House adds $4.2B in cyber, innovation funding to NDAA
The House Armed Services Committee voted Wednesday to add $4.2 billion in what it categorized as “cyber and innovation” funding to its draft of the fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act.
The funding was a part of a nearly $25 billion increase to the top line of the authorization bill, which also includes $5.2 billion for research and development and other categories. The amendment brings the total proposed amount of authorized spending for the Department of Defense to $778 billion.
“The defense of our nation will not be shortchanged by Congress. I thank my colleagues for adopting this amendment to support the men and women who serve in our armed forces,” committee Ranking Member Mike Rogers, R-Ala., said in a statement. Rogers, the highest ranking Republican on the committee, proposed the amendment and garnered 14 Democratic votes in additional to all Republicans on the committee.
Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., chairman of the new Cyber, Innovative Technologies, and Information Systems Subcommittee, was one of the 14 Democrats to support the amendment.
In the funding increase, the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center would get a $57 million increase specifically to fund the new AI and Data Acceleration (ADA) initiative. The effort is design to build “flyaway” teams of data scientist that can be deployed to combatant commands to build new and improve old tech systems. It’s an idea that was proposed by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI).
Other tech-related amendments would increase funding for AI trust research and several cloud programs, including the Defense Information Systems Agency’s (DISA) MilCloud 2.0. Some proposed changes to the legislation would require reports to Congress on the software development, data science and AI workforce.
IT contractor gets 14-month prison sentence for bribing federal officials
The owner of an IT services business has received a 14-month jail sentence for paying bribes to federal and state officials in exchange for favorable treatment on contracts.
Charles M. Thomas was sentenced Tuesday for making the payments to two employees at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as to an employee of the District of Columbia Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE).
According to court documents, Thomas was the sole owner and president of a Maryland company that provided IT services to federal agencies, as well as educational services to public school children in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.
Thomas in 2018 pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bribery and two counts of conspiracy to pay gratuities and to violate the Procurement Integrity Act.
Evidence presented by the government showed that Thomas provided HUD employee Kevin Jones with tickets to sporting events, travel, cash and other items worth more than $50,000, in exchange for Jones providing Thomas and his company with non-public information about pending HUD contracts.
According to government evidence, Thomas also gave a second HUD employee and former supervisor, LaFonda Lewis, tickets to sporting events, designer handbags, cash, and other items, worth more than $23,000 in exchange for non-public information about contracts.
At the District of Columbia Office of the State Superintendent of Education, government evidence showed that Thomas made about $53,000 in payments to employee Shauntell Harley, in return for non-public information.
Jones, Lewis and Harley were previously sentenced for their involvement in the schemes.
Thomas was sentenced by Judge Randolph D. Moss and as part of his plea agreement is required to pay restitution to the D.C. Superintendent of Education in the amount of $179,999. In his guilty plea, he admitted to carrying out three schemes.
GSA seeks online learning providers for upskilling pilot across 24 agencies
The General Services Administration is looking to pilot a tool that identifies a federal employee’s knowledge gaps and lets them purchase online educational content to fill them, according to a request for information released Thursday.
GSA wants online universities and tech companies to apply to work with the federal Chief Financial Officers Council on providing pay-for-access content across 54 competencies with an emphasis on data, technology and financial management skills.
The Biden-Harris administration has prioritized innovation within the government’s approach to workforce modernization and upskilling, and the pilot will leverage about 140,000 employees within its financial management community — spanning the 24 largest agencies in coordination with the Office of Management and Budget.
“Not only has this new pilot effort been driven up from agencies and required very little upfront investment,” said Deidre Harrison, deputy controller in OMB’s Office of Federal Financial Management, in the announcement. “But it can be quickly scaled to larger segments of the federal workforce if successful.”
If the pilot is successful in attracting effective, reasonably priced upskilling content, it could be expanded among the 2.1 million employees in the federal workforce.
Applications are also open to business education content holders and talent development vendors, and those selected will become “trusted providers.” The deadline to apply is Dec. 16.
“We really hope innovative learning content providers take note of this unique opportunity and
consider applying,” said Krystal Brumfield, associate administrator of GSA’s Office of Government-wide Policy. “We’ve structured this to be very low risk for them and the commercial opportunity for any selected providers has the potential to be wide open.”
NSA awards $2B GreenLake contract to Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Hewlett Packard Enterprise has won a $2 billion contract from the National Security Agency to provide the intelligence agency with high-performance computing technology.
Under the contract 10-year contract, HPE will provide fully managed, on-premise, secure cloud services through its GreenLake platform.
GreenLake is a pay-per-use cloud platform that provides cloud services for servers, storage and networking, as well as a range of applications, including container management and machine learning. It was first launched by HPE in 2017.
