If the U.S. military winds up in a war that does damage to its equipment, in many cases, the repairs would have to be done stateside. Not only would that require long round trips, but many of the shipyards and depots that would be tasked with that work are overtaxed even in peacetime. That’s one reason DoD wants to move more of its maintenance operations overseas as part of what officials are calling the Regional Sustainment Framework.

It’s still very early days for the RSF, first published in May, and Defense officials have not yet estimated the full costs of what they say will be a “paradigm shift” in the way the military handles overseas logistics. But the key, according to Christopher Lowman, the assistant secretary of Defense for sustainment, is that the U.S. won’t do it alone.

Rather, he said, DoD wants to build an international maintenance “ecosystem” made up of trusted allies and U.S. and foreign vendors.

“This is just another mechanism for us to satisfy demand driven by normal use and wear and tear on the equipment, or, as we scale from competition through crisis and conflict, where we have battle damaged equipment,” he told reporters this week. “The intent here is to create those maintenance, repair, and overhaul capabilities and utilize them in competition, so that they’re also available to us to repair battle damaged equipment in conflict.”

Pilots to begin this year in Pacific

Although DoD has published very few details so far on how the new framework will operate, a provision in this year’s defense authorization bill will let the department get started with some initial experimentation. That law ordered the department to test and demonstrate “product support” capabilities in contested logistics environments, partnering with one or several other of the so-called “five eye” countries: Canada, the U.K, Australia and New Zealand.

Lowman said the initial work will start this year in Indo-Pacific Command, with follow-on experiments planned in Europe next year.

“INDOPACOM is the priority theater where our pacing threat resides, but it’s also the greatest contested logistics challenge, because of the long over-ocean lines of communication. So it really provides the most rationale to get sustainment capability into the theater in a distributed fashion and to regenerate readiness,” he said. “And there are capabilities that are emerging in [U.S. European Command] because of support to Ukraine and the amount of Western produced material that’s flowing in … We’re letting the combatant commander in EUCOM, the service component commanders and the NATO partnership shape those regional capabilities, their focus and their investment.”

Sustainment options for commanders

Conducting maintenance at forward locations certainly isn’t an entirely new idea. For example, the Navy has historically done scheduled maintenance on its overseas stationed ships in Japan, Spain and Bahrain. But a recent Government Accountability Office study found that out of 71 ships scheduled for those overseas maintenance periods, 50 took longer than planned.

However, Lowman said the idea behind RSF is to have many more options for commanders, including ones from allied nations.

“In the past, sustainment has historically been viewed as a national responsibility. National governments would sustain our forces in whatever theater we were operating in. This is really a recognition that sustainment can be performed through a coalition and a network of regional providers,” he said. “Each of those regional allies has industrial capability, maintenance, repair and overhaul capability, and a desire to support the work. This capitalizes on those capabilities in theater so that we’re not building U.S.-owned and operated capabilities — we’re taking advantage of what exists, making the appropriate changes to accommodate specific U.S. needs, and then utilizing that through a joint venture arrangement.”

One complication the department might face as it tries to change its maintenance paradigm is a longstanding federal law called the 50/50 rule. That provision requires each military service to conduct half of their depot-level maintenance at U.S. government-owned facilities, generally staffed by government employees – the so-called “organic industrial base.” Defense officials say they’ll have to keep close tabs on their maintenance workload distribution to make sure they continue to comply with that rule even as more work moves overseas.

A role for advanced manufacturing

And doing more work overseas is one thing. Getting spare parts to those new maintenance locations is another – especially in situations where they’re needed on very short notice.

So in parallel, Lowman said the department has efforts underway to make parts when and where they’re needed through advanced manufacturing techniques.

“It’s really an effort to take advantage of existing commercial technology, whether that’s additive manufacturing or subtractive manufacturing,” he said. “We’ve been after this, in coordination with the military services, for the last three years. But in [the Office of the Secretary of Defense], our intent is to enable the use of advanced manufacturing capability so that we don’t have to transport parts from the continental United States into the theater to repair equipment. What we’re doing is enabling that digital framework and network in order to transmit intellectual property to the point of manufacture, secure that intellectual property at the point of manufacture, and finally to ensure that the parts produced meet our standards so that they’re safe and suitable to operate.”

The post In ‘paradigm shift,’ DoD looks to move more equipment maintenance overseas first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Defense Department and Space Force (USSF) recently released aligned strategies that prioritize expanding commercial partnerships to enhance mission capabilities, resilience and operational advantage. The USSF Commercial Space Strategy (CSS) emphasizes leveraging industry innovation, prioritizing operational utility, feasibility, resilience and speed to fielding.

The CSS highlights the need for beyond-line-of-sight satellite communications (SATCOM) to support command and control, data transport and reach-back requirements for the Joint Force worldwide. Through commercial SATCOM partnerships, the USSF aims to enhance data transport, capacity, flexibility, reliability and resiliency to support multi-domain and joint mission operations. The CSS also acknowledges commercial space sector’s role as an accelerator, fostering innovation and helping reduce barriers to entry for new capabilities.

The DoD’s Commercial Space Integration Strategy (CSIS) recognizes the importance of leveraging all available tools to prioritize the resilience of the national security space architecture. It identifies 13 mission areas, including SATCOM as a hybrid mission area. The CSIS emphasizes the integration of government and commercial SATCOM systems, highlighting the need to make “commercial solutions integral — and not just supplementary — to national security space architectures.”

These strategies demonstrate the military’s commitment to embracing private sector partnerships and commercial innovations to enhance mission capabilities and resilience for modern military operations.

Collaborative, user-driven innovation

Ideal collaboration will drive a continuous loop in which industry invests, develops and demonstrates with federal agency end user requirements foremost in mind. Through continuous iteration, testing and customer feedback, commercial operators can deliver solutions that are proven, strong and resilient.

While shifts toward this type of development and adoption will face budget and acquisition challenges, the government is making meaningful progress through several rapid experimentation and development initiatives designed to accelerate creation of national security and warfighter operation capabilities.

While not a defense-focused initiative, NASA’s Communications Services Project is an example of embracing collaborative public-private partnership, helping create a market for new COMSATCOM solutions and services that could be replicated by government agencies. NASA is working with five commercial companies to develop and demonstrate COMSATCOM solutions for future launch and near-Earth communications. NASA recognized that commercial systems could meet their mission communications needs rather than investing heavily to replace its Tracking and Data Relay Satellite system.

The Air Force Research Laboratory’s Defense Experimentation Using Commercial Space Internet program has awarded several major industry contracts that explore the capabilities of commercial space constellations to connect military platforms with user terminals that can talk to multiple space broadband providers, including across different spectrum and orbits.

Last year, Space Systems Command announced the launch of the Commercial Space Office (COMSO) to pave pathways for collaboration in its “race to resilience” by 2026. Senior Materiel Leader Col. Richard Kniseley explained that “The goal of COMSO is to leverage the full force of this innovation with speed, cost efficiency and minimal duplication of effort to deliver efficient and sufficient commercial space capabilities to the warfighter.”

These innovative programs offer models for mutually beneficial public-private partnerships that USSF and other DoD components can leverage.

Building blocks for success 

The next phase of realizing this collaborative vision requires a strong, aligned partnership foundation. Implementing effective and scalable SATCOM hinges on engaging trusted commercial partners that are willing and able to deliver current and future solutions fully in sync with DoD operational and mission needs.

Looking ahead, four essential building blocks for successful SATCOM initiatives include:

1. Intentional innovation: Commercial industry continuously innovates advancements in satellite and ground networks, applied with the intent to meet operational and resilience needs. Trusted public-private partnerships should promote transparency to better understand mission requirements and enhance iterative SATCOM
2. Flexibility: Dynamic mission needs demand flexible technologies and service models from commercial providers. Additionally, greater agility in agency procurement can accelerate the adoption of new capabilities for warfighters.
3. Expertise: The commercial industry attracts top talent, and government customers can access this expertise without incurring recruitment and training costs. Managed services also deliver ongoing technology maintenance updates, shifting that responsibility to industry to conserve time and resources.
4. Commitment: Commercial SATCOM providers should immerse themselves in government partnerships to understand specific environments and requirements. This customer-focused approach ensures mission-aligned capabilities, solutions and services, executed with efficiency and efficacy.

President Kennedy’s famous 1962 speech emphasized the pursuit of difficult goals; more than 60 years on, developing advanced SATCOM capabilities remains a challenge. Space is hard, but strong commercial-government partnerships engendering trust and commitment will yield the solutions we need to reliably support space missions and protect our warfighters.

Sunil Pandit is vice president of strategy at Viasat Government.

