Anduril scores $99M contract with DIU for counter-drone tech

The Department of Defense has awarded technology startup Anduril a $99 million contract to provide a new automated counter-unmanned aerial system (C-UAS) capability.

The Production Other Transaction (P-OT) Agreement was struck between the company and the Defense Innovation Unit, the DOD’s Silicon Valley outpost that uses non-traditional contracts to work with start ups. The agreement acts as a vehicle for any of the military branches to purchase the technology and services of Anduril to detect and deter against enemy drones using artificial intelligence. The agreement runs for five years and has the flexibility to allow Anduril to update its services and tech as threats change and software improves.

“This milestone for Anduril and DIU demonstrates that by running meritocratic test events and competitions that focus on capabilities, and rewarding the best systems, DOD can bring the country’s engineering resources to bear on critical national security issues,” Anduril Co-Founder and CEO Brian Schimpf said in a statement.

The tech itself is based on an AI-enabled system that takes in data from an array of sensors to detect incoming drones. Small unmanned aerial systems (UAS) have proven difficult for older detection systems to detect because they are nimble and small. They have also proven to be a nuisance for both military and civilian operations, with non-state groups strapping explosives to commercial drones and commercial flights being grounded by drones near airports.

The deal represents a major milestone for both Anduril and other companies in the emerging markets of defense tech startups. The company’s Chief Revenue Officer Matt Steckman said it was an example of the company bridging the “valley of death,” or the gap in between small research grants that can be earned quickly from the DOD and major multi-million dollar contracts that can take years to pay out.

“This is a meaningful contract to the high tech start up community,” he said in an interview with FedScoop, adding later that “I am actually particularly excited and motivated not by this contact but the change in attitude.”

Attitudes towards contracting within the DOD are criticized by some as being risk-adverse and overly prescriptive. Steckman said also that DIU’s approach could be a model for the rest of the DOD to follow by making contract vehicles that allow for constant iteration.

DIU contracts with tech company by posting problem statements rather than the typical long requirement documents. That approach was one of the many things Steckman said was critical in having a flexible vehicle that will be able to support rapid changes as needed to the system.

TMF funding could help clear NARA veterans’ records backlog, lawmakers say

House lawmakers have written to the National Archives and Records Administration, calling on it to apply for funding from the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) to help clear a backlog of more than 500,000 requests for service records from veterans.

In a letter sent Monday, members of the three House committees said NARA should seek to use the TMF, in addition to existing allotted funds, to speed up IT modernization and digitize records and clear the impasse.

Signatories include Rep. Carolyn Maloney, chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, D-N.Y., and Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Wisc., who is a ranking member on the committee’s National Security Subcommittee.

“NARA has identified the need to digitize records as one of the biggest hurdles to addressing the backlog of veterans’ requests,” the lawmakers wrote in the missive. “Congress has provided substantial financial support for NARA to reach this goal. Although NARA has taken some steps to begin digitization, more significant action is needed to improve the agency’s IT infrastructure.”

Since implementing workplace restrictions at the start of the coronavirus crisis last year, NARA has been unable to process thousands of requests for veterans’ records. The delays have left veterans unable to access certain military records held at the National Personnel Records Center needed to receive service-related benefits, including medical treatment, unemployment assistance, home loans and student loans.

Despite receiving fresh funding, including through the American Rescue Plan Act in March this year, NARA projects that at the current rate, the records backlog will not be resolved until the end of fiscal 2022.

At a briefing on June 9, NARA reported to members of Congress that the backlog stood at nearly 500,000 unprocessed pending requests for records, a number that remained unchanged from May.

Alongside $272 million in funding for NARA included in the American Rescue Plan, Congress in March 2020 provided the agency’s Federal Records Center Program with $8.1 million in CARES Act funding. These funds followed $50 million in emergency appropriations included in the Consolidated Appropriations Act last year.

The latest missive follows a bipartisan letter sent by lawmakers in May, which urged the Department of Defense to help address the backlog of veterans’ records and called on Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to address the data pile-up.

HHS renews, expands Palantir’s Tiberius contract to $31M

The Department of Health and Human Services renewed and expanded its one-year contract for its COVID-19 vaccine distribution platform Tiberius from nearly $17 million to $31 million, tech company Palantir announced Monday.

Palantir Foundry powers Tiberius, which has grown from simply helping HHS understand vaccine distribution across the U.S. and providing an integrated view of the supply chain to serving as the backbone of day-to-day dosage programs launched by agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.

HHS had Palantir develop Tiberius in mid-2020 as part of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed, which has since been rebranded as the Countermeasure Acceleration Group.

“We are proud to have supported HHS in administering one of the most successful and rapid
vaccine rollouts in the world,” said Akash Jain, president of Palantir’s U.S. government arm, in an announcement. “As new variants emerge and pose a renewed risk to public health in the United States and around the world, we are humbled to have earned the confidence of HHS once again to help support its lifesaving work.”

