GSA names Raylene Yung director of Tech Modernization Fund

The General Services Administration has appointed Raylene Yung as executive director of the Technology Modernization Fund.

She joins the organization after stepping down as CEO of the nonprofit U.S. Digital Response, which she helped to found in March 2020.

Yung will oversee the Technology Modernization Fund Program Management Office, which was authorized by the Modernizing Government Technology Act of 2017, and will be tasked with giving agencies additional ways to deliver services to the American public more quickly and efficiently.

She has over 10 years of experience in technology across the private sector, government and nonprofit organizations. Previously she was a member of the Biden-Harris transition team identifying key policy priorities for the administration with a critical technical focus.

GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan said in a statement on Yung’s appointment: “The future of government services is digital.”

“Modernizing technology means delivering a better experience for the public, securing our nation’s infrastructure, creating shared services that save taxpayers money and addressing the critical challenges of climate change and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic,” Carnahan said. “Raylene brings a wealth of experience in technology policy and the private sector that will help us more effectively rethink the way we invest in modernizing our nation’s digital infrastructure. We look forward to having her on the team.”

Yung’s appointment comes as the TMF has received a $1 billion injection of capital from the American Rescue Plan Act and the team behind it must now work to deliver funding to agencies at a scale unprecedented for the fund.

According to Federal CIO Clare Martorana, the Technology Modernization Board has received over 100 proposals for projects, totaling more than $2 billion, since funding was appropriated in March through the American Rescue Plan.

Late last week, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform voted to adopt an amendment as part of the fiscal 2022 budget reconciliation process that could provide an extra $3 billion for federal IT modernization, including $1 billion for the Technology Modernization Fund.

Air Force awards potential $46B digital engineering contract vehicle

The Air Force awarded a major digital engineering contract to 55 companies that aims to increase the service’s ability to work on digital designs of its future platforms.

The $46 billion indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity initially only obligated $55,000 in research and development funds for fiscal 2020 and 2021 at the time of award, according to a Department of Defense press release. Air Force Officials have previously stated high interest in developing the ability to digitally design and test hardware like airplanes before they go into production, a capability served by digital engineer.

The procurement is for digital engineering and model-based systems engineering. Contractors will also provide services to support agile processes, open systems architecture and weapons and enterprise analytics.

By building virtual environments that simulate the physical conditions a weapon system or airplane will sustain during use, the Air Force could optimize designs before they are physically created and tested in the real world. The prospective tech that could save the department both time and money, officials have said.

The service has been working to advance digital engineering practices internally and with contractors. Former head of acquisition, technology and logistics, Will Roper, pitched companies on using the Air Force’s own tech stack to mixed reactions.

Companies selected for potential future task orders include both major defense contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton and Lockheed Martin, and smaller startups like Shield AI.

OMB publishes zero-trust draft strategy

The Office of Management and Budget published a draft strategy Tuesday that will clarify key zero-trust priorities for civilian agencies as they roll out the cybersecurity architecture over the next few years.

Alongside the proposals issued, the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency also released a new cloud security technical reference architecture (TRA) and zero-trust maturity model to guide implementation.

Both agencies are seeking public feedback on the draft documents, which they hope will further strengthen the plans.

Top priorities identified in OMB’s new strategy include consolidating agency identity systems, combatting phishing through strong multifactor authentication and treating internal networks as untrusted. It also spells out the need to encrypt traffic and strengthen application security.

The new federal zero-trust strategy is intended to focus government departments on key security outcomes and to set baseline policy and technology requirements. It supports the executive order on cybersecurity issued by President Biden in May, which reignited the push to zero trust.

OMB and CISA publish the documents as part of a long-running campaign to push federal agencies to adopt zero-trust architecture — a strategic initiative that helps prevent successful data breaches by eliminating the concept of trust from an organization’s network architecture.

“Moving to zero-trust architectures will by a multi-year journey for federal agencies, and the government will learn and adjust along the way as new practices and technologies emerge,” OMB said.

CISA’s new cloud security technical reference architecture and zero-trust maturity model were developed as part of a multi-agency effort with contributions from the U.S. Digital Service and the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). The technical reference architecture and zero-trust maturity model are intended to provide agencies with guidance on a range of cloud security-related issues.

