After 2023 outage that paused flights nationwide, FAA now has backup system

Back in January of last year, contractors working with the Federal Aviation Administration accidentally deleted files while trying to update a database, inadvertently disrupting the Notice to Air Missions system that the agency uses to communicate important flight information to pilots. The outage forced the FAA to issue a nationwide ground stop and pause thousands of flights — one of the largest disruptions to air traffic since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. 

But the agency has now confirmed that there’s a backup system in place and that systems involved in sending NOTAMs have been updated. 

“The FAA developed a contingency system which is used to issue Notice to Air Missions (NOTAMS) to pilots if the primary system is experiencing an outage,” the agency said in a statement to FedScoop. “Equipment and systems dealing with NOTAMs have been updated and a NOTAM Task Force has been created to improve policies and processes. These are still in place and have been communicated to staff.”

The agency addressed the issue within hours of the initial outage in 2023 and flights resumed soon afterward. Still, the malfunction catalyzed bipartisan interest in improving the country’s NOTAM system, which are used to communicate important issues to pilots, like warnings about weather and closed-off airspace.

The National Archives and Records Administration sought further information from the FAA about potentially destroyed records almost immediately after news outlets reported on the ground stop. While there were other copies of the records, the FAA told NARA that it had subsequently implemented a staggered backup database approach in order to avoid “a cascading system failure.” 

The agency also told NARA that it now requires that two people be on site when the NOTAM system is undergoing maintenance and that a federal employee provides supervision.

In June of last year, the Biden administration approved the NOTAM Improvement Act, which required that the FAA create a task force to study potential improvements to the system. Last July, the FAA sought information from private industry about potential ways to improve the system. 

VA plans to award AI tech sprint winners contracts for ambient medical transcription services

The Department of Veterans Affairs released a notice of intent to issue sole source contracts for an artificial intelligence-enabled healthcare dictation tool late last week. 

On behalf of the Veterans Health Administration, the VA’s Strategic Acquisition Center announced that it plans to award non-competitive, fixed-price contracts to Abridge AI, Inc. and Nuance Communications, Inc., two AI platform providers for the healthcare industry, according to the notice. The two vendors will conduct cloud-based, ambient scribe pilots that use AI to transcribe clinical encounters and generate notes in medical settings.

The anticipated sole-source awards are the result of the businesses winning the first track of the VA’s AI Tech Sprint, which focused on generating transcriptions from ambient recordings of patient encounters within specialty care, mental health care and primary care settings, according to the agency’s site.

Through the notice, the VA is also soliciting feedback from other parties that believe they could meet the needs of the contracts.

The VA was tasked in President Biden’s October AI executive order with running two tech sprints. In addition to the first track, the agency held a second tech sprint seeking an AI system to process documents generated in patient-provider encounters and other complex medical documents for “increasing continuity of care for veterans” and sharing “key points” with VA providers, the agency said.

The pilot program will integrate with the VA’s electronic health record modernization program and workflows, the notice states. Providers will be able to start recording without the manual entry of a patient’s identifying information, and draft notes can be automatically inserted into the EHR without manually copying and pasting. 

Charles Worthington, the chief AI and technology officer for the VA, said in a recent interview with FedScoop that the agency has a list of high-priority AI use cases that it is “really leaning into,” including the tech sprints. 

“I feel like right now, we’re in that awkward stage where most of these tools are a different window … where there’s a lot of flipping back and forth between tools and figuring out how best to integrate those AI tools with the more traditional systems,” Worthington said in the interview. “I think that’s just kind of a relatively unfigured-out problem. Especially, if you think of a place like VA, where we have a lot of legacy systems, things that have been built over the past number of decades, oftentimes updating those is not the easiest thing.”

In the same interview, Worthington said that the VA’s technical infrastructure was on “pretty good footing” — despite the threat of funding reductions from Congress for fiscal 2025. That potential for forthcoming fiscal challenges comes after the VA has faced trouble on Capitol Hill regarding concerns with modernization upgrades, a lack of AI-related disclosures and inadequate tech contractor sanctions, and consistent scrutiny of the department’s Oracle Cerner-developed EHR, which has just seen a contract extension.

Social Security Administration transitioning long-time users to Login.gov

Late last week, the Social Security Administration announced that long-time users of the agency’s online account system would have to switch to Login.gov, the government-wide identity management and sign-on service created by the General Services Administration. 

The new requirement applies to users who created accounts for Social Security’s services, including its my Social Security benefits-management platform, before September 2021, but not those who already have a Login.gov account or those who’ve signed up for ID.me, another identity verification service. 

