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SBA Launches Initiative for Supporting Small Businesses’ E-Commerce Growth; Isabella Casillas Guzman Quoted
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SBA Launches Initiative for Supporting Small Businesses’ E-Commerce Growth; Isabella Casillas Guzman Quoted

The Small Business Administration has teamed up with non-profit organization Business Forward for an initiative aimed at helping small businesses expand their reach into the digital world.

The new Small Business Digital Alliance will train entrepreneurs on how to use various digital technologies for expanding their e-commerce blueprint, recruiting employees from a diverse pool, enhancing business operations and raising capital, SBA said Friday.

SBDA will also connect beneficiaries with government, business and economic leaders to potentially secure cooperative deals and support for growing their respective organizations.

In addition, the joint public-private co-sponsorship will hold free events across the U.S. to explain government policies, small business trends and available digital tools in the market.

“Through our new Small Business Digital Alliance and agreement with Business Forward, the SBA will help more small businesses accelerate their online and social media strategies to power their businesses in e-commerce and better engage with their customers where they are,” noted Isabella Casillas Guzman, administrator of SBA.

The SBDA will publish a list of its members in the coming weeks.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to Discuss Hypersonic Weapon Development With Industry
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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to Discuss Hypersonic Weapon Development With Industry

Lloyd Austin, secretary of the Department of Defense and a 2022 Wash100 Award winner, will meet the top executives of nearly a dozen of U.S. defense companies on Feb. 3rd to discuss the importance of speed and collaboration in fielding hypersonic technologies designed to help the nation stay ahead of recent Chinese and Russian advances, Defense One reported Wednesday.

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, fellow 2022 Wash100 Award recipient will chair the virtual meeting, which is expected to see the participation of Heidi Shyu, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering who oversees all hypersonic weapons development, who is also a 2022 Wash100 Awardee.

DOD spokesman Eric Pahon said the upcoming meeting will focus on a range of topics, from systems engineering concepts to the manufacturing workforce.

Top defense officials are actively pursuing the development of hypersonic weapons, or missiles that can maneuver at speeds of at least Mach 5, to keep up with the advances that both China and Russia have made in their respective hypersonic weapons programs.

The Pentagon has requested a $3.8 billion hypersonic research budget for fiscal year 2022, while the Missile Defense Agency sought an additional $247.9 million for hypersonic defense, according to a report Congressional Research Service analyst Kelley Sayler published in October.

According to Sayler, the development of U.S. hypersonic weapons “will likely require greater accuracy and will be more technically challenging to develop than nuclear-armed Chinese and Russian systems.”

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DOE CIO Ann Dunkin: Department Working on IT Transformation Guide
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DOE CIO Ann Dunkin: Department Working on IT Transformation Guide

Ann Dunkin, chief information officer at the Department of Energy, said DOE is creating guidance on how it can scale information technology transformation efforts.

Dunkin said at a panel discussion on digital transformation that the playbook in progress is being made to guide modernization at any department-level agency, Nextgov reported Wednesday.

The playbook will include best practices on how to develop local platforms, establish a DevSecOps pipeline and comply with authority-to-operate standards.

The CIO noted that she hopes to eventually share the guidance with the rest of the federal government. She also said DOE needs to refocus its future modernization efforts in ways that support internal collaboration and employee cooperation.

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NIST Opens Applications for Four Manufacturing Center Operations Contracts
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NIST Opens Applications for Four Manufacturing Center Operations Contracts

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is offering nearly $19.8 million in cooperative agreements to companies interested in four Manufacturing Extension Partnership Centers.

NIST said Wednesday it will accept applications until April 26 for the management of facilities that provide manufacturing support to small and medium-sized businesses in Kentucky, Nebraska, Rhode Island and South Dakota.

Only U.S.-based non-profit organizations, academies, and state, local, tribal and territory governments can be selected for agreements with an initial performance period of up to five years and a cost-share requirement.