Agencies will use the expanded Tiberius platform to weigh policy decisions concerning additional doses and boosters and international distribution, a Palantir spokesperson told FedScoop.

Tiberius already has between 2,000 and 3,000 users including those at HHS, CDC, BARDA, the Countermeasure Acceleration Group, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Pentagon, and other agencies involved in pandemic response. State and territory employees make up two-thirds of the user base, which also includes sub-state entities that receive vaccines like New York City and Chicago and commercial users including all retail pharmacies.

The Long-Term Care Facility and Federal Retail Pharmacy programs hadn’t been envisioned at the start of Palantir’s first contract for Tiberius, which now provides more granular analysis of gaps in vaccine access.

“You sort of see us shifting gears right now from a flooding-the-zone approach to vaccines, where you’re just trying to get as much supply as you can access out there,” the spokesperson said. “And things have really turned a corner where you’re more demand-constrained than you are supply-constrained.”

Embracing a multi-cloud mindset

Although public sector organizations have been moving toward a multi-cloud operating model for some time, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the trend and forced new discussions around transformational cloud strategies. Today, several public sector agencies are seeing tangible benefits in terms of continuity, resiliency, management efficiency, and security.

“Multi-cloud is not a product or a vendor or a location, it’s a mindset,” said Matt VanSickle, Chief Technology Officer for the State of Montana, speaking at the 2021 Public Sector Innovation Summit sponsored by VMware. “And that mindset really starts with automation and security. And from there, you build on that mindset to deliver those services to the organizations you support.”

VanSickle was responding to Ranil Dassanayaka, Vice President of Architecture & Engineering, GEH, at VMware, who asked public sector leaders in one of the summit’s panel discussions how they are approaching the multi-cloud world. (Watch the full panel discussion here.)

Christine Finnelle, CTO at the U.S. Marshals Service, said her agency is on track to be a 100% multi-cloud agency within the next two years. “We’re almost…50-to-60% cloud-enabled already. And it’s a mix of IaaS and SaaS-type services that provide us a base for those multi-cloud, connections and services to be delivered,” said Finnelle.

The increase in FedRAMP offerings has made it much easier for the U.S. Marshals Service to adopt multiple cloud services while reducing operational overhead, Finnelle said. And while the agency still has some legacy applications that require modernization, the bulk of the effort has been what Finnelle calls a “lift and shift” approach, which not only provides ease of migration to the cloud in a multi-cloud world, but also provides the increased capabilities and security protections that the cloud offers at no additional cost to the base services.

Gary Washington, Chief Information Officer at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who also spoke at the summit, said the USDA’s multi-cloud approach is based on the federal government’s Cloud Smart strategy.

“Our multi-cloud strategy continues to grow and mature,” Washington said. Today, 81% of the agency’s applications are in the cloud. Given the large number of missions USDA has, “we’re not really dedicated to one single cloud provider or technology,” he said.

“Our approach is to enable our mission and our multi-cloud approach,” Washington said. “We’ve been on this journey for the last for more than four years now. And we have seen tremendous benefits from taking this approach.”

Balancing innovation with security and compliance

Just as the addition of new FedRAMP offerings has streamlined the U.S. Marshals Service’s ability to deploy new cloud offerings quickly and securely, the federal government’s standardized approach to security and risk assessment for cloud technologies is having a positive impact on the state and local level.

“What we’ve done is focus on pre-vetted vendors, focusing on FedRAMP vendors already having that [secure] ecosystem set up,” said Montana’s CTO Matt VanSyckle. “And so when a business user comes to us with a design plan, we can immediately respond based on that pre-vetted idea.”

Another improvement has been the increase in the number of cloud tools available at FedRAMP High — the strongest FedRAMP security control baseline. “FedRAMP High status is important to us,” said Finnelle. “There are some very cutting edge, cross-cloud tool sets that are FedRAMP certified, and those that we’ve used on-prem now are adapted to the cloud models. And so the vendors that have done that are the ones that we adopt so we have that visibility and transparency.”

However, even with pre-vetted vendors from the FedRAMP program, VanSyckle advises his public sector colleagues to test their response plan to different security issues that may come up in any cloud environment. “That’s been the key to supporting that balance of innovation and security,” he said.

Best practices and lessons learned

Although multi-cloud environments are becoming easier to establish — and generating increasing benefits — all three public sector experts agreed that one size does not fit all.

The need to adjust approaches “applies whether we’re talking about legacy apps or migrating to a SaaS platform, or refactoring it within a commercial landing zone and using commercial tools to manage it. We believe each application has a unique customer interface and experience set,” said USDA’s Washington. “And as we go down this journey, we try to be more thoughtful about [how we] engineer applications in the cloud so that they will provide business value, and also minimize the costs that we have.”

