Kendall merges Air Force acquisition offices to support Space Force

New secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said he is moving the service’s Space Acquisition Directorate into the Space Acquisition and Integration Office, he announced Tuesday.

The announcement, which he said was effective immediately, is meant to bolster the nascent acquisition enterprise of the Space Force, which sits under the larger Department of the Air Force. Kendall said that it was a needed step to support acquisition capability within the newest branch of the military.

“One area where we have not done enough yet is in the acquisition capacity of the Department of the Air Force,” he said during the Space Foundation’s Space Symposium.

Space Force leaders had promised that its acquisition enterprise would be “agile” and not allow the traditionally slow bureaucratic process of the military to hamper its ability to buy tech and space assets. So far, some members of Congress have expressed disappointment over the service’s progress.

Kendall also named an acting leader for space acquisition, Brig. Gen. Steve Whitney, who currently oversees space development and purchasing within the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force.

Congress created a new space acquisition civilian role to lead a more agile approach for purchasing the tech that the new force will need to operate in space. While Kendall has not named someone yet for that role, he said he is reviewing several candidates and a nomination could come soon.

Shawn Barnes has been leading space acquisition in an acting capacity but will “move on to another leadership position” soon, Kendall said.

Langevin teases bid protest reforms coming from Congress

Changes may be coming to the federal bid protest process to ensure that losing bidders cannot derail a government procurement, a top lawmaker on the House Armed Services Committee said Tuesday.

Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., said during an interview at FedTalks that the committee is “looking at” reforms to the federal procurement process and “a company’s ability to hold up defense programs for years.” He said he “hopes to see some positive changes” in the near term, possibly as soon as in the forthcoming fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, which is set to be passed later this fall.

Langevin expressed his frustration with the current state of federal bid protests in relation to the Pentagon’s beleaguered and now canceled Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract, which has since been reborn as a multi-cloud acquisition known as the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC). He called the JEDI saga a “source of frustration” for himself and his committee as they continue to see procurements, many in the IT space, “getting bogged down in the protest after protest.”

It seems likely that Congress will have to take some sort of action “to stop big protests from being essentially a matter of routine in the course of action,” he said.

“I want to see us have a fair and open bid process, want there to be transparency. That’s going to be the rule … that those elements have to be in place,” said Langevin, chair of the committee’s Cyber, Innovative Technologies, and Information Systems Subcommittee. “You know, I have deep reservations about the bid process right now and the protest process right now and a company’s ability to hold up defense programs for years. We’re hurting our national security when we do that. We’re hurting the warfighter at the end of the day.”

Langevin acknowledged that the failure of JEDI has put the Department of Defense even further behind in acquiring an enterprise cloud capability, making it imperative that the department gets it right this time with JWCC.

“We were behind the curve when JEDI started,” he said. “And you know, we’re four years further behind now. And so we really need to work harder to get this right with this new JWCC plan that DOD is going with. This is a particular capability that we can’t continue to delay — we need to get this right for the warfighter.”

GSA’s Sonny Hashmi: ‘Modern acquisition is a data challenge’

For the federal government to reform and improve the way it buys things, it must turn to data, believes Sonny Hashmi, head of acquisition at the General Services Administration.

“Getting procurement right is actually a data problem. It’s not a paperwork problem. It’s not a workflow problem,” Hashmi said Tuesday during FedScoop’s FedTalks. “I truly believe that acquisition modern acquisition is a data challenge.”

Hashmi’s background in IT — most recently as a managing director with Box, but also as CIO of GSA before that — lends itself to the thinking that acquisition relies on data, and when combined with modern technology, that can lead to greater efficiencies in governmentwide procurement.

“Throughout the acquisition process, we’re collecting data or analyzing it every day, using that data to make decisions,” he said. “Modern procurement requires understanding how systems talk to each other, and how data plays a role in doing a better analysis.”

Hashmi said that while he doesn’t come from a career in acquisition like the typical commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service might, “over time, my passion became this idea of solving for a streamlined way to buy goods and services that matter to the mission, or maintaining the appropriate level of quality and influencing markets along the way to make positive impacts to the country,” he said.

“We need to find the right balance in acquisition between the level of checks and balances, the validations we need to do, the compliance and security of the solutions that we buy, and balancing all those requirements against customer service mission outcomes and creating a delightful experience both for our suppliers and our buyers,” Hashmi said. “We need to find pathways through innovative technologies, new entrants to the market, new ideas, and new ways to solve for the mission to identify the right products and services at the right prices that our agency partners need and the federal government relies on, and we need to do it fast.”

