DHS’ Greg Capella on open source trends in government

Greg Capella, deputy executive director at the Enterprise System Development Office of the Office of the CIO at the Department of Homeland Security, highlights some of the open source trends in government in this FedScoopTV interview.

NASA seeks transformative tech proposals

NASA is looking for the next big idea.

Its Space Technology Mission Directorate, through the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, is accepting proposals for concepts and ideas with the potential to revolutionize aerospace endeavors.

NIAC Phase 1 proposals offer up to $100,000 for nine months of study to advance NASA’s mission and enhance innovative space technology concepts. These concepts, in previous years, have covered technological areas that fall into NIAC’s portfolio, such as autonomous exploration, revolutionary construction and aerospace transportation, are intended to help NASA meet current operational and future mission requirements.

“It’s through visionary thinking that transformative ideas go from concept to reality,” said Michael Gazarik, NASA’s associate administrator for space technology in Washington. “Our NIAC program provides an onramp for early stage technology concepts to take seed and potentially create revolutionary new capabilities for space exploration that might one day change how we live and work as we explore the cosmos.”

In previous NIAC phase 1 proposals, ideas have gone as far as using electromagnets to protect spacecraft from radiation or the application of terrestrial ocean-exploring concepts for extremely low-power exploration of under-ice oceans, according to the NASA release.

To submit a phase-one proposal, send in a short proposal, three pages or less, by Dec. 18. After reviewing them, NASA will invite proposal concepts of interest to submit a full proposal of eight pages or less by March 2014.

Proposals are selected based on peer review of the technical strength, potential impact and benefits of the proposed study. These concepts are typically infantile in development and most are 10 years or more from operation.

Leadership changes at VA’s cybersecurity office

Don Sheehan, the longtime director of business continuity at the Department of Veterans Affairs, left the agency Nov. 8 for a position in the private sector, FedScoop has learned.

Sheehan, who joined the VA’s Office of Information Security in 2003, is credited with successfully leading the VA’s emergency response to Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, and is considered to have been “a driving force” in the creation of the VA Trusted Internet Connection gateways, according to an email obtained by FedScoop from deputy assistant secretary for OIS, Stanley Lowe.

Sheehan also served as VA’s representative to the National Communications System and the Executive Branch Cyber Unified Coordination Group.

“Always the team player, Don stepped up as the acting ADAS of security operations when Chris [Wlaschin] left over the summer,” Lowe said in the email.

Sheehan has taken a position as vice president of cybersecurity solutions at Accelera Solutions Inc., a Fairfax, Va.-based virtualization company. Ken Savoie, a business manager with VA’s capital region data center, will take Sheehan’s place as acting director of business continuity, Lowe said.

Lowe also announced Donald Modder has taken over as the new chief of staff for OIS. Modder is a former program manager for product development at VA.

“Don brings a wealth of experience in project management helping organizations ‘get things done,'” Lowe said. “As chief of staff, he will work to improve collaboration, continuity, and efficiency throughout OIS.”

FedWire: Astronomical data, 100 days of science and drought preparedness

FedWire is FedScoop’s afternoon roundup of news and notes from the federal IT community. Send your links and videos to tips@fedscoop.com.

NIST is looking for public comment on the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation.

NASA issues call for advanced technology concepts.

NOAA announces new partnership to prepare for droughts.

Obama meets with senior military leaders.

Hagel praises Stratcom organization at change of command.

An unmanned helicopter sets record.

Investing in American transportation.

One hundred days of EPA science.

Astronomical data from the Library of Congress

Technica’s John Robinson on open source opportunities

John “JR” Robinson, principal consultant of the DISA STAX Program at Technica Corporation, talks with FedScoopTV about some of the opportunities with open source adoption.

DISA ‘reassessing’ major cloud contract

It turns out the cloud cover over the Pentagon may not be as thick or as high as the Defense Department’s network planners and contractors had hoped it would be.

The Defense Information Systems Agency, DOD’s enterprise network provider, announced last week it is taking a second look at the department’s $450 million commercial cloud computing contract due to lack of demand from Pentagon components and agencies.

