White House employees to return to in-person work in July: report

White House employees will be invited to return to work in July, indicating the potential end of the pandemic protocols for some federal employees.

In a memo sent to the White House Office and Office of the Vice President, staff have been informed that they will start working full time on-campus between July 6 and July 23, according to a report by Axios.

The memo says that exceptions will be made for staffers with extenuating circumstances and that they may continue to work remotely on a temporary basis “in consultation with their manager.”

News of the plan to get White House staff back in the office comes as employees across federal government seek for clarity on what their agencies will expect from their staff as the U.S. continues to recover from COVID-19 closures.

It is understood that each agency is being required to develop its own plan to bring employees back to work in stages.

In January, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a memo to all agencies mandating that they adopt model COVID-19 safety principles and build tailored workplace safety plans.

The OMB in its guidance at the time said it would work with the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force to review and finalize plans, which would provide a starting point for adjusting mission requirements.

In April last year, the Trump administration issued joint guidance from the Office of Personnel Management and the OMB, requesting that agencies consider how they might bring back staff.

At the time, the guidance said that the federal government was actively planning to “ramp back up” operations to the maximum extent possible as local conditions warrant.

Senate confirms McCord as Department of Defense comptroller

The Senate on Friday confirmed Mike McCord as undersecretary of defense, or comptroller, at the Department of Defense.

It represents a return to the post for the senior government official, who was confirmed by unanimous consent, and has previously held the role between 2009 and 2014, and between 2014 and 2017.

The comptroller is a high-level civilian position within the DOD, which is appointed by the U.S. president. The comptroller advises the secretary of defense and the deputy secretary of defense on budgetary and fiscal matters.

McCord supported defense budget growth between 3-5% under President Trump, and also defended President Biden’s plan to divert those resources during his confirmation hearing on May 11.

Biden’s proposed $171.3 billion budget for civilian research and development (R&D) prioritizes emerging technologies like quantum computing and artificial intelligence at the expense of outdated, legacy systems.

McCord’s expected nomination, along with two others, earned praise from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in early April.

“Each of these individuals is talented, experienced and highly qualified for the critical national security roles they will, if confirmed, undertake on behalf of the department.”

“Their deep experience in national security will prove essential in guiding our efforts to defend this nation and secure our interests around the world,” Austin said at the time.

During his confirmation hearing, McCord emphasized the importance of DOD’s audit for identifying waste in an “era of cyber intrusions,” and said he would look to speed up the process.

Before returning to government, following his departure in 2017, McCord was director of civil military programs at the Stennis Center for Public Service.

Ex-Army Cyber Command leader Cardon joins C3 AI

A former commanding general of the U.S. Army Cyber Command has joined artificial intelligence and cybersecurity defense firm C3 AI.

Ed Cardon, who is a retired lieutenant general, takes up the post of chair at the business, where he will provide leadership to the company on national defense priorities.

He served in the U.S. Army for over 36 years, including stints leading troops in the U.S., Europe, Iraq and the Republic of Korea. Between 2013 and 2016 he was commanding general of the Army Cyber Command. In this role, he oversaw a major expansion of the unit and led task force Ares, which focused on offensive cyber operations against ISIS.

In 2016, Cardon became director of the U.S. Army Office of Business Transformation, where he led the task force responsible for modernizing the service. Since retiring in 2018, he has worked in industry, academia, and as an advisor to the government.

Commenting on his appointment, Cardon said: “AI is one of the greatest transformational technologies of this century.”

He continued: “C3 AI is a clear leader in enterprise AI. I am incredibly impressed by C3 AI’s leadership and talent, its rich software technology, and its commitment to the Nation.”

C3 AI was established in 2009 by former Siebel Systems founder Tom Siebel. The company listed on the New York Stock Exchange in November last year and has contracts to provide artificial intelligence software to agencies including the Defense Innovation Unit at the Department of Defense.

Biden administration proposes record $171.3B for R&D across civilian agencies

The Biden administration proposed the largest-ever increase in non-defense research and development spending as it looks to out-compete China in emerging technologies with its first budget released Friday.

