FedWire: STEM focus, base security and meeting cyber challenge

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

Mobilizing cities to support STEM.

Obama meets with the business roundtable.

Ipad users get new science and engineering indicators app.

Navy program “excelerates” alternative energy.

Ash Carter to lead panels on base security.

NIST’s grants for additive manufacturing research.

NASA seeks best and brightest for space tech research fellowship.

Innovating to meet the cyber challenge.

Education Department awards millions to boost minority participation in STEM-related fields.

OMB releases guidance memo amid looming threat of government shutdown

The Office of Management and Budget on Tuesday issued a memorandum to heads of executive departments, advising them on how to prepare for a possible government shutdown.

The fiscal year ends Sept. 30, and without a budget agreement before then, the government could face a shutdown.

The memo from OMB Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell urges agencies to take prudent management measures in the event of a possible lapse in funding should Congress fail to come to an agreement.

“The administration strongly believes that a lapse in appropriations should not occur,” said OMB spokesman Steve Posner. “There is enough time for Congress to prevent a lapse in appropriations, and the administration is willing to work with Congress to enact a short-term continuing resolution to fund critical government operations and allow Congress the time to complete the full year 2014 appropriations.”

With that in mind, the memo advises agencies to update their plans for operations in the case of absent appropriations.

Unless agencies have outside funding source that would continue despite a lapse of appropriations, all activities not legally required of the agencies should cease to be performed. Agency leaders should also examine standards for which employees are deemed necessary to perform the legally required functions, according to the memo.

OMB has provided an FAQ sheet as a resource for agencies with further questions that relate to government operations, travel, technology, payment for excepted work and orderly shutdown. In the event inquiries with personnel or staffing issues, the Office of Personnel Management has also released an FAQ resource.

According to Posner, these planning measures for agencies are consistent with what was done in previous instances when a potential lapse in appropriations was approaching.

“It is our hope that this work will ultimately be unnecessary and that there will be no lapse in appropriations,” he said.

DOD aims for 2014 audit readiness, two senators want to make sure it gets there

The Pentagon has been publicly on board with the government’s 2014 audit readiness deadline, but two senators are aiming to put increased legislative pressure on the Defense Department to meet that goal.

Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., introduced a bill this week that would institute both incentives and penalties to ensure DOD hits its mark.

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” Coburn said. “Every year, the Pentagon fails to produce a viable financial audit they not only violate the Constitution, but put our nation’s security at risk because of a failure to effectively prioritize spending.”

DOD is the only federal agency to never complete a full financial audit, which Manchin called “simply unacceptable.” Since 1995, the Government Accountability Office has declared it a “high risk” for fraud, waste and abuse.

The bill would ban DOD from purchasing any off-the-shelf IT system that takes longer than three years to install. Contracts would be rewritten to include a termination clause if an IT system is not delivered on schedule.

“We must ensure that we’re using our limited resources most efficiently to support the men and women in uniform,” Manchin said. “One of best ways to get the most accurate information about our spending and our military’s priorities is to shed light on the Department of Defense budget, without jeopardizing our national security secrets.”

If the Pentagon doesn’t get a “clean audit” — an audit without any major objections — by 2018, the bill would freeze any new DOD funding for major engineering and manufacturing developments on weapons systems. The ban would be lifted once the Pentagon does achieve a clean audit.

Service leaders give Congress specifics of bleak military future

With ongoing sequestration looming and a continuing resolution likely, military officials Wednesday inundated Congress with a distressing portrait of the military under these compounded conditions.

“I do not consider myself an alarmist, I consider myself a realist,” said Gen. Raymond Odierno, Army chief of staff. And that realistic scenario is an Army that may not regain full readiness and modernization until 2018, and might not be able to “conduct even one sustained major combat operation.”

Over nearly three hours of testimony and questions, House Armed Services Committee members repeatedly blamed themselves for these dire straights as officials from each service delineated its worst case scenario: hiring freezes, idle fighter jets, deferred carrier maintenance, zero modernization initiatives and protracted personnel training.

“What keeps me up at night is if I’m asked to deploy soldiers and they are not ready,” Odierno said.

Eighty-five percent of the Army’s current brigade combat teams — the basic deployable unit — would not meet their training requirements under the 2014 sequestration and a continuing resolution, he said. And the overall Army would lose 26 percent of its active force, down to at least 420,000.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert envisioned a 2020 fleet of 255 to 260 ships, roughly 30 ships short of what it is now and 40 short of what he would like it to be. The scaled-back fleet would mean fewer globally deployed ships, no re-balance to the Asia-Pacific region (as President Barack Obama directed in his first term), and no more premium on supporting Middle Eastern partner nations.