DISA “is currently reassessing demand within the department for commercial cloud solutions meeting the DOD’s security requirements for hosting/processing government data,” the agency stated in a Nov. 8 posting on the contract’s Web page on FedBizOpps.gov. “Initial indications are the demand will not require a contract with the ceiling estimated in this draft solicitation.”

According to the notice, the Pentagon is currently revising its acquisition strategy for commercial cloud-hosting services.

“This strategy may result in a solicitation for a new contract at a significantly lowered ceiling or the leveraging of contracts previously awarded which contain the appropriate scope for meeting this demand,” the announcement stated.

The Pentagon released a draft request for proposals in June, which called for commercial Infrastructure-as-a-Service, cloud-based storage, virtual machine, database, and Web hosting services.

Changes to security clearance process on the horizon

The mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard in September and the unprecedented leak of classified information from the National Security Agency by a contractor led the Obama administration to order a mandatory 120-day review of the government’s process for granting and reviewing security clearances.

And while that review is only about a month old, senior intelligence and security officials are studying ways to leverage technology to create a new process of “continuous evaluation” of employees and contractors to better identify so-called red flags in a person’s behavior, such as run-ins with the law, that can go unnoticed for years until a person’s background investigation is updated.

“Continuous evaluation is a tool that will assist in closing this information gap,” said Brian Prioletti, assistant director for the Special Security Directorate of the National Counterintelligence Executive within the Office of Director of National Intelligence. “It allows for a review at any time of an individual with eligibility or access to classified information, or in a sensitive position, to ensure that the individual continues to meet the requirements for eligibility.”

As many as 4.9 million federal government and contractor employees currently hold or are eligible to hold a security clearance. And the government spent more than $1 billion in 2011 to conduct more than 2 million background investigations. But the government faces a monumental task of maintaining accurate and current information on employees, especially as current guidelines only require holders of secret-level clearances to undergo new investigations every 10 years and top-secret clearance holders every five years.

But Prioletti and other senior security officials throughout the defense, intelligence and homeland security communities envision a new, more agile security clearance and review process that leverages everything from database integration to automated data sharing between federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, as well as reviews of social media sites.

“Manual checks are inefficient and resource intensive. The CE initiative currently under development will enable us to more reliably determine an individual’s eligibility to hold a security clearance or sensitive position on an ongoing basis,” Prioletti said during a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence. “There are a number of ongoing pilot studies to assess the feasibility of select automated records checks and the utility of publicly available electronic information, to include social media sites, in the personnel security process.”

Gregory Marshall, chief security officer at the Department of Homeland Security, said a continuous evaluation system would ensure agencies are alerted to relevant security information, such as an arrest or conviction for a crime outside of the federal system, on a timelier basis.

“Continuous evaluation represents a significant process improvement over current capabilities and will mitigate some of the limitations in the existing background investigation process,” he said.

One of the limitations agencies continue to deal with involves the sharing of information about employees with clearances when they change jobs. The process, known as reciprocity, involves the transfer and acceptance of a background investigation from one agency to another. It is seen as an efficiency- and cost-savings measure designed to eliminate the need to duplicate investigations, a process that can take up to a year to complete.

But the government has very little information on how often security clearances are accepted or rejected between agencies, said Brenda Farrell, director of military and DOD civilian personnel issues at the Government Accountability Office. More troubling, she said, is the lack of insight into how often agencies pass on derogatory information that comes to light before an employee’s background investigation is due to be updated.

“We do not know how well it works,” Farrell said. “There are no metrics. How often information is passed along is unknown.”

“When we can point to an existing investigation, we’ll honor it on its face,” Marshall said. “One of the gaps that we see within DHS is that we are not allowed to do any additional checks unless we have derogatory information. So it would be critical that the first agency to pass that information along to the second agency in order for us to take action.”

Merton W. Miller, associate director of investigations at the Federal Investigative Services within the Office of Personnel Management, which conducts 95 percent of all government background investigations, acknowledged there remains a major gap in the current five- and 10-year timeframes for new background investigations.

If information about arrests, financial troubles or foreign travel is not captured and reported the time between reinvestigations remains a major gap, Miller said.

