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.

The Defense Innovation Unit has selected Greensea Systems and Nauticus Robotics to build prototypes of unmanned amphibious systems for the U.S. Marine Corps to detect, identify and neutralize naval mines and other explosive hazards in surf and on beach landing zones.

DIU said Wednesday the Autonomous Amphibious Response Vehicle project intends to come up with prototypes of unmanned platforms that could interoperate with other underwater drones, underwater surface vehicles and explosive ordance disposal professionals as part of the Littoral Explosive Ordnance Neutralization program.

Greensea will partner with Bayonet Ocean Vehicles to work on the Bayonet-250 crawler prototype.

Nauticus Robotics will team up with VideoRay to develop a concept vehicle, called Terranaut, that would use thrusters to navigate through the seafloor.

USMC will conduct a user assessment of the submitted prototypes by the fall of 2023 and integrate the platforms with mission command systems. The service expects the prototypes to adopt open architecture standards to facilitate interoperability.

The Department of Defense’s innovation arm received 67 proposals for the A2RV program’s rapid prototyping phase.

The Department of Energy’s Energy Sciences Network has upgraded the high-speed network infrastructure that serves DOE national laboratories, scientists and researchers nationwide.

ESnet6 boosts the network’s bandwidth to more than 46 terabits per second to speed up the processing, sharing and visualization of research data from experiments, modeling and simulations, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory said Tuesday.

The network also includes new capabilities including an expanded fiber optic backbone, network automation platform, network security features and real-time telemetry.

“With ESnet6, DOE researchers are equipped with the most sophisticated technology to help tackle the grand challenges we face today in areas like climate science, clean energy, semiconductor production, microelectronics, the discovery of quantum information science, and more,” said Barbara Helland, associate director of the DOE Office of Science’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research program.

DOE officially unveiled ESnet6 during an event attended by department officials, Berkeley Lab leaders and representatives from local, state and federal government agencies. 

During the event, DOE demonstrated the ability of ESnet6’s new automation platform to configure network paths to support the transfer of massive datasets across the country in less than two minutes.

The General Services Administration and the Department of Energy are seeking input from the private sector on clean energy technologies designed to help reduce commercial buildings’ greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen grid resilience.

In a request for information, the agencies said they are looking for emerging technologies that could reduce greenhouse gas and carbon emissions, generate and store clean energy, enable building electrification and improve operating efficiency, GSA said Tuesday.

The technologies must be commercially available and ready for integration into operational buildings. They will be evaluated for inclusion in the GSA Green Proving Ground (GPG)
program or DOE-facilitated voluntary partnership programs.

The RFI follows the recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act that allocates $3.3 billion for the integration of low-carbon materials and sustainable technologies into federal buildings.

“The Inflation Reduction Act will provide even more opportunities for us to transform federal buildings into high-performing, high-tech testbeds for clean energy innovation,” said GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan.

Responses are due Dec. 9.