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DLA Discovers Benefit of 3D Imaging for Additive Manufacturing Following Scanner Tests
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DLA Discovers Benefit of 3D Imaging for Additive Manufacturing Following Scanner Tests

The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) has completed tests on a three-dimensional scanner that showed the benefits of such an imaging technology in driving its additive manufacturing goals.

The agency said Friday that the imaging capability will enable defense users to share models across the Department of Defense through the Joint Additive Manufacturing Model Exchange web-based platform for 3D printing.

Craig Gravitz, DLA’s information operations technology accelerator team lead, explained that the technology would help match manufacturing parts to a catalog model to figure out their national stock number.

DLA officials agree that a scanner would help improve how its Troop Support Product Test Center and contracting personnel, vendors and customers discuss platforms in development.

“Being able to send a 3D-model embedded in a PDF that users can spin around… you can actually see it, and it’s more meaningful to you rather than just a bunch of [technical] words on a page,” added Gravitz.

Another benefit of 3D imaging includes the ability to gather information on a hard-to-manufacture part through reverse engineering, added Jamie Hieber, laboratory manager for DLA’s test center.

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SREL Receives 5-Year DOE Contract Extension for SRS Environmental Studies
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SREL Receives 5-Year DOE Contract Extension for SRS Environmental Studies

The University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL) has secured an estimated $34 million contract extending its environmental evaluation work with the Department of Energy at the Savannah River Site in North Carolina.

SREL, a seven-decade DOE onsite partner at SRS, said its scientists will continue assessing the environmental effects of the agency’s activities at the nuclear reservation for five more years.

Olin Rhodes Jr., the laboratory director, noted that his organization has provided the agency with scientific expertise in explaining the link between legacy contaminants and ecosystem and wildlife sustainability at the site.

“SREL has been a consistently valuable partner over the past 70 years, and the return on investment to DOE and the nation has been exceptional,” noted Mike Budney, DOE’s Savannah River operations manager.

UGA, the laboratory’s parent organization, is a member of the Battelle Savannah River Alliance, a Battelle-led consortium managing SRS.

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NASA Announces 5-Year Funding for Research Infrastructure Development at 28 Jurisdictions
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NASA Announces 5-Year Funding for Research Infrastructure Development at 28 Jurisdictions

NASA has pledged $28 million to fund the development of research infrastructure across 28 U.S. jurisdictions across five years as part of the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).

The EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Development awards are aimed at increasing and diversifying technology and research, higher education and economic initiatives in the beneficiary regions at the state and national levels, NASA said Friday.

EPSCoR is a nearly 30-year-old program that aims to close the gap in funding across all states and territories and maintain a competitive market for aerospace research and development activities.

The NASA awardees include:

  • Alabama
  • Arkansas
  • Delaware
  • Hawaii
  • Idaho
  • Iowa
  • Kansas
  • Louisiana
  • Mississippi
  • Nevada
  • North Dakota
  • Puerto Rico
  • the U.S. Virgin Islands
  • West Virginia
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DOJ to Support Whistleblowers Exposing Cybersecurity Fraud of Contractors; Lisa Monaco Quoted
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DOJ to Support Whistleblowers Exposing Cybersecurity Fraud of Contractors; Lisa Monaco Quoted

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has made a commitment to protect whistleblowers who report cybersecurity issues of federal contractors. 

Lisa Monaco, deputy attorney general, said DOJ will use all available resources to protect whistleblowers in alignment with the False Claims Act.

DOJ seeks to address federal contractors that are guilty of cybersecurity failures or have misled the government about their cyber capabilities.

The U.S. government first made FCA a law in 1863 to address fraud from defense contractors. The law would penalize false record perpetrators to compensate triple the damages caused by fraud and up to $10,000 in civil penalty charges.

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Dewberry Promotes Griffin Brumbaugh to Senior Web Content Specialist
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Dewberry Promotes Griffin Brumbaugh to Senior Web Content Specialist

Dewberry, an engineering, architecture and consulting firm, has promoted Griffin Brumbaugh, who has been a part of the company’s web content team for over three years, to senior web content specialist.