Officials likened the $171.3 billion proposed for R&D across more than 20 federal agencies —which represents a 9% increase from prior year proposals — to “space race”-era spending. It comes in addition to American Jobs Plan investments of $50 billion for the National Science Foundation, $40 billion for laboratory upgrades across the country, and $30 billion for general innovation and job creation.

Historic increases in foundational R&D at scientific agencies like NSF, NASA, the Department of Energy, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology accompany growing concern that the U.S. has lost its global edge in the development of key technology such as satellites and supercomputers.

“[T]he nation is falling behind its biggest competitors in research and development, manufacturing and training,” reads the budget. “It has never been more important to invest in strengthening the nation’s infrastructure and competitiveness, and in creating the good-paying, union jobs of the future.”

Officials cited “overly restrictive” budget caps during the last decade for diminishing the country’s global advantage in emerging technologies.

The fiscal 2022 budget proposes a $7.7 billion increase to the Department of Health and Human Services‘ R&D budget, bringing the total to $51.2 billion, an 18% jump.

Of that figure, $8.7 billion would go to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, its largest increase in two decades, for improving disease surveillance — notably by modernizing public health data collection nationwide. A separate $1 billion is proposed for foreign assistance in crosscutting research and viral discovery programs to detect outbreaks that could lead to pandemics.

An additional $6.5 billion is proposed for the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, which would be modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that helped create the internet. ARPA-H would sit within the National Institutes of Health and research advances in cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s treatments.

If the proposals are enacted, the Department of Veterans Affairs would receive a $78 million R&D budget increase to $1.5 billion, $882 million of which would go toward medical and prosthetic, traumatic brain injury, and toxic exposure effects research benefitting disabled veterans.

Another big winner in the Biden budget is the Department of Energy, which would receive a $2.1 billion, or 11% increase, to its R&D budget — bringing the total to $21.5 billion. A portion of that would go toward upgrading the National Laboratories seeking climate and clean energy breakthroughs, as well as competing with China to develop the first exascale supercomputers.

The Biden administration is prioritizing climate R&D with $36 billion in discretionary climate investments, including a proposed $10 billion, a 30% increase, for non-defense clean energy innovation. The goal is to achieve a net-zero carbon economy by 2050.

Another $7 billion, representing a $1.5 billion increase, would go to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for improving climate observation and forecasting and data provided to decision-makers. Meanwhile the Department of the Interior, NASA and NSF would receive another $4 billion to fund climate science.

The budget also proposes $1 billion for an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Climate and invests in the existing Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy.

A smaller $600 million is proposed for electric vehicles and charging infrastructure at 18 agencies. The General Services Administration would see dedicated funds for other agencies, and the U.S. Postal Service would receive money for charging infrastructure.

Other R&D budget upticks of note would be a $1.3 billion increase at NASA to $14.6 billion, $765 million increase at NSF to $8.2 billion, and a $621 million increase at the Department of Commerce that houses NIST to $2.7 billion.

NASA would bolster everything from its next-generation satellite projects to its efforts to broaden diversity and inclusion in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.

An additional $50 billion proposed for NSF in the American Jobs Plan would go, in part, toward creating a technology directorate that will collaborate and build on existing semiconductor, advanced computing and communications, energy, and biotechnology programs across government.

The request for NIST includes program increases for measurement research and services across advanced communications, climate and energy, trustworthy artificial intelligence, quantum information science, engineering, semiconductor metrology, and the bioeconomy.

Biden’s budget reemphasized his administration’s effort to foster scientific integrity and evidence-based decision-making across agencies.

“The administration’s commitment to evidence-based policymaking and program evaluation is reflected in the prioritization and design of the budget’s historic investments in addressing climate change, environmental justice, health security, and pandemic preparedness and will be equally central to implementing these initiatives,” reads the document. “Agencies’ learning agendas and annual evaluation plans should reflect their plans to build evidence in these and other priority areas.”

Another administration goal with the budget was to improve the country’s long-term finances while making critical investments in emerging technologies, said Shalanda Young, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, on a call with reporters Friday morning.