The agency’s “my Social Security is a safe and secure way for people to do business with us,” Martin O’Malley, the agency’s commissioner, said in a statement. “We’re excited to transition to Login.gov to access our online services, streamlining the process and ease of use for the public across agencies.”

SSA said in a release that more than five million users have already made the move to Login.gov.

The move constitutes the latest effort by a federal agency to transition government customers to a more-involved authentication platform. Last September, GSA announced that every Cabinet-level agency had transitioned to using Login.gov. 

In April, GSA said that it would launch a pilot of biometric verification within Login.gov, though the agency is also investigating concerns related to potential algorithmic bias. The program’s deputy director, Hanna Kim, was recently promoted to lead the initiative this past spring. 

FedRAMP ‘undeniably’ in state of limbo without final OMB modernization guidance, Rep. Connolly says

As the federal government awaits final guidance from the Office of Management and Budget meant to modernize and reform the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, one of Capitol Hill’s top federal IT modernization advocates believes that the program is “undeniably” in a state of limbo until that guidance is issued. 

In a statement to FedScoop, Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va. — the author of the FedRAMP Authorization Act, which codified the program in January 2023 so that agencies had a common security framework that was more efficient and cost-effective — listed the absent guidance among other issues like agency backlogs and the vacancy of the FedRAMP director role as contributors to the program’s current state.

In October 2023, OMB issued draft guidance, officially kicking off its campaign to modernize FedRAMP and soliciting feedback from the public to guide its work toward a final policy memo. Not long after, in November, the agency extended the comment period after receiving fruitful but “challenging” feedback from the public. 

Despite his criticism of OMB not yet releasing the final directive, Connolly said that FedRAMP is in fact progressing in the right direction. 

“But, when we started all of this, we were in the inferno,” Connolly said. “So being in limbo is, in fact, an improvement. We have a lot of good news to talk about with FedRAMP…. My hope is that we can maintain progress and ensure the program is delivering for the government and FedRAMP stakeholders.”

Connolly also pointed to the administration’s move to promote the presumption of adequacy in its draft guidance, the “growing marketplace,” software-as-a-service payment clarity and new initiatives led by the General Service Administration, such as the Emerging Technology Prioritization Framework, as positive steps for the program.

Deputy Federal CIO Drew Myklegard shared a similar sentiment that, though the final policy hasn’t yet been published, what will eventually be released will reflect many practices and improvements that have already taken effect within FedRAMP.

Myklegard pointed to the technical advisory group, which the General Services Administration announced in collaboration with OMB in May, as an example of how elements of the final policy have led to positive change before it is issued.

“So what we’re really excited about is when we put [the draft memo] out for public comment, we were very close to where it’ll end up,” Myklegard said in an interview with FedScoop. “We got some great feedback, and we did some sessions with industry — it showed that we needed to focus on agency.”

Speaking at the 2024 GovForward: ATO and Cloud Security Summit event Thursday, where both Connolly and Myklegard addressed current needs for the program and upcoming changes, the deputy federal CIO said the memo is coming about the same way that one builds software. “Which is: Come up with a hypothesis, build it and then we’ll put it into policies.”

On the program side,  GSA has been significantly active of late doing its own work to modernize FedRAMP. Recently, the agency announced an overhaul of its priorities and released a new roadmap for the program. And in an interview with FedScoop last month, Eric Mill, the executive director for cloud strategy at GSA’s Technology Transformation Services, detailed many new pilot efforts underway to streamline the cloud security authorization process and reported that the agency is in the final stages of hiring a new FedRAMP director.

Bipartisan Senate bill aims to ban U.S. agency purchases of counterfeit electronics 

Federal agencies would be prohibited from using certain products if they were purchased from an entity other than the original manufacturer or an authorized reseller under a new bipartisan Senate bill.

The Securing America’s Federal Equipment (SAFE) in Supply Chains Act was introduced Thursday by Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Gary Peters, D-Mich., who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. 

According to a release, the bill is intended to address the increased risk of cyberattacks that target federal agencies by preventing the purchase and use of equipment from “grey-market sellers” that circumvent trusted supply chains to provide counterfeit products. The bill is specifically aimed at the purchase and use of “information and communications technology,” per the bill text.

“From the pandemic to Russia’s attack on Ukraine and other global conflicts, the last few years have taught us just how important a secure domestic supply chain is to America’s national security,” Cornyn said in a statement provided in the release. “This commonsense legislation would require government agencies to only purchase reliable electronics from trustworthy sellers, helping safeguard our cybersecurity from bad actors around the world.”