The post Four essential elements of trustworthy public-private SATCOM partnership first appeared on Federal News Network.

Derace Lauderdale |

The Office of Naval Research is developing an automated hiring portal to track its onboarding and offboarding processes, hoping to improve customer experience for both.

ONR, the Navy Department’s main science and technology organization, is constantly looking for new talents all over the world while having the largest total of PhDs in any federal agency, from trained scientists to research professionals.

For now, the customer experience for new hires is somewhere between good and very good, but ONR is still spending a lot of time looking into automation and areas where they can improve, said Curtis Pelzer, the organization’s chief information officer. He said ONR is looking at reducing the time it takes to onboard personnel and providing more information to leadership on why employees are leaving.

“In terms of our onboarding process, a lot of that process is manual. And when we identify a potential hiring candidate, a lot of that initial interaction also happens manually.  In terms of all the forms that they need to fill out to become a federal employee or transition from another federal agency, what we’re looking to do is allow them to provide all that information online, through what we’re calling a program or hiring portal. They log in, and they are able to see all the information that they need in terms of completing forms and being able to transmit those forms back to the hiring manager,” Pelzer said on Federal Monthly Insight — Customer Experience. “And, then, after the employee has been onboarded to the command, we’d be able to automate the entire lifecycle of that employee. So all those documents that were generated during the hiring process are made available to that employee.”

Information would also be automatically passed on to others in the organization who need to know about the onboarding process, including hiring managers, supervisors, and HR personnel, depending on their roles.

“The system would provide for the individual roles that are needed to make sure that the employee lifecycle is being met, and the things that the employee would need during their tenure. I speak of this in terms of lifecycle, because I believe that there’s a beginning, which is the onboarding process,” Pelzer said. “And then you look at the sustainment of that employee during their tenure, and you look at the offboarding process. That would entail, how do you recover those assets that have been provisioned for the employee? And then how do you successfully offboard that employee, making sure that they have everything that they need when they’re departing the organization?”

Other information in the portal could provide insights into why an employee decides to leave the agency might enhance the automated process in the future,

Prior to the development of the new automated portal, ONR has experienced issues automating processes due to their existing manual process. Originally, they would overlay new technology over the manual process — but would not receive the  level of efficiency they were expecting.

Artificial intelligence has also been a conversation at ONR, as they’re working on AI-enabled capabilities. Pelzer said the challenge is identifying what data will be allowed, and making sure the data remains secure, not putting anything at risk.

“We have been looking at using bots using robotic process automation to help streamline routine processes that we believe can be done better by a bot, or using an AI. And most certainly bring a level of efficiency to these processes like onboarding and offboarding of personnel and tracking personnel better,” Pelzer said. “When you look at our data and analytics program, we’re building AI-enabled capabilities every single day. These are taking systems that we’ve already built, and then layering that generative AI on top of that, to be able to better serve our workforce, to give them an additional capability that we previously didn’t have, prior to the advancement of AI.”

ONR is also looking at new ways to track metrics on how many personnel are onboarding and offboarding. Currently, they’re manually capturing these metrics. For Pelzer, looking at metrics provides insight when it comes to a call for resolution and meeting customer needs.

“One thing that’s the most gratifying in terms of customer satisfaction is the messages that I receive from the customer that say, ‘Hey, well done, your team has done something that I didn’t think was possible,’ or the response time, or the level of satisfaction the customer received. So, the metrics certainly give you insight into how well your team is performing. We look at the data, but having those notes that come in is really something that I look forward to,” Pelzer said.

The post ONR looks to automation to speed hiring federal hiring process first appeared on Federal News Network.

An academic course endorsed by the Defense Department and delivered by accelerator company, BMNT aims to help science and engineering students develop their ideas in two companies. It’s called Hacking for Defense. One resulting startup called Pharos aerospace hopes to help both defense and commercial satellite operators deal with space debris. For more, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with former University of Chicago students, Victor Tyne and Brian Klein.

Interview transcript: 

Victor Tyne
We took the course the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, we were a team of students, a team of five students at the time. And we were interested in learning about what a dual use architecture was, and what it meant to do innovation in the defense space. And we did exactly that, we learned a lot about what that looks like. The correspond to a lot of different problems across a lot of different kinds of problem spaces. And we were actually sponsored by the Missile Defense Agency to tackle challenges to secure communication for missile defense systems. And we started pulling strings and thinking about what specific problem can be addressed, whether the one in the original problem statement or not. And we ended up realizing kind of the importance of satellite to ground communications for these kinds of systems, and thinking about what the threats were to that. We identified debris, specifically lethal non trackable debris in low Earth orbit, and then also just unidentified residence based objects, whether any satellite weapons or otherwise as a real threat to secure communication. So we started thinking about what are the gaps in current technology? And how can we address that.

Tom Temin
Sounds like you’re focused on the physical destruction or capability of debris, as opposed to jamming and signal interference, that type of thing.

Victor Tyne
problems that was more focused on the cybersecurity kind of problem, and we pivoted at some point in the course toward a real physical threat.

Tom Temin
What do you major in? What were you guys studying that you were interested in this particular area, Brian.

Brian Klein
Victor and myself have a physics background. So Victor is studying physics, I was a physics major at the University of Chicago in the past, and then latest degree is business, also have another MBA.

Tom Temin
Unlike I guess, some people of your generation, you have an interest in national defense and warfare and helping the country in that manner.

Victor Tyne
I think that I was one of the main motivations for taking the course. And it’s been really interesting going through this process and getting to talk to stakeholders and find out what the challenges they face are and why they’re interested in this kind of technology. I think it’s largely an interest in national defense. But it’s also an interest in just the common good of our planet, the ability to continue having secure satellite communications to continue providing GPS service, all these things that are threatened by things like small lethal non trackable debris, or any satellite weapons in low Earth orbit. So I think it’s a really important issue for National Security, but also just for the common good of how we do things in the 21st century.

Tom Temin
So that’s the dual architecture idea that it serves both civil and military interests.

Victor Tyne
We’ve also found to a large degree, government agencies like the Space Force already doing a lot out of general public interest. And in addition to their National Security effort, that’s been really interesting to learn about and collaborate with.

Tom Temin
And what happened when you completed the course? You were selected for something. And there’s teams from several universities, what happens next? They liked your ideas, tell us about the process.

Brian Klein
Two things happened when we completed the course. The first was we were selected for the University of Chicago’s New Venture Challenge program. So that’s a major, maybe the biggest university accelerator in the country, if not the world, and that accelerator focuses on consumer applications. So we really got to phone our business and our idea from the lens of providing services to consumer companies, but we’re therapy imaging companies, that sort of thing through that program, which is really good ended up placing six out of over 80 teams in that. They liked us too apparently. The other side was we got into the H Rex program. So H 4x is a direct continuation of hacking for defense. And that program focuses much more strongly on dual use technology, on working with government, on learning how to not just do things the government way, but also making connections in the government. And that been a great compliment to us to the NBC focus on consumer sites. And now we’re getting to really learn about running a business not just focusing on consumer, but also focus on government clients.

Tom Temin
Yeah I guess if you can navigate government contracting, you can certainly solve the problem of space debris. I don’t know which one is more difficult to overcome. But in that regard, you mentioned Victor the idea of lethal non trackable. If it’s non trackable, I guess maybe give us a basic foundation on what some possible solutions to lethal debris might be if you can’t track it.

Victor Tyne
Lethal trackable debris is lethal, but currently non trackable. And there are workarounds and solutions to that. This debris is non trackable from the ground with ground radar, because there are limits on the ability to see things from such a distance. And with atmospheric interference. There’s been a big push toward imaging in space of debris tick track, to try to be be able to see what’s historically been lethal and non trackable. And our approach is to do this, but to an unprecedented level in a distributed way. So leveraging technology that’s on a lot of satellites, specifically cameras that a lot of satellites use for other purposes, to track when small pieces of debris enter their field of vision, analyze its position and velocity, get information about where it is and what it is, and record that and keep a database of all this debris. And the reason we’re able to do this on such a large scale is because we’re tapping into cameras that are already on orbit throughout low earth orbit, rather than trying to send up hundreds, if not thousands of new cameras to try to see what we currently can’t.

Tom Temin
Launching clouds of new satellites, just for that purpose, in a sense, increases the risk, because when you let out a cluster of satellites, they don’t all make it. And some of them might turn into the debris that you’re trying to track.

Victor Tyne
And it’s also a huge cost. And it would be extremely costly to launch a large number of satellites, especially with the technology required to do this.

Tom Temin
So it sounds like it’s essentially a software approach, then because the hardware is already in space. And it’s a matter of programming what those cameras are doing to do something else.

