Brett Goldstein to step down as Defense Digital Service director in June

The Pentagon’s “SWAT team of nerds” will lose its head nerd next month as Brett Goldstein cycles out of his job as director of Defense Digital Service.

Katie Olson, the current deputy director, will be elevated to acting head of the organization that places technologists on “tours of duty” in the Pentagon.

Goldstein came to the role with a mix of public sector and private industry experience, being an early employee of restaurant reservation site OpenTable. He also served in government before that, working as the chief data officer and chief information officer of the City of Chicago.

Goldstein served as head of DDS for two years. During those two years, he oversaw an expansion of DDS’s work and its response to the coronavirus pandemic. He now plans to take up a position as a consultant on cybersecurity and emerging technology to the DOD, according to POLITICO, which first reported his departure. 

Goldstein oversaw a transformation of DDS from a startup bursting with new ideas to an organization trying to sustain its growth. He was the second director, replacing Chris Lynch who stepped down after four years of work in the Pentagon in 2019. Lynch left and founded his own defense contracting firm, taking many DDS employees with him.

Upon Lynch’s departure, Goldstein worked to build out a new team and turn its startup energy into something more sustainable.

“That’s when I realized that we had taken this team from being a generator of good ideas and good feedback to rapid response solution delivery — this vision of a SWAT team of nerds, but a SWAT team of nerds that delivers left and right,” Goldstein told FedScoop in March.

“I saw lots and lots of good ideas,” he added. “But we hadn’t really conquered the sustainable piece, or ensuring the outcome, or the commitment to stay with something when it went from sexy and shiny to kind of boring but still critical.”

DDS led several pandemic response projects. When the Navy moved two floating hospitals to New York as cases spiked in March 2020, DDS created anti-unmanned aerial systems tech to keep the ships safe from buzzing drones. Later, it led a project to help ward off hackers from Operation Warp Speed, the project created to speed up vaccine development and distribution planning.

The group has other health-related projects underway, like its work to digitize a century’s worth of pathogen samples housed in the Department of Defense’s Joint Pathology Center. It also has expanded bug bounty programs as it tries to strengthen its connection to the hacker community.

Navy will push ahead with Project Overmatch, even without extra money

The vice admiral overseeing the Navy’s implementation of Project Overmatch — the military’s concept for the future networked warfare — says the department will continue to push ahead on the project, even with a declining budget.

Initial projections of the fiscal 2022 budget show a flat defense appropriation. Taking into account inflation, that would give the military less actual dollars to work with. But that’s a scenario that will not impact the Navy’s most important modernization goals, Vice Adm. Douglas Small told a virtual audience during a Center for Strategic and International Studies event Friday.

“Where the budget moves in top-line is not going to affect how we deliver in Overmatch if I have anything to do with it,” Small said.

Project Overmatch is the Navy’s attempt to create a maritime network of ships, sensors, weapons and platforms that will allow the service to connect its operations and give commanders broader insight in real-time. And it won’t just be for the Navy: Any service, ally or partner operating at sea will eventually be able to link into the network, using the data-sharing capabilities to enhance their field of vision and coordination of operations, Small said.

It’s all part of the Pentagon’s Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) military-wide concept of operations where everything gets connected through networks carrying data from air, sea, land, space and cyberspace and artificial intelligence helps sift through it. The hope is that by linking together sensors and shooters, commanders will have more options and be able to converge different operations to achieve greater impact.

“The power of the platform is everything; that’s what we are trying to bring to the Navy,” Small said.

Small leads a team in San Diego building the technical capabilities of Project Overmatch. Those technical capabilities will fulfill the new naval strategy for distributed maritime operations and support the integration of unmanned systems. To build those capabilities, he said his team is working on a unified platform that will host suites of applications designed both in-house and by contractors.

“Overmatch is about connective tissue — we provide links and we provide applications for decision advantage,” he said. “Our job is to make sure that those links and those tools work across any part of that continuum of conflict.”

That technology will continue to be built no matter the budget, Small said.

“If you look at it by any metric, we have a lot of money, and I think what we are trying to do is go after this with more of an abundance mindset, not a ‘gosh I wish I had this much more,” he said. “What that leads to is we are starting with what we have, that’s starting with the people that we have, with the funding that we have, with the technical expertise that we have, which is eye-watering.”

New multi-domain operations software running in Air Combat Command

The Air Force‘s Air Combat Command now has basic software that can host a suite of applications and combine data from across different operations, achieving a key milestone for technology leaders, the service says.