While acquisition rules for the military require contractors to acquire electronics from original equipment manufacturers or authorized resellers, the release said that there are still “many cases of federal government employees purchasing technology from grey-market sellers rather than authorized sellers.”

The legislation also includes language allowing heads of agencies to waive the prohibition on certain covered products if they determine there is a national security interest or the use of that product is necessary. To do that, the legislation states the official must give written notice to the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

OMB would also be required to submit a report to Congress on those waivers, including the number and types of covered products for which waivers were granted.

“The federal government has a responsibility to purchase technology that will help keep Americans’ data secure and strengthen our defense against a potential cyberattack,” Peters said in a statement. “This legislation takes an important step towards protecting our national security interests and securing our domestic supply chains.”

The bill comes as counterfeit devices have already been found in sensitive government and military systems. 

In May, a man was sentenced to six years and six months for running an operation to traffic counterfeit Cisco equipment following prosecution by the Department of Justice. Those products often didn’t work or malfunctioned, and “numerous counterfeit devices originating” from the operation “were discovered in highly sensitive governmental applications, such as classified information systems,” according to a DOJ release at the time of his sentencing.

In a quote provided to FedScoop, Cisco’s Chief Government Strategy Officer Jeff Campbell said the company supports the legislation and looks forward to working with the senators on the issue.

“The risk of counterfeit components compromising our federal IT systems is a clear and present danger that must be addressed,” Campbell said. “At Cisco, we know that the security of technology is intrinsically linked to the trustworthiness of its source and support the bipartisan SAFE Act’s efforts to ensure that the lifeblood of our government’s digital infrastructure is drawn from secure and reputable sources.”

Editor’s Note, July 12, 2024: This story was updated with comment from Cisco in support of the SAFE Act.

National Science Foundation breaks ground on computing facility in Texas

A computing facility being built by the National Science Foundation in Texas aims to advance computational research and development through new hardware, software and other services that will be available to scientists across the country, the agency said.

NSF on Thursday announced it had started construction on the Leadership-Class Computing Facility, which will be led by the University of Texas at Austin. That facility is expected to be operational in 2026 and will be home to Horizon, NSF’s “largest academic supercomputer dedicated to open-scientific research.” 

“This facility will provide the computational resources necessary to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time, enabling researchers to push the boundaries of what is possible,” NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan said in a written statement.

Horizon is expected to improve performance for simulations by 10 times over Frontera, the agency’s current “leadership-class computing system,” which is also located at the university’s Texas Advanced Computing Center, according to the release. 

A spokesperson said leadership-class computing is one of three complementary advanced computing areas in which NSF invests. The other two are advanced/innovative computing systems and services, and coordination and support services. The Texas facility is the second phase of NSF’s Frontera project that started in 2019, an NSF spokesperson said. 

Horizon also promises more capability for AI research, per a press release from the agency.

“For AI applications, the leap forward will be even larger, with more than 100x improvement over Frontera,” the release said. “Horizon will include a significant investment in specialized accelerators to enable state-of-the-art AI research and more general-purpose processors to support the diverse needs for simulation-based inquiry across all scientific disciplines.”

As a result, the computing facility is also expected to be an important part of the National AI Research Resource, or NAIRR, which is currently in a pilot phase. The NAIRR is meant to provide students and researchers with computational and data resources needed for their work.

UT Austin President Jay Hartzell said in a written statement that the university and its advanced computing center are recognized as “one of the nation’s leading academic supercomputing centers” and the new facility means “continued excellence and reliability for top researchers from across the country.”

“This investment will enable UT to make even greater impacts by addressing more challenges using AI, computational science, and other disciplines,” Hartzell said. “We are excited about the privilege to continue in our role as an enabler of work that serves and improves society, and we are grateful to NSF and to our longtime partner in advanced computing, Dell Technologies.”

According to a release from UT Austin, NSF’s initial investment for construction is $457 million. In that release, Hartzell also thanked Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, for helping secure the funding.

The Texas facility will also collaborate with four “distributed science centers” to broaden its access, distribute “storage and capabilities across the country,” and leverage “the expertise that exists at the centers,” the NSF spokesperson said.

Those four organizations are the Atlanta University Center Consortium, which is composed of four historically Black colleges and universities; the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center at Carnegie Mellon University; and the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California San Diego. 

In addition to those organizations, Ohio State University will also contribute to “advancing the software stack for high-performance networking” and Cornell University will assist with workforce development, the NSF release said.

Energy Department’s national labs get AI boost in bipartisan Senate bill

A new bill from two of the Senate’s most influential lawmakers on energy policy calls on the Department of Energy to leverage artificial intelligence to advance its science and security missions. 

