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DOD Highlights Challenges Affecting Fiscal 2022 Performance
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DOD Highlights Challenges Affecting Fiscal 2022 Performance

The Department of Defense is facing challenges in strategic competition, cyberspace, budgeting and other areas with regard to DOD’s performance and management for the fiscal year 2022. 

These challenges are highlighted in the Top DOD Management Challenges document, which tackles issues on multi-domain missions, procurement, installation management and workforce, DOD said Friday.

DOD said Friday that it faces the challenge of multi-domain mission execution in the areas of space dominance, nuclear deterrence, missile defense and cyber operations.

The department is also facing procurement-related challenges with regard to supply chain reinforcement, contract oversight and financial management.

The document also tackles the need for DOD facilities to be resilient to environmental events and maintain health, modernity and trust in the DOD workforce.

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White House Urges Congress to Pass FY 2022 Appropriations Bills
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White House Urges Congress to Pass FY 2022 Appropriations Bills

The White House is calling on Congress to reach a bipartisan agreement and pass appropriations bills for fiscal year 2022 to avoid the continuation of funding at FY 2021 levels under a continuing resolution.

The president’s FY 2022 budget proposal and appropriations measures from the House and Senate support the COVID-19 pandemic response and other public health programs, seek to address national security challenges, strengthen U.S. leadership and improve the delivery of citizen services, according to a White House fact sheet published Friday.

The president’s budget would strengthen U.S. economic competitiveness by investing $13 billion more in research and development efforts and provide the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with at least $1.6 billion in additional funding in support of pandemic response efforts.

Other national priorities in the appropriations bills that the administration is pursuing are ensuring defense modernization and readiness, supporting NASA’s lunar exploration program, investing in election infrastructure, combating the opioid epidemic and accelerating processing of Social Security disability benefits.

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VA to Pilot Model for Determining Hazardous Exposure
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VA to Pilot Model for Determining Hazardous Exposure

The Department of Veterans Affairs will test a military exposure model designed to reduce burdens on veterans potentially exposed to environmental hazards.

VA said Thursday it will pilot the new model to determine the association between veterans’ medical conditions and environmental hazards.

The model will build on VA claims data, military environmental research, veterans’ health outcomes and scientific input from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.

The pilot will initially focus on constrictive bronchiolitis and respiratory cancers. VA will run the pilot from Nov. 15 this year to April 1, 2022, and expects to produce answers by the middle of next year.

The agency has been helping veterans exposed to chemicals including Agent Orange over the past half-year.

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Professional Services Council Provides Recommendations on Proposed Purchasing Rule; Stephanie Kostro Quoted
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Professional Services Council Provides Recommendations on Proposed Purchasing Rule; Stephanie Kostro Quoted

The Professional Services Council (PSC) has issued recommendations to help NASA, the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Department of Defense better maintain competition in technology and services industries amid proposed changes to the Federal Acquisition Regulation Buy American Act. 

PSC said Thursday it made these recommendations to address possible burdens and challenges associated with the proposed amendment, which would impose new requirements.

The council advises the agencies to implement an alternative to post-award reporting requirements, and provide waivers for commercial off-the-shelf items and exemptions for commercial information technology.

Another one of the recommendations encourages the agencies to recognize that services contracts historically have not followed BAA requirements and therefore are not connected to the proposed rule.

“The FAR rule as proposed could burden both agencies and contractors—for example, complying with BAA component requirements would be immensely challenging, if not impossible, in a services context—and its implementation could undermine U.S. competitiveness in our industry sector,” said Stephanie Kostro, executive vice president for policy at PSC.

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Larry Frazier Named Iron Bow Director of Sales Strategy; Stu Strang Quoted
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Larry Frazier Named Iron Bow Director of Sales Strategy; Stu Strang Quoted

Larry Frazier, a former Cisco executive and retired U.S. Army veteran, has been tapped to lead sales strategy at Iron Bow Technologies, an information technology firm serving commercial, education and healthcare markets.

As director of sales strategy, Frazier will spearhead the execution of programmatic business, form strategic growth initiatives and drive the advancement of the company’s global sales practice, Iron Bow said Wednesday.

Stu Strang, senior vice president of Sales at Iron Bow, said Frazier’s role will be “fundamental” in accelerating the company’s innovation and transformation goals.

Of the new sales strategy director, Strang said, “His deep expertise in sales with some of the most reputable partners in the industry as well as his years of service to our country make him an invaluable addition to the team as we continue to deliver the best for our partners and customers, expand our sales team, and grow overall as a company.”

Prior to joining Iron Bow, Frazier spent nearly three years at Cisco, serving in roles including senior director of strategy and plans for the company’s workforce experience, as well as chief of staff for the office of the chief digital officer. 

Previously, Frazier also held the role of senior technical executive advisor at the Defense Information Systems Agency, and he served for over 21 years in the U.S. military. 

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Former Bloomberg Exec Kai Weidie To Lead Dentsu’s First Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Team
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Former Bloomberg Exec Kai Weidie To Lead Dentsu’s First Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Team

Kai Weidie has been selected to serve as Dentsu International’s first senior vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion.

In the newly created role, Weidie will drive diversity initiatives, increase support for minority new hires and create more inclusive client campaigns across Dentsu’s media agencies in the Americas, Adweek reported Monday.

She will report to Dentsu CEO Doug Rosen and chief equity officer for Dentsu Americas, Christena Pyle.

Rosen said the role was created to reflect Dentsu’s mission to champion “meaningful progress” for its employees, its clients and the media industry, and that Weidie’s appointment as DEI executive will help ensure that diversified representation exists at the core of the company’s media plans.

“As we continue our pursuit to make real change in media, Kai’s experience challenging the status quo and tackling inclusion issues head-on in advertising will lead us into an equitable future like never before,” Rosen continued.

