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GSA Rule Seeks to Address Barriers to Worker Organizing for Federal Contractors; Robin Carnahan Quoted
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GSA Rule Seeks to Address Barriers to Worker Organizing for Federal Contractors; Robin Carnahan Quoted

The General Services Administration has released a final rule that will allow union organizers to access GSA-controlled facilities to educate government contractors’ employees about union membership, collective bargaining and organizing.

The policy amending Federal Management Regulation comes in response to a recommendation by the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment, GSA said Friday.

“Today’s rule removes barriers to worker organizing and collective bargaining for federal contractors, allowing union membership to become more accessible,” said GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan.

The rule seeks to clarify that activities related to worker organizing are not restricted or covered by the general prohibition on distributing, soliciting and posting materials in or on property controlled by GSA.

GSA will open the rule for public comments over a period of 60 days and expects the collected feedback to inform task force projects and future rulemaking.

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White House Eyes Nickolas Guertin for Assistant Secretary of Navy for R&D, Acquisition
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White House Eyes Nickolas Guertin for Assistant Secretary of Navy for R&D, Acquisition

President Joe Biden announced his plan to nominate Nickolas Guertin, director of operational test and evaluation in the office of the secretary of the Department of Defense, to serve as assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition.

Guertin serves as senior adviser to the DOD secretary on live-fire testing and assessment of the Pentagon’s weapons system, the White House said Friday.

He has over 40 years of civilian and military experience in ship construction and maintenance, submarine operations and testing and development of sensors, weapons and combat management products.

He has carried out applied research for academia and government in cyber-physical and software-reliant systems at Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute.

Guertin is a Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act certified in engineering and program management and a retired Navy Reserve engineering duty officer.

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Ali Zaidi to Become National Climate Adviser, John Podesta to Advise President Biden on Clean Energy
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Ali Zaidi to Become National Climate Adviser, John Podesta to Advise President Biden on Clean Energy

President Biden will promote Ali Zaidi as successor to National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy, who is slated to step down from the role on Sept. 16, and will appoint think tank executive John Podesta to serve as senior clean energy innovation and implementation adviser.

Zaidi, who currently serves as McCarthy’s deputy, will also become vice chair of the National Climate Task Force, the White House said Friday.

He held climate-related positions under the Obama administration and was chairman of climate policy and finance and deputy secretary for energy and environment for the state of New York.

Podesta chairs the board of directors at the Center for American Progress, a public policy research institute he also founded.

He previously coordinated climate policy and initiatives for the Obama administration, participated in the U.N. Secretary General’s High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda and served as chief of staff at the White House during Bill Clinton’s presidency.

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DOD Calls for Comments on Further Development of Digital AI Marketplace
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DOD Calls for Comments on Further Development of Digital AI Marketplace

The Department of Defense’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office is seeking input on the development of features for a new initiative as part of the Pentagon’s artificial intelligence marketplace.

In a SAM.gov notice, CDAO said industry, academia and government organizations are welcome to provide comments and suggestions for the Tradewind Solutions Marketplace, which is a digital environment of competed video pitches accessible to customers.

The office looks to align features with Marketplace objectives such as providing a platform where industry and academia can promote data, analytics, digital and AI/machine learning products and services and enabling DOD organizations to search, review, compare, negotiate and acquire the mentioned offerings.

CDAO and its marketplace manager IN3 set an open comment period for the effort. The anticipated Tradewind Solutions Marketplace MVP “go-live” date is in the first quarter of the fiscal year 2023.

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DOE Selects 10 Projects to Develop Next-Generation Data Management, Visualization Tools
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DOE Selects 10 Projects to Develop Next-Generation Data Management, Visualization Tools

The Department of Energy has selected 10 projects to advance big data movement and analysis and develop data management and visualization tools.

DOE said Thursday it will invest a total of $23.9 million in the projects over a period of three years to address challenges in managing data sets produced by scientific experiments and supercomputers.

Data management projects will focus on optimizing the management of data that must be moved and analyzed using machine learning and other mathematical techniques. Supported research will also advance the use of smart storage and networking hardware to improve the efficiency of data processing.

Moreover, projects to advance visualization techniques include research on new approaches to creating informative and interactive visualization of complex scientific data supporting DOE’s mission space.

“These efforts will enable data to be processed and stored at higher rates across the edge, cloud, and high-performance computing environments, and develop new visualization methods to explore that data, form hypotheses, and convey conclusions to a broad spectrum of audiences,” said Barbara Helland, associate director of science for advanced scientific computing research at DOE. 

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Construction Begins on New National Advanced Air Mobility Center of Excellence in Ohio
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Construction Begins on New National Advanced Air Mobility Center of Excellence in Ohio

The construction of the new National Advanced Air Mobility Center of Excellence at Springfield-Beckley Municipal Airport in Ohio has begun with a groundbreaking ceremony held on Aug. 23.

The $9.35 million NAAMCE will support the development of electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles and other advanced air mobility initiatives of the Air Force Research Laboratory, NASA and the Ohio Unmanned Aircraft Systems Center, AFRL reported Thursday.

AFRL will use the center to advance the Air Force’s Agility Prime research and development project aimed at accelerating the development of commercial eVTOL aircraft.

“What AFWERX has done with Agility Prime is they have capitalized on the fast-paced industry technology advancements, and they have followed it up trying to nest the military requirement and a piece of it and not hindering in any way the commercial development,” said Maj. Gen. Heather Pringle, commander of AFRL.