Victor Tyne
Exactly. A software problem and a data problem of aggregating data that is either not currently being saved or not currently being collected and making it useful.

Tom Temin
And by the way, is it always imagery within the human visual spectrum, or are there other areas of the spectrum where because these things are small and moving so fast, they can be detected other than visually?

Victor Tyne
That’s a great question. These pieces of debris can be detected with radar and lidar and other things outside of the optical regime. In fact, one of the main ways debris is currently tracked is from the ground with radar. The reason we’re working with optical sensing in space is because those are the cameras that are currently widely used. And they actually do a very good job of seeing what we want to see. And some of these other methods like LiDAR, for example, doesn’t do as well with the distances that we’re working with.

Tom Temin
And getting back to the business side of it, are you accompany yet? And do you have a plan to make a company that could actually sell this technology to the Pentagon, as well as to commercial operators in space.

Brian Klein
We are a company, were incorporated. And we are working on making those connections to not just the Pentagon and other agencies but also commercial providers to that a lot of discussions with providers on what would make the technology interesting for them what they need to be interested in. And now we’re going to be doing the same with government agencies to the ATREX program.

The post This company is helping government satellite operators improve awareness of threats in low-earth orbit first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Army has a plan to no longer “fight the network.”

Through the Unified Network Operations (UNO), initiative, the Army wants to create an agile, software-defined network that is easy to set up and use. This is the opposite of what soldiers currently must deal with then setting up a tactical network that requires on-premise hardware, cables and unique knowledge and skillsets.

The Army is laying the groundwork for this new network set up under UNO in a new draft request for proposals that Lt. Col. Keith Jordan, the product manager for Tactical Cyber and NetOps, in the Army’s Program Executive Office Command Control Communications-Tactical (PEO-C3T) said will bring efficiency, ease of use and, most importantly, meet the needs of commanders more readily.

“There’s a time component of how long it takes to make the network operate. That’s a concern. But also, it’s a manpower issue. It’s specialized training and skills that our signal soldiers are required to have in order to make all these different components of network work, both from a hardware perspective, a cabling, a software interoperability issue perspective and troubleshooting. So there’s a lot of different factors that the soldiers have to go through to make the network work,” Jordan said in an exclusive interview with Federal News Network. “When they are having to do those tasks across multiple items, one-by-one, it does take a lot more time. And depending on a unit, you’re going to always have a degree of soldiers that have the right requisite training and the right requisite experience. So there’s always a little bit of inefficiency built into that model. What we’re looking to do through this is to really improve that inefficiency, and make it much more a much simpler task for those soldiers, especially if we’re not fully manned that at each unit to do that mission.”

PEO-C3T has been leading the UNO effort for the better part of two years and the draft RFP is the second piece of a three-pronged effort to create this new software-defined network.

Jordan said the draft solicitation, for which responses are due by July 17, will help inform its long term plans to bring in commercial technologies and take advantage of cloud services. PEO-C3T expects to issue a final RFP for this multiple award indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract in early 2025 and make awards in early 2026.

In the meantime, Jordan said the Army will soon award “several” other transaction agreements (OTAs) to examine prototypes of what UNO may look like.

“The Army acquisition executive last year decided that UNO would utilize the software acquisition pathway. This is a new pathway under the adaptive acquisition framework that really is focused on how we manage, contract and deliver software capability to the Army. It’s different than what we might typically see under the some of the older pathways. This really is a revolution of thinking in the Army of how we recognize that software is different than hardware and it needs to be procured differently,” he said on Ask the CIO. “Really, what that does is it allows us to deliver capability incrementally versus like a big bang where the product is done all at once. We recognize that this will not be done right off the bat, you’ll get updates to the capability over time and each time we make an update, the capability will get more and more mature, more and more capable. The whole idea is we’re able to rapidly make these updates versus in the past where it may take a really long time to make an update. We want to update very often based on feedback in whatever theater we might be operating in.”

Army testing prototypes through OTA

Through the OTA process, Jordan said vendors will demonstrate SDN capabilities that can bring together several disparate systems and handle a large number of users over a several month period.

He said the vendors will demonstrate the SDN capabilities in the lab and in the field so soldiers can provide real-time feedback and the contractors can add or change the network as required.

Jordan said “usability” and “simplicity” will be key concepts that the Army wants to see in the prototypes.

“We think by doing that we’re going to really get down to a good vendor, and then following that, we’re going to pursue a FAR-based contract that will allow a lot more vendors to get in the mix and be able to deliver various capabilities,” he said. “We don’t know how many vendors we’re going to end up with so that’s why the window [for timing] is a little bit difficult. But we think between late 2024 and 2025, we’ll be able to complete that [OTA award] process. Then as we go into the prototype phase, the idea would be that’s a little bit of a longer phase because there’ll be a downselect. We’re not going to take the same amount of vendors from the lab to the field. We’re going to take those vendors out to the field and that’ll be a little bit longer because what we do want to do is see their agile development process and we want to be able to see as a soldier provides feedback to a particular company, we want to see him make the changes that we’re looking for. It’s not just about the technology, it’s also going to be about the company’s ability to manage the process.”

Jordan said the network of the future will depend on agile and DevSecOps process, where signal soldiers will not have to have special skillsets.

The future network also will enable commanders to make faster and better decisions as data will be easier to get and use.

“We’ve had to fight the network for a long time. This will help us be able to get the network up and running efficiently, tailored to our mission needs and operationalize it,” Jordan said. “For industry, there’s going to be lots of opportunities inside UNO to deliver unique and value added capabilities to the network. We’re really excited because there is so many opportunities for businesses, both small and large, to deliver capability inside the network, around things that we haven’t even thought of yet that we may want. As long as our vendors are able to operate in a modular open system approach, and that we’re able to integrate capability into that architecture in a rapid and easy to do methodology, we’re really going to be successful.”

The post With UNO, Army intends to stop battling its own network first appeared on Federal News Network.

Senate Armed Services Committee leaders filed their version of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2025 on Monday, which was passed behind closed doors last month in a 22-3 vote. The bill is now heading to the Senate floor for consideration.

The legislation includes an amendment to a portion of Section 1521 of the defense bill for fiscal 2022, which centralizes the procurement of cyber products and services across the Defense Department. 

The fiscal 2022 defense bill states that the DoD components can’t independently purchase cyber services unless they can buy services at a lower per-unit price than what the DoD chief information officer office, which leads department-wide procurement of cyber services, offers. The components can also procure cyber services independently if the DoD CIO office approves the purchase.

If passed, the amendment included in the 2025 defense bill would allow DoD components to buy cyber services independently if they can demonstrate the “compelling need that the requirement of the product has due to its urgency, or to ensure product or service competition within the market.”

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), who has long expressed concern about the Defense Department’s increasing reliance on Microsoft for its cyber products, initiated the amendment.

“DoD CIO has used this authority to create a one-size-fits-all approach to all DoD components, causing serious concerns related to a single zero-day flaw being used to create massive disruptions across DoD’s networks. The amendment returns decision-making power back to DoD components, so they can adopt tailored cybersecurity approaches based on the threats they face,” the amendment summary shared with Federal News Network says.

In May, Schmitt, along with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), sent a letter to the Pentagon inquiring about the department’s push to implement Microsoft’s most expensive licenses, known as E5, across all components. The Pentagon already widely relies on Microsoft products and services but it has been considering mandating all components to upgrade to Microsoft’s E5 license as part of its effort to achieve the target level of zero trust by 2027.

“Although we welcome the department’s decision to invest in greater cybersecurity, we are deeply concerned that DoD is choosing not to pursue a multi-vendor approach that would result in greater competition, lower long-term costs and better outcomes related to cybersecurity,” Schmitt and Wyden wrote.

Another amendment, also spearheaded by Schmitt, would require companies that conduct software development in China to notify the Pentagon if they are required to disclose any software vulnerability to any Chinese agency, such as the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

“PRC security laws mandate that cyber companies with presences in China must report any flaw discovered to their government, potentially giving state-sponsored hackers a treasure trove of zero-day flaws to exploit. This bill would ensure that companies doing business with DoD that have presences in the PRC report the same information to their US-based arm as their PRC arm reports to the CCP government,” the summary of the amendment provided to Federal News Network reads.

The provision amends Section 855 of the fiscal 2022 defense policy bill and is identical to the Defense Technology Reporting Parity Act, which Schmitt filed on the floor prior to the 2025 defense policy bill.

The two amendments signal lawmakers’ growing concern about the Pentagons’ reliance on a single vendor for its cybersecurity products.