5G networks need to be interoperable, DOD and DHS officials say

As military and civilian agencies eye the use of fifth generation wireless tech, officials representing both agree that a key to success is ensuring interoperability between networks and devices through open standards.

So far, the Department of Defense has led the government’s effort to trial 5G by offering its bases to telecommunications companies as testing grounds for the tech. Those tests could yield new capabilities for both military operations and civilian uses, hence the need officials see to ensure the tech remains open and interoperable for agencies beyond DOD, officials said Tuesday at FedScoop’s FedTalks conference.

“Cross-communications and interoperability absolutely will be critical for all our operators,” Kathryn Coulter Mitchell, acting undersecretary for science and technology at the Department of Homeland Security, said of 5G technology.

Early versions of telecommunications networks lacked the ability for devices to be used across different companies’ networks. That’s a scenario officials want to avoid and urged both government officials and private sector companies to work together to ensure open standards.

“Today you don’t need to think, ‘am I with an AT&T phone in a Verizon network or a T Mobile phone in an AT&T network,'” said Eric Burger, a research professor and technical program director at the Next G Alliance. “It all just works.”

The DOD’s tests of 5G have focused largely on logistical operations, such as using augmented reality in warehouses or providing better wireless connectivity on bases. While the DOD hopes to eventually integrate 5G into battlefield operations, many of its current uses could be used by others.

“As we roll out 5G we will find more and more uses,” Kelly Fletcher, principal director to the deputy CIO for resources and analysis and DOD, said.

Both Mitchell and Fletcher agreed the government needs to play a role in setting open standards to ensure those uses can be shared. DHS’s Science and Technology Directorate “has always been a huge proponent of open standards,” Mitchell said.

Navy taking new steps on software development modernization

The Department of the Navy has established a team to take stock of its software tools to try and streamline its ability to write code.

A new cross-functional team will take steps that include completing an inventory of the department’s software factories, and reviewing development standards. The team will also write new policy to determine what products are best to use when developing code, according to Navy spokeswoman Sandra Gall.

The goal is to help modernize how the department creates software and implements its broader IT strategy, which is known as the DON Information Superiority Vision.

“Establishment of this team supports DON strategic intent to provide mission-driven and user-focused software that is deployed at the speed of relevance to our sailors and Marines,” Gall told FedScoop.

The Navy declined to provide a copy of the full memo that created the team, citing its designation as a document for internal use only.

The new cross-functional team will also work to update training materials on DevSecOps, a set of coding practices that aim to bake security into the development process. It remains unclear what the timeline is for the team’s work, but the new draft policy should be codified by fiscal 2022.

The Navy has been building its own DevSecOps envionrment, dubbed “Black Pearl.” Its first cohort of users joined during a soft launch in fall last year.

Federal CIO Martorana: ‘We must focus on service delivery to the American public’

Government agencies must double down on service delivery to the American public and use technology to bridge inter-departmental silos, according to Federal CIO Clare Martorana.

Speaking Tuesday at FedScoop’s FedTalks conference, Martorana said an improved user experience for citizens would in part be driven by departments adopting a more product-focused mindset.

“It’s technology, obviously informed by the massive amount of data we collect across government, that will enable us to power outstanding customer experience,” she said. “It’s not our citizens’ job to figure out how to navigate across department and agency silos to get the service they deserve. That’s our job.”

“We must focus on service delivery to the American public,” Martorana said.

Martorana also described the urgency with which cybersecurity across federal departments must be addressed and reiterated that modernization of federal IT systems remains a top priority for the Biden administration.

“By working rapidly and seamlessly, we can achieve results. And we must. Our adversaries are on the move,” she said, commenting on the need for action on cybersecurity.

The threat of cyberattacks across departments and the wider U.S. infrastructure has taken center stage since the Colonial Pipeline hack in May and a surge in ransomware attacks that began as early as the second quarter of 2019.

Martorana added that she is committed to modernizing federal IT systems and said that the $1 billion appropriated for the federal Technology Modernization Fund was a “down payment” on the myriad multi-year modernization projects that have been identified by the government.

“The faster we can adopt modern technology and cloud infrastructure, the faster we can deliver trusted services to the American public,” she added.

Since the funding was appropriated in March through the American Rescue Plan, the Technology Modernization Board has received over 100 proposals for projects, totaling more than $2 billion.

Air Force chief scientist pushes zero trust for microchips

The Air Force‘s chief scientist wants the department to take a zero trust-based approach in assessing the security of the branch’s microprocessor chips, she said Monday.

Victoria Coleman, who also is the former director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), said taking a zero-trust approach with microchips could prevent the ripple effect that a compromised unit could have on an entire system, much like the model in cybersecurity is meant to stop the spread of attackers inside a network.

