FAA awards 15 prime contracts as part of $2.3B systems engineering procurement
The Federal Aviation Administration has awarded prime contracts to 15 federal contractors as part of a landmark technical services support contract.
The agency selected five large companies and an additional 10 small companies to take up lead spots on the $2.3 billion procurement.
The Systems Engineering and Technical Innovative Solutions (SETIS) indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract has a base performance period of 36 months followed by a three-year option and two two-year option periods.
According to contract documents, services obtained through the procurement will be used to support air traffic operations and planned improvements to the agency’s technology infrastructure.
The five large companies to receive prime spots are Booz Allen Hamilton, LS Technologies, Noblic, Oasis Systems and SAIC. The 15 companies awarded prime contracts are supported by multiple subcontractors and in total, there are over 275 prime and subcontractor awardees taking part in the procurement.
SETIS is intended to provide the agency with “a broach range of research, service analysis, strategic planning, systems engineering, technical, financial and programmatic support services, and other aviation related support services,” according to RFP documents on SAM.gov.
“With the expected growth in air traffic operations and our aging infrastructure, the FAA, in collaboration with its aviation partners, other Federal agencies/departments, foreign entities, and users of the NAS and the larger national air transportation system, continues the task of modernizing and transforming the NAS to meet the future demands of Air Traffic,” the agency said.
It added: “The scope of the support services of this contract is in direct support of U.S. aeronautics development and the transformation of the national air transportation system. The FAA intends, but is not required, to manage this contract as a follow-on to the SE-2020/2025 portfolio of contract vehicles.”
The FAA’s NextGen plan to modernize its IT infrastructure came under scrutiny this week following the outage of its Notice to Air Missions System (NOTAM) computer system that temporarily grounded flights early Wednesday.
Details of the awards were first announced by the FAA in November.
FAA preliminary investigation traces NOTAMS outage to damaged database file
An initial investigation into the outage that hit the Federal Aviation Administration’s Notice to Air Missions system has found that the error may have been caused by a damaged database file.
In a statement issued at 6:30 p.m. EST Wednesday, the agency said it was continuing a “thorough review to determine the root case of the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system outage.”
“At this time, there is no evidence of a cyber attack,” it said. “The FAA is working diligently to further pinpoint the causes of this issue and take all needed steps to prevent this kind of disruption from happening again.”
The Federal Aviation Administration took the decision to ground aircraft between 7:30 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. EST Wednesday after an attempted reboot of the notification system was unable to rectify a system error.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg shared additional details about the timeline of the outage, noting that it first began at 3:28 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 10.
A backup system went into effect and the main system resumed before which problems reappeared, according to the secretary’s comments, which were reported by the Washington Post.
Buttigieg also shared that the FAA conducted a “complete reboot” of the NOTAMS system at about 5 a.m. EST Wednesday morning before making the decision to temporarily ground U.S. domestic air traffic because of concerns that the alerts were not populating correctly.
If the diagnosis is correct, NOTAMS will be the latest example of a major federal IT system outage caused by a damaged database file.
In August, a major outage of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ critical Cerner Millennium electronic health record system was caused by a corrupted patient database. Details of the system outage were first reported by FedScoop.
NOTAMS is a communication system that alerts pilots to immediate hazards that could pose a threat to flight safety such as construction works on runways or flocks of birds. It operates separately from the FAA’s air traffic control services operation, which governs airspace across the country.
Two forms of bulletins can be sent through the system: temporary NOTAMs, which make pilots aware of hazards that are likely to change, and permanent NOTAMs which communicate information such as warnings that an entire section of airspace has been closed. The alerts are sent using contracted language to avoid ambiguity and facilitate fast transmission.
House lawmakers introduce bill to create National Digital Reserve Corps
House lawmakers introduced bipartisan legislation Wednesday to create a civilian organization tasked with supporting the digital and cyber needs of federal agencies.
The bill to establish a National Digital Reserve Corps would allow reservists to sign up for a three-year period in which they would work for the federal government for 30 days each calendar year to take on digital and cybersecurity projects, digital education and training, and other work.
The legislation is intended to address a nationwide shortage of cyber talent. According to cybersecurity recruitment website CyberSeek, there are currently 769,736 cybersecurity job openings across the U.S.
Introduced by Reps. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, and Robin Kelly, D-Ill., the bill is intended to give citizens the opportunity to obtain additional training and education while also serving the U.S. government. Under the plans, reservists would also have the chance to obtain and maintain security clearances.