Weidie joins Dentsu from Bloomberg, where she served as a diversity and inclusion client partner. Previously, she also served for over two years as director of diversity and engagement at McCann New York.

The new SVP said a major component of her decision to join Dentsu was the company’s readiness and commitment to implementing new diversity and inclusion strategies.

As part of its commitment, Dentsu released its first diversity, equity and inclusion report in May to detail the firm’s focus areas and strategic framework for deploying DEI principles across all business operations.

Weidie added, “It was really important to me that I work with an organization that’s nimble and really ready to take a fresh approach.”

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Dayton University’s Research Arm Books $88M AFRL Contract for Autonomous Tech Maturation
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Dayton University’s Research Arm Books $88M AFRL Contract for Autonomous Tech Maturation

The Air Force Research Laboratory has awarded the University of Dayton Research Institute an $88 million contract for autonomous technology-focused research and development efforts.

Under the Soaring Otter program, UDRI said Thursday it will work on the development, testing, evaluation and integration of autonomous systems, novel computing approaches, new application spaces, open system architectures and maturing system support.

Patrick Hytla, senior image processing engineer in UDRI’s applied sensing division, said the university will bring to Soaring Otter expertise in machine learning, neuromorphic computing and other related areas to help the U.S. Air Force improve global situational awareness, information sharing and decision making.

The university’s research arm received initial funding of $1.8 million for the program and will work on automated technologies for five years.

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Army Marks Project Convergence’s 2nd Year With New Technologies for JADC2; Andre Abadie Quoted
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Army Marks Project Convergence’s 2nd Year With New Technologies for JADC2; Andre Abadie Quoted

The U.S. Army has marked the second year of Project Convergence and demonstrated 110 new technologies meant to support joint all-domain command and control as part of the experimentation effort, Defense One reported Wednesday.

Tech experimentation efforts that Army officials said worked during the project’s second year include artificial intelligence-enabled reconnaissance, high-bandwidth mesh networking using drones and a small satellite constellation in low-Earth orbit and rapid threat data sharing across services.

For AI-enabled reconnaissance, the military conducted a reconnaissance mission using four autonomous robots linked to two tethered drones.

“And so those robotic vehicles and their ability to collaborate and sense decided how to recon that area on their own,” said Col. Andre Abadie, head of the Project Convergence 21 operational planning team.

Abadie said those robots also decided how to report the detected threats to the communications component.

“We hope to take that next year and actually do that at night,” he added.

Project Convergence also allowed soldiers to test new equipment like the IVAS headset and helped Army officials to identify other areas that need improvement, such as equipping autonomous robots with new sensing capabilities and defending against adversaries’ electronic warfare capabilities.

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GPAI Report Offers Recommendations for Governments to Drive AI Use in Climate Change Mitigation
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GPAI Report Offers Recommendations for Governments to Drive AI Use in Climate Change Mitigation

A new report commissioned by the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) has provided 48 recommendations for how governments can advance the use of AI to help address climate change. 

GPAI said Monday the report developed by the Climate Change AI and the Centre for AI & Climate classifies the recommendations into three categories: supporting the responsible use of AI for climate change mitigation and adaptation; reducing the negative impacts of AI on the climate; and building implementation, evaluation and governance capabilities.

For the first category, themes include data and digital infrastructure, research and innovation funding and deployment and systems integration.

The study offered several recommendations to advance the use of AI in mitigating climate change, including establishing data task forces in climate-critical sectors; facilitating data creation and open data standards in climate-critical industries; supporting cloud compute resources; and overseeing the development of data collection systems and digital twins for transport, energy and other physical infrastructure.

“This report is urgently needed to help governments unlock the potential for AI in fighting climate change, in areas like energy, land use, and disaster response,” said Yoshua Bengio, co-lead of the GPAI Responsible AI Working Group.

The report also highlighted several initiatives where AI is being used to help drive climate action and these are the UN Satellite Centre, National Grid ESO and Climate TRACE.

GPAI said the document outlines bottlenecks that hamper the adoption of AI to address climate challenges and offers recommendations for governments how to deal with such challenges. These include improving data ecosystems and increasing support for innovation, research and deployment.

Climate Resilience: Reducing Risk and Creating Opportunities Fireside Chat

GovCon Wire will hold its Climate Resilience: Reducing Risk and Creating Opportunities Fireside Chat on Nov. 18. Sign up for this virtual event to hear from experts as they discuss success stories of climate resilience and adaption efforts in the U.S. and abroad and describe future initiatives to enable communities to bring together diverse stakeholders to address vital issues.

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Pew Research Center Survey: Majority of US Adults Have Heard About Cryptocurrency
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Pew Research Center Survey: Majority of US Adults Have Heard About Cryptocurrency

A new survey by Pew Research Center has found that 86 percent of U.S. adults have heard of Bitcoin, Ether and other cryptocurrencies and 16 percent said they have used, traded or invested in cryptocurrency.

The Washington, D.C.-based think tank said Thursday it surveyed over 10,300 respondents between Sept. 13 and 19 and found that 43 percent of men ages 18 to 29 said they have used, invested in or traded a cryptocurrency compared with nearly two in 10 women.

The study showed that about 13 percent of U.S. adults said they have heard nothing about cryptocurrency at all. The center also found that White adults are less likely than Asian, Hispanic and Black adults to say they have traded, used or invested in the digital currency.

POC - Digital Currency and National Security Forum

The Potomac Officers Club will hold its Digital Currency and National Security Forum on Jan. 27. Sign up for the virtual event to hear from government and industry leaders as they talk about the implications, risks, opportunities and challenges that digital currencies pose for the future of the U.S. economy and national security.

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