The software contains a suite of nine applications linked through a common data layer, a small-scale version of what the senior-most leaders in the Pentagon say the entire force will need to do to win future wars. Kessel Run, the Air Force’s software factory, built the product called Kessel Run All Domain Operations Suite (KRADOS), which crossed the minimum viable product threshold in April and was used for the first time in May.

The software is used in the Air Combat Command’s Air Operations Center Weapon System’s (AOC WS) planning and execution process.

“This is a huge milestone for Kessel Run, ACC and our users,” Col. Brian Beachkofski, commander of Kessel Run, said in a release. “Only a year after delivering stand-alone applications to support operations, we’ve fielded an MVP suite of nine applications connected by a common data layer for usability assessment and user feedback.”

Kessel Run said it had users in the design process to ensure it worked for airmen. The KRADOS system builds off an initial group of applications connected for a narrower set of functions, but now with nine applications, the system combines data across different areas of use. Building systems that can use and generate data across domains is a top priority of the department under the Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) concept of operations.

“The AOC WS is Kessel Run’s most complex development effort, and while the program still has a long road ahead, we are definitely picking up speed and the KRADOS MVP is an important point of progress,” Col. Timothy Hofman, chief of the Air Operations Center, said in a statement.

The decades-old Theater Battle Management Core Systems is being transitioned out in favor of the newer Air Operations Center Weapon System as Kessel Run develops more code to support faster data sharing and more applications integrated into the system. The Air Force’s broad JADC2 project,  the Advanced Battle Management System, aims to do similar integration of applications and data on a much larger scale.

“This is an extremely important moment for the command and Air Force,” Lt. Gen. Greg Guillot, commander of 9th Air Force, said in a separate release on the software’s first operational use. “Improving the Air Tasking Order process makes AFCENT and our distributed command and control capabilities more efficient, and this innovation will also help improve AOC operations across the Air Force and in other combatant commands.”

Lawmakers request overdue 21st Century IDEA guidance for agencies

Lawmakers want the Office of Management and Budget to issue immediate implementation guidance for agencies on the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act.

Democratic members of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Government Operations are giving OMB 45 days to provide agencies with compliance guidelines for the accelerated use of electronic signatures, website modernization and digitizing forms, they said in a letter sent to the agency Thursday.

Congress passed the 21st Century IDEA in 2018, but the increase in remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the need for agencies to deliver location-agnostic services to people.

“Because the Trump administration failed to issue statutorily required guidance to assist agency implementation of the law, federal agency implementation has been inconsistent, creating uneven access to the federal government’s essential information and services,” reads the letter, signed by subcommittee Chair Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., and larger Oversight Committee Chair Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., among others. “The intent of the 21st Century IDEA was to accelerate digital modernization at agencies to improve how individuals access federal services, and to increase trust in government while driving down the cost of government operations.”

The 21st Century IDEA requires agencies to upgrade their websites, replace paper-based forms with digital- and mobile-response options, and create plans to expand use of electronic signatures.

All of the law’s deadlines passed without full agency compliance.

“The requirements of this law are intended to give agencies the tools needed to deliver a world-class digital experience to the public and federal employees,” reads the letter. “While we believe the law effectively clarifies and defines what is expected of agencies in complying with the 21st Century IDEA, guidance from OMB is needed to harmonize the various requirements of the law with other administration initiatives.”

AWS DOD Director Liz Martin on how cloud is transforming defense missions

A technologist by trade, few things spark Liz Martin’s imagination more than using the latest technology to solve complex mission challenges.

So by almost any measure, she landed the ideal assignment four years ago, when Amazon Web Services (AWS) hired her to help the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) gain a deeper understanding of the art of the possible using cloud technologies.

That opportunity took on new significance in March, when AWS promoted her to lead all of its global business with the Defense Department.

Since her days as a developer, and later as a solut

ions architect in the telecom sector, “I always understood the need to work backwards from customers’ challenges,” Martin says. In her role with AWS, that means working backwards from defense missions. “The DOD has made significant progress in adopting cloud technologies in the time since I joined AWS. But as the security landscape continues to evolve, it remains critical for defense agencies to stay ahead of the emerging threats with the latest technology developments.”

What struck Martin most about the Defense Department when she first joined AWS was the critical nature of DOD’s mission. “DOD’s most sensitive missions pose different challenges than running a back-office IT system. When our warfighters are in the field or at the tactical edge, those missions leave no room for failure.”

According to Martin, cloud technologies are helping DOD agencies address challenges such as the need for speed, resiliency and reliability, as well as supporting operations on a global scale.

“While our mission is focused on technology delivery, we have a similar commitment to the idea that our warfighters deserve access to the best technology in the world. And I think that resonates with our DOD customers and with the defense community at large.”