Individuals in the National Digital Reserve Corps would be detailed to federal agencies by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA). The bill also requires the Department of Labor to issue regulations that ensure reservists’ jobs are waiting for them once they finish their annual service.
“As we have seen from previous cyberattacks, our government currently lacks the workforce capacity needed to combat ransomware and bad actors,” Rep. Gonzales said. “The National Digital Reserve Corps strives to fill that void with civilian industry experts working in service to our federal government and our national security. This will bring the ingenuity and expertise of the private sector to our federal government to bolster our nation’s cybersecurity defense.”
Rep Kelly added: “As the online landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace, our government needs cybersecurity solutions that meet the moment,” She added:“I am proud to introduce the National Digital Reserve Corps Act again this Congress to build the cybersecurity infrastructure we need to keep every American safe. This bipartisan effort will strengthen the systems that our constituents rely on to make the government work for them.”
What is the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions System and why does it matter?
On Wednesday, millions of travelers in the United States showed up at airports to find that their flights had been grounded after a technical error in a little-known but very important computer system forced the Federal Aviation Administration to ground planes not already in the air.
The cancellation of thousands of flights sparked fears that FAA systems were under cyberattack. But the reality was far more mundane, according to FAA officials. Due to an as-yet unidentified error in its Notice to Air Missions System (NOTAMS) computer system, the FAA was forced to reboot the system, throwing the departure schedule for flights across the United States into disarray.
NOTAMS alerts pilots to immediate hazards that could pose a threat to flight safety such as construction works on runways or flocks of birds. The computer system operates separately from the FAA’s air traffic control services operation, which governs airspace across the country.
Early Wednesday the FAA said it was looking into the initial cause of the problem; however, so far no root cause has been identified.
Speaking with reporters at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said his top priority was to “understand the root cause, understand how it could have led to this level of disruption, and understand how to make sure that it does not happen again.”
While the system’s outage led the FAA to ground all U.S. domestic flights between 6:30 a.m. and 9 a.m. EST amid safety fears, it is just one of several avenues available to the FAA to communicate information to pilots.
Aviation safety expert and former FAA trial attorney Mark Dombroff told FedScoop that even with the NOTAMS system down, pilots would not be left in the dark.
“The controllers sitting at the radar screens talking to the airplanes would have passed them the information [about the environment],” he said. “I don’t think the safety of any flights was compromised.”
A secondary alert system
Two forms of bulletins can be sent through the system: temporary NOTAMs, which make pilots aware of hazards that are likely to change, and permanent NOTAMs such as a warning that an entire section of airspace has been closed to air traffic. The alerts are sent using contracted language to avoid ambiguity and facilitate fast transmission.
Air traffic controllers are in constant contact with the jets they monitor and will pass safety critical information to pilots in real-time. Pilots also have direct in-flight communication channels with their airlines, which means that even when the NOTAMs system is down, critical information will almost certainly still be received.
Dombroff added: “The thing that’s most notable about this outage is that the national airspace system is an interdependent system. It’s a function of a whole bunch of things having to work together. Whether it’s the airline, the weather, or the computer systems.”
“What you have is lots of moving parts, and when one part of the system malfunctions, there’s a ripple effect across the whole system.”
FAA permits flights to resume as computer system outage resolved
The Federal Aviation Administration permitted flights to resume Wednesday morning after an outage with a key safety notification system was resolved.
FAA had earlier announced that the operation of its Notice to Air Missions System failed, causing delays to airlines across the U.S. As it worked to bring the system back online, the agency ordered all airlines to ground domestic departures until 9 a.m. EST “to validate the integrity of flight and safety information.”
According to the agency, the system is responsible for delivering real-time notices to flight staff about abnormal or hazardous conditions “not known far enough in advance to be publicized by other means.”
“The FAA is working to restore its Notice to Air Missions System,” the agency said in its initial statement about the outage. “We are performing final validation checks and reloading the system now. Operations across the National Airspace System are affected.”
According to flight-tracking company FlightAware, more than 1,200 flights within, into and out of the U.S. had been delayed Wednesday morning, and about 100 had been canceled at the time of publication.
On Twitter, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said President Biden had been briefed by the Secretary of Transportation on the systems outage and said that currently there as no evidence the outage was caused by a cyberattack.
In a statement, the FAA said: “Normal air traffic operations are resuming gradually across the United States following an overnight outage to the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system that provides safety information to flight crews. The ground stop has been lifted.”