“With today’s zero trust announcement, we are clearly driving home the message to federal agencies that they should not automatically trust anything inside or outside of their perimeters,” Federal CIO Clare Martorana said in a release. “They must verify anything and everything trying to connect to their systems before granting access. This is an expectation in a modern technology environment and we look forward to this public comment process to make our strategy even stronger.”

Federal CISO Chris DeRusha said: “The federal government’s approach to cybersecurity must rapidly evolve to keep pace with our adversaries, and moving toward zero trust principles is the road we need to travel to get there … While we feel the urgency to begin implementing this plan, we know that input from the broader community of experts will help ensure it is the right plan. We welcome feedback on how we can refine this strategy to best advance federal cybersecurity.”

DOD deputy secretary sets Jan. 1 deadline for transferal of chief management officer assets

Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks has set a deadline of Jan. 1, 2022 for the transferal of assets and responsibilities from the now-abolished office of the chief management officer to other officials or organizations.

In a memo to senior Pentagon staff on Wednesday, the defense leader outlined a plan for the reallocation of responsibilities, including those of data oversight, which now fall to the agency’s CIO and chief data officer.

“[E]ach responsibility assigned to, and the personnel, functions, and assets of, the chief management officer of the Department of Defense, as of January 1, 2021, shall be transferred to another official or organization no later than January 1, 2022,” Hicks wrote in the memo.

The Pentagon in January this year abandoned the CMO role, which was created to overhaul business practices and oversee tech reform within the department. The decision to disestablish the role followed a recommendation from the DOD advisory board.

Other responsibilities that will be reassigned include that of defense reform and performance improvement, which now fall to the director of administration and management.

Responsibilities for defense business systems now also fall to the DOD comptroller, as well as the CIO.

According to the memo, the assistant to the secretary of defense for intelligence oversight will  now take responsibility for privacy, civil liberties and transparency and regulatory oversight.

The Defense Business Council will also be tri-chaired on an interim basis by the director of administration and management, the chief financial officer, and the DOD CIO.

“These realignments of former CMO responsibilities represent only the latest step in the ongoing efforts to improve strategic-level management and oversight at the highest levels of the Department,” added Hicks. “We will review these arrangements after one year to assess any potential need for adjustments.”

House Oversight Committee approves extra $3B for IT modernization in budget markup

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform has voted to adopt an amendment as part of the fiscal 2022 budget reconciliation process that could provide an extra  $3 billion for federal IT modernization.

If it passes into law, the proposed change would allocate $2 billion for the Federal Citizen Service Fund to improve federal cybersecurity and the delivery of critical services, as well as $1 billion for the Technology Modernization Fund.

The amendment would also give the Office of Management and Budget $350 million for IT oversight and reform. It would provide extra support for U.S. Digital Service projects such as a forthcoming climate and economic justice screening tool.

Following the markup, the reconciliation package now moves to the floor of the House for further consideration by lawmakers. The legislation was introduced to the Senate early last month and passed the upper chamber on Aug. 11.

In a statement, the House committee said it sought to provide “crucial funding” to improve cybersecurity and to modernize federal technology. The $1 billion for the TMF is intended to facilitate the modernization of high-priority federal systems.

Chairwoman of the committee, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said she looked forward to continuing working with the Biden administration and members of the House and Senate to pass the legislation.

The amendment was proposed by Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va.

Berkeley Lab quantum testbed aims to accelerate work of physicists, researchers

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will build a distributed quantum network with its five-year, $12.5 million award from the Department of Energy to accelerate the development of a nationwide quantum internet.

The testbed will connect quantum computers between Berkeley Lab and the University of California, Berkeley with the help of the California Institute of Technology while integrating a distributed quantum computing application.

The Quantum Application Network Testbed (QUANT-NET) would advance the nationwide quantum internet blueprint drawn up in New York City in February 2020 and the National Quantum Initiative more broadly, with recent DOE funding for quantum information science projects.

“A testbed seemed more synergistic because I’m doing practical networking for the Department of Energy, so I’m not on the physics or the device or the materials side of research,” Inder Monga, executive director of the Science Networking Division and ESnet at Berkeley Lab, told FedScoop. “I’m more on: How do we operationalize new ideas?”

Commercialization of quantum internet remains a way off, so it made sense to accelerate the work of physicists and other researchers with the help of academia and industry, Monga said.