According to HPE, the contract will help support the NSA’s growing use of artificial intelligence and data and offer it new forecasting and analysis tools.
“Implementing artificial intelligence, machine learning and analytics capabilities on massive sets of data increasingly requires High Performance Computing (HPC) systems,” said Justin Hotard, HPE senior vice president and general manager.
“By using the HPE GreenLake platform, which delivers secure on-premises solutions as a service, the NSA is gaining industry-leading HPC solutions to tackle a range of complex data needs, but with a flexible, as a service experience.”
Government agencies are increasingly turning to pay-per-use cloud computing contracts as they seek greater storage flexibility amid an exponential increase in the volume of data being processed.
Take NASA as an example — the agency’s move to the cloud was in large part driven by the need to accommodate the vast volume of data it receives from space, Joe Foster, cloud computing program manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said recently.
“It’s saved us money, in terms of investing in infrastructure, and it’s allowed us to refocus those dollars into things like upgrading the actual satellite antennae themselves,” he said at the time.
Air Force software chief Nic Chaillan resigns
Nic Chaillan, the senior official responsible for leading DevSecOps and other software development initiatives at the Air Force, has resigned.
Chaillan announced his resignation Thursday from the post of chief software officer, which he has held since May 2019.
Chaillan was hired in August 2018 by the Department of Defense as a highly qualified expert (HQE), a contract position that allows the government to quickly onboard experts outside of the normal hiring process. In May 2019, he then moved to become CSO at the Air Force.
Before the Air Force, he worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as a cloud security adviser and later DevSecOps lead at the DOD’s CIO office, according to his LinkedIn.
In addition to his role in the Air Force, Chaillan also contributed to Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) by working “part-time” with the Joint Staff’s J-6. JADC2 is the DOD’s new framework for making a battlefield Internet of Things, a system that would rely heavily on software to connect weapon systems.
Chaillan wrote in a fiery, candid post on LinkedIn that part of the reason he left was alleged inaction by senior Air Force leadership. He also complained about a lack of funding for his work and a lack of follow-through from DOD on commitments to elevate software modernization and agile practices across the department.
The list of things he had issues with included “funding, staffing and prioritizing IT basic issues for the Department. A lack of response and alignment is certainly a contributor to my accelerated exit,” he wrote.
Chaillan also wrote that the DOD’s “failure” to deliver on JADC2 was another reason for leaving. After being asked to build a product to show that all of the Joint Staff’s theorizing on JADC2 could translate to new tech, he was not given any funding, he wrote.
“After all the talk and continued assertions that this was critical work, DOD could not even find $20M to build tremendously beneficial warfighter capabilities,” the post says.
Chaillan continued in his post: “It seems clear to me that our leaders are not aligned with our vision in pursuing agility, the importance of DevSecOps, continuous delivery of capabilities, nor, most importantly, the need to fund teams, like Cloud One and Platform One, that are making things happen for the Department, and is a catalyst for change across the Government.”
One of Chaillan’s largest initiatives was helping to start Platform One, the Air Force’s DevSecOps platform. The coding environment has a security accreditation that allows software built in the system to be automatically authorized for use, a security process that usually takes months. The office now has approximately 200 employees, most of whom are private contractors.
Mina Hsiang appointed USDS administrator
The Office of Management and Budget announced Mina Hsiang on Thursday as the new administrator of the U.S. Digital Service.
Hsiang takes over for Matt Cutts, who left the White House’s digital tech surge team in April. She’s just the third administrator of USDS since it was founded in 2014 under Mikey Dickerson to bring tech talent into government, initially to put out the fire of the Healthcare.gov rollout.
Hsiang was an early member of USDS, working as part of that effort to fix Healthcare.gov and then going on to serve as founding executive director of the USDS’s embed team at the Department of Health and Human Services.
“Since its creation, the United States Digital Service has served as a cornerstone of innovation by uniquely focusing on human-centered solutions to government’s most pressing technical problems,” OMB acting Director Shalanda Young said in a release. “As USDS Administrator, Mina brings a wealth of government digital delivery experience, as well as the leadership to continue cultivating the extraordinary talent at USDS and delivering better services for the American people.”
Since her original stint with USDS, Hsiang worked in leadership roles with Devoted Health, a health care startup focused on seniors. She then served on the Biden-Harris transition as part of the agency review team at HHS before rejoining USDS as senior adviser for delivery, focused specifically on COVID-19 response and the rollout of the Vaccines.gov.
Hsiang will be the first woman and first Asian-American to lead USDS.