The groundbreaking ceremony was attended by Reps. Mike Turner, Warren Davidson and Mike Carey and other local government officials.

In a separate announcement, Turner said the NAAMCE will strengthen Ohio’s defense sector and create new opportunities to facilitate economic growth in the Springfield region.

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Pentagon Releases Action Plan to Mitigate, Respond to Civilian Harm
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Pentagon Releases Action Plan to Mitigate, Respond to Civilian Harm

The Department of Defense has released a new action plan outlining a series of efforts aimed at mitigating civilian harm during future combat operations and exercises.

Lloyd Austin, secretary of defense and a 2022 Wash100 Award winner, directed the development of the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan to enhance the Pentagon’s approach to considering, assessing and responding to civilian harm resulting from military operations, DOD reported Thursday.

In a memorandum issued in January, Austin also ordered the establishment of a Civilian Protection Center of Excellence to institutionalize the advancement of knowledge and tools designed to prevent civilian casualties during combat.

The CoE is expected to achieve full operational capability by fiscal year 2025.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said DOD will work to incorporate civilian harm mitigation into military education, training and exercises as part of the action plan’s implementation.

“We envision the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence actually leading much of that and ensuring that this type of curriculum and these types of lessons learned are built into the education process of our military officers and civilians,” Ryder said.

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ARPA-E Acting Director Jennifer Gerbi Discusses High-Risk, High-Reward Investments
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ARPA-E Acting Director Jennifer Gerbi Discusses High-Risk, High-Reward Investments

The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy funds high-risk, high-reward projects based on the significance and urgency of the problems they aim to solve, Jennifer Gerbi, acting director at ARPA-E, said in an interview aired Wednesday.

Appearing on the news program Government Matters, Gerbi discussed the agency’s detailed selection process, which involves different levels of internal and external reviews and empowered directors.

Gerbi provided an overview of their two funding models. The focused model involves an individual director “that decides what problem to solve and why.” This model also entails pressure testing of ideas at multiple points before being pitched to the agency.

The open model, on the other hand, is conducted every three years to allow a broader range of applicants to submit proposals as long as they are aligned with the agency’s mission. This model “enables us to [discover] areas that we had no idea existed, or solutions in a space where we don’t have focused models,” Gerbi explained. ARPA-E also offers small business innovation research seedling grants as part of its open-door program.

Once the project is awarded, ARPA-E has “substantial involvement” with the teams, conducting quarterly reviews of project milestones and work plans. It also helps identify a first market to help new and obscure technologies move forward, Gerbi told Government Matters.

ARPA-E was founded in 2009 and has since funded more than 1,000 projects on energy efficiency, resiliency and sustainability. The agency recently invested in proposals for carbon-neutral buildings and battery improvement technology.

Gerbi noted that return on investment in ARPA-E is manifested in the “technologies that exist now that didn’t exist before that are moving forward.”

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NIST Report Cites Metrology, Standardization as Key Semiconductor Industry Challenges
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NIST Report Cites Metrology, Standardization as Key Semiconductor Industry Challenges

A National Institute of Standards and Technology report describes seven “grand challenges” that U.S. semiconductor producers should address to strengthen domestic market competitiveness and leadership.

The report centered around standardization, metrology, modeling and simulation in microelectronics design, manufacturing and packaging, NIST said Thursday.

“The measurement challenges impacting the U.S. semiconductor industry are at a critical stage and must be addressed if we are to ensure U.S. leadership in this important sector,” NIST Director Laurie Locascio remarked.

The grand challenges are the agency’s recommendations to improve each of the following areas:

  • Metrology for materials purity, properties and provenance
  • Advanced metrology for future microelectronics manufacturing
  • Enabling metrology for integrating components in advanced packaging
  • Metrology to enhance security and provenance of microelectronic-based components and products
  • Modeling and simulating semiconductor materials, designs, and components
  • Modeling and simulating semiconductor manufacturing processes
  • Standardizing new materials, processes, and equipment for microelectronics

As part of its research, NIST sought input from more than 800 industry, government and academic representatives who attended agency-hosted Semiconductor Metrology Workshops. The Department of Commerce also posted a request for information to gather data for the study.

The publication comes less than a month after President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law that includes a provision for the institute to facilitate research and development projects in the metrology discipline to help companies advance microelectronics technology.

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CBO Identifies More Than 100 Expiring Authorizations of Appropriations for FY 2022
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CBO Identifies More Than 100 Expiring Authorizations of Appropriations for FY 2022

A Congressional Budget Office report has found 111 authorizations of appropriations that are set to expire before the end of fiscal year 2022 and of those authorizations, 99 are for definite amounts valued at approximately $807 billion.

CBO said in the report published Wednesday that funding for expired authorizations rose by $26 billion to $461 billion in 2022, up 6 percent from the previous year’s figure of $435 billion.

The agency found that the $461 billion in FY 2022 appropriations can be linked to 422 expired authorizations in 163 laws.

According to the report, $353 billion of the total $461 billion can be attributed to specified authorizations, while the $107 billion can be associated with indefinite authorizations.

About 44 percent of expired authorizations of appropriations that CBO identified expired more than 10 years ago. CBO also found 1,118 authorizations of appropriations that expired prior to the start of the current fiscal year.

The agency determined expired and expiring authorizations of appropriations under a three-phase process: reviewing newly enacted laws; cataloging authorizations in the Legislative Classification System; and identifying appropriations for expired authorizations.

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