Quantum networks encode more information than traditional computing with implications for quantum sensing, metrology and distributed quantum computing. The last application is the one Berkeley Lab hopes to demonstrate, but it remains theoretical as the algorithms don’t exist.

“These demonstrations will require seamless integration of a host of different technologies ranging from quantum information processing with trapped ions, color centers and superconducting systems to ultra-highly efficient conversion of quantum information from atoms to light and routing it through a fiber network,” said Hartmut Häffner, associate professor of physics at UC Berkeley, in a statement. “We envision that this work will pave the way toward a quantum internet for quantum communication applications and allow us to connect different quantum computers to create larger and more powerful ones.”

Despite its assistance, Caltech won’t be connected to the network due to the proximity issue. Signal photons can’t yet be sent and directed over long distances without a quantum repeater, which hasn’t yet been developed.

Berkeley Lab’s latest system ESnet has 309 locations where optical amplifiers help create a nationwide network, but those amplify light and not single photons, which is necessary for quantum networking. While the lab might not succeed, it hopes to develop a quantum repeater before its five years of funding runs out, Monga said.

Currently a number of homegrown devices exist to address physics challenges and synergies within quantum computing, and a perk of a testbed is it’s not tied to one device or technology. Berkeley Lab intends to leverage the best technology available from the National Science Foundation; University of Arizona; startups like PsiQuantum in Palo Alto, California, and Aliro in Brighton, Massachusetts; and NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

However pandemic-related supply chain delays might just be the testbed’s biggest hurdle, Monga added.

On the digital networking side, getting servers takes six months — even general purpose commodity servers. And some parts can only be procured from Sandia National Labs or small startups launched by university professors.

“Some of these are very specialized,” Monga said. “You need ion traps and quantum computing components, and I don’t have insight into how good the supply is and whether things will be delayed beyond what we have planned for in contingency.”

The ‘Big Bang’ of USAF application modernization

Public sector agencies that may still be wondering if open source software is the key to application modernization can simply look at the U.S. Air Force, which recently used Kubernetes to manage the weapons systems on the 65-year old U-2 spy plane.

Nicolas Chaillan, former Chief Software Officer for the Air Force, said the service was able to deploy new software services on the U-2 in less than two weeks. “In just 12 days with [artificial intelligence machine learning] containers on that legacy hardware, we were able to manipulate the sensors on the jet so the pilot could focus on doing other stuff,” Chaillan said, speaking during a panel session at the 2021 Public Sector Innovation Summit sponsored by VMware. (Watch the full panel discussion here.)

The new software was able to receive over-the-air updates of the container, “ensuring that we could be decoupled from the hardware and not put the jet at risk in terms of airworthiness and making sure that the pilot is safe,” Chaillan said.

The test flight, which took place late last year, was a first for the Defense Department. Since then, however, Kubernetes has become the central nervous system of the Air Force’s Platform One initiative. Platform One allows users to deploy a DevSecOps Software Factory and start solving software problems with a 90% solution immediately, instead of starting from scratch.

“For us, Kubernetes is becoming the foundation of all the software we do on jets to bombers to ships, and, let’s face it, to nuclear,” Chaillan said. “We have Kubernetes running across embedded systems at the edge on clouds, on classified clouds, and air-gapped environments. So it’s really kind of the enabler for us not to get locked into a single tech stack, and to be able to have a diversity of options.”

Leveraging a project called Platform One Big Bang, the Defense Department can install an instance of Platform One, called the Customer DevSecOps Platform, on behalf of other organizations. Big Bang is the Platform One Infrastructure as Code / Configuration as Code package that deploys a software factory in a customer owned environment. 

“We open-source the entire Big Bang platform, which is a full DevSecOps platform,” Chaillan said. “A lot of people think of DevSecOps as a [development] platform, but for us, it runs in run-time on the weapon, on the device, on the jet, on the system with Zero Trust baked.”

“When I look at open source, it’s really an opportunity for collaboration writ large,” said Craig McLuckie, Vice President at VMware, who also spoke on the panel. But there can be challenges, he said. “Culture really matters. Culture is effectively the operating system of the organization,” McLuckie said.

For the Defense Department, those challenges range from ensuring the security of open source code to modernizing the way the department thinks about managing large programs, said Chaillan.