The security of the microchips is a major concern for Coleman because they run everything from computers to weapon systems for the military, she said during a virtual event Monday produced by the Hudson Institute.

“You don’t have to wait too long before another news story comes out about another vulnerability that was just discovered,” she said. “I am certain we will continue finding these things, [and] not necessarily because someone put them there … with ill intent.”

In the world of IT and cybersecurity, the zero trust architecture is a framework that starts with the premise that networks have already been infiltrated and security checks need to be placed within a system to stop attackers from moving elsewhere throughout a network. For chips, that means mitigating vulnerabilities that could spread throughout an entire system, Coleman said.

But it’s a tall order due to the centrality of microprocessors to computers and most other tech, she said. “We really have our work cut out for us.”

To mitigate both adversarial attacks and inadvertent vulnerabilities in chips, the Air Force could also take a lesson from how rigorously safety-critical systems are examined for all their possible points of failure, often with life-or-death consequences.

The Department of Defense previously used a “trusted foundry” model to work with manufacturers to certify how they made chips and ensure their reliability. It was a system that focused on validating the process of manufacturing, not necessarily testing each product. But that system did not provide enough vetting, Coleman said.

“We need to replace faith in process with faith in products,” which comes from more rigorous testing of the chips themselves, she said. And in turn, that would increase the reliability of the processes or systems they are built upon.

Coleman is not the first to push the idea of using the principles of zero trust in chip procurement for DOD. Others IT leaders across the department have stressed the need to have secure building blocks for all of its tech, pointing to zero trust as one way to get there.

Enabling an anywhere workforce in government

Public sector agencies are not known for their flexibility when it comes to when, where, and how employees work. The demands that come with their missions often dictate where members of their workforce need to be located as well as the IT systems they have to use. But when the COVID-19 pandemic sent Americans across the country into quarantine, public sector technology leaders were forced to deal with a massive culture change — the anywhere workforce.

By March 22, 2020, Ohio became the sixth state to declare a coronavirus lockdown. It had only been two weeks since a state of emergency had been declared. And in that time, the state’s Chief Information Officer (CIO), Ervan Rodgers, needed to shift tens of thousands of employees to remote work.

“In two weeks, we got roughly anywhere from 30,000 to 55,000 people in a work-from-home status. That’s lightning speed,” Rodgers said, speaking at the 2021 Public Sector Innovation Summit sponsored by VMware. Rodgers left his CIO post in June to take a role in the private sector, but shared the lessons he learned through that period. (Watch the full panel discussion here.) 

While the pandemic would prove to be disruptive for millions of Americans, there was a silver lining in how it forced many public sector agencies to rethink how to accomplish their missions. Telework, as it was once known, no longer accurately described what was happening to the nature of work — or conveys an accurate picture of the technology landscape that is revolutionizing what it means to work in the public sector.

“State government has not necessarily been an environment where we’ve worked from home. It’s kind of frowned upon,” Rodgers said. “However, I think the pandemic not only ignited innovation, but it’s also given us an ability to prove that we’re, in some cases, much more productive.”

Government workers in Ohio weren’t alone. At the U.S. Census Bureau in Washington, D.C., — an agency perhaps best-known for its paper forms and army of pencil-toting census takers — Deputy CIO Dr. Gregg Bailey sent more than 15,000 employees home in the middle of the decennial population count.

In a weird sort of way, the changes brought about by the pandemic were “really good timing for us from a technology standpoint,” Bailey said. The bureau had been racing against the clock to overhaul its IT operations to make the 2020 census the first to be conducted primarily online.

“Because we were beginning the census, we had expanded our bandwidth dramatically. And ironically, the day we went to 15,000 teleworkers was the highest day for the self-report, internet census. “We had a huge number, over 100,000 concurrent respondents filling out the census, at the same time we had 15,000 new employees teleworking.”

Cultural implications: It’s different this time

For Bailey, it’s important for agencies to make a distinction between teleworking of the past and what is taking place post-pandemic. It goes “beyond telework” to “work from anywhere,” he said, and the new normal has significant implications for culture and security. 

“We have the ability to go anywhere from a technical standpoint, and now it becomes an issue of policy,” Bailey said. “We’re working with the union and we’re working with the employees and the leadership to see what that is going to look like.”

Cameron Chehreh, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Pre-Sales, Engineering at Dell Technologies Federal, said whatever the anywhere workforce looks like will entail a “rethinking of work” for the public sector.

“There’s no water cooler to gather around anymore,” he said. “So how do I actually take teams of people that were used to working in an office and make them productive, in that work from anywhere situation, and make sure that we’re getting work completed, and that the mission of government and continuity is continuing to occur?”