Officials expect the budget’s corresponding American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan, as budgeted, to fully offset within 15 years.

“This is a very important and forward-looking budget,” said Cecilia Rouse, chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, on the same call. “The policies proposed are premised on the idea that to move forward as a country we need to invest in innovation, and the public sector is critical to building a robust and inclusive economy.”

Speaking to FedScoop, Grant Thornton Public Sector director Kelly Morrison, said the increase in R&D spending suggests an increased commitment from federal government to strength testing projects in their early stages.

“I think it’s a recognition that more needs to be done up front to prove out value and fail fast so that we’re not spending millions of dollars on initiatives that are behind schedule and don’t produce the value intended.

“In order to fix that symptom, more money needs to be invested in that R&D phase,” she said.

 

 

 

DOD asks for $112B in R&D funding in budget request

The Department of Defense is asking Congress to increase its overall research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) budget by more than $5 billion in fiscal 2021, a request that leaders have been teasing in the months before the official budget request was published Friday.

The department is seeking $112 billion for RDT&E, which represents a 5% year-on-year increase from enacted levels in fiscal 2021, and is the largest ever such demand.

The overall budget request for fiscal 2022, which was published earlier in April, comes in at $715 billion.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told lawmakers Thursday that the budget announced Friday would have “the largest ever request for [research, development, test and evaluation] for the development of technologies.”

“Our effort is to make sure that we have the ability to leverage quantum computing, AI [and] space-based platforms,” he told the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee. He added the funding was also to ensure that the DOD could “not just leverage these capabilities but network these capabilities in ways they have never been networked.”

The DOD’s budget request includes a slight boost to artificial intelligence funding, with this year’s being $874 million, more than the $841 million in last year’s request. 

Austin and the department’s No. 2 civilian, Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks, have emphasized the need to invest in new technologies, like AI, cybersecurity, and new concepts of operations that use them, while divesting from legacy systems.

“Our fiscal year [2022] budget will provide early insight into our strategic approach,” Hicks said at the Aspen Security Forum in early May. “It will support defense research, development, test and evaluation funding. This will lead to breakthrough technologies that drive innovation and underpin the development of next-generation defense capabilities.”

While overall spending would get a boost if the budget is approved by Congress as is, the Army would see a more than $1 billion cut in its R&D budget, a reflection of a shift to focusing on the Indo-Pacific region where other services like the Navy and Air Force are expected to play a bigger role. The Air Force and Navy combined would get a more than $5 billion bump.

Army funding was also cut as its soldiers begin to withdraw from Afghanistan, DOD acting Comptroller Anne McAndrew told reporters Friday.

Another boost came in cyberspace activities, where the the DOD has requested $10.4 billion, compared with a $9.8 billion request for fiscal year 2021.

To account for the boosts in funding in research and development, cyber and other tech, the request seeking $2.8 billion less funding across a range of legacy systems, including the Army’s IT budget and some intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) tech from special operations command.

White House allocates $9.8B to cybersecurity in 2022 budget request

Just over two months after receiving roughly $2 billion in emergency funding for tech and cybersecurity modernization, the Biden administration wants more money from Congress to build on those investments.

The White House has asked for $500 million to be added to the federal government’s Technology Modernization Fund and $9.8 billion to go specifically toward civilian cybersecurity programs across the government — up from about $8.7 billion for fiscal 2021 — according to its fiscal 2022 budget request released Friday.

Under the passage of the American Rescue Plan in March, the TMF received a $1 billion injection, which the TMF Board has since said it will prioritize for the most pressing modernization and cybersecurity needs across government.

The TMF is a central pot of appropriations intended to fund modernization projects under the stipulation that participating agencies pay back the funding within a set time, typically five years. However, the board recently introduced new repayment flexibilities for higher priority projects to encourage agencies to apply for funding.

“With the continuously evolving IT and cyber landscape, these investments are an important down payment on delivering modern and secure services to the American public, and continued investment in IT will be necessary to ensure the United States meets the accelerated pace of modernization,” says the administration’s budget proposal.

Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., a top advocate in Congress for federal IT modernization, told FedScoop in an emailed statement he is happy to see the call for additional support through the TMF. Connolly was a co-author of the Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Act, which was signed into law in late 2017 and created the TMF.

“I am pleased to see that the Biden Administration continues to recognize the importance of investing in the federal government’s IT and cyber infrastructure through the Technology Modernization Fund,” Connolly said. “The MGT Act established the TMF with two significant goals in mind: to improve information technology and enhance cybersecurity across the federal government. Those goals are essential to the success of the government, both now and in the future.”

Appropriators, however, gave been hesitant in the past to fork over money to the nascent TMF program until it’s a proven, successful model. And with $1 billion already sitting in the fund, appropriators may want to see some evidence that that emergency funding is spent meaningfully before handing over an additional $500 million, said Matthew Cornelius, executive director of the Alliance for Digital Innovation.

“There’s this weird dynamic where there’s still an incredible amount of political support from the administration, both from the previous as well as this one, on the TMF,” Cornelius told FedScoop. “But there’s also a real need to change that operating model that was sort of instituted three or four years ago in order to get that $1 billion out and to then make the case for why the additional $500 million is needed.”

To date, the TMF program has “awarded ten initiatives a total of approximately $79.4 million,” the budget document says. Until the American Rescue Act, only $175 million had been put into the fund over four appropriation cycles.

Ultimately, it will come down to House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government to prioritize its 2022 allocations toward the TMF, Cornelius said. So, the agencies in charge of TMF administration — the Office of Management and Budget and the General Services Administration — should work over the next few months to make good headway awarding some of that $1 billion, he said.

“If OMB and GSA get their act together, really push forward quickly on high priority projects where they spend a good chunk of that billion that they’ve been given here over the next four to five months as they continue to make their case to the appropriators, there’s an opportunity for them to get more money in there,” Cornelius said.

Cybersecurity would see a solid boost

Of the greater $9.8 billion proposed for civilian cybersecurity, $110 million would go to support the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency‘s federalwide cybersecurity efforts and $750 million to agencies affected by recent cyberattacks, like the sweeping SolarWinds hacks, “to address exigent gaps in security capability,” the proposal says. CISA got $650 million in emergency funding under the American Rescue Plan.

“These resources would better enable Federal agencies to protect technology and safeguard citizen’s sensitive information from the threats posed by cybercriminals and adversaries,” the budget proposal says. “Agencies will continue to improve cybersecurity practices, implement supply chain risk management programs, develop coordinated vulnerability disclosure programs, and improve cyber threat intelligence analysis.”

Just Thursday night, it was revealed that the U.S. Agency for International Development was the latest federal agency to be hit by a cyberattack, reportedly by the same Russian hackers responsible for the SolarWinds breach, according to Microsoft.

Additionally, the budget proposes setting aside $15 million to support the launch of the White House’s Office of the National Cyber Director position.

Despite the uptick in money requested for cybersecurity, what the budget proposal doesn’t seem to account for is the new mandates from the Biden administration’s recent cybersecurity executive order, Cornelius said.

“Because of the timing from the budget and the EO, there’s really not money in the budget to implement any of that stuff,” he said. Outside of the additional $860 million combined that would go to CISA and to address recent hacks, most of the additional cybersecurity request increase is for “plus ups…independent of the additional activity they’re going to have to take on as part of the EO,” Cornelius pointed out.

These elements fall under a larger federal-wide civilian IT proposed budget of $58.4 billion for 2022, up from the $57.1 billion estimated for this current fiscal year.

These figures do not include the Department of Defense’s IT budget, which is released separately. As context, DOD requested $38 billion for IT in fiscal 2021.

The budget proposal mentions a number of other IT initiatives the administration looks to support, such as IT workforce development, the Federal Data Strategy and the U.S. Digital Service, but it doesn’t explicitly provide information on their funding. USDS got $200 million under the American Rescue Plan, multiplying several times over what the organization has received in funding so far during its short life.

Lawmakers introduce bill to create federal rotational program for cyber experts

Lawmakers have introduced a bipartisan bill that would create a rotational program within the federal government for cyber experts from the private sector.