NIST scheduled a webinar on Feb. 14 to discuss the funding opportunity. With over 51 centers across the U.S., the MEP program offers technical expertise and assistance from manufacturing professionals to strengthen the domestic industry.

 

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Telos Platform Xacta Designated by Oracle to Expedite Security Compliance
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Telos Platform Xacta Designated by Oracle to Expedite Security Compliance

Software company Oracle has chosen Telos platform Xacta to manage and automate security clearances at various classification levels for its projects and clients, the Ashburn, Virginia-based information technology company announced Thursday.

“Xacta fast-tracks the entire security compliance process – saving time and money that customers would normally devote to consulting or advisory services,” explained Hugh Barrett, Telos vice president of technical solutions.

Xacta is a cyber risk management and compliance analytics program whose most recent version offers machine-readable data exchange tools that enable automation while minimizing errors.

Glen Dodson, Oracle National Security Group senior vice president, said Oracle selected Xacta due to its efficient authorization process in federal government transactions.

For instance, Xacta leverages Open Security Control Assessment Language (OSCAL) technology to assist clients in submitting the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program system security plans. Submissions in the FedRAMP marketplace and certain federal cloud transactions are then expedited.

In accordance with future rulings from the National Institute of Rulings and Technology, Telos hopes to further develop its OSCAL capabilities and make advancements in federal security compliance.

Telos is currently working under contract with the both Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency implementing Xacta to create an interactive, real-time risk assessment capability.

These agencies are similarly interested in streamlining access and security compliance with Telos and Xacta.

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Rebecca Chhim to Oversee Submarine Combat Tech Development at Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division
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Rebecca Chhim to Oversee Submarine Combat Tech Development at Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division

Rebecca Chhim, a more than two-decade veteran of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division Newport in Rhode Island, has been promoted to lead an internal department that focuses on helping the U.S. Navy acquire combat systems for undersea missions.

Naval Sea Systems Command said Wednesday Chhim will oversee technical functions and personnel that support the life cycle of systems acquisition programs as head of the 625-employee Undersea Warfare Combat Systems Department.

She most recently served as cybersecurity director for USW Combat System Integration for Submarines and USW Systems. Before that, she concurrently held the positions of deputy department lead for cybersecurity, activity chief information officer and acting IT division head.

Chhim started her career in the division’s unmanned undersea vehicle organization and later worked at USW Combat Systems Department for more than a decade.

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Livermore Lab Scientists Create ‘Burning Plasma’ in Nuclear Fusion Experiment
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Livermore Lab Scientists Create ‘Burning Plasma’ in Nuclear Fusion Experiment

Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have reached a key milestone in the course toward generating clean and renewable energy from nuclear fusion by demonstrating for the first time a “burning plasma” in a lab experiment.

The burning plasma regime marks a key step in making fusion reactions become self-sustaining, LLNL said Wednesday.

“Fusion experiments over decades have produced fusion reactions using large amounts of ‘external’ heating to get the plasma hot. Now, for the first time, we have a system where the fusion itself is providing most of the heating,” said Alex Zylstra, a physicist with the national lab and one of the study’s lead authors.

Vice reported that scientists at the National Ignition Facility – the world’s largest laser at the national lab – directed 192 lasers at a small capsule containing the thermonuclear fuel, which is composed of two hydrogen isotopes – deuterium and tritium.

They were able to create the self-heating plasma by developing a strategy to control the implosion process that compresses and heats the fuel through mechanical work and modify the capsule’s spatial scale.

“This is a key milestone on the way to even higher levels of fusion performance,” added Zylstra.

The study was published in the journal Nature.

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OMB Unveils Federal Zero Trust Strategy; Clare Martorana Quoted
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OMB Unveils Federal Zero Trust Strategy; Clare Martorana Quoted

The Office of Management and Budget has introduced a strategy to advance the adoption of zero trust architecture within the federal government in accordance with a May 2021 executive order on cybersecurity.