In recent years, USDS has kept a lower profile. But it continues to seek new tech talent to inject into government to tackle the most glaring digital holes across federal agencies. Most recently, during the pandemic, that includes supporting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the COVID-19 pandemic, streamlining financial relief, improving the immigration and refugee processes, aiding students with their loans, and reforming procurement and federal hiring.
As part of the American Rescue Plan, USDS received a $200 million boost in funding, multiplying several times over what USDS has received in funding since 2014.
Hicks says DOD will take ‘meaningful action’ to remove barriers for small contractors
The Department of Defense is working with the White House and other agencies including the Small Business Administration to create more opportunities for small businesses to join federal contracting vehicles, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said Wednesday.
Small companies still face major challenges when bidding on military technology contracts, but the DOD will do more to streamline the process, Hicks said during a speech at the 30th Annual Pennsylvania Showcase on Commerce.
“I realize that doing business with the DOD is not always easy. Because of our unique security requirements and procurement practices, we can be a challenging customer,” Hicks said. “But we are committed to examining the administrative barriers that small businesses face in working with us. And we will take meaningful action to remove barriers where we can.”
She argued that small businesses lead the nation in innovation “producing 16.5 times more patents than large patenting firms. They deliver rapid operational concepts, prototypes, and demonstrators that allow DOD to respond with agility and efficiency when needed.”
In her speech, the deputy secretary noted that the number of small businesses in the U.S. defense industrial base shrank by over 40% over the past decade and warned that if the trend continues, the country could lose an additional 15,000 suppliers over the next 10 years.
She also announced a new intiative published in the Federal Register through which DOD will seek input from industry to understand the barriers that small companies face.
Federal government regulations, including those relating to cybersecurity, can pose a greater challenge for smaller companies because of the financial resources and risk management expertise required to achieve certain levels of compliance.
Hicks’ comments come after the DOD in June said it would address concerns that the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC), a new contractor cybersecurity certification process, will impose additional costs on small businesses as part of an ongoing internal review.
In July, sources speaking to FedScoop described further changes to CMMC on the horizon and said they were likely to increase compliance costs.
The deputy secretary added that DOD has set up an innovation steering group focusing on the work of small contractors. DOD is also in the process of enhancing its network of Procurement Technical Assistance Centers, she said.
Air Combat Command directs all installations to use Kessel Run base monitoring software
Air Combat Command has directed all of its installations to use software from Kessel Run to monitor its base resources, a move that will expand the number of users of the software and give commanders more data on its bases.
The goal is to have the software, Command and Control Incident Management Emergency Response Application (C2IMERA), at 60 installations by the end of the year, according to the Air Force‘s software acquisition and development unit, Kessel Run. The system is designed to give base commanders real time visibility into a host of data points on “installation resources,” from food and water levels to what planes are ready to fly.
By directing its use across all ACC installations it also gives commanders deeper insights across bases, Harsheet Shah, program manager for Wing C2 at Kessel Run, told FedScoop in an interview.
“Our bases are air power projection platforms that require real-time installation and resource awareness, as well as command and control capability. C2IMERA gives commanders the operational sight picture to execute the mission,” Gen. Mark Kelly, commander of ACC, said in a release.
The new directive moves the command away from a hodgepodge mix of tools used to create a picture of base operations towards a single, Air Force-owned system. With one system, data across bases is interoperable and can be collected by theater commanders to understand how ready ACC installations are. Other Air Force major commands have also request C2IMERA, according to Kessel Run.
“The fact that [ACC] is making it flow through a single system is massive,” Shah said.
The system was also recently used in Operation Allies Refuge, the massive airlift to evacuate U.S. citizens, Afghans and others from Kabul, Afghanistan. The 609th Air Force in Central Command made a request to Kessel Run for a system to give operators more visibility into their resources at Hamid Karzai International Airport, and within four days Kessel Run delivered C2IMERA, Shah said.
The software was coded by Leidos, the prime contractors for C2IMERA. Shah said the model of contracting the actual coding while the military retains project management oversight is a model that worked well for Kessel Run and should be replicated.
“C2IMERA is one of the best examples of partnership with a prime contractor,” Shah said. “This model should be adopted by c2 system in the Air Force.”
Edit: This story was updated to correct the spelling of C2IMERA.
Partnership for Public Service suggests review of federal tech laws, pay system overhaul
The Partnership for Public Service recommended ways for Congress and the Biden administration to improve innovation and technology modernization in government while bolstering the federal workforce, in a roadmap released Wednesday.
Reviewing all federal tech laws, creating a “future state” strategy, and overhauling the pay and job classification system are among the nonpartisan nonprofit’s bolder recommendations.
The Roadmap for Renewing Our Federal Government document builds on President Biden‘s early executive orders promoting data-driven decision making across agencies and a diverse federal workforce with a focus on keeping pace with tech innovations.