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., on Friday introduced the Federal Rotational Cyber Workforce Program Act in the House of Representatives. It is the same version of a bill that was last month introduced in the Senate by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

The proposed legislation aims to solve the difficulty faced by the federal government in obtaining the top cyber and tech talent needed to counter sophisticated threats from foreign actors. Federal government agencies have in recent years faced challenges recruiting top cyber and technology talent, in large part because of the pay differential between the private and public sectors.

If passed, the legislation would create a dynamic, prestigious program that allows senior tch industry staff to work for the U.S. government for a defined time period.

Participants would be able to return to their original position, or similar, in the private sector once their time in the program has ended, according to the bill. It encourages agencies to identify positions for rotation that have a focus on multi-agency, integrated cyber missions.

The legislation would mandate that the Office of Personnel Management lead the program in consultation with the Chief Human Capital Officers Council, the Chief Information Officers Council, and the Department of Homeland Security.

It also requires the Government Accountability Office to study the program’s effectiveness during a pilot.

After consideration by lawmakers, the bill will next move to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform for scrutiny.

Commenting on the legislation, Rep. Khanna said: “Silicon Valley has and will continue to lead the world in creativity & scientific discovery, but we can’t rely on private investment alone to protect our cyber-infrastructure from bad actors.”

“The federal government, America’s largest employer, must lead. This dynamic rotational program will give our cyber professionals the wide-ranging experience they need to defend us from growing threats abroad,” he added.

Rep. Nancy Mace said: “This program will equip not only our current generation of cybersecurity professionals but our next, ensuring America’s grid is prepared for attack. To strengthen our cybersecurity workforce is to strengthen our national defense.”

Speaking to FedScoop earlier this month, a senior procurement official said that in some cases staff working in the private sector can receive up to ten times the salary compared with a similar public sector position.

USAID hit with cyberattack by Russian-backed group Nobelium: Microsoft

The Russian-backed group reportedly responsible for last year’s sweeping SolarWinds hacks have once again breached a federal agency — this time the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Hackers within the Russian group Nobelium are believed to have accessed USAID’s Constant Contact email marketing service account, according to Microsoft, who published a blog post late Thursday on the attack. Once the group had access to the USAID account, it began a larger intelligence-gathering phishing campaign targeting 3,000 email accounts at more than 150 different organizations, including other agencies, think tanks, contractors and non-governmental organizations.

It’s unclear from the blog post whether the attackers accessed other USAID systems or data. Microsoft did not comment beyond the information in the blogs.

“[T]he actor was able to distribute phishing emails that looked authentic but included a link that, when clicked, inserted a malicious file used to distribute a backdoor we call NativeZone,” Microsoft’s Tom Burt wrote in the blog post. “This backdoor could enable a wide range of activities from stealing data to infecting other computers on a network.”

Microsoft said it detected the activity this week and said that its services automatically block many of the attacks, adding that there’s “no reason to believe these attacks involve any exploit against or vulnerability in Microsoft’s products or services.”

Microsoft began tracking the so-called spear-phishing campaign — where an attacker uses social engineering and deception, often via email, to target specific individuals — in February, but the situation escalated in April, the company said, before the USAID emails were sent May 25.

The incident remains active, according to Microsoft, and the company will add more details when they become available.

“Microsoft security researchers assess that the Nobelium’s spear-phishing operations are recurring and have increased in frequency and scope,” the company said in a separate post. “It is anticipated that additional activity may be carried out by the group using an evolving set of tactics.”

The Nobelium group is believed to have been responsible for the SolarWinds attacks that have affected at least nine federal agencies and many more organizations within the contracting base and wider industry. In this latest breach, however, Microsoft says that the group took an approach that “differs significantly” from the SolarWinds campaign, which targeted the firm’s Orion software to access victims’ networks.

News of the ongoing campaign comes as President Joe Biden is set to take a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva next month as the U.S. looks “to restore predictability and stability to the U.S.-Russia relationship.”