It added: “The agency continues to look into the cause of the initial problem.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 9:25 a.m. eastern time.
National Archives broadens records retention guidance to include text messages
The National Archives and Records Administration has widened its digital records retention guidance for federal government agencies to include other forms of electronic messaging such as text messages.
In a bulletin issued Jan. 5, the federal agency set out new rules requiring the preservation of all communication about government business on electronic messaging systems.
Electronic messaging systems are defined as systems that “allow users to send communications in real-time or for later viewing,” and explicitly include texts, chats and instant messages.
“This bulletin recognizes that the use of additional types of electronic messaging often now replaces conversations previously occurring over email,” NARA said in the fresh guidance.
Under current NARA guidance, which was issued in 2013, federal agencies are required to use a role-based approach to records presentation — known as Capstone — which only applies to email records.
The Capstone approach rules that the final disposition of records is determined by the seniority of the role or position of the records creator or receiver.
“A role-based approach for managing email records, also known as Capstone, has been widely adopted by a large percentage of federal agencies,” the guidance says. “Therefore, NARA is expanding the role-based approach to include other types of electronic messages beyond email.”
According to NARA’s new guidance, electronic messages created or received in the course of agency business on personal devices are likely to be defined as federal records. Those messages must be forwarded or copied to an official account within 20 days, under the new guidance.
NARA said also that when considering how to implement the new rules, agencies must consider whether they have an approach for capturing complete electronic messages including emojis, GIFs, images and video.
The update follows heightened scrutiny of federal agencies’ preservation of digital records last year, which came as lawmakers sought evidence from agencies relating to the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot.
In early July, the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security sent a letter to Congress to inform lawmakers that text messages sent by agents relating to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot had been deleted.
NASA appoints A.C. Charania as chief technologist
NASA has named A.C. Charania as its agencywide chief technologist, it announced Monday.
In the role, Charania will serve as principal adviser to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on technology policy and programs at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Charania joins from industry, where most recently he worked as vice president of product strategy at autonomous vehicles company Reliable Robotics. During his private sector career, he has worked in management and business development roles at aeronautics companies including Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and SpaceWorks Enterprises.
The appointment follows a yearlong search by the agency for a new innovation leader to help improve commercial partnerships with the U.S. space industry.
As chief technologist at NASA, Charania will be responsible for coordinating NASA’s agencywide technology investments across six mission directorates and will oversee collaboration with other federal agencies and the private sector. The position sits within NASA’s Office for Technology, Policy and Strategy.
Commenting on the appointment, NASA Associate Administrator for Technology, Policy and Strategy Bhavya Lal said: “A.C. is an experienced leader in managing large, rapidly shifting technology portfolios. I am eager for him to apply his knowledge and enthusiasm at NASA.”
Prior to Charania’s appointment, Lal served as acting chief technologist at NASA. Charania’s first day was Jan. 3.
NASA began its search for a new chief technologist early last year. At the time, Lal told FedScoop that she was looking to hire a “rising star” who might come from outside of the federal government.
“If we are trying to change culture at NASA, what better way than to bring in people from outside and get them to both learn and teach?” she told FedScoop
Interior Department watchdog finds 5% of active credentials at agency use word ‘password’
A watchdog audit of IT security at the Interior Department has identified key password management failings at the agency.
The department’s inspector general found during a recent investigation that out of all active users, 4.75% of them used a password derived from some variation of the word “password.”
Within the first 90 minutes of testing conducted for the report, watchdog staff were able to crack passwords for 16% of the agency’s user accounts.
However, this represents a slight improvement on results from previous oversight projects when the IG was able to crack between 20% and 40% of passwords captured, according to the report.
In addition to concerns over password complexity requirements, the latest watchdog probe found that Interior did not consistently implement multi-factor authentication, including for 89% of its high-value assets.
High-value assets are defined as assets that could have serious impacts on the department’s ability to conduct business if compromised.
According to the report, the Interior Department’s password complexity requirements were outdated and ineffective. It also failed to disable inactive accounts in a timely manner or to enforce password age limits.
As a result of the findings, the watchdog has made eight recommendations, including that the agency immediately adopt multifactor authentication across its systems and implement a process for tracking its implementation across all departments.
Interior’s IG has also recommended revamping the agency’s security protocols to require more complex passwords and establishing procedures to ensure that inactive accounts are disabled within a defined period of time.
