Secretary of Defense Austin approves JADC2 strategy

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has signed off on one of the biggest changes to how the military will fight future wars, approving the Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) strategy that aims to fast-track the use of artificial intelligence and data sharing on the battlefield.

The strategy defines how the military services will approach connecting sensors in the air, land, sea, space and cyberspace and use a networked approach to operations. Secretary Lloyd Austin signing the JADC2 strategy marks the beginning of implementing much of the nascent work the military has started, from testing new technologies and developing new concept of operations to use them.

“We have been given the clear signal to begin,” Lt. Gen. Dennis Crall, chief information officer for the Joint Staff and director of the J-6, which oversees all of the military’s command and control networks, said. “It’s outcome delivery time.”

JADC2 is intended to give the U.S. a greater military advantage by allowing for data sharing through a global, resilient network. Advocates of the new concept say that if a fighter jet can automatically share data with a soldier on the ground, the two units can coordinate more easily.

Within the JADC2 framework, each military service has its own project. The Army has Project Convergence and the Air Force has the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS). Both are focused on implementing the JADC2 framework, but with their own focuses on areas on things like increasing the precision of ground munitions for Project Convergence, and in-flight data sharing for ABMS. The Navy also has Project Overmatch, focused on building seafaring networks.

One of the critical points of the new strategy is coordinating the disparate efforts across the military into one interoperable framework of technology and operations. The strategy relies on a cross functional team (CTF) that has members from the across the department that can coordinate between services that often do not like working with each other.

“The CTF, that is the widest table setting you can imagine to get after these problems,” Crall told reporters Friday. He added, “we have had pieces of this in the past, we have never had this compressively put together.”

Crall added that the DOD need an enterprise cloud solution for work on JADC2 to continue past experimentation, whether that is the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) or some other contract. JEDI continues to be stuck in legal limbo, with continued protests from Amazon Web Services over the two-time award to Microsoft Azure.

“Where I am at today…I am able to take advantage of that multi-cloud provision,” he said, referring to the DOD’s current cloud offerings. “I think the real question is…how long can you do that?”

Security for any joined-up data sharing system remains a principal concern, and Crall highlighted the need for the DOD to improve identity, credentialing and access management (ICAM) on JADC2 networks.

“If we don’t have a real ICAM solution it will be impossible,” he said.

Homeland Security CDM dashboard lacks key data, IG report finds

The Department of Homeland Security can’t prioritize or respond to cybersecurity risks in real time because its internal Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) dashboard lacks some of the necessary data, according to its Office of Inspector General (OIG).

DHS‘ OIG found the dashboard reported less than half of the required data on network assets because collection hadn’t been automated and integrated for every agency in the department as of March 2020, in a report released Tuesday.

While the report is DHS specific, its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which manages the entire CDM program, came under fire from lawmakers in March when agencies governmentwide struggled to assess the effects of recent, high-profile supply chain attacks like the SolarWinds hack.

“According to DHS, its current dashboard could not yet handle the required volume of data or report all data to the federal dashboard as required,” read the report published on Tuesday.

“Until the DHS dashboard is fully functional, DHS cannot leverage the intended benefits of the dashboard to manage and respond to cybersecurity threats.”

According to the report, the DHS Office of the Chief Information Security Officer’s dashboard only reported 40% of hardware assets, 24% of software assets, 18% of configuration settings and 16% of vulnerability management.

It found also that the CDM dashboard was developed with software that couldn’t handle the data volume, and a new dashboard on a more robust platform was not expected until early 2021 at the earliest.

The study found also that out of $180 million spent on CDM, at least $38 million was wasted because certain essential system tools were removed and not replaced.

DHS OIG also found three critical and eight high-risk vulnerabilities across the department’s operating systems and databases, with 10 of the 11 occurring on multiple systems.

Lastly, DHS OIG found agencies were not on track to implement the required configuration settings for their CDM servers, leaving them vulnerable to disruptions and cyberattacks.

DHS OIG recommended OCISO update the department’s CDM program plan with appropriate deadlines for its dashboard transition, agencies’ tool replacements and data integration; address system and database vulnerabilities; and define patch management responsibilities.

The department has agreed with the recommendations, noting that patch management responsibilities were defined on July 6, 2016.