The Navy could respond to one major offensive threat, but only deny (make an attack seem unwise) if presented with two such threats.

“The [continuing resolution] stops me, puts me at last year, and we have to operate to meet the commitments of today,” Greenert said, which could mean canceling 34 of 54 maintenance and repair projects, the equivalent of 8,000 jobs lost, according to Greenert.

And the Marine Corps is getting desperately close to its floor to be able to meet basic requirements, said Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos. From a high point of 202,000 in 2006, the Marines have plans to reduce its force to 182,100 by the end of 2016. With the sequestration-continuing resolution double threat, it won’t be able to even afford that.

Amos said he could go down to 174,000. But that’s it — if the U.S. wants a Marine Corps ready for a full-scale war.

“174,000 is a floor as far as I’m concerned,” Amos said. “That force is the minimum force to go off to war. … We are consuming tomorrow’s ‘seed corn’ to feed today’s requirements, leaving ever less to plant for the future.”

While potential cuts to the Air Force — 4 percent of current airmen and 9 percent of current aircraft — are not as severe as other services, the service would cut up to 50 percent of its modernization programs, said Gen. Mark Welsh, Air Force chief of staff.

“Sequestration-level cuts would severely threaten each of our top priority programs as well every single lower-priority program,” Welsh said. Focus would concentrate on the long-awaited F-35 fighter jet and long-range strike capabilities, he added. But much of the aircraft inventory — 24 years old on average — would be ignored.

“The mainstays of our bomber and air-refueling fleets are both from the Eisenhower era,” Welsh said.

Come Sept. 30 — the fiscal year end — the military will know better if these hypotheticals will become reality.

“I ask Congress to put political differences aside and pass funding bills that give us some stability – both in the near term and the long term,” Welsh said. “If not, we’ll have these same conversations year after year.”

FedWire: Transparency reform, Capitol birthday and shutdown memo

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

OMB issues memo on preparing for government shutdown.

NASA and Boys and Girls Clubs of America to inspire explorers.

GSA official tapped as FTC CIO.

GAO: OMB should create plan to implement comprehensive transparency reform.

Senators introduce bill to hold DOD accountable for financial audit.

Digital Analytics Program goes to the moon.

Happy 66th birthday, Air Force.

Capitol turns 220 today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtK6yTPYWPI&feature=share&list=PL663F2C07C7D8563D

 

State Department’s Greg Ambrose on reducing redundant contracts

http://youtu.be/NhOITGp2vFQ

Greg Ambrose, director, consular systems and technology, State Department, talks with FedScoopTV about how interagency partnerships can help cut redundant contracts.

NIST awards $7 million to develop identity protection systems

Identify protection and verification systems just received a big cash influx from the government.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology this week awarded grants totaling more than $7 million to five organizations to develop pilot identify protection systems. The awards are the second round of grants for a project launched in 2011 — the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, or NSTIC. The program’s goal is to bring government and industry together to develop options for convenient security and privacy online.

“The grants announced today will support privacy-enhancing technologies that help make Internet transactions more secure, including better protection from fraud and identity theft, and are an important step toward giving American companies and consumers greater confidence in doing business online,” said Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker.

The five programs will affect a number of everyday Internet user activities.

“These new NSTIC pilots span multiple sectors, benefitting children, parents and veterans, as well as online shoppers and social media users of all ages,” said Jeremy Grant, NIST’s senior executive advisor for identity management.

Here are the five organizations and a brief description, from NIST, of each pilot:

1) Exponent

“The Exponent pilot will issue secure, easy-to-use and privacy-enhancing credentials to users to help secure applications and networks at a leading social media company, a health care organization and the U.S. Department of Defense.”

2) Georgia Tech Research Corporation

“The [Georgia Tech] pilot will develop and demonstrate a ‘Trustmark Framework’ that seeks to improve trust, interoperability and privacy within the Identity Ecosystem. Trustmarks are a badge, image or logo displayed on a website to indicate that the website business has been shown to be trustworthy by the issuing organization.”

3) Privacy Vaults Online, Inc.

“[Privacy Vaults] will pilot a solution that provides families with Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act-compliant, secure, privacy-enhancing credentials that will enable parents and guardians to authorize their children to interact with online services in a more privacy-enhancing and usable way.”

4) ID.me, Inc.

“ID.me, Inc.’s Troop ID will develop and pilot trusted identity solutions that will allow military families to access sensitive information online from government agencies, financial institutions and health care organizations in a more privacy-enhancing, secure and efficient manner.”

5) Transglobal Secure Collaboration Participation, Inc.