The fiscal 2025 defense policy bill authorizes a topline of $911.8 billion, which exceeds spending limits imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility Act passed last year.

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, voted against the legislation due to the funding increase that would break the spending caps.

“I regret that I needed to vote against passage of this bill because it includes a funding increase that cannot be appropriated without breaking lawful spending caps and causing unintended harm to our military. I appreciate the need for greater defense spending to ensure our national security, but I cannot support this approach,” Reed said in a statement.

The House passed its version of the defense bill last month, and the two chambers will have to negotiate to pass the bill before the end of 2024.

The post NDAA amendment to give more authority to DoD components to buy cyber products first appeared on Federal News Network.

• The troubled Air Force program to modernize aging nuclear missiles survives despite ballooning costs. Earlier this year, the Air Force’s Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program exceeded baseline cost estimates, triggering the Nunn-McCurdy Act. A breach occurs when the cost of a program grows by 25% unless the Defense Department proves that the program meets the criteria to continue. Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante determined that the program can continue despite soaring costs. The Sentinel program is now expected to cost $140.9 billion.
  (Air Force's Sentinel program survives as costs soar - Department of Defense)
• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is running into staffing problems for its marine operations. NOAA data shows high employee turnover among its mariner workforce, and that attrition has outpaced hiring in three of the past five years. The Government Accountability Office said problems with work-life balance, and high disqualification rates in medical screenings is hurting NOAA’s recruitment and retention efforts.
  (NOAA mariner recruitment and retention - Government Accountability Office)
• Want to be the National Institutes of Health's first permanent CIO in 18 months? Well, submit your resume and qualifications by July 11. NIH is trying for a second time to hire a permanent CIO since Andrea Norris retired in December 2022. For this senior executive service position, NIH said it wants someone to lead the IT and cybersecurity management for the agency. NIH changed the make up of its CIO's office soon after Norris retired, separating its CIO from the director of the Center for Information Technology to create two distinct positions after almost 25 years of combining the roles. Dennis Papula has been the acting CIO for the last 18 months.
  (NIH chief information officer - USAJobs)
• The Supreme Court overturned a 40-year-old precedent at the core of how federal agencies issue regulations. So what happens next? The court eliminated Chevron deference. It’s a legal precedent that required judges to defer to an agency’s interpretation of relevant laws when its regulations were challenged in court. The court further weakened agency rulemaking in two other recent decisions. Caroline Wolverton is former senior trial counsel for the Justice Department Civil Division’s Federal Programs Branch. She said the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are among the agencies that might see the most legal challenges, after the court’s ruling. “Those could be areas where you see upticks in litigation,” she said.
  (What does — and doesn’t — change for agencies after Supreme Court’s Chevron ruling - Federal News Network )
• There are 45 rule changes in the works for Federal Acquisition Regulations. The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs issued its semi-annual regulatory agenda detailing 25 acquisition regulations in the pre- or proposed rule stage and 20 in the final rule stage. Rules expected to be finalized this year include one from 2015 implementing reverse auction guidance and another from 2019 to bring procedures on suspension and debarment of contractors into closer alignment. The FAR Council is also expected to issue notices of proposed rulemaking to address organizational conflicts of interest, including contract clauses, and another about protecting controlled unclassified information in contracts.
  (The 2024 Spring Regulatory Agenda - Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs)
• The Department of Homeland Security is working with start-ups to boost the privacy of digital wallets. DHS’s Science and Technology Directorate has awarded contracts to six companies to work on the identity security effort. The vendors will develop technologies that protect the identity and security of people who use digital versions of credentials for immigration and travel. The initiative comes as more states have started to issue digital drivers licenses and other documents.
  (Homeland Security awards contracts to six startups to identify, develop, and implement privacy-enhancing digital wallets technologies - Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate)
• The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is getting some push back on its proposed cyber incident reporting rule. The Information Technology Industry Council said CISA should scale back the scope of its incident reporting regulation. The council is one of several tech industry groups that provided comments to CISA this month. ITI said the proposed rule could lead to over-reporting of cyber incidents and potentially bury the cyber agency with irrelevant data. CISA published the proposed incident reporting rule in March. The agency is expected to finalize the regulations by next year.
  (ITI comments responding to CIRCIA - Information Technology Industry Council)
• The Army is looking to refine requirements for its Unified Network Operations program. The service’s goal is to provide standardized and interoperable tools to support both tactical and enterprise environments. The Unified Network Operations program is central to the Army's efforts to modernize and unify its network operations. This request for information is open to all business types and responses are due by July 17. The service expects to issue the multiple award, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract in fiscal 2026.
  (Army seeks to refine requirements for Unified Network Operations program - SAM.gov)

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No, he’s not taking a swipe at the Dutch and their almost 800 year old tradition of creating clogs.

Rather, Skinner, whose tenure as DISA director will be ending as soon as the Senate confirms his replacement, Maj. Gen. Paul Stanton, who currently leads the Army’s Cyber Center of Excellence, is talking about wooden shoes as a metaphor for IT services offered through the DoDNet. The DoDNet is the network consolidation initiative under the $11 billion contract award under the Defense Enclave Services and Fourth Estate optimization initiatives.

“We take a best of breed offering, so let’s take identity, for example, or let’s take networking or let’s take applications, and we’re developing an application that is best for the enterprise. A lot of times services, and even some agencies, have, they say, unique requirements that they want to make sure that as part of this. Well, whenever you add a unique requirement to an enterprise solution, it’s suboptimizes that enterprise solution,” Skinner said during a press conference after speaking at the AFCEA TechNet Cyber conference on June 26. “So really, what we’re saying is, you have to change your processes to leverage this environment. Our focus, as a combat support agency, has to be on the combatant commands, who are the warfighters. So our focus is on them and the agencies because that’s what we’ve been tasked and that’s what our mission is. I would love to have the services consume more DISA services and capabilities, that would be great because then as the services and the service components are supporting those combatant commands, they are all leveraging the same capabilities.”

Skinner said the unique requirements that the military services say they need are those wooden shoes, where no two pairs are the same.

DISA taking on software licensing

A prime example of this wooden shoe problem is how the Defense Department set up the unclassified version of Office 365. Across all of DoD, there are 14 different and distinct tenants.

Skinner said DoD is not making that same mistake with the classified or secret version of O365 where everyone will use one instance.

“If you’re a Marine, for example, that is a working at the Marine Corps headquarters and then you go to Cyber Command, and you go to a joint tenant, you have to move your data and move your stuff to this new tenant versus it all being in one tenant already,” he said. “As we lay this framework of cloud identity, networking applications, it’s really for the greater good, and I would offer sometimes the organization’s need to change your process, even it’s just a little bit, to consume it versus saying, we have this unique requirement that and we’re going to use that as a as a reason for not supporting an enterprise capability.”

The other challenge is the cost of licensing the software in the distinct tenants. That issue came about under the DISA Defense Enterprise Office Solutions (DEOS) contract where software licenses could cost as much as 20% higher.

DISA is leading an effort to address this higher cost of software licenses as well as part of this overall DoDNet effort.

“I’m a big proponent of DoD purchasing power that if you’re using, we’ll just say Microsoft, for example, everybody should be paying the same price for the same capabilities, whether it’s Microsoft or ServiceNow [or any other provider]. But from a department standpoint, we have more purchasing power when we’re all aligned” he said. “Same thing to me from a collaboration interoperability standpoint, the more that we’re leveraging the same capabilities, the easier it is to be more proficient and quicker. If I’m a soldier, sailor, airman, Marine or guardian, who is a network operator, for example, and I’m going from a joint position to a service position and back to a joint position, if you’re using common capabilities, then you can be proficient faster as you go into that new position.”

DoDNet ready for expansion

Skinner said the DoD CIO’s board is working on three or four enterprise licenses deals to show the services the potential savings as a way to gain some traction for this effort.

“The other thing that we’re working with the department at the DoD level, is to say, ‘hey, for licenses, why don’t we just take it off the top?’ So instead of a service having to take it [out of their budget,] why don’t we just take it off the top and therefore services don’t have to worry about it?” Skinner said. “Well, as a service, I’m actually paying more than what I did before because they didn’t get as good a deal. But because I’m part of this enterprise license, let’s just take it off the top. So that’s another area that we’re working within the department.”

In the meantime, DISA continues to expand DoDNet and its capabilities.

Miguel Cerritos-Aracen, the DoDNet operations chief for DISA, said during an AFCEA TechNet Cyber panel that they are ready to expand beyond the three current customers, DISA, the Defense Technical Information Center and the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA).

Cerritos-Aracen said about he expects the 30,000 current users of common IT services on the unclassified and secret tenants to increase to more than 300,000 in the next year or so.