In a response to the report signed by Interior Chief Information Officer Darren Ash and acting Chief Information Security Officer John Clink, the agency agreed with the recommendations and said it was working to ensure full compliance with an August Office of Management and Budget memo requiring federal agency application owners to move to multifactor authentication within a set timeframe.
It said: “This report fundamentally asserts that passwords as lone credentials for authentication are not sufficient for modern information systems. The Department agrees and is committed to implementation of requirements specified in Executive Order (EO) 14028, Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity and related policies and directives.”
NASA targeting launch of $2B NCAPS contract vehicle for late February
NASA plans to issue a request for proposals for a nearly $2 billion contract to consolidate, standardize and centralize IT services from across the agency at the end of February.
The space agency issued a presolicitation notice Friday declaring that it will open its NASA Consolidated Applications and Platform Services (NCAPS) contract vehicle for bids “on or about February 28, 2023, with an anticipated offer due date of on or about March 31, 2023.”
NASA initially anticipated launching the RFP period late last year. However, in a Nov. 14 notice, it said the procurement was placed on hold “until further notice.”
Now that the contract seems to be back on track, NASA said it will issue a draft RFP sometime on or around Jan. 13 so that prospective bidders can provide questions, comments and concerns. With this, the agency anticipates hosting a virtual industry day the week of Jan. 24.
Through NCAPS, NASA wants to acquire a “comprehensive enterprise solution to standardize and centralize NASA’s IT support,” the presolicitation document says.
“This includes the maintenance of IT systems, development of new applications as needed for NASA, a rationalization of duplicative efforts to create efficiencies across NASA Centers, and other functions,” it reads. “The NCAPS contract will be critical in consolidating the scope of NASA’s Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) application and platform services at NASA Centers, IT Programs, and the NASA Shared Services Center (NSSC).”
As FedScoop previously reported, the contract is expected to feature firm, fixed-price (FFP) and cost-plus-fixed-fee (CPFF) elements and indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) task orders.
The eight-year contract consists of a 90-day phase-in, a nine-month base period and seven one-year options.
The roughly $2 billion ceiling for the contract is broken down across different categories: NCAPS core service catalog items, teams and tasks will be FFP with a $1.33 billion ceiling; core services will be CPFF with a $430 million ceiling; IDIQ task orders will be FFP and CPFF with a $100 million ceiling; and other direct costs will be reimbursable with a $115 million ceiling.
IARPA to develop novel AI that automatically generates tips to improve intel reports
The intelligence community’s key research hub is launching a new program to build tools that exploit recent advances in artificial intelligence to ultimately help intel analysts write their reports with stronger evidence and better reasoning.
To answer complex and constantly evolving intelligence questions, military and government analysts frequently have to comb through large amounts of uncertain and sometimes conflicting information. Through its new rapid explanation, analysis and sourcing online program (REASON) the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) will tap teams to develop AI-driven software that can automatically generate recommendations or comments on any draft analytic report that an analyst is working on, with the simple push of a button.
“The suggestions that are automatically produced will do two things: They’ll suggest additional evidence bearing on the topic, and secondly, the suggestions and the comments will identify, automatically, strengths as well as weaknesses in the reasoning of the draft report,” IARPA Program Manager Dr. Steven Rieber told DefenseScoop in an interview on Thursday.
Rieber provided an early look at what this new project will involve — and how the AI it enables might benefit the U.S. military and intel analysts in the not-so-distant future.
The goal
“We’re developing new tools and technology for the intelligence community, so we’re working on problems that have not yet been solved,” Rieber said.
Rieber has never been an intelligence analyst, and he “doesn’t ever pretend to have been” one — but he has worked closely with many over the course of his career.
“I got my [doctorate degree] in analytic philosophy, and I worked as a professor at a university for a number of years. After 9/11 I decided to change careers and come to the intelligence community to help it improve its analytic methods — the methods that intelligence analysts use,” he told DefenseScoop.
At the time he first joined the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Rieber worked in its integrity and standards unit. While there, he introduced sophisticated analytic methods to intel analysts, crafting thousands of different training courses for government experts.
“When it comes to developing training courses and training analysts, and facilitating structured analytic techniques, one thing I noticed — and that the analysts pointed out to me — is that the techniques and the training tend to require a lot of time and effort on the part of the analyst. But intelligence analysts, like most professionals, are busy people doing important tasks, and often don’t have sufficient time to take away from their work to use a structured method. So, my goal in coming to IARPA was to work with scientists to develop new methods for intelligence analysts that require much less time and effort on the part of any analyst,” Rieber explained.