The Department of Energy AI Act from Sens. Joe Manchin, I-W.Va., and Lisa Murkowksi, R-Alaska, would require the DOE secretary to establish an R&D program centered on the aggregation and training of AI datasets, the deployment of advanced computing platforms and infrastructure, the development of safe and trustworthy AI systems and the adaptation of AI models for energy and national security purposes.

“As AI technology takes the world by storm, the United States needs to meet the moment quickly and effectively before our adversaries do,” Manchin, chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement. “The DOE and its network of national laboratories are ready and able to bring our nation to the next level of scientific discovery and global competitiveness through the innovation of safe and responsible AI.”

The DOE’s national labs would play an especially critical role under Manchin and Murkowski’s legislation. At least eight multidisciplinary AI research and development centers would be created and operated by some of the 17 national labs, as determined by the Energy secretary. 

Those centers would unite experts from the national labs, academia and industry on a variety of “frontier AI research” projects. The centers would also be tasked with establishing a technical roadmap to meet AI research and innovation goals for the agency within seven years of the bill’s enactment. Each center would receive no less than $30 million annually for the entirety of their existence — between five and seven years with the possibility of a five-year renewal.

“This bipartisan legislation will leverage the agency’s existing world-class laboratory test facilities, scientific workforce, and advanced computing resources to strengthen our country’s AI capabilities to remain the superpower of the world in energy, national security, and economic competitiveness,” Manchin said. “Deploying our existing lab infrastructure and scientific expertise for AI instead of starting from scratch will also safeguard taxpayer dollars and allow for us to move quickly.” 

The legislation, which would also authorize the agency’s Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence for Science, Security and Technology (FASST) initiative, additionally calls on the Energy secretary to develop a “taxonomy” of AI-related safety and security risks, which includes everything from threats to nuclear weapons systems to critical infrastructure vulnerabilities. 

Murkowski, who serves with Manchin as a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement that AI also provides capabilities for streamlining the permitting process for critical mineral and large-scale energy projects.

“This legislation will enable the department to harness these emerging technologies so that DOE can be on the front foot to respond to Alaska and America’s science and technological needs,” she said.

How the integration of AI and HPC is turbocharging scientific research

The convergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) is providing researchers with new and unprecedented computing capabilities, which scientists say are propelling research organizations into a new era of supercomputing and discovery.

The combined power of AI and HPC is turbocharging research breakthroughs across various scientific disciplines and helping to fast-track solutions to complex global challenges. Those breakthroughs are also providing an early glimpse into the potential of quantum-like computing power, according to a new report produced by Scoop News Group and underwritten by Microsoft.

The transformative potential of AI and HPC became more apparent in a groundbreaking project at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) last year. By leveraging AI to screen tens of millions of potential materials and HPC to perform complex calculations, a team of Microsoft AI experts helped scientists at PNNL achieve in a few months what traditionally would have taken years: the discovery of a new battery electrolyte requiring significantly less lithium.

This remarkable feat, described in fuller detail in the report, underscores the power of AI to vastly expand the scope of research and HPC to determine the most promising avenues, according to Nathan Baker, a key figure in this collaboration and the current Product Leader for Azure Quantum Elements at Microsoft. He emphasized the significance of this approach: “We’re changing the game by using AI to expand the space that you can research.”

A new dawn for supercomputing and chemistry

This accelerated pace of discovery has far-reaching implications for government agencies and research organizations tackling critical challenges such as climate change, energy storage, and drug discovery.

Brian Abrahamson, PNNL’s Chief Digital Officer, underscored the transformative impact: “The ability to narrow down the playing field with millions of potential combinations of elements and structures to dozens in just months — something that would’ve taken decades — the acceleration aspect of this can’t be understated,” he said. “This is a shift that the world of science hasn’t seen since the dawn of supercomputing.”

Accelerating scientific discovery in chemistry, materials and other sciences to solve the world’s most complex problems is at the heart of what led to Microsoft’s work with PNNL — and what’s behind Microsoft’s Azure Quantum initiative, according to Jason Zander, Executive Vice President of Strategic Missions and Technologies at Microsoft. He says that Azure Quantum Elements offers scientists the computing scale of Azure High-Performance Computing in the cloud and the speed of AI to tackle complex simulations and calculations that would be too costly or time-consuming for even the largest computers to solve.

“Chemistry directly touches more than 96% of all manufactured goods, so the system’s potential impact is huge,” adds Zander in the report.

A growing roster of global chemistry firms, including AkzoNobel, AspenTech, Johnson Matthey, SCGC, and 1910 Genetics, and consumer products companies like Unilever, have already been using Azure Quantum Elements to accelerate their research and development efforts, according to the report.