Miller pointed to an initiative known as Rap Back, which is part of the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. An upgraded data repository within IAFIS will allow federal agencies to receive immediate notifications whenever somebody who holds a security clearance has been arrested and fingerprinted.

But database integration down to the local level remains a significant obstacle to achieving this capability, he said, as only a limited number of the thousands of local police departments around the country have digitized and automated their fingerprinting procedures.

Commerce secretary unveils plan to unleash data

Data is at the top of Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker’s list of priorities.

At a Thursday morning event, Pritzker spoke less about trade agreements and budget technicalities and more about innovation, unveiling the “Open for Business” framework. The initiative commits exclusively to three different areas to boost the economy and create more business opportunities: trade, innovation and data.

Pritzker knows first-hand the opportunity open data offers; her first business venture, which focused on building senior-living communities, succeeded because it was able to pull public information from the Census Bureau. She used that data to find out where seniors were living and their incomes to plan and grow her business.

“It’s already clear that government data is fertile ground for business creation and market growth,” Pritzker said, speaking at startup incubator 1776.

One way Commerce has begun to unleash data is with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations data sets. Each day, NOAA produces two terabytes of oceanic and weather data to the public, and Commerce is now working to release the 17 terabytes of data not made available daily.

The idea is that unlocked public information about the ocean, climate and weather will help entrepreneurs launch businesses.

But freeing up data shouldn’t stop just there, Pritzker said.

“We will work throughout our department, across government and with industry to make even more data standardized and easy to use,” she added.

One issues with open data is that it doesn’t get a lot of attention until the information is no longer available. During the last government shutdown, Commerce’s employment reports were delayed and attention was drawn to the number of those using Commerce data every day, Pritzker said.

Pritzker has taken a grassroots approach since assuming office in June. She visited 13 cities in 12 states to connect with people on the ground, meeting with more than 400 business leaders, CEOs and Commerce employees.

What she found was the hunger business leaders had for data.

“Business leaders should have access to data so that they can make the most informed decisions,” Pritzker said. “It’s essential in creating a strong digital economy with cutting-edge technology.”

Commerce is working to ensure businesses have a strong voice at the table when it comes to strengthening the digital economy, she said. Security of online information is also a major priority for the department.

“We will make sure there is a robust cybersecurity system in place to protect infrastructure for consumers, and we will champion for a free and open Internet throughout the world,” Pritzker said.

FedWire: Reducing nuclear risk, open data handbook and private space flight

FedWire is FedScoop’s afternoon roundup of news and notes from the federal IT community. Send your links and videos to tips@fedscoop.com.

U.S. and Russia complete nuclear milestone.

The Open Government Partnership releases guide.

U.S. organizations honored for innovation.

NASA hails private resupply flights to ISS.

The sixth zero-power reactor.

Air Force capturing exhaust to save environment.

EPA administrator’s testimony in front of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Rapid Equipping Force launches website for innovations.

DHS issues first task order for continuous monitoring contract

The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday issued its first task order under the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation Program, a governmentwide effort to provide real-time security for civilian agency networks and commonly referred to as continuous monitoring.

The task order is valued at $60.6 million and covers specific quantities of named products, as outlined in the initial request for information released by the General Services Administration. The functional areas covered in that initial RFI included hardware and software asset management, configuration management and vulnerability management.

A source familiar with the order told FedScoop services are not included. Bids and responses from the 17 companies awarded a seat on the Blanket Purchase Agreement in August are due Nov. 22.

The competitive bidding process will be based on a review of the lowest price technically acceptable, or LPTA, a controversial evaluation criteria that ignores many noncost-related factors, such as past performance. Multiple awards are expected.

DHS awarded the $6 billion contract in August. The 2013 fiscal year budget authorized $185 million for the first year of the contract, which has four subsequent option years.

Although the Defense Department has not agreed to use the contract, most civilian agencies have, meaning the contract will change how most of the government approaches cybersecurity. Ultimately, DHS is expecting “continuous monitoring” will translate into 60 billion to 80 billion security checks every one to three days, according to the department.