Need for speed

“One of the areas that we are helping the DOD is around speed,” she says. Pentagon and military leaders understand it’s critical “to accelerate the speed to adopting innovative technologies — to continue to stay ahead. It’s a very challenging global environment, and technology can provide a significant edge in a way that it hasn’t in the past.”

One of the key components to achieving that edge, she says, revolves around gathering and analyzing data faster and where it’s needed most.

“All of the server power in the world isn’t going to deliver your mission outcomes if you don’t have the data you need available to you when and where you need it,” says Martin. So, AWS is working with DOD teams on ways to integrate sensor data in austere environments and the so-called tactical edge.

“Analytics at the edge is very important because critical missions require an incredible number of sensors, diverse areas for collecting data, and the ability to make sense of that sensor data to make decisions in real time,” says Martin.

“We have a variety of products, like our ruggedized AWS Snowball Edge and AWS Snowcone computing and storage devices — ranging in size from a Kleenex box to a piece of carry-on luggage — that can be deployed in forward positions to create a local cloud,” she explains. “They can process all of that data locally, in real time, and also upload it into one of our larger regional data stores or analytics platforms, when conditions permit.”

Another problem the military faces when it comes to IT solutions is its massive scale.

AWS is helping DOD develop creative solutions to take the cloud to austere environments while also utilizing secure cloud computing regions to handle the large scale of the military’s IT requirements.

Reimagining what’s possible

Martin says AWS continues working with defense and military leaders to better understand the full capabilities available through the cloud, as well as how those capabilities might be put to more effective use.

“There are still a lot of folks who think the cloud is just a server in someone else’s location,” she recalls. “The notion of expandable compute and storage capabilities is certainly part of the story. What’s more compelling are the high-value activities that customers can achieve by leveraging the AWS cloud and the functions it offers, like high performance computing and real-time analytics,” she says.

At the same time, she also sees many pockets of cloud-based innovation through her work with the U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, U.S. Space Force, and Combatant Commands.

She credits defense officials for tackling significant problems over the past three years, including “some very large workloads moving into the cloud at all classification levels — as well as massive enterprise IT systems where scale is essential.”

DOD agencies can now move classified and mission-critical IL 6 workloads securely into AWS’s exclusive Secret Region cloud facility. Those and other initiatives promise to give defense officials greater speed and flexibility as they continue to scale up digital warfare capabilities and focus on initiatives like the Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) program.

Martin adds that AWS is committed to helping DOD customers develop their workforces, as well as supporting veterans, reservists and military families at Amazon. There are more than 40,000 veterans and military spouses employed at Amazon across the United States. “We find that many of the qualities that are foundational to military service align well with our Amazon culture,” Martin says.

What’s different today than when Martin first started her role at AWS, she adds, is the extent to which DOD mission owners are realizing the benefits of cloud technology. “By eliminating the undifferentiated heavy lifting of the underlying IT infrastructure, the DOD can focus on delivering its critical missions,” Martin says.

Learn how AWS can help your agency capitalize on today’s cloud.

Read more insights from AWS leaders on how agencies are using the power of the cloud to innovate.

Telework is here to stay in the Navy, at least for now

The Navy is extending its remote work policy even as many across its forces get vaccinated against COVID-19, according to a memo published Monday.

The Navy said sailors and other personnel will need to continue working remotely at least 50 percent of the time in accordance with “health protection level B” for vaccinated sailors and civilians.

“This update continues to build on what we have learned about combatting COVID-19 while still maximizing our operational readiness,” said Vice Adm. Phil Sawyer, the Navy’s operations chief in charge of coordinating the service’s response to COVID-19. “I expect we will continue to improve services available for our Sailors and their families while protecting the force as the number of personnel vaccinated grows. The key is for everyone that is eligible to get vaccinated.”

Health protection level B, the Navy’s highest level for vaccinated employees, is set for 2-15 new cases per 100,000 population in the last seven days.

The Air Force and Army are also both in discussions for how long they will continue teleworking, with the Army expended to update its telework guidance soon. The changes come as the larger Department of Defense works to build out its “enduring” suite of virtual work tools to support continued telework.

The DOD’s technology to support both in-person work and telework is planned to be rolled out by summer. DOD365 is a new high-security version of Microsoft’s Office suite of tools.

The current telework platform, the Commercial Virtual Remote (CVR) environment, is scheduled to sunset in June and was always designed to be temporary, even though the military’s telework policies are extending.

“Our enduring capability is going to be with us for a long time,” acting DOD Chief Information Officer John Sherman told FedScoop in March.

The DOD recently published new guidance for how leaders should evaluate their facilities’ risks to coronavirus spread. The guidance gives different levels for how many employees should work in-person based on the level of community transmission.