“Right now, we’re working with, for example, the Defense Media Activity, the Defense Contract Audit Agency, the Defense Contract Management Agency, Defense Microelectronics Activity and others,” he said. “That’s also why it’s so important that we take advantage of things of new technologies like automation and things of that nature. Our latest partners have actually brought in more solutions that have removed some of the legacy technologies of our environment, and actually allowed us to be on the precipice to be more advanced. In addition to that, some of the other achievements that we did just last year, as an example, is we did retire some legacy environments. For example, in DISA we had a corporate network called DISANet. I actually put to bed because we were able to move on into DoDNet.”

DISA’s Thunderdome included in DoDNet

Additionally, Cerritos-Aracen said by moving to DoDNet, its customers are now using Windows 11 across both unclassified and classified platforms, and are using new applications through O365 that they previously didn’t have access to and allows for more collaboration on the secret side.

Chad Buechel, a vice president for Leidos, which is the lead contractor for DoDNet, said at the end of May or early June, DoDNet reached initial operating capability for some of those new technologies and capabilities, such as virtual desktop-as-a-service and unified end point management, which lets DISA more effectively manage customer end points and protect them from cyber threats.

He said it’s all about making it easier for users to migrate and then use DoDNet.

DISA expects to continue to expand DoDNet to the combatant commands starting in fiscal 2026.

Cerritos-Aracen said DISA also is integrating its zero trust architecture under Thunderdome as part of DoDNet to include a secure access service edge (SASE) and software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) capabilities.

The post DISA’s Skinner not a fan of ‘wooden shoe’ IT services first appeared on Federal News Network.

There have been a lot of high profile cyber-related folks on the move recently with Chris DeRusha, the federal chief information security officer, leaving in May, and then Eric Goldstein, the executive assistant director for cybersecurity in the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the Homeland Security Department, announcing his departure two days later.

While DeRusha landed at Google as its director of global public sector compliance, Goldstein waited until last week to announce his next job. He will be the managing vice president and head of cyber risk at Capital One.

“As with any role, transitions are essential. I’m thrilled that my dear friend Jeff Greene has stepped into the leadership seat for the Cybersecurity Division — there is no one better suited for the role,” Goldstein wrote on LinkedIn. “And I’m equally delighted to be starting the next phase in my journey at Capital One, where I’m joining an amazing team that is transforming the financial sector through innovation, scalable risk management, and a laser focus on customer experiences. I’m looking forward to new perspectives while continuing on our shared mission of keeping our country’s critical services safe and resilient against cyber risks.”

Greene came to CISA in May from the Aspen Institute where he was senior director for the cybersecurity program.  Prior to that, he was the chief, of cyber response and policy at the White House’s National Security Council from 2021 to 2022. He also worked at the National Institute of Standards and Technology for five years, for Symantec and was a senior counsel for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee for three years.

Along with the top level changes in federal cybersecurity, two more cybersecurity executives headed out the door.

Ross Foard, as senior engineer in CISA’s cybersecurity division, retired after eight years at the agency where he lead efforts on identity security and helping to shape the continuous diagnostics and mitigation program.

“It was a rewarding experience over the last eight years, on par with the eight years I spent as a U.S. Navy submariner at the beginning of my career,” Foard wrote on LinkedIN. “I have been honored to serve as a subject expert and elevate identity and access management (IdAM) and cryptographic capabilities across the federal civilian executive branch (FCEB) and beyond.”

Among the areas Foard helped lead included serving as CISA’s CDM program lead engineer and architect for IdAM capabilities.

He said this helped the CDM program provide identity management and privileged management capabilities to the largest federal agencies and establish the ability to understand who authorized users were by creating a master user record at each agency.

Additionally, Foard served on the Federal Mobility Group (FMG) Mobile Security Working Group, where he helped demonstrate how mobile devices can serve as important and secure sources of identity and enable phishing-resistant authentication.

Finally, Foard highlighted his time as the co-chairman on the Federal CISO council’s ICAM subcommittee.

White House leaders heading back to academia

Jake Braun is a fourth federal cyber leader to move on over the last two months. Braun, the acting principal deputy national cyber director in the White House’s Office of the National Cyber Director, is returning to the University of Chicago where he is a lecturer and on the faculty of the Harris School of Public Policy.

Braun was the executive director of the cyber policy initiative from March 2018 to February 2021 where he joined DHS as a senior advisor to the Management Directorate, which oversees all operations for the department.

He has been working at ONCD since June 2023 as what some would call the functional chief operating officer for the office where he oversaw the implementation of the national cybersecurity strategy.

“Helping run a startup in the White House has been one of the best experiences of my professional career. ONCD has accomplished so much in such a short period of time,” Braun said in an email statement. “I can’t thank the team at ONCD — especially Director [Harry] Coker and Kemba Walden — as well as President [Joe] Biden enough for giving me this opportunity.”

At the recent AFCEA TechNet Cyber conference, Braun spoke about the changes to ONCD over the last year, including growing to almost 100 people.

“One of the main things we are doing, and we haven’t had this before where there is one agency or White House office like ourselves whose sole job is driving federal cohesion on cybersecurity. We do that through implementation of the national cyber strategy. Nearly every agency in the federal government has some aspect of cybersecurity tied to their part of the Implementation of the national cyber strategy,” Braun said.

In a statement, Coker praised Braun’s dedication and efforts to improve the nation’s cybersecurity posture.

“From the beginning of the Biden-Harris administration, and even earlier, Jake Braun has been a fierce advocate for our Nation’s cybersecurity. At every opportunity, I’ve seen Jake be a champion for the implementation of the National Cybersecurity Strategy, rallying ONCD and our mission partners to collaboratively focus on achieving meaningful outcomes. I am especially grateful for Jake’s advocacy and action on behalf of our nation’s critical infrastructure owners and operators, helping them learn about and take advantage of the resources wisely allocated through the President’s investing in America agenda,” Coker said. “Along the way, Jake repeatedly heard organizations tell us they need two things: resources and trained workers. In every meeting, in every engagement, his focus on having an impact for those on the front lines of our nation’s cybersecurity has been unwavering — that’s leadership. I personally am grateful to Jake for not only his incredible leadership while he’s been here at ONCD, but also his guidance and friendship.”

Outside of the cybersecurity realm, one other federal technology leadership retirement that is worth mentioning. Terryne Murphy, who had been the chief information officer of the Railroad Retirement Board since August 2019, retired after more than 35 years of federal service.

“To my leaders along the way, thank you — I learned so much from you. Thank you for every opportunity to stretch and to grow, for your counsel, your cover, and your patience while I learned to get better at leading/serving!” Murphy wrote on LinkedIN. “To my colleagues, teammates, and my classmates, thank you — I learned so much from you, too. Thank you for the challenges and the tough lessons to always strive to take the high road and to give back better than what we received! I did my best to serve you all well.”

Rich Kramer is the deputy CIO for the RRB, but it’s unclear if he stepped into the acting role with Murphy’s retirement.

Along with her time at RRB, Murphy also worked at the Commerce Department for 18 months serving as the acting CIO for seven of those months.

She began her career with the Army as a telecommunications officer and after nearly 12 years of service, Murphy joined the civilian sector working at the Justice Department, the Homeland Security Department and the Census Bureau.

Beyond these departures, there are several federal executives who have found new roles in government.

For starters, Mike Wetklow, the deputy CFO for the National Science Foundation for the last eight years, is taking a new job at the IRS as its chief risk officer.

“I am excited to join an organization dedicated to public service and to help drive innovation, leverage data, and improve compliance processes,” Wetklow wrote on LinkedIn. “Most importantly, I look forward to collaborating with the talented team at the IRS and contributing to an environment where we can all thrive.

Wetklow also worked at the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Federal Financial Management for four years as a branch chief and previously worked at DHS and the Government Accountability Office.

He also was the co-chairman of the CFO Council’s working group on improving the federal financial management workforce.

New leaders at HHS, Air Force

A second federal executive heading into a new job is Melissa Bruce, who is taking over as the deputy assistant secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services Program Support Center (PSC).

She joins HHS PSC after spending the last four years working in the Treasury Department’s Special Inspector General for Troubled Asset Relief Program. (SIGTARP) office. Bruce has been acting IG for the last 2-plus years. Previously, she spent 10 years at DHS in the management directorate and worked in the private sector.

Bruce takes over PSC after several turbulent years, including the cut back of its assisted acquisition services and controversial treatment of its leadership.

Finally, Darek Kitlinski is the new chief technology officer for the Air Force’s Manpower, Personnel and Services (A1). He comes to the service after spending the last almost two years as the chief of the cloud services division for the Army’s Enterprise Cloud Management Agency.

