Brian Conrad, acting director of the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, said his office will work to further simplify cloud security assessment and approval processes through automation while ensuring that vendors will continue to help protect federal data.

He told an audience at the FCW-hosted FedRAMP Summit that agencies have reused authorizations under the program more than 4,100 times to date.

Conrad added that 276 companies hold certification to offer cloud products and services to the federal government.

As part of its modernization efforts, the FedRAMP team worked with the National Institute of Standards and Technology in 2021 to implement a common programming format – called the Open Security Controls Assessment Language — for agencies, providers and third-party assessors.

The program management office received the first system security plan in OSCAL machine-readable format from a cloud service provider in May.

Colin Kahl, undersecretary for policy at the Department of Defense, said the U.S. government through DOD will provide $2.98 billion in additional military support through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative to help the Eastern European country continue to defend itself against Russian invasion.

“Stepping back for a moment, the United States has now committed more than $13.5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration, including $12.9 billion in the last six months,” Kahl said Wednesday during a press briefing.

Under the USAI package, he said the U.S. will procure military capabilities from the private sector instead of drawing out equipment from the department’s stocks.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement the military capabilities in the security assistance package to be delivered include National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems; 155mm artillery ammunition; 120mm mortar ammunition; and counter-artillery radars.

The Pentagon will also provide Ukraine with Puma unmanned aerial systems and related equipment for Scan Eagle UAS, Vampire counter-UAS, laser-guided rocket systems and funding for training, sustainment and maintenance.

Army Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo said the service branch has initiated an evaluation of its network modernization portfolio with a focus on cloud adoption, network operations, the common operating environment and the transport layer that includes satellite communications and tactical radios, Breaking Defense reported Wednesday.

“Some of the questions that we’re examining as part of the reviews include, for instance, how do we implement a hybrid and multi-cloud approach combining…private and public sector cloud computing resources to meet Army security and resilience requirements, while at the same time promoting competition among different teams?” Camarillo said Wednesday at the Potomac Officers Club’s 7th Annual Army Summit.

He said he expects the review, which is set to conclude in the fall of 2022, to enable the service to identify potential investment areas in support of next-generation requirements.

During his trip to Aberdeen Providing Ground in Maryland, Camarillo said the Army also intends to put “big bets” on future combat network tech platforms.

Camarillo, most recently a senior vice president at Science Applications International Corp., discussed the three major items on the Army’s “to-do” list during his keynote address at POC’s 7th Annual Army Summit.

Data technology provider Cardinality.ai has established a strategic partnership with information technology services company NTT DATA that is aimed to furnish government agencies with cloud platforms.

The mutually beneficial collaboration will find Cardinality.ai and NTT DATA combining their resources and respective teams’ capabilities to help public sector organizations migrate their assets and stay up-to-date with new technologies, NTT DATA said Wednesday.

Christopher Merdon, group president of public sector business at NTT DATA Services stated that the strategic alignment’s goal is to expand on citizens’ access to government information and programs while making the processes to do so easier.

“This partnership delivers the key to the digital front door,” Merdon continued.

The main platform the two companies plan to deliver through the partnership is Cardinality Personalized Integrated Citizen Services, or PICS. It is a cloud-based tool designed to gradually jettison legacy systems while adopting a path toward digital modernization that is fast and secure and taps into NTT DATA and Cardinality’s shared expertise.

Cardinality PICS is modeled after Maryland Total Human-services Integrated Network, or MD THINK, an Amazon Web Services-hosted and cloud-sourced program that was created in part by NTT DATA and Cardinality.ai and has been used by state-level agencies in Maryland such as the Department of Human Services, Department of Health, Department of Juvenile Services and the Health Benefit Exchange.

This first successful collaborative output from NTT DATA and Cardinality allows the aforementioned agencies to execute a range of services for different purposes simultaneously and speedily. They hope to achieve the same thing with Cardinality PICS.

“We’ve partnered with NTT DATA to help governments realize positive outcomes faster,” commented Thiag Loganathan, CEO of Cardinality.ai.