“Federal agencies offer few incentives for employees to try new ideas, are saddled with outdated technology and lag behind the private sector in hiring qualified technologists in sufficient numbers for critical leadership and staff positions,” it reads. “This antiquated system is an impediment to the government’s ability to meet the needs of today’s interconnected, technology-driven world and prepare for the challenges of the future.”
PPS recommends Congress end crisis budgeting — because short-term spending resolutions and government shutdowns hurt agencies’ ability to invest in replacing or modernizing legacy IT systems — in favor of biennial budget resolutions, multi-year appropriations and the timely passage of appropriations bills.
Congress should also conduct a comprehensive review of all federal technology management laws to identify where the framework for how government buys and manages technology needs an updater, according to the roadmap.
Finally passing the Federal Agency Customer Experience (FACE) Act and other legislation would make it easier for agencies to collect and publish customer experience (CX) data, per the document.
As for the administration, PPS recommends it set a “moonshot” goal for improving customer services that will boost confidence in government, as well as create a governmentwide strategy for a federal tech future state.
“Outlining the steps, resources and roles essential to upgrade technology, while providing flexibility for agencies based on the technology needs of their employees and customers, will help government adapt to rapidly changing demands,” reads the roadmap. “Political and career leaders should also have a basic familiarity with technology and cybersecurity issues in order to focus on key priorities and make informed choices across all policy areas.”
The administration would also be wise to expand CX guidance to apply to more high-impact services because the Office of Management and Budget‘s 2018 guidance only applies to 25 such service, per the document.
Agencies should use Challenge.gov resources to launch internal idea competitions that fund employee proposals and have procurement innovation coaches support the acquisition workforce on specific projects — like the Procurement Innovation Lab at the Department of Homeland Security or Digital IT Acquisition Professional Program, according to PPS.
The roadmap also recommends agencies prioritize the executive order on improving racial equity and support for underserved communities.
On the workforce front, PPS wants to see Congress replace the current federal pay and job classification system “designed for clerical workers” with an occupation-based, market-sensitive one better positioned to fill critical skill gaps in cybersecurity and IT positions.
The administration should create a federal internship and fellowship database, streamline the application process and make hiring platforms more easily accessible and mobile-friendly to attract top, young talent, according to the roadmap.
Meanwhile agencies can boost employee retention with robust mentorship and professional development opportunities.
“Outlining the steps, resources and roles essential to upgrade technology, while providing flexibility for agencies based on the technology needs of their employees and customers, will help government adapt to rapidly changing demands,” reads the document. “Political and career leaders should also have a basic familiarity with technology and cybersecurity issues in order to focus on key priorities and make informed choices across all policy areas.”
Clear performance metrics on employee development and data on departures are also needed, according to PPS.
Among its collaboration recommendations, PPS suggests the administration enhance Performance.gov, the website for monitoring goals and results, to support interagency councils. Agencies are advices to add evaluation experts to projects and initiatives to ensure data-based decision-making.
“The Biden administration and Congress have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build on recent innovations and set the government on a sustained path to renewal,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of PPS, in a statement.
GSA contract opens agencies to commercial coworking spaces
The General Services Administration wants to give federal personnel the opportunity to work from commercial coworking spaces instead of coming into the office.
GSA awarded a multi-award, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract to five commercial co-working companies —WeWork, The Yard, LiquidSpace, Expansive and Deskpass — last month that will allow agencies to purchase flexible, temporary space from any of the companies.
The contract starts at one year and could go up to five, with a $10 million cap on spending with each of the five companies per year, according to terms of the procurement.
While the idea of such a contract makes sense now that the government has had to flex its teleworking muscle during the COVID-19 pandemic, GSA actually began planning it out in late 2019 before the coronavirus was really even known to be a threat to the U.S.
“Working beyond the confines of traditional government offices has become more common,” says a contract document from 2019. “Government employees are now commonly equipped with technological tools to work from anywhere. The freedom provided by technological advancements allows agencies to efficiently and flexibly pursue mission success through the utilization of employee mobility and telework.”
And with the federal government embracing telework more than it has in the past, and GSA hoping to shrink its footprint as the federal landlord, these co-working companies are looking to the federal government as a bright, new client — even outside of this contract. For instance, WeWork — one of the best known and most infamous commercial co-working companies in the world — now has an arm of its business dedicated to the federal government. Heading up that new branch for the company is Daniel Mathews, former commissioner of GSA’s Public Buildings Service under the Trump administration.
“The pandemic has fundamentally changed how work is approached, and now government agencies will have a tool to help employees succeed while saving costs,” WeWork CEO Sandeep Mathrani said in a statement. “The workplace of the future requires flexibility, and GSA should be applauded for innovating.”