The federal zero trust strategy calls for agencies to shift from perimeter-based defenses to an approach that will enable them to quickly identify, isolate and respond to cyber vulnerabilities, the White House said Wednesday.

The strategy comes with specific security goals that agencies should meet by the end of fiscal year 2024. These strategic goals are aligned with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s zero trust maturity model consists of five pillars: identity; devices; networks; applications and workloads; and data.

For the identity aspect, agency personnel should use enterprise-managed identities to gain access to applications they use in work and implement phishing-resistant multifactor authentication to protect against sophisticated cyberattacks.

“Security is the cornerstone of our efforts to build exceptional digital experiences for the American public,” said Federal Chief Information Officer Clare Martorana, a 2022 Wash100 Award winner.

“Federal agency CIOs and IT leadership are leaning into this challenge, and the zero trust strategy provides a clear roadmap for deploying technology that is secure by design and responsive to the needs of our workforce so they can better deliver for the American public,” added Martorana.

In September, OMB issued an initial draft of the strategy to solicit feedback from cybersecurity professionals and other interested stakeholders.

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IRS to Harness UiPath Platform for Automation of Procurement and Finance Procedures
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IRS to Harness UiPath Platform for Automation of Procurement and Finance Procedures

The Internal Revenue Service, a bureau of the Department of the Treasury, has begun using autonomous software to increase efficiency in its finance and procurement functions.

UiPath has been named the software platform of choice for the IRS’s adoption of robotic process automation technology to support data formatting, consolidation, extraction and retrieval from multiple information sources, the agency said Wednesday.

“Technology is the future of finance, and automation is an essential part of our transition from our current state to agile finance, which is a center of innovation to meet future needs,” said IRS Chief Financial Officer Teresa Hunter.

The decision came about because of a challenge that arose in 2020. When under deadline to modify contract clauses to obey shifts in federal law, the procurement office at IRS estimated the task would take one year. Instead, the agency opted to use RPA and completed almost 1,500 contract modifications in 72 hours.

IRS personnel found that the RPAs reduced errors, alleviated unnecessary burdens on employees and immediately wired the information and results to their destinations. Due to this, the IRS CFO and procurement offices are training employees to work with UiPath software.

Decision-makers at IRS feel the use of RPAs simplifies processes that were previously unwieldy and needlessly complicated.

“We should ask employees which tasks or processes are mundane, repetitive, and ripe for automation. Our employees are smart so we should let them identify opportunities to leverage RPA and let them focus on more interesting and higher value tasks,” said Shanna Webbers, IRS assistant deputy commissioner for operations support.

Some of this terrain was covered in a recent panel discussing 6th generation military technology at the Potomac Officers Club’s 8th Annual Defense Research & Development Summit.

During the panel, Capt. Gregory Petrovic of the U.S. Navy Research Lab and Dr. Benji Maruyama of the U.S. Air Force Research Lab discussed how AI and robotics can eliminate mundane tasks and create more opportunities for discovery through expedited practices.

You can watch the full panel at PotomacOfficersClub.com.

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NAWCAD Demonstrates 5G Logistics Technology for Tracking Flight Line Assets
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NAWCAD Demonstrates 5G Logistics Technology for Tracking Flight Line Assets

The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division has showcased a new technology that tracks the service branch’s flight line assets using Global Positioning System tags to improve logistics efficiency and readiness.

The 5G Identification of Support Equipment logistics system enabled servicemen to view the location of equipment and aircraft through their mobile devices over 3G networks during a technology exercise in Virginia, the Naval Air Systems Command said Tuesday.

According to Dan Bramos, NAWCAD’s maintenance and logistics experimentation lead, the in-house-developed 5GISE could help improve scheduling of aircraft missions and reduce turnaround time to save the service branch both time and money.

“The goal is to put the right equipment and Sailors at the right aircraft at the right time,” explained Bramos.

NAWCAD is currently working on additional capabilities for 5GISE such as compatibility with 5G networks and visual tracking enhancements for monitoring operational status, hours of service, maintenance intervals and other data.

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