The new REASON program he’s leading aims to accomplish exactly that.
The proposer’s day for the effort will be held Jan. 11 and the program will unfold under two phases — the first lasting 24 months and the second lasting 18 months.
Several scientific research and interdisciplinary teams — or “performer teams” in IARPA jargon — will likely be tapped to collaborate with the agency in this work. But they won’t be competing against one another.
“What IARPA looks for when evaluating proposals for a program like REASON is a diversity of approaches. So, we’re happy to fund — and we often do — several different ways of solving the technological problem that we put out in the [broad agency announcement],” Rieber said.
The agency’s technical description calls for proposals to involve a “mix of skills and staffing,” highlighting expertise in more than a dozen topics, including: applied epistemology; argumentation; cognitive psychology; experimental design; informal logic; judgment and decision making; linguistics; natural language processing; philosophy of language; psychometrics; rationality; software engineering; systems engineering; and systems integration.
The agency makes it a point to never prescribe in detail the exact technology performer teams should generate in efforts like this one, and broadly its approaches seek to promote creativity. Still, Rieber provided DefenseScoop with a hypothetical about the sort of innovation that IARPA envisions inspiring through REASON.
Imagine “you’re an analyst working on a problem and you’ve written a draft report. You think you’ve covered the things that you need to. So what you do with REASON is you press a button and request that REASON produce automatic instantaneous comments on your draft,” he said. “And among the comments, you find that REASON has pointed out that there’s a piece of evidence from a report that you hadn’t noticed is relevant to the topic you’re working on. And that piece of evidence, let’s say, is contrary evidence. It’s some evidence against the claim that you’re making in the report.”
He continued: “You see that piece of evidence, and as a result you reduce the level of confidence that you’ve assigned to your judgment, because there’s some contrary evidence that REASON pointed out that you weren’t aware of.”
While that, Rieber noted, was just one “sort of stylized, dramatic example” of what the imagined software might do, he said the novel AI-enabled tools might also point out supporting evidence for the judgment that an intel analyst is making. It could also reveal, he said, some weakness in the logic of the user’s analytic report.
“We all know how helpful it can be to receive comments from our peers and supervisors, and from friends on our drafts. So, you can think of REASON as producing these comments of a similar type that we get from our human peers — but doing so instantaneously and on demand — whenever the analyst wants the comments,” Rieber said.
Aiding — but not replacing — humans
IARPA intends for this program to pave the way for novel AI systems that can assist intel analysts as they hustle to solve complex national security puzzles by pinpointing critical information that’s available, pertains to their work and may have been overlooked.
The hope is that those tools might one day help influence the accuracy and speed of reports those top thinkers deliver to policymakers and the administration. Right now, though, “such technology does not exist,” Rieber told DefenseScoop.
One capability out there that REASON may be somewhat analogous to — once IARPA and its partners develop it — is the digital technology that automatically produces suggestions on grammar and style in written products, like essays. The envisioned AI tools would be similar in that they generate comments on experts’ work, however, the comments produced will be about the logic of the evidence of the analytic reports and not the writing and style.
“The automatic grammar checks technologies are pretty sophisticated. But the REASON problem is harder because there aren’t formal rules that guide the evidence and logic in real-life reasoning on complex issues the way there are formal rules for, say, grammar and spelling,” Rieber said.
He noted that the REASON program does not seek to replace human analysts with fully automated production of analytic reports. Instead, those involved will produce and refine software that helps the analysts write better reports, faster, and with stronger reasoning than today’s technologies allow.
“The fact that REASON doesn’t aim to do that is a good thing — because if we had automated production of analytic reports, that technology would have to be just about perfect, because we can’t risk making a mistake in intelligence analysis that informs our decision-makers in national security,” Rieber said.
Human experts can use their own judgment to consider the valuable suggestions the AI software might generate and discard the others.
When asked whether REASON could be portrayed as a potential stepping stone to reaching sophisticated AI systems that are so intelligent they can independently write full analytic national security reports that are more accurate — and produced quicker — than those produced by humans, Rieber said he could think of several reasons why “that is still a long way off.”
For one, even incredibly advanced technologies that exist today for creating essays or other written products, still often pump out glaring errors, according to Rieber.
“Another reason to doubt whether technology will soon be able to produce analytic reports of high quality is that intelligence analysts are experts on their topics. And the technology would have to have an extraordinary level of … artificial intelligence to be able to compete with the human analysts who’ve been working on that topic for years,” he said.