“While DHS acknowledges the initial challenges in fully implementing its [CDM] program, the statement that the department ‘has not yet strengthened its cybersecurity posture,’ is inaccurate,” wrote the department’s GAO-OIG Liaison Office in its response.

“In addition, DHS disagrees with the assertion that $38 million was wasted during the initial effort to design and deploy a department-wide solution.”

The Government Accountability Office found that no agency governmentwide had implemented all the key requirements of the CDM program, in a report released in August.

During a March Senate hearing, CISA’s Acting Director Brandon Wales said almost all parts of every agency had achieved a common CDM baseline as the program closes out Phases 1 and 2 of the program this year.

Just over a month later, CDM Program Manager Kevin Cox announced plans to depart and return to the Department of Justice as its deputy chief information officer.

Federal health IT provider Halfaker and Associates to be acquired for $250M

Government technology contractor SAIC will pay $250 million to acquire federal health IT provider Halfaker and Associates.

Halfaker provides healthcare IT services to government departments including the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs. It is among the top largest five IT providers by awarded task orders on the VA’s Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology Next Generation acquisition program.

Halfaker President and CEO Dawn Halfaker said: “The alignment of SAIC’s culture and values with this important mission has been critical in making the decision to join forces and successfully bolster the services we provide our customers with even greater digital transformation capacity and scalability.”

The transaction is expected to close by July 30 this year, subject to closing conditions. Halfaker is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia.

Last month the National Institutes of Health has issued a request for proposals for its long-awaited governmentwide acquisition vehicle that will give up to $50 to federal contractors over a 10-year period.

The CIO-SP4 vehicle has 10 task areas including IT services, CIO support, cybersecurity, digital government and cloud services and software development.

Pentagon to establish new security standards for 5G technology

The Department of Defense (DOD) is working to create its own set of security standards for 5G, according to the department’s principal director for the technology.

Speaking at a 5G security summit hosted by Billington Cybersecurity, Joe Evans said the DOD must understand all hardware and software used — including cell towers and receptors — and that it would have its own set of security standards for procuring 5G networks.

“We are really working across the 5G initiative to understand and develop [the] necessary security standards within DOD,” Evans said.

Evans is the Principal Director for 5G in the office of the director of defense research and engineering (modernization). This division sits within the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering at the DOD.

The new standards will dictate what requirements private companies must meet in order to collaborate with the DOD on installing the technology.

Security standards will play a major role in ongoing collaboration between industry and government, as much of the DOD’s strategy on 5G has so far revolved around opening military bases to private companies to conduct research and development.

The implementation of uniform security standards remains in an early stage, with even a common definition of 5G technology yet to be established.

In particular, Evans’ office and the chief information officer of the DOD are focused on ensuring that 5G technology does not compromise supply chain security.

The DOD has several test sites for the new technology around the U.S., including in San Diego to Georgia. Private companies are able to test 5G tech in a secure but less-regulated environment such as supply warehouses.

As new security standards for 5G are established and introduced, some existing technologies will become insufficient or incompatible.

“Not all the old standards will fit the new models,” added Evans, speaking at the event.

Security experts in recent years have raised concerns about the potential for China to use its large market share of the 5G hardware market in order to conduct acts of espionage. So far, the U.S., the U.K. and Australia have banned the use of Huawei on 5G networks. Other European countries are considering similar restrictions.

AI-supported ‘superteams’ key to future of federal workforce: Deloitte

New artificial intelligence-supported “Superteams” will play a central role in the future structure of staffing at federal agencies, according to a new report by Deloitte.

In a study published Thursday, the consultancy firm said challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic during the last year had fast-tracked the use digital technology to streamline workflows and reduce the volume of mundane tasks that staff must undertake.

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, many public sector organizations accelerated incorporating technology into their team structure as a survival strategy to enable adaptability and speed.

“Superteams ensure that the right workforce type (human or technology) gets properly allocated to critical tasks: by using digital technology to unburden the human workforce of dirty, dangerous, and dull tasks, leaders enable the workforce to focus on meaningful, high-impact work that requires human insight to solve problems, think strategically, and build interpersonal relationships,” Deloitte said in the study.