“The TSCP pilot will deploy trusted credentials to conduct secure business-to-business, government-to-business and retail transactions for small and medium-sized businesses and financial services companies, including Fidelity Investments and Chicago Mercantile Exchange.”

BREAKING: Bajinder Paul to become FTC CIO

Bajinder Paul, deputy associate administrator of citizen services and innovative technologies at the General Services Administration, is soon leaving the agency, a GSA official with knowledge of the situation told FedScoop.

Paul will take over as chief information officer at the Federal Trade Commission, replacing Jeff Huskey, who stepped down in March. Paul’s last day at GSA will be this Friday, according to a senior official at FTC.

Paul is no stranger to the government CIO role, having served as CIO at the Office of Comptroller of the Currency for four years and as acting CIO and deputy CIO of IT operations at the Housing and Urban Development Department.

He has also held major IT management positions at the Justice Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

100 years later, the Constitution app

One of the oldest documents in U.S. history is being modernized.

As the U.S. Constitution on Tuesday turned 226 years old, the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, Library of Congress and the Government Printing Office launched a new app and Web publication.

The app makes “Constitution Annotated” — an analysis and interpretation of constitutional case law by library experts — available on mobile devices and computers for free. Anyone researching the Constitution can now easily locate particular topics or court cases on federal or state laws.

The Constitution Annotated was published in 1913 and has been reissued every 10 years with an updated interpretation of judicial cases and issues. Nearly 3,000 pages of complicated analysis is now available on the app, which also provides more frequent updates to the content.

“The United States has the world’s oldest constitution, written over 225 years ago,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., chairman of the Senate rules and administration committee. “The Constitution Annotated app will enable people across America to gain up-to-date, state-of-the-art access to one of the world’s greatest legal documents.”

The new app allows users to browse section by section, and sift through the massive amount of analysis as well as a function allowing users to search all text.

The site can also be accessed on GPO’s Federal Digital System, FDsys, and opened as a searchable PDF.

A potential roadmap to avoid capability deterioration

Without a more strategic approach to managing its purchasing priorities, the U.S. military could lose critical capabilities and face exorbitant costs to regain them in the long term, according to a new study.

Since World War II, the U.S. has generally been able to assume its military capabilities would simply be there. But with declining budgets, sequestration and the drawdown overseas, “it’s not clear that assumption is going to hold in the future,” said Barry Watts, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and author of the study.

Before it’s too late, the Defense Department should attempt to define the core competencies of both itself and the defense industrial base, and focus its budget priorities there “rather than starting with what to reduce or cut for the current budget cycle,” said Watts, who was head of DOD’s Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation from 2001 to 2002.

It’s not as if DOD hasn’t tried. But efforts in the last decade have mostly sputtered out, according to Watts. Because of rapid contractor consolidation and disagreements between the services, it’s hard to settle on a concise core competency list for both DOD and the defense industrial base. Watts was at DOD in 2001 when then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked for a strategic review of military capabilities.

“We got absolutely nowhere,” Watts said. “Lists like this are very controversial.”

Several years ago, Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy within DOD tried to do a sector-by-sector, tier-by-tier breakdown of all the services. It hasn’t been finished, Watts said.

“Because the Pentagon has not been able to get down to lists like these and really saying what we thing going forward is important, it just generates a lot of uncertainty in the minds of people in the industry,” Watts said.

So Watts, over three months of arguing with colleagues, set down six core competencies each for DOD and the defense industrial base, or DIB.

For DOD:

1. Global nonnuclear precision strike
2. Flexible, effective nuclear forces
3. Capability to protect and sustain combined-arms campaigns at the operational level of war
4. Access to freedom of action in the global commons — at sea, in orbital space and in the electromagnetic spectrum, which includes cyber
5. The cryptologic enterprise
6. Realistic combat training

For DIB:

1. Precision weapons, strike and defense missiles
2. Low-signature platforms such as stealthy air vehicles, manned and unmanned
3. Global intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or ISR (ie. satellites, GPS)
4. Integrated battle networks that marry ISR with robust command
5. Electromagnetic spectrum (ie. network attacks, network defense, cryptologic skills)
6. Large-scale system and network architecture integration

Of course, Watts said, all come with the caveat that knowing which of these supply chain elements require special attention would require a more detailed mapping of DIB only the Pentagon could provide.

Cyber, in particular, is “hard to talk about,” Watts said. Even with the copious leaks, “it’s too classified” to make useful recommendations.

But absent this core competency thought process, DOD might find itself without the necessary design and production capabilities to meet combat requirements in coming years. If that happens and the U.S. is in a pinch, there aren’t many other advanced military producers on par with the U.S.

“Who are we going to go to? China? Russia? We just don’t really have anywhere to go,” Watts said.