In this new role, Kitlinski serves as the senior civilian advisor on cloud computing, computer systems and information technology.

Kitlinski also has been CTO for the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) and chief technology advisor for enterprise architecture, cloud, cyber and governance for the Coast Guard.

The post People on the move: RRB CIO retires, IRS gets new CRO first appeared on Federal News Network.

“Ninety percent of the time, don’t do it. It’s the easy button. But using [large language models] like Chat GPT or Gemini — that is boiling the ocean to make yourself a cup of coffee. You don’t have the compute resources to run effective LLMs down at the tactical edge,” Stephen Riley, who is part of the  Army engineering team at Google, said during an Association of the U.S. Army event Tuesday.

The Army generates a vast amount of data due to its large number of personnel and extensive range of operations, making the service one of the largest AI users among the military branches. But having a lot of data does not mean Army leaders can get actionable insights from it.

“I say there’s too much damn data out there. We can’t overload our warfighters and our leaders with too much data,” said Young Bang, the principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology.

Google, for example, improved the quality of search results long before the advent of large language models, and the Army could apply similar methods to how it handles its large swaths of data, said Riley. 

One way the tech giant worked to improve search results was by analyzing which search results were clicked on most often and identifying which results were most useful to the most users.

Additionally, the company developed a knowledge graph that “represents  widely accepted truths and relationships.” This approach helps ground search results in established knowledge, which subsequently requires less computational power than LLMs.

“Now we’ve got two things working in tandem. We’ve got what’s been most useful to the most people and we’ve got what is actually a good result because it conforms with generally accepted truth. All of this doesn’t require LLMs. So how do we do this with the Army? Let’s start building a knowledge graph of things that are true for the Army,” said Riley.

“We don’t need to train a gigantic LLM with all of the ADPs and FMs and say, ‘All right, we’ve got a model.’ You could actually encode all of those ADPs, all the operations stuff, all the intel stuff — we could encode that into a knowledge graph, which requires infinitely less compute power. That’s something you could deploy forward on a pretty small box. I encourage everybody to look first at the old ways of doing things. They tend to be more efficient. I got to think a little harder about how to implement them. But it’s a lot more efficient and it’s very doable.”

Bang said that while LLMs are useful for general purposes, using them in combination with small language models for specific military terms, military jargon, cyber terms or other specific languages would provide better results for soldiers. 

“Do you really need LLMs and SLMs at the edge? No. If you use that and overlay a knowledge graph, I think that’s a much better practical implementation of things. Because we can’t afford all the computing resources that we’re going to need to process all that or do the training on it or even the retraining or the inference at the edge,” said Bang. 

But the concern is that malicious actors can potentially overload existing data sets with misinformation, which would lead to a shift in what’s considered a commonly accepted truth or knowledge. Riley said that’s why it’s important to have humans in the loop. “We cannot abdicate human reasoning to the machines.”

“You could theoretically overload it and start shifting truth in on a given access to some degree. But as we index stuff, the data that we index is also run through the current knowledge graph. But we also have humans in the loop; we are watching what’s going on with the trends, with the shifting of the Overton window there,” said Riley.

Poisoned datasets

When using AI datasets, particularly for training large language models, malicious actors don’t have to poison the whole dataset. Compromising even a small piece of a server will introduce bad data that will contaminate the overall training dataset. That’s why the military services acquiring AI models and data sets from the commercial world should “demand to see where the data came from.”

“Google ain’t going to tell you. Demand it of us anyway. Microsoft ain’t going tell you. Demand it anyway. We have already seen cases where companies building large LLMs have sourced data from other companies that say they have a bunch of data. And it turns out they source from other companies that are given some pretty bad stuff. Maybe not deliberate misinformation, but stuff that absolutely would not comply with our nation or Army values.  In all cases, demand to see where that data came from. And don’t stop until they tell you,” said Riley.

“We’ve talked about this data bill of materials. Famously, after Solar Winds, people are asking for a software bill of materials. We must develop some kind of data bill of materials and make that it’s a standard part of acquisition of these AI systems. We’ve got to do it because we’re already seeing this problem whether you know it or not.”

The post Army faces data overload but LLMs are not the answer first appeared on Federal News Network.

Service members are often part of two-income families. But spouses face the continual difficulty of establishing themselves when the service member gets relocated. Now the Army has schootched up its reimbursement policy for those spouses to, in the Army’s words, promote career continuity and military readiness. Joining the Federal Drive with Tom Temin with details, Army program analyst Steve Yearwood.

Interview Transcript:  

Tom Temin  Well, what’s going on here, you are reimbursing spouses. But there’s more to it than simply reimbursement. There’s also other enhancements to help them with licensing and so on, as they move from place to place.

Steve Yearwood  That’s correct. This policy change means quite a bit to military spouses. It allows military spouses to have their professional licenses and business costs reimbursed, which makes it easier for them to continue work in their chosen field or profession as a result of these frequently move, but more importantly, it promotes career continuity, financial stability, and professional fulfillment.

Tom Temin  When someone moves, what has been the policy, say they have a license for Real Estate license, or it could be a cosmetician type of license. We’re talking generally state licensing fees, that kind of that type of thing.

Steve Yearwood  Yes, we’re talking state licensing fees. So for example, a military spouse, maybe a lawyer or dentist and have to get a license renewed recertified, when they move to another state, whatever fee they’re paid, the Army will reimburse them up to $1,000, for that recertification of that license.

Tom Temin  And was there no reimbursement before this? Or did the reimbursement that was there get raised.

Steve Yearwood  So in the FY 18, National Defense Authorization Act, that’s when the policy what the law should say, came out that reimburse spouses for $500. Then the following year, subsequently, it was increased to $1,000. And that stayed pretty much static until the FY 2003 NDAA when they added business costs to the existing law. So this policy included both those changes for licensure reimbursement, and also business costs.

Tom Temin  So in other words, an individual could get as much as 2000 in a relocation 1000 for the license and up to 1000 for whatever costs are incurred.

Steve Yearwood  That’s correct. That’s correct. And that’s the benefit of this policy to help streamline the process. What are these military spouses, so they understand the benefit that they will receive as a result of these frequent moves?

Tom Temin  Do we have any sense of how often this happens in a year? I mean, relocations are 10s of 1000s. How many people do we know apply each year for reimbursement or relicensing fees?

Steve Yearwood  Right, the data that we do have and we’ve been tracking this initiative since the inception. So going back to 2019, when we published our policy as a result of the NDAA in 18. So since that inception, we have reimbursed military spouses just for licenses. reimbursement, I will say in excess of 750 spouses have filed for claims.

Tom Temin  So it’s not a vast number, but I guess it really matters to those that do file for claims.

Steve Yearwood  Yes, it doesn’t matter because again, this reimbursement is taxable. So it becomes, you know, tax. So for example, if a military spouse file for reimbursement of $500, reimbursement that $500 will be taxed, and the soldier is the one who’s filing on behalf of their military spouse.

Tom Temin  All right, good to know, we’re speaking with Steve Yearwood. He’s an Army program analyst in the Directorate of prevention, resilience and readiness. And just a question on licensing. State license fees probably vary widely. And I imagine within a given number of professions, you mentioned dentists, for example, I imagine that’s a much higher licensing fee than say someone that wants to do manicures, do you have that sense of what each state costs for various things.

Steve Yearwood  I don’t have what each state costs. However, we do have resources that kind of leads spouses through the different resources. So if they’re getting ready to move to a new state, they can actually go and see what those requirements are, because although there’s a reimbursement fee, there may be some other requirements that may preclude them from obtaining that license and affecting the reimbursement fees. But again, those fees can be reimbursed even for a recertification, whatever the cost is, as long as doesn’t exceed the $1000. So to your point, yes. We have several military spouses file in excess of 2000 in some professions, but again, the reimbursement is the max is up to $1,000. And again, that $1,000 being taxed.

Tom Temin  And are you aware of any states for example, that maybe give a little extra boost Maybe if what the person is bringing to the state doesn’t have an exact match with the requirements, they’ll nevertheless grant it because the person is part of the military permanent change of station. Do the states ever give a little bit of leniency to military member spouses?

Steve Yearwood  Yes. And one of the key points I want to make here to this question is that we the army, works with the defense State Liaison Office, whose primary function is to work with state legislators to help military spouses in regards to licenses and recognizing their licenses, expediting the process, limiting the number of paperwork. So that’s what we do within the Army to work with the state liaison office to help guide that effort. And that’s a continuous effort that the Defense State Liaison Office does. But identifying specifically what state requires or what they’re doing. I don’t we don’t have that information readily available. But it’s something that we can definitely, you know, provide at a later time if necessary.