VanSyckle advises his counterparts to have an agile mindset and a Plan B. “If you’re going to go into a certain product, or a certain vendor or a certain cloud…have a plan if you need to transition out and have that written down,” he said. “So planning the agile mindset upfront helps across the board and in multi-cloud environments.”

What’s Next?

The future of multi-cloud environments in the public sector hinges on scalability, flexibility, and security. Agencies want to be able to spin up services, servers, storage, and tools leveraging a multi-cloud plane of operations.

“Now with the cloud, there’s that option for the advancement and expansion to things we haven’t even thought of yet,” said Finnelle. “We don’t want to have a proprietary back-end OS in one cloud and another one in another cloud and not be able to talk or create multiple data lakes. We want something that’s federated, something that’s seamless.”

Learn more about the “Multi-Cloud” strategies and how VMware is helping to accelerate public sector innovation.

Deloitte acquires military cybersecurity firm Sentek

Deloitte has bought San Diego-based cybersecurity and systems engineering firm Sentek for an undisclosed sum.

The acquired company provides services to the defense, security and justice sector, and the Navy is one of its largest clients.

Mike Canning, head of Deloitte’s public services division, said the deal would expand the consultancy’s presence in San Diego and boost its cybersecurity work with branches of the military and other federal agencies.

Eric Basu, CEO and founder of Sentek Global, said: “Sentek Global and Deloitte share many common values, not the least of which is providing high-quality services and solutions for the agencies that serve our country. He added: “We are joining Deloitte to help our government clients solve complex systems engineering and cybersecurity challenges, while also accelerating the scaling of our services for defense, security and justice sector organizations.”

National labs modernization bill introduced in Congress

A bill that would compel the Department of Energy to use appropriated funds to upgrade its national laboratories has been introduced in Congress.

Rep. Bill Foster, D-Ill., earlier this month introduced the draft legislation, which has been referred to the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Foster worked as a high-energy physicist and particle designer at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory prior to becoming a member of Congress.

If it passes, the new legislation will require the secretary of Energy to fund deferred maintenance projects at the national labs, as well as modernization projects and critical infrastructure updates.

The Department of Energy operates 17 strategically significant research facilities across the U.S., focused on scientific research across a range of areas, including management of the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile.

In late June, an analogous bill was also introduced in the Senate by two Democrat lawmakers, requiring the DOE to upgrade infrastructure at the national labs.

As part of the annual funding appropriations process, Energy is required to submit to House and Senate committees a list of projects that will receive funding. For fiscal 2022 through 2026, the department is authorized to receive $6.1 billion for maintenance and modernization through the appropriations process.

At least one-sixth of the funding for maintenance made available during each fiscal year must be managed by the Office of Science at the Department of Energy.

Senate NDAA draft includes study of budgeting process, other tech provisions

The Senate draft version of the fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act could be the start of the Department of Defense and Congress rethinking the defense budgeting process, a system that advocates for tech modernization have long said inhibits the DOD’s ability to be agile.

A summary published by the Senate Armed Services Committee includes a provision that would establish a commission to study the planning, programming, budget and execution process that forces acquisition programs to wait years before getting full funding from Congress. The budgeting process was created in the 1950s to ensure proper accounting for major industrial projects like buying tanks, but inhibits the kind of rapid iteration needed when buying software, experts have said.

“The FY22 National Defense Authorization Act will help safeguard the nation, counter a range of evolving threats, and support our troops both on and off the battlefield.”

“[I]t prioritizes programs and policies to strengthen our cyber defenses, improve readiness, and accelerate research and development of advanced technologies that will give our forces strategic advantages,” committee chairman Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said in a statement.

The bill still has a long way to go before becoming law, including passing both the full Senate and House, but the powerful defense committee often gets many provisions enacted into law.

Other new provisions in the summary include several reports the secretary of defense would be required to submit to Congress, including one on DOD’s contractor compliance regime the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC), new augmented reality headset technology and DOD’s use of commercial autonomous capabilities.

The bill would also match several requests the DOD has for Congress, including increased funding for research and development and “full funding” for U.S. Cyber Command. On top of more money for research and development, it would give new hiring authorities to the DOD to retain technical talent in labs. The bill would also create a “civilian cybersecurity reserve” within Cyber Command.

Ex-HHS modernization adviser JD Walter joins Golden Key Group

Professional services consultancy firm Golden Key Group has appointed JD Walter as Executive Vice President of Solution Optimization and Execution.

Previously he was a modernization advisor at the Department of Health and Human Services, and also has several decades of experience as a federal contractor working with various federal departments.

Walter is the latest former government technology leader to join the HR consultancy, after Jessica Salmoiraghi earlier this year moved to the company as a vice president. Salmoiraghi was previously chief acquisition officer at the General Services Administration, a role that she vacated in January.