Quantum computing on the horizon

The report also highlights Microsoft’s continuing investment in the development of quantum computing and how quantum computing will likely complement AI and HPC computing.

While “the promise of quantum computing at scale is real,” it’s essential to separate the hype from the hope, says Matthias Troyer, Technical Fellow and Corporate Vice President of Quantum at Microsoft.

He and others argue that certain problems will be better suited for quantum systems than others because of “the fundamentals of quantum physics.” While quantum systems can make calculations more efficiently than classical computers, several critical technical constraints in moving data into and out of quantum systems are likely to remain, making HPC more practical.

Download the full report to learn more about Azure Quantum and the evolution of AI, HPC and quantum computing in government.

This article was produced by Scoop News Group for FedScoop and underwritten by Microsoft.

GSA begins FedRAMP pilot to change request process

A new FedRAMP pilot will utilize a non-blocking process for reviewing significant changes to the governmentwide compliance program for cloud services, the General Services Administration announced Wednesday. 

GSA said it is inviting cloud service providers to apply to participate in the Agile Delivery pilot, part of an agency effort to replace the “significant change request” process with an approach that removes the requirement of advanced approval for each change. The pilot is set to focus on the addition of new features for existing cloud service offerings, the GSA said.  

Eric Mill, executive director for cloud strategy at GSA’s Technology and Transformation Services, teased the release of the Agile Delivery pilot in an interview with FedScoop last month, calling the significant change process a big “pain point” in the FedRAMP program. 

“What we want to do is try to enable cloud providers to keep moving through this process, but to move some of the information and review parts of that process, more left on the timeline,” Mill said. “We want to know that the information that would be coming into this process is coming to us in an ongoing way so that we can have sufficient confidence to remove the blocking approval step on a per-change basis.”

The GSA warned agencies in the press release that they may see “significant delays” before being able to access features that could help security and delivery on their missions. Additionally, the release said that cloud service providers “may create government-specific offerings that lag behind their commercial offerings” or choose not to enter the FedRAMP marketplace “so as not to delay development and improvement of their core product.”

The GSA is accepting applications from cloud service providers until July 26, and anticipates working with providers and agencies to make selections by Aug. 16. Cloud providers planning to release a new feature before the end of the year are encouraged to apply, per the GSA. 

“The data gathered from this pilot will help inform program-wide changes to streamline the current processes for change management,” the release states. “Our long-term goal is to shift the FedRAMP process to one that is based on continuous assessment rather than assessing point-in-time snapshots.”

The Agile Delivery pilot is part of the overarching FedRAMP roadmap release, the GSA said.

“We want to be able to have the same amount of confidence in the security and overall, just get more security stuff out of these cloud providers,” Mill previously told FedScoop. “More patches, more features, more work with the same amount of confidence and overall control in the process by moving this to an oversight of the process rather than each change.”

White House to require increased cybersecurity protocols for R&D institutions

Federal research agencies will now require certain covered institutions to implement cybersecurity programs for research and development security, a move the White House attributes to growing threats posed by the People’s Republic of China. 

Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Arati Prabhakar made her case in the memorandum for increased awareness of security threats from adversaries. The guidance aims to enable national R&D enterprise research agencies and participants to “respond appropriately” through certifying that institutions’ research security programs — and cybersecurity protocols — include foreign travel security, research security training and export control training. 

“Technology and R&D are central to this strategic competition, and the PRC has exploited international research collaboration by undermining values — such as transparency, accountability and reciprocity — in order to advance its strategic objectives and military modernization,” the memo states. 

According to the memo, higher education institutions certified by the federal research agencies must implement a cybersecurity program consistent with the CHIPS and Science Act’s cybersecurity resource for research-focused entities. That implementation must occur one year following the final issuance of this document; the National Institute of Standards and Technology has posted an initial draft of the resource. 

Covered institutions that are not part of higher education but are certified by the research agencies are required to “implement a cybersecurity program consistent with another relevant cybersecurity resource maintained by NIST or another federal research agency,” the memo states.

Federal research agencies are required to submit plans to update policies regarding “standardized requirements” for research security programs within six months, and those will take effect six months after finalized plans have been submitted. Additionally, agencies must “ensure that covered institutions have adequate time”  to implement those requirements, though it must happen in under 18 months after the effective date. 

The Biden administration, however, makes clear that federal research agencies must balance security efforts without prejudice throughout the process of implementation. 

“Federal research agencies should implement research security policies in a way that treats everyone equally under the law, without xenophobia, prejudice or discrimination, a principle reinforced by the CHIPS and Science Act,” the memo states.