In a statement to FedScoop, USAID acting spokesperson Pooja Jhunjhunwala, said: “The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) became aware of potentially malicious email activity from a compromised Constant Contact email marketing account.

“The forensic investigation into this security incident is ongoing. USAID has notified and is working with all appropriate Federal authorities, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).”

A spokesperson for Constant Contact said: “We are aware that the account credentials of one of our customers were compromised and used by a malicious actor to access the customer’s Constant Contact accounts.

“This is an isolated incident, and we have temporarily disabled the impacted accounts while we work in cooperation with our customer, who is working with law enforcement.”

DHS awards four EIS task orders worth $306M to AT&T

The Department of Homeland Security has awarded four Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) task orders for modernizing its telecommunications infrastructure with Internet Protocol-based networking services to AT&T.

Worth a combined $306 million over 12 years if all options are exercised, the task orders cover networking services supporting the DHS headquarters, as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and Science and Technology Directorate.

Unlike most departments, DHS is awarding upward of five EIS task orders ahead of the Networx contract’s expiration on March 31, 2023, but these most recent awards were protested first by Lumen Technologies and then Verizon. Those protests were denied by the Government Accountability Office, and now work can proceed.

“We’re honored DHS selected us to modernize its communications capabilities with an IP-
based infrastructure,” said Stacy Schwartz, vice president of FirstNet and public safety at AT&T, in a statement. “We expect the networking transformation to power the many missions of DHS agencies into the future.”

DHS agencies will soon be able to access data networking, voice collaboration, equipment, security and labor, as well as FirstNet priority communications for public safety personnel.

Software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) and other cybersecurity protections will reduce agencies’ internet connections, and therefore their attack surface. This permits improved monitoring, in keeping with the zero-trust security model, which has become an increased focus in the aftermath of high-profile hacks like SolarWinds.

Atlantic Council calls on U.S. gov to strengthen cyber strategy and accelerate quantum tech

The U.S. government and its allies should strengthen their cybersecurity strategy and accelerate the operationalization of quantum technologies, according to a leading D.C. think tank.

In a report published on Wednesday, the Atlantic Council issued recommendations for maintaining the country’s leadership in science and technology, and for preserving the resilience of its physical and IT supply chains.

According to the study, which was conducted by the think tank’s Commission on the Geopolitical Impact of New Technology and Data, the federal government must support technological development across many separate spheres of society.

The Atlantic Council says federal government should offer greater support for technologies that underpin the growth of digital economies, as well as more support for innovation that enlarges the spaces where societies operate, such as sub-sea technology.

The Atlantic Council also recommends additional backing for the development of artificial intelligence.

“The sophisticated, but potentially fragile, data and tech systems that now connect people and nations mean we must incorporate resiliency as a necessary foundational pillar of modern life,” said David Bray, director of the Council’s Geotech Center.

“It is imperative that we promote strategic initiatives that employ data and tech to amplify the ingenuity of people, diversity of talent, strength of democratic values, innovation of companies, and reach of global partnerships,” added Bray, former CIO of the FCC.

The recommendations come after the Biden Administration in March published its interim national security strategic guidance, which identified cybersecurity as a “top priority,” and said it would strengthen the country’s capability, readiness and resilience in cyberspace.

According to the Atlantic Council, a revamped strategy is crucial for the country’s national and economic security, and it must also work to increase trust and confidence in the digital economy.

Federal government concerns over cybersecurity have come to the fore in recent weeks, amid a surge in ransomware attacks on private and public sector entities, including against the recent attack on the Colonial Pipeline.

The U.S. is also racing to build a new generation of supercomputers, supported by federal departments including the Department of Energy. It is hoped that exascale computing will have a key role to play in the future energy security of the country, by allowing more efficient management of the energy grid.

The think tank is also calling for wider federal oversight of supply chain assurance and said more must be done to harden the security of commercial space industry facilities and space assets. The latter recommendations follow a report by NASA’s oversight body earlier this month, which identified major cybersecurity weaknesses at the organization.

The Atlantic Council is an Atlanticist U.S. think tank focused on international affairs, which was founded in 1961.