Tom Temin  Yeah, you’ve got the career onestop site that kind of guides them to that information, I guess.

Steve Yearwood  yes, we do have a page on our website, or quality of life webpage, specifically for Spouse Employment. And on that landing page, there spouses can see the resources and information on the process for filing a claim, subsequently, the policy is there. And they can also review the policy. But again, any questions they have, they are directed to go to their installation, employment readiness office, most installations, have one of those offices and those individuals will be able to help and guide those spouses and navigate them through this process, as well.

Tom Temin  And we’ve been talking about an army program, do you have any collaboration or information sharing, say, with the Navy and the Air Force that probably have similar issues?

Steve Yearwood  Yes. So I collaborate quite a bit with my service counterparts. And one of the things we did in regards to the policy, we actually did some collaboration to see how each service is primarily interpreting the law. So what we found is that I’m not going to speak because of the Navy and the Air Force is the ones that we was engaged with quite a bit. Their policy was similar to what our policies were. So we all were consistent in our messaging, and interpretation, where we do collaborate quite often with our services when it comes to the license reimbursement or business costs.

Tom Temin  And before we let you go, I just wanted to ask you to comment on something the Army said in the statement, and that this is not just about income, but also professional fulfillment, talent, retention, and support of military readiness, in the grand sense.

Steve Yearwood  Yes, so army spouses, as we know supports the soldier, which is essential to ensuring their soldier success and continuous service. And in return, you know, the Army is committed to helping these military spouses achieve their goals. And this is a benefit part of the Army’s ongoing effort to improve the quality of life, you know, financial stability and Army families. But last point is that when we talked about retention is also a key factor and a multiplier when we talked about ensuring the spouses continue their job, when they move from one location to another and not creating a financial gap I should state when it comes to PCS move. So in summary, this policy enhances that ability for the continuity of spouses promoting their careers. It also provided, like I mentioned earlier on professional fulfillment.

The post The Army moves to make spouses financial lives more viable first appeared on Federal News Network.

BALTIMORE — The Defense Department’s Joint Chiefs of Staff is getting on the artificial intelligence bandwagon.

The J6 recently completed a review of potential generative AI use cases to improve internal processes and now are deciding the next steps toward implementation.

Lt. Gen. Todd Isaacson, the director for command, control, communications, computers and cyber and the chief information officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff/J-6, said at the AFCEA TechNet Cyber conference that the 90-day sprint looked at commercial generative AI tools and large language models that are already available to improve internal processes, such as a task or contract award.

“The second purpose was to then determine how we could potentially organize the Joint Staff and determine whether or not we wanted to stand up a Joint Staff chief data and AI officer (CDAO), which we have not yet determined, but is informed by the work that was done,” Isaacson said in an interview with Federal News Network. “Then, how do we endure the kinds of use cases that we had already put tools and capabilities in place? The final piece is how do we train teammates that when they come on board to utilize generative AI tools that are available, and institutionalize those? That’s the big idea behind the sprint. Now we’re in the reflection phase and getting ready to report back to leadership to determine what were the next set of a series of steps.”

Isaacson said the review team started with four use cases, but ended up completing eight as interest and excitement over the effort grew. He said the team has another 10 waiting for review. He added when the call went out for volunteers for the task force, the response was overwhelming, showing how much interest there is to use the GenAI tools.

The use cases were focused on how the GenAI tools could improve how action officers conduct analysis of large volumes of information, particularly historical financial, personnel and logistics data.

“There’s a lot of information to cull through so can you leverage LLMs to cull down the important components to maintain situational awareness on big items like that?” he said. “Those were largely internal. We didn’t use it for an intelligence function. We did it largely for internal joint staff keeping the conveyor belt moving kind of processes.”

Is a Joint Staff CDAO in the works?

Several military agencies and services are starting to take a deeper look at GenAI. The Air Force, for example, in May opened up a GenAI platform to airmen and civilians to use. Called the Non-classified Internet Protocol Generative Pre-training Transformer (NIPRGPT), the service hopes it can help with tasks such as coding, correspondence and content summarization, all on the service’s unclassified networks.

At the same time, Army CIO Leo Garciga is developing a new policy around GenAI and LLMs with a focus on data protection and the creation of guardrails for the interaction between the government and industry.

Over the next 60 days, the J6 review team will create recommendations for the J-6 leaderships to decide next steps.

Isaacson said the recommendations also will include whether creating a CDAO would be beneficial for the organization. DoD stood up its CDAO in February 2022.

“We’re going to have a conversation about if we want to organize ourselves in a different way to include an organic CDAO and whether or not we would find that valuable,” he said. “Into the fall, we would then be able to gain momentum based upon the decisions that are made. Currently, we have a CIO, which I perform. We have a CDO, which belongs to the Joint Staff/J6. That’s our current organization, but we saw the opportunity of the GenAI Task Force to take ourselves to task to determine through learning and doing if we wanted to establish a Joint Staff CDAO or not. It might be, we can’t make the investment because we’re not getting any larger. It might be, ‘hey, we definitely want to invest in it and this is how we’re going to do it.’ But nothing has been predetermined in that regard.”

The GenAI effort is part of a broader digital transformation effort across the J6.

Isaacson said his office issued a digital transformation campaign plan that outlines four levels of effort.

• People
• Infrastructure
• Tools and capabilities
• Rapid adoption

“The people piece is how do we develop, maintain and attract a digitally-enabled workforce. This is something that we are supremely focused on, and we appreciate the insights that industry could help us to make our pursuits more attractive in terms of best practice,” he said. “The second is the infrastructure. We partner very, very closely with the Defense Information Systems Agency, Joint Force Headquarters, DoD Information Network (JTHQ-DoDIN) partners to set the theater, set the conditions and set the enterprise. We rely very heavily as a joint force on that enterprise, and the investments for this data-centric pivot is laying a burden on the enterprise and the infrastructure.”

The GenAI review sprint falls into the third level of effort around adopting tools and capabilities. Isaacson said the use of data analytics and other emerging tools and capabilities need to lead to the J6 receiving better and more timely insights as part of its goal to achieve global information dominance.

Finally around rapid adoption, Isaacson said the DoD doesn’t necessarily move fast enough to take advantage of new or emerging technologies.

“We’re doing it better than we used to, and we are continuing to endeavor to make it better as we partner with our industry partners,” he said. “When you think about, say 10 or 15 years ago, when we would deliver a capability, oftentimes there was a tremendous learning curve that went along with it. These days the extraordinary innovation in digital awareness that our service members have, we’re able to deliver capability to them very quickly. But also, they become incredibly familiar with it right away and provide the feedback that I think is an important part. So having digital natives in our services give us a competitive advantage.”

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The Defense Department’s new strategy, which links its high-level strategic documents and the supporting strategies, represents the department’s shift toward leveraging information technology as a critical strategic enabler.

Dubbed Fulcrum: The DoD’s IT Advancement Strategy, the document will serve as the north star for the department’s IT goals and objectives for fiscal 2025-2029. At the forefront of this approach is user experience, and the strategy succinctly lays out how to measure progress during the implementation of Fulcrum.

“Fulcrum crystallizes the department’s vision into what success looks like for the next five years,” DoD Principal Deputy CIO Leslie Beavers told reporters during a media roundtable on Tuesday. 

“I want it to get all the way down to the individual program managers and have them adjust their day-to-day decisions of how they run their programs and as they’re solving their problems to make sure that they do it in a way that works interoperably across the department and with the end user in mind. So in order to do that, we’ve tried to clearly articulate the vision of what success looks like.”

Savan Kong, the deputy CIO for information enterprise, said he wants Fulcrum to be a resource that military and civilian components continuously turn to as they plan, build, and deliver user-friendly and adaptable capabilities to warfighters.

“In the department, we write a lot of documents. What I would like specifically for Fulcrum is to have it be a good partner and a good tool for all of our partners across the department so that they can keep on referencing it continuously over and over again, and that they can lean on when they’re actually having conversations about the decisions they need to make and the things they need to do in the coming future. So if I had to choose anything, I would love for Fulcrum to be that partner,” Kong said during the roundtable.

The strategy, signed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, was unveiled by Beavers at the AFCEA TechNet Cyber conference on Tuesday.

The CIO office formed a writing team of 40 authors from across the department, including the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, the Joint Staff and all the military services to put together the document. 

“I think one of the more important pieces of this whole exercise of producing Fulcrum is making sure that we had representatives in the room that actually represent the warfighter to the greatest possible extent,” said Kong.