Commenting on the appointment, GKG CEO and founder Gretchen McCracken said: “Throughout his career, JD has established himself as a government shared services expert with a focus on modernization activities that optimize government efficiency. Those skills are invaluable in our line of work.”

State Department’s security procurement division lacks integrated IT for ‘efficient’ contracting

The division that arranges security for the State Department’s domestic and foreign posts lacks integrated financial management and procurement IT systems for efficient contracting, according to its Office of Inspector General.

The IG found State’s Diplomatic Security Contracts Division staff manually enters data on critical security services and supplies, despite it slowing their work and making it difficult to follow internal controls.

Supplies and services DSCD contracts for include protection for State Department employees and facilities, new local guard posts oversees and armored vehicles for embassies.

“The continued lack of a centralized and integrated procurement and acquisitions system designed for acquisitions program management reduces the effectiveness of acquisition planning and management and increases the opportunities for errors,” reads the OIG’s unclassified report released Thursday.

Part of the problem is the Office of Acquisitions Management, of which DSCD is a part, hasn’t completed its analysis of State Department IT architecture to determine where procurement systems can be integrated. Secondly, the Bureau of Administration, of which AQM is a part, hasn’t implemented a knowledge management strategy for managing files on standard operating procedures, contracting templates and policy documents. OIG recommended the bureau do so, to which it agreed.

Lastly, the State Department’s Global Financial Management System (GFMS) and eFiling module of the Integrated Logistics Management System (ILMS) are managed by different bureaus. The Bureau of the Comptroller and Global Financial Services manages GFMS, while the Bureau of Administration’s Office of Logistics Management manages ILMS.

Because integrating the two systems is the bureaus’ responsibility and not DSCD’s, OIG recommended the two bureaus create a schedule of potential systems improvements based on the results of AQM’s completed IT architecture analysis. The Bureau of Administration agreed, and State Department employees told OIG several initiatives were already underway to strengthen systems integration.

DSCD’s IT issues are exacerbated by the fact it’s understaffed. OIG found 11 of 43 positions vacant at the time of its inspection, which created high workloads for employees across the division’s three branches: security, worldwide protective services, and local guard force and anti-terrorism assistance and training (LGF/ATA).

LGF averaged eight contracts per contracting officer (CO) across 105 contracts worth $2 billion, and together one security and one AGA CO handled a combined 91 contracts worth $6.8 billion.

COs struggled to complete contractor performance assessments and contract file management as a result, and the Office of the Procurement Executive hasn’t done a comprehensive staffing analysis for DSCD — though one is planned for fiscal 2021. OIG recommended the Bureau of Administration have OPE conduct the analysis, to which it agreed.

“Without such an analysis, the division’s current staffing and workload situation increases opportunities for mistakes, reduces effectiveness, limits DSCD’s capacity to implement innovative practices, and ultimately reduces the level and quality of AQM’s support to [the Bureau of Diplomatic Security].”

DOD tests new machine learning capabilities for JADC2

The Department of Defense recently concluded a round of tests of new machine learning technology that aims to increase data sharing between combatant commands.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command and Northern Command’s Global Information Dominance Experiment 3 (GIDE 3) brought 11 combatant commands, the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) and other tech leaders together July 8-15 at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado to test the use AI in warfare.

The GIDE experiments aim to advance tech that will enable the DOD’s new concept of how it will fight in the future, where data from across military domains will be shared between machines and AI will assist commanders in their decision-making. The idea is captured in the department’s larger strategy of Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), which is a guiding framework for many experiments like GIDE 3 and others across the services.

“The GIDE 3 experiment showcased how the software tools designed for cross-combatant command collaboration, assessment, and decision-making can be used to enable more effective global logistics coordination, intelligence sharing and operations planning,” said Gen. Glen VanHerck, NORAD and NORTHCOM commander.

The third phase of the GIDE experiments focused on testing the JAIC’s new Matchmaker tool, designed to create defensive options by reading real-time data from the field and analysis assessments from analysts, according to a release from the Air Force. The tool is meant to provide a core capability within JADC2 of linking and analyzing data from across domains, replacing the current process of human analysts talking over radios with data often siloed between domains.

“By integrating more information from a global network of sensors and sources, using the power of AI and machine-learning techniques to identify the important trends within the data, and making both current and predictive information available to commanders, NORAD and USNORTHCOM are giving leaders around the globe more time to make decisions and choose the best options available, whether in competition, crisis or conflict,” VanHerck said. 

The first two GIDE experiments focused on how to coordinate early warning alerts between a handful of commands using AI and how to collaborate on logistics during war. The third test in mid-July was the final GIDE experiments hosted by Northern Command and NORAD, which has been an early adopter of AI and JADC2-related tech.

The two homeland defense commands also run the Pathfinder program, which uses AI to detect air threats like incoming missiles or even small drones.