Part of the answer is leveraging new technologies, like Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and cloud computing, Chehreh said.

The other part of the answer, and perhaps the most important part, is culture — and ensuring employees feel connected. It’s not always as easy as it sounds, but sometimes the solutions are right in front of us.

“We found things as simple as turning the [web] camera on has been a really important solution,” said Bailey. “We were finding there were people being hired during the pandemic who wouldn’t turn their camera on. And so they literally had never met their boss visually,” he said. “Although we’re not demanding the use of cameras, we’re trying to encourage their use.”

Rodgers acknowledged that tools like Microsoft Teams and VMware have enabled public sector agencies to reshape the workplace. “It’s the future of the workplace, where you’re going to have some folks that are working from home, some folks that are in the office, and they might switch schedules,” he said. “There are folks who are reimagining the workplace, things are only going to get more exciting from a cultural perspective.”

For Chehreh, the cultural shift looks more profound this time around. 

“Never forget or underestimate the power of culture,” he said. “And you have to make sure people continue to connect. If you don’t have that team environment, then you don’t have people that will run through walls for you to be able to get things done. But we can safely and securely innovate. And there’s a level of excellence in this country I haven’t seen in a long time. And it’s the pandemic that brought out the best of us.”

Learn more about “Enabling an Anywhere Workforce” and how VMware is helping to accelerate public sector innovation.  

Watchdog says USAID must improve data privacy protections

The inspector general of the U.S. Agency for International Development has called on the agency to improve how it handles personally identifiable information.

In an audit, which was published earlier this month, the oversight body identified a range of failings, including the reliance on out-of-date data loss procedures and insufficient role-based privacy training.

The IG also identified the unnecessary retention of Social Security Numbers and failure to implement controls related to third-party websites as areas for concern. It also found multiple instances of staff handling sensitive personal information without first having completed the required training.

Guidance from the Office of Management and Budget published in 2007 states that agencies must establish a plan to eliminate the unnecessary collection and use of Social Security Numbers and provide annual updates on the progress of such plans.

USAID’s CIO is responsible for the agency’s privacy program and for the management of privacy-related risks at the organization.

The IG issued a number of concrete recommendations for improvement in its report. These include the suggestion that the agency’s CIO should develop and implement tools for the periodic testing of data loss prevention measures and also update its SSN storage reduction plan.

It recommends also that the director of web management at USAID’s Bureau of Legislative and Public Affairs take a complete inventory of the third-party websites being used by the agency.

The IG’s intervention comes three months after USAID was hit with a cybersecurity breach when Russian hackers accessed its Constant Contact email marketing service account.

Following the incident, which was revealed by Microsoft, USAID notified agencies including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. When an agency has a privacy breach it is required to inform the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, which is part of CISA.

VA piloting system to find and manage AI talent

The Department of Veterans Affairs is piloting a system for assessing the development of the federal artificial intelligence workforce with more than 30 agencies and organizations outside government, according to Gil Alterovitz, director of the National AI Institute.

VA‘s Talent, Education and Assessment Management System (TEAMS) is a whole-of-government, whole-career solution helping find and evaluate AI talent and standardize training with support from the Executive Office of the President.

TEAMS builds on the VA’s Talent Management System (TMS) — established in 2012 as the official education, leadership development, learning and training record for employees — with AI talent proving especially hard to find.

“Very few people major in artificial intelligence, and even if you have a related area, let’s say computer science, you could not have any expertise in artificial intelligence,” Alterovitz said during FedTalks, produced by Scoop News Group, on Tuesday. “So how do you know if someone has the knowledge to do that?”

While VA started by targeting researchers, it quickly moved on to clinicians like pharmacists, who can apply AI in meaningful ways with the proper training, Alterovitz said.

VA is also using grant funding to attract AI talent and reskill employees as needed.

The department recently announced the winners of its latest AI Tech Sprint, many of which are now able to access production-level data. Sprints have an added bonus of helping VA develop faster mechanisms for contracting AI.

To that end, the National AI Institute is working with the Veterans Health Administration, Office of Information Technology and VA Cybersecurity and Innovation Program to use something like an other transaction authority to purchase and pilot AI quickly.

“One of the issues in working with contracting is around ensuring the security is there,” Alterovitz said. “And so we’re working with different security teams to ensure that the threat modeling for AI solutions is going to be consistent, in terms of the security controls and procedures.”

VA is also working to integrate security teams into AI development and deployment processes to secure and harden applications and create a trustworthy production baseline.

“The road to AI adoption goes through trustworthy AI that is robust and scalable,” Alterovitz said. “And the ultimate destination is standardized processes and high accuracy of the results.”