforms to streamline the process of reaching mission success, reduce costs and improve overall efficiency.

Peterson additionally forecasts that the increasing cloud usage in government organizations will strengthen agency communications with employees and citizens by further automating facilities such as contact centers. Incorporating cloud services into these operations can decrease hold times, allow self-service options and boost cost-effectiveness, Peterson said.

As obstacles surrounding the use of digital twins and large-scale simulations are broken down, Peterson also suspects that the growing availability of these tools will result in government agencies leveraging their advantages.

Quantum computing is another area of interest for Peterson, who said that despite the recent emergence of the field, he expects the area to grow and become more straightforward, allowing government clients to harness the technology to support their missions.

The commercialization of space is the final prediction on Peterson’s list. With a vast majority of spacecraft launched into orbit in the first half of 2022 coming from the private sector, Peterson believes that digital technologies, such as those offered by AWS, will further assist companies in their space ventures.

Looking forward, Peterson aims to continue supporting customers with AWS cloud technologies.

“Having the right tools in place will help organizations prepare and respond to any circumstances yet to come, while also helping drive the next wave of innovation,” he wrote.