In his role, Brumbaugh drives corporate growth initiatives through developing written and video content, providing social media training and managing and analyzing Dewberry’s website and all social media accounts, the Fairfax, Virginia-based company said Monday.

Molly Johnson, Dewberry’s chief communications officer noted that Brumbaugh has been “integral to several large-scale projects over the last few years” at the firm.

“His creativity, ambition, and commitment to telling our story have made him a great asset to our team and the firm,” she added.

The projects Brumbaugh has spearheaded at Dewberry notably include the implementation of a firm-wide standardized email signature software, development of the firm’s award-winning “Our Project Stories” video series, and the launch of a new external corporate website created in-house.

Throughout his time at Dewberry, Brumbaugh has been recognized with three awards, based on the firm’s Dewberry At Work values, in the areas of honesty, passion and individualism.

Prior to joining Dewberry in 2018, Brumbaugh served as communications coordinator and social media specialist for the American Society of Civil Engineers. The senior web content specialist received his bachelor’s degree in communications from Wake Forest University.

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Guidehouse Names Ted Adair, Julia Gibbons, Chris Choby, Phillip Hall to Defense Segment Leadership Team; Ed Meehan Quoted
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Guidehouse Names Ted Adair, Julia Gibbons, Chris Choby, Phillip Hall to Defense Segment Leadership Team; Ed Meehan Quoted

Ted Adair, Julia Gibbons, Chris Choby and Phillip Hall join Guidehouse’s defense segment leadership team, and Ryan McKeon has been promoted to defense segment growth leader.

Following Guidehouse’s recently finalized acquisition of Dovel Technologies, these executive additions and shifts align with the company’s expansion efforts in key priority areas, including defense, and the newly appointed leadership team will enhance the company’s offerings to Department of Defense customers, Guidehouse said Monday.

“We are excited to welcome this group of exceptional professionals to Guidehouse and look forward to supporting the growing demand through our expanding defense capabilities, solutions, and implementation strategies,” said Wash100 Award recipient Ed Meehan, partner and defense segment leader of Guidehouse.

Ted Adair will serve as Guidehouse’s Army client relationship executive. Adair previously served as business development director for Accenture and also served over five years as a U.S. Army officer. His experience notably includes leading technology, digital modernization, DevSecOps and cloud operations across a range of organizations with key focus areas of national security, homeland security, defense and law enforcement. In his new role with Guidehouse, Adair will lead business unit pipeline management and marketing, foster new business relationships in the defense sector and oversee strategic capture efforts.

Julia Gibbons, former director of capture management at Engility, joins Guidehouse as the Air Force/Space Force client relationship leader. Gibbons served 21 years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, and her private sector experience includes senior business development roles at SAIC, Booz Allen Hamilton and Deloitte. In her new role, Gibbons will leverage her deep Air Force expertise and industry experience across risk management and program management areas to drive growth in Guidehouse’s expanded defense segment.

20-year U.S. Navy and Marine Corps consultant Chris Choby joins Guidehouse to manage the company’s Navy and Marine Corps client relationships. Previously, Choby served as U.S. Navy/USMC account leader for IBM Global Business Service, where he was responsible for identifying and winning Navy opportunities, managing won programs, driving growth and fostering and maintaining key business relationships. He also notably served as general manager of DXC Technology’s aerospace, defense and manufacturing segment.

Lastly, Phillip Hall has been tapped to lead Guidehouse’s Office of the Secretary of Defense and defense agencies client relationships. Prior to joining Guidehouse, Hall managed the systems integrators Azure Cloud accounts at Microsoft. His previous experience also includes multiple senior business development positions for companies including SAIC, BAE Systems, Verizon and ManTech. An Air Force veteran, Hall’s areas of expertise span IT, cybersecurity and cloud computing services in support of Department of Defense, private sector and intelligence community customers.

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Federal CIO Council Issues Draft Overseas Travel Guidance for Government-Furnished Mobile Devices
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Federal CIO Council Issues Draft Overseas Travel Guidance for Government-Furnished Mobile Devices

The Federal CIO Council is seeking public comments on draft guidance that outlines best practices to mitigate threats to government-furnished equipment (GFE) used by federal employees during international travel.