“It’s important to realize that open source does not mean it is something that is safe or it’s going to last. You have to look at the community behind it. That’s why we like the [Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)] because we know to get to a certain stage you have to demonstrate some maturity and diversity of contributors,” Chaillan said.

“I love that some teams in CNCF are actually pushing for pen tests,” he said. “And for us in Platform One we actually have seven people full-time continuously pen-testing the stack. It’s not a once a quarter or once a year thing, it’s continuously.”

Just as important as security, however, is the ability to move at what Chaillan calls the pace of relevance. “No one wants to waste time and taxpayer money and reinvent the wheel. But we also design in a way that’s very siloed and you end up with a lot of people having to be convinced to make meaningful changes,” he said.

The other challenge is that the DOD doesn’t always control everything, like funding, he said. “If it’s cut into tiny silos, how do you do enterprise services well? In fact, I would argue that the Department is not really good at building enterprise IT because of that,” he said. “Because big programs get a lot of money and they don’t like having dependencies on others. That’s why we created Cloud One and Platform One.”

Learn more about “Application Modernization” and how VMware is helping to accelerate public sector innovation

JAIC completes draft of AI ethics implementation guidance

The Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) briefed Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks late last month on how it plans to implement the DOD’s AI ethics principles.

The brief was mandated by a May memo signed by Hicks and constitutes an initial milestone for implementing the DOD’s ethics principles, which were adopted in February of 2020. The JAIC did not provide any detail on its forthcoming guidance to be finalized by the end of October. The guidance was initially scheduled to be finalized by February 2020, a JAIC official previously told FedScoop.

“The Council will continue to adhere to the battle rhythm, collaboration efforts, and deliverable schedule established for delivery of the final Pathway document to the DSD as scheduled,” a JAIC spokesman told FedScoop.

The principles are “responsible, equitable, traceable, reliable and governable,” broad terms that the JAIC has acknowledge will need detailed guidance in order for the DOD bureaucracy to implement.

“Implementing the AI ethics principles will be hard work. The Department’s efforts over the next year will shape the DOD’s future with AI,” Lt. Geb. Jack Shanahan, former director of the JAIC said when the principles were adopted in February 2020.

GAO recommends HHS reconsider $330M IT contract award to Accenture

The Government Accountability Office has recommended that the Department for Health and Human Services reevaluate a $330M IT contract won by Accenture Federal Services (AFS), but dismissed a competitor’s claim that the awardees’ experience was improperly evaluated.

AFS was awarded the task order in April this year following a protracted solicitation process that has so far included three bid protests, the most recent of which was filed by Deloitte.

In its latest decision issued last month, GAO partly sustained the protest but also disagreed with the claim that AFS’ cost and price proposals were not properly assessed.

“We recommend that the agency reevaluate proposals consistent with the terms of the solicitation as they relate to transition, and make a new selection decision.”

“Alternatively, if the terms of the solicitation do not reflect the agency’s requirements, it should revise the solicitation, conduct discussions with the offerors; solicit, receive, and evaluate revised proposals; and make a new source selection decision,” GAO said.

Prior to the submission of bid protests by both Deloitte and AFS, the solicitation process had an initial closing date of August 5 2019.

The $330M solicitation included a task order to operate and upgrade IT services for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ federally facilitated exchange. The task order had a one-year base period that included a six-month transition period and four one-year option periods.

In November 2019, Deloitte was initially selected as the winning bidder on the contract, which was subsequently protested by AFS. In response, HHS took corrective action by reviewing and revising its evaluation document.

In June 2020, HHS again selected Deloitte for the contract, and AFS then filed another protest. Following corrective action, GAO dismissed Accenture’s second protest.

HHS then amended the solicitation, and in December 2020, the two contractors submitted their proposals for an amended solicitation process, prior to the most recent award of the contract in April.

In this latest decision, GAO also recommended that Deloitte be reimbursed for costs associated with filing and pursuing its protest, including reasonable attorney’s fees.

Deloitte had argued in its protest that AFS was improperly credited for experience during the award process because it relied on the experience of its corporate parent, Accenture LLP. GAO dismissed this claim in its opinion, saying that AFS in its proposal spelt out its intention to rely on resources from its parent company multiple times.

AFS and Deloitte declined to comment. HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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.