“Unlike some of the other documents that are more functional-based, ours has a very different approach. We tried to get as close to the users as possible. And we tried to really engage with them to the foundation of what they were seeing from a day-to-day basis and bring that back into the fold of what you see now.”

The document is organized around four lines of effort, including:

• LOE1: Providing Joint Warfighting IT capabilities that are functional, scalable, sustainable and secure.
• LOE2: Modernizing information networks by leveraging best-in-class technology and a data-centric zero trust cybersecurity approach.
• LOE 3: Optimizing IT governance to gain efficiencies in capability delivery, enable cost savings and streamline policies from governance all the way to acquisition systems. 
• LOE 4: Cultivating a premier digital workforce capable of deploying emerging technologies to the warfighter.

“If I had to sum up what Fulcrum is like, it describes the What with regards to IT advancement and the Why it matters,” said Kong. 

Each line of effort lays out the vision, strategic objectives and metrics to track progress. 

The CIO office plans to release an implementation plan that will come out later this summer. Beaver said her team is also putting together a document that will lay out specific objectives and key results for the components to use.

“If you’re sitting in a program or a service and you’re like, ‘My cloud is doing well, but I want to up my game in my workforce area — what specific things should I do?’ We give you something to start with so you’re not starting with a blank piece of paper. Those are two very important documents that are going to come out this summer,” said Beavers. 

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The Navy Department’s “Black Pearl” software factory program is making headway on partnering with customers across the department, as it looks to move its services into the realm of classified networks.

Manuel Gauto, chief engineer for Black Pearl, said in an early June interview that the program has gotten “unclassified down,” with the software factory accredited up to “impact level five” data, which includes controlled unclassified information and national security systems.

Now, Black Pearl is looking to get accredited for “impact level six” so it can work with secret-level classified workloads.

“So the folks who aren’t able to operate on unclassified [networks] also have an option,” Gauto said on Federal News Network.

In the few years since it was established, Black Pearl has worked with a range of organizations to deliver DevSecOps software practices, including the program executive office for integrated weapon systems, which runs the Navy’s Aegis Weapon System platform.

Black Pearl is also helping the Rapid Autonomy Integration Lab in their mission to deliver unmanned naval vessels.

“We’re kind of pretty pervasive at this point,” Gauto said.

Navy’s ATO journey

But as it seeks IL-6 authorization, perhaps the most important partnership the Black Pearl program has developed is with the authorizing officials at organizations across the Navy. The offices that grant or deny authority-to-operate packages are often seen as a barrier to new technologies, including agile software development services.

Gauto said his initial approach with authorizing offices was “less diplomatic” as the program worked to gain ATOs.

“Now, we’ve brought in a lot more people,” Gauto said. “We have a cyber team on Black Pearl. We’ve built relationships with the authorizing official team. They now work together to figure out how to get to ‘yes.’ It’s much less adversarial.”

Still, Gauto said he would choose security over compliance “11 times out of ten.” He said policy often lags behind technology and threats, meaning Black Pearl has to go above and beyond to ensure its internal systems stay secure, while also working with their customers to secure their software environments.

But Gauto said he believes authorizing officials have the “best interests of the Navy at heart.”

“They want the Navy to be better,” Gauto said. “They want the Navy to be secure. But they also are custodians of this process that has been built upon for a long time now. So we kind of have to slowly guide them into alignment with the newer technologies that are coming out. And I think that’s where we’ve had success.”

The program has also developed guidance for Navy organizations to make it easier to talk with authorizing officials about software containers, Kubernetes, the cloud and other leading edge technologies, Gauto said.

Black Pearl’s ‘Shipyard’

Black Pearl is now developing a new offering called “Shipyard” that Gauto said is “our software factory for delivering to the cloud.”

“It will be the policies and procedures, it will be the rules for the code scanners, it will be a little dashboard or something that’s like, ‘you are good to go or you are not good to go because XYZ,’” Gauto said.

Black Pearl has also developed services that help translate cybersecurity data into “a tool that authorizing officials are familiar with,” Gauto said.

“That’s kind of an intermediate step,” he said. “Let’s at least start leveraging the data and make them comfortable with where the data is coming from. And then we can have a conversation around, okay, well, maybe you can take the data in it’s less transformed form because it actually has even more information that may be more helpful for you. And that’s where we’re really focused. It’s having those conversations with the authorizing officials and in a way, negotiating what they want to see on behalf of the community.”

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In congressional testimony Wednesday, DCSA Director David Cattler said the Defense Department this spring initiated a 90-day recovery plan for the NBIS program, which is charged with delivering new IT capabilities to support the background investigation mission. Cattler took over as director of DCSA in March. He has said addressing NBIS delays is one of his top priorities.

“With the help of our partners in the department and the [Government Accountability Office], we developed a recovery plan to fix these problems including NBIS’s cost, its delivery schedule and its overall performance,” Cattler said during Wednesday’s hearing before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee’s government operations subcommittee. “And outcome of the recovery plan is initial 18-month capability roadmap for NBIS development.”

“To be clear, NBIS development will extend beyond the next 18 months. But I’m confident with this path forward to reset the program,” he added.

NBIS is a key component in the White House-led “Trusted Workforce 2.0” personnel vetting reform initiative. But NBIS is years behind schedule and more than $600 million over budget. DoD planned to deliver all new NBIS capabilities by 2019. But so far, the program has delivered a limited set of new capabilities, including a new “e-application” portal for security clearance applicants.

Cattler said out of the $1.35 billion spent on NBIS so far, approximately $800 million has gone toward new software development, while the remainder has gone to sustaining legacy background investigation systems.

“So we need to prioritize the retirement of the legacy software systems with the thought of how much they cost,” Cattler said. “And ideally, sunset the programs that cost the most at the earliest opportunity, if the technology will allow us to do so.”

Last August, GAO reported for the second time in three years on issues with NBIS, including funding shortfalls due to shifting priorities at DCSA, as well as an unreliable schedule and cost estimate.

Alissa Czyz, director of defense capabilities management at GAO, told the House subcommittee that “DoD was not always listening” to the issues GAO raised regarding NBIS. But she said GAO is “encouraged by recent leadership changes” at DCSA.

“I can’t emphasize enough that [DoD] needs to embrace key program management principles, like having a reliable schedule and cost estimate,” Czyz said. “Without these, programs will continue to suffer setbacks.”

Cattler also said he was committed to working with GAO and other oversight entities. The Pentagon’s acquisition and sustainment office is now the milestone decision authority for NBIS. And Cattler has also asked DCSA’s inspector general to audit the NBIS program.

“I’m committed to building a culture of accountability at DCSA that was lacking in the program,” Cattler said. “Simply and directly: the delay in fielding NBIS is unacceptable to everyone.”

NBIS in the cloud

By the end of June, Cattler said DCSA aims to gain approval for updated acquisition, requirements and program documents for NBIS.

In written testimony, he said DCSA would prioritize five actions over the next 18 months: “modernizing and migrating NBIS applications, aligning acquisition and development actions, adapting our NBIS workforce, aligning program cost and service pricing, and strengthening cybersecurity protections.”

Once the new program plan is approved, Cattler said he will direct DCSA to migrate select systems to cloud services provided through DoD’s Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract.

“This will give NBIS a stable, modern platform, security, the ability to scale and will provide application developers and investigative service providers access to modernize to their specific needs,” Cattler explained in written testimony. “In time, this move will allow for shared services.”

DCSA is also focused on restructuring the NBIS team and retraining the program’s workforce. The agency recently hired both a new program executive officer and NBIS program manager.

“We’ve had a lot of advice on who else to hire, who else to bring in,” Cattler said. “For example, user experience experts, [and] people that can help us a little bit more with data architecture. We sent our people out for agile training. We’ve had over 140 receive updated training and agile methods for software development. And we sent some of the program management staff over to the Defense Acquisition University as well, for further training on program management related skills.”

DCSA is also working on a new cost estimate for the NBIS program. Cattler said the agency would also get a separate, independent cost estimate for the updated program.

Czyz applauded DCSA’s new efforts, but said the agency needs to demonstrate more rigor in its planning going forward.

“We are looking forward to seeing the new roadmap and plans,” she said. “But I will say that we have reviewed multiple NBIS roadmaps over the years. And none of them had reliable schedules. In fact, we did a review in 2021. It was unreliable. In our 2023 report, when we re-looked at the new roadmap and new schedule, it was actually worse than the 2021 [plan]. So it’s great that new plans are being formed. But it’s essential that you follow best practices for integrated master schedules to get the plan right, or else we’re just going to keep repeating this over and over.”

The post DCSA has a new roadmap for delayed background investigation IT system first appeared on Federal News Network.