The study comes as government agencies continue to experiment with the use of AI to automate business processes, including at the Pentagon. The Defense Innovation Unit and private sector contractors have worked with the U.S. Army to develop automated systems for flagging erroneous financial transactions.

DataRobot and Summit2Sea are among the private sector contractors that have developed machine learning systems for the DOD.

According to Deloitte, superteams are defined by giving technology the status of a full-on teammate. The consultancy says that although technology systems must still be led by humans,  they are growing rapidly in their ability to be applied to complex problems.

GSA making ‘significant’ investments to automate FedRAMP processes

The General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services arm is making “significant” investments in automating security authorization processes for cloud service providers, Director Dave Zvenyach said on Wednesday.

Zvenyach said these new investments under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) will focus on automation, process improvements and additional resources to help plug gaps, as well as make agencies more aware of existing authorities to operate (ATOs).

FedRAMP approves secure cloud technologies for agencies’ reuse via ATOs. Onboarding new cloud service providers, however, carries significant costs, not only that of the initial authorization but also annual reassessments, significant change requests and continuous monitoring as well.

CSPs and CIOs regularly urge the FedRAMP Program Management Office to automate what processes they can to streamline onboarding, but investment hasn’t kept up with demand.

“As we add cloud service providers to FedRAMP, it ends up having a nonlinear cost,” Zvenyach said, during an ACT-IAC event.

TTS investments in automation, process improvements and additional resources will help plug gaps, as well as make agencies more aware of existing ATOs, he added.

The thousands of ATOs agencies already reuse save taxpayer dollars, improve security and lower vendors’ overhead costs.

TTS is collaborating with the FedRAMP PMO and Joint Authorization Board on process work, as well as the Federal CIO, CIO Council and Office of Management and Budget to ensure FedRAMP’s reciprocity with the Pentagon’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program. The Department of Defense‘s CIO office is already represented on the JAB, which makes things easier, Zvenyach said.

“This isn’t just a [General Services Administration] thing,” he said. “We really do need to have partnership.”

Tasked with improving the public’s digital experience with government, TTS is still responding to the pandemic, economic recovery, racial inequity and climate change in its work. Major investments are also being made to improve the security and usability of Login.gov, the government’s identity and authentication platform, Zvenyach said.

But now agencies including GSA also need to finalize return-to-office plans by July 19, as required by the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force.

Under Zvenyach’s leadership, TTS has adopted a “distributed-by-default” mindset.

“My experience is distributed by default is a better pattern than the hybrid approach,” Zvenyach said. “I think people should be distributed, or they should be in person. And we should try and think about how you use the best of each, rather than trying to blend them together.”

People working in person shouldn’t receive more benefits than those who opt not to, which, in turn, allows TTS to focus on outcome delivery and measuring success, he added.

To that end, TTS has invested in collaboration tools, restructured how it conducts meetings and rethought results measurement to enable employees to live across the country in a more equitable, accessible work environment.

One downside to a more distributed workforce is feedback is harder to come by, so Zvenyach set up an anonymous, digital feedback form.

“I really do read all of the comments that come in,” he said.

Former GSA procurement leader Nakasone to join VMware

Former General Services Administration procurement leader Keith Nakasone is set to join cloud computing firm VMware as a federal strategist.

He joins the company in mid-June after leaving the GSA at the end of May, and in the new role will report to VMware’s government strategy and innovation leader Peter Romano.

Nakasone worked at GSA as deputy assistant commissioner of acquisition management within the Office of Information Technology Category. Before this, he held senior procurement roles at the Federal Communications Commission and the Defense Information Systems Agency.

Following his departure from GSA, Nakasone’s responsibilities will be taken on in an acting capacity by Cheryl Thornton-Cameron, who is executive director of ITC Schedule Contract Operations at the agency.

Earlier this month, the GSA launched an industry consultation over plans to issue a multiple-award cloud blanket purchase agreement as part of a government-wide acquisition strategy.

Booz Allen wins $674M contract to support DOD data analytics platform

The General Services Administration has awarded Booz Allen Hamilton a five-year contract to continue support a central data analytics platform at the Department of Defense (DOD).

Under terms of the $674 million contract, the federal contractor will maintain and support the growth of the DOD’s Advana platform.