The draft document released by the council’s federal mobility group (FMG) listed several measures government personnel should take before, during and after their overseas travel and explains the cybersecurity and physical threats to GFE, the council said Tuesday.

Some of the pre-travel tips outlined in the draft FMG International Travel Guidance for Government-Furnished Mobile Devices report are installing mobile threat defense software, protecting data in motion and at rest, securing the wireless communications link, protecting voice and text communications and disabling nonessential mobile device capabilities.

During travel, GFE users should inspect their mobile devices for signs of tampering, maintain possession of their devices, turn off wireless communications and exercise caution when connecting to Wi-Fi networks. Post-travel tips include a physical inspection of devices and GFE return procedures.

The report also provides an overview of roles and responsibilities with regard to the use of mobile devices during international travel and mentions other considerations for government employees on temporary overseas travel.

Comments on the draft guidance are due Dec. 29th.

Supply Chain Cybersecurity: Revelations and Innovations

ExecutiveBiz, sister site of GovConDaily and part of the Executive Mosaic digital media umbrella, will host a virtual event about securing the supply chain on Oct. 26. Visit ExecutiveBiz.com to sign up for the “Supply Chain Cybersecurity: Revelations and Innovations” event.

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Nico Papafil: GSA’s 10x Program Seeks Digital Citizen Experience Improvement Ideas
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Nico Papafil: GSA’s 10x Program Seeks Digital Citizen Experience Improvement Ideas

Nico Papafil, director of the 10x program at the General Services Administration, said 10x will fund more ideas that seek to improve the digital customer experience in fiscal year 2022, Federal News Network reported Friday.

“We’re just asking the question, ‘what problems [are you] trying to solve?’ And we actually added these investment themes to kind of create some guidelines that just show where we want to add weight for the types of ideas we want to select,” Papafil said during a webinar Thursday. 

He said the program will be looking at three themes and the first two will focus on how to improve the way the public engages with the government and how to enhance digital services in relation to climate change.

“And the last one is equity and delivery. How are we better, as a government, providing more equitable service to underserved and underpopulated and underrepresented communities? And so those are the themes that we’re going to be looking at,” Papafil added.

According to the report, interested stakeholders have until Nov. 16 to propose ideas. The program expects the selected Phase I projects to begin by March 2022.

Papafil also noted that the program is also working on the Benefits Eligibility Awareness Recognition Service, which seeks to establish a centralized resource that would inform and direct citizens to federal government benefits they are eligible for.

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Sanjay Gupta: Cloud-Based Foundation Enabled SBA to Scale Up During Pandemic
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Sanjay Gupta: Cloud-Based Foundation Enabled SBA to Scale Up During Pandemic

The Small Business Administration (SBA) was tasked with processing more than $1 trillion in grants and loans for small enterprises during the COVID-19 pandemic and Sanjay Gupta, chief technology officer at SBA, discussed how a cloud-based foundation established in 2018 as part of the agency’s modernization strategy enabled SBA to manage such an increase in workload, Nextgov reported Friday.

Gupta mentioned how the cloud foundation helped SBA to rapidly scale up and accommodate users from anywhere.

“In terms of call centers, using services like [artificial intelligence] or machine learning, we have increasingly adopted more of those services from a cloud-based offering for the simple reason that it allows us to scale up quickly, but more importantly, it allows to initiate those services—turn those services on—very quickly,” Gupta said. 

“We don’t have to go through the typical acquisition life cycles of buying new hardware, configuring it and going through the whole acquisition process. Having a cloud foundation allows us to do that,” he added.

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AFMC Announces Initial Operational Capability to Support USSF
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AFMC Announces Initial Operational Capability to Support USSF

Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) has achieved initial operational capability to support members of the U.S. Space Force as a major command.

The milestone represents AFMC’s readiness to service Space Force-assigned Airmen and establishes a formal agreement memorandum between the Department of the Air Force and USSF, the U.S. Air Force said Thursday.

AFMC and USSF developed a programming plan in preparation for the IOC. The plan defines the functional support that AFMC will perform for USSF.

The command will service USSF as a major command with responsibilities such as policy guidance, developmental team representation and professional development.

The Air Force expects AFMC to achieve full operational capability as USSF’s servicing command by the fall of next year.

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