Advana is managed by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, also known as the comptroller, and integrates systems and data across the agency, including financial and medical data and personnel and logistics data. The platform is currently used by at least 20,000 staff across 42 DOD organizations.

Under an earlier contract, Booz Allen worked with the DOD to design and develop the Advana platform, launching it in 2019 to simplify more than 3,000 of the department’s business systems, according to the company.

Booz Allen Executive Vice President Leslie DiFonzo said in a statement: “In response to increasingly advanced threats from global adversaries, the DOD has placed a clear priority on enabling ready access to data and analytics across its enterprise so its teams can make faster, smarter decisions that benefit their business, operations, and mission.”

“We are proud to take part in helping the DOD continue the meteoric growth of the Advana platform by providing full life cycle IT support, data engineering, and analytics capabilities,” she added.

The contract win for Booz Allen comes shortly after it was last month awarded a $1.1 billion benefits management and processing contract by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

In its report for the 2021 financial year, the government contractor last month revealed that the Department of Justice has shuttered a prior criminal investigation into accounting practices at the company.

Army Secretary Wormuth says modernization programs remain ‘a top priority’

The newly sworn-in Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth has said that modernization programs remain “a top priority” in her first message to service personnel.

“The army must be manned, trained, equipped and modernized to be ready to fight today, but also to meet the demands of an uncertain and unpredictable future,” Wormuth wrote in a memo sent on June 1. “Seeing our modernization programs through successfully will remain a top priority so that the Army is ready to meet future challenges.”

The secretary wrote to service members after last week being sworn in as the first woman to lead the Army. She has previously held several senior DOD positions, including the undersecretary for policy.

At her confirmation hearing, Wormuth told Congress she backed the Army’s plans to create a force that can fight in “multi-domain operations,” where soldiers would be able to link together operations via tactical networks and data transfers that would better inform how they can coordinate actions.

The largest multi-domain project the Army is working on is its Project Convergence. It is the Army’s contribution to the over all Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), which is intended to bring multi-domain and multi-service operations to the entire military.

The Army has six major priorities for modernization that largely rely on using software and new data-based tech to increase autonomy and precision. The priorities include: Long-range precision weapons, next generation combat vehicles, future vertical lift, network modernization, air and missile defense, and soldier lethality.

The department established Army Futures Command in July 2018, which is tasked with leading modernization programs.

Biden budget proposes 2.7% average pay increase for federal employees

President Biden’s fiscal 2022 budget proposes a 2.7% average pay increase for government employees in an effort to rebuild the federal workforce.

If enacted, the plan would in total boost the pay and benefits of civilians working in government agencies by $16.7 billion, or 4.4%, to $396.6 billion next year.

The proposal comes amid a push by the Biden administration to walk back changes made to federal employment under the Trump administration, including the curtailment of collective bargaining rights and the weakening of anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ employees.

“After decades of under-investment in a modern-day workforce, a failure to partner with labor unions, and ongoing, unwarranted attacks on its independence, the civil service is in need of repair and rebuilding and the administration has already taken swift action to deliver on that goal,” said a budget document published on Friday.

Biden has already issued executive orders directing agencies to review their policies for systemic barriers preventing people of color and underserved communities from accessing federal benefits and opportunities, as well as creating a Gender Policy Council.

The administration has so far restored collective bargaining rights, eliminated Schedule F and prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. If enacted, Biden’s budget would take things a step further by funding implementation of his “Protecting the Federal Workforce” executive order.

The proposed pay increase for federal employees matches what’s been proposed on the defense side and was praised by several unions, including the American Federation of Government Employees, which felt it showed Biden “respects the civil service and the work they do for the American people.”

However, the union said also that it would continue to advocate for the 3.2% average pay increase being considered by Congress in the Federal Adjustment of Income Rates (FAIR) Act.

“While we are supportive that the long tradition of military-civilian pay raise parity has been honored in the president’s proposal, 2.7% is simply not nearly enough to compensate for the losses in buying power of federal wages and salaries over the past decade,” said Everett Kelley, AFGE president, in a statement.

“On average, federal workers are underpaid by 23% compared to those doing the same jobs in the private sector and state and local government,” Kelley added.

The budget also includes funding for a paid family leave program when employees’ family members are critically ill.