The Air Force does not have updated policies for how it plans to address a workforce with a growing number of vaccinated airmen and other personnel.

The federal government gets a central AI website in AI.gov

The National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Office compiled all government activities advancing the effort on a single website launched Wednesday.

AI.gov features recent AI reports and news across agencies; details the initiative’s six strategic pillars; archives related legislation and executive orders; and explains the structure of not only the office but various AI committees, working groups and task forces.

The website is part of the government’s push to increase transparency around every agencies’ work with cognitive technologies and develop trustworthy AI, where people believe in the reliability of the algorithms involved. Office Director Lynne Parker announced the site in a post on LinkedIn.

The most recent publication on the site is the National Security Commission on AI’s final report released March 1, which found that the U.S. remains unprepared for the “assertive role” government must play scaling public resource to ensure the country achieve global dominance in the sector.

Parker maintained her role as deputy federal chief technology officer during the presidential transition to the Biden administration and has been quiet about NAIIO‘s work up to this point. She’s currently assisted by four policy advisers in her capacity as the office’s director.

The National AI Initiative Act of 2020 became law on Jan. 1, 2021, creating a governmentwide program to accelerate AI research and development in ways that improve the U.S. economy and national security. NAIIO sits within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

HoloLens 2 headset will be model for Army’s future acquisitions

The Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) the Army recently procured for $21 billion will be the gold standard for other acquisition programs to follow, the Army’s top general told lawmakers Wednesday.

The IVAS system, designed by Microsoft and based on its HoloLens 2 headset, is a “transformation” from the night vision systems the Army currently uses as it also has augmented and virtual reality capabilities built into the headset, Gen. James McConville told the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee on Wednesday during a hearing on the Army’s budget.

The program shattered the usual multi-year — even multi-decade — timeline for fielding major Army acquisition programs, taking just 28 months to go from prototype to purchase, largely thanks to a novel structure of embedding soldiers in the design process, McConville said. “IVAS is a good example of where we are trying to go with acquisition as a whole.”

Microsoft President Brad Smith told the Senate in February that the company hedged it would win the award and had started building manufacturing facilities early to help speed up the scaling of production.

The system will allow soldiers to train in environments projected in their headsets, giving them experiences in far-flung environments. The Army also hopes the tech will reduce training injuries.

“That cap I think is going to transform how our soldiers operate,” McConville said.

McConville spoke about wanting to transform the Army from an Industrial Age one in the information age, as he has repeated often in public remarks. He pointed to having constant “soldiers touch points” on the project as a successful part of the IVAS process that will be repeated in other programs to make the broader transformation he wants to achieve.

“We must transform the Army,” he said.

CISA has a better understanding of critical software post-SolarWinds hack

Following the SolarWinds hack, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency believes it has developed a better understanding of critical software across government.

CISA’s National Risk Management Center has spent the four months since the hack was discovered determining the risks such software poses to national critical functions and developing tools to mitigate the threat, said Assistant Director Bob Kolasky.

The SolarWinds hack compromised at least nine agencies when Russian operatives used its updating system to push malware to Orion software users, and now all agencies should take stock of their IT infrastructure, Kolasky said.

“We call this supply chain security; we call it supply chain risk management — about understanding the hardware and software that you rely on to do business and do critical processes,” he said. “But that actually means differentiating between the hardware and software you rely upon to do critical processes and doing your own survey of what your critical processes are.”

Even SolarWinds customers unaffected by the hack had to reevaluate their IT environments now that supply chain attacks of this magnitude are no longer simply theoretical.

A large, nation-state adversary was nothing SolarWinds was “really, truly prepared for,” said Tim Brown, the company’s chief information security officer and vice president of security.

“This adversary was not simple,” Brown said. “They were quiet, they were stealthy, they lived off the land, they only were there when they needed to be there, they weren’t noisy.”

SolarWinds can do better as a software provider when it comes to development transparency and is looking to help industry after pushing releases the last four months, he added.

CISA is a partner in those efforts.

Government information sharing needs to improve, and the National Risk Management Center wants to ensure agencies aren’t entering into software contracts where, should a breach happen to one, it winds up affecting another’s systems, Kolasky said.

“What is the overall national response capability?” he said. “And how are we going to have depth of remediation, so that we can anticipate things bigger than what just happened?”

That will require working with companies like SolarWinds. Adversaries currently share information better than the public and private sectors do, Brown said.

SolarWinds attackers hit the company at the endpoint, and it didn’t have double checks in place. Now SolarWinds not only builds software but installs, decompiles and checks it back against source code, Brown said.

“I truly gave a little too much flexibility to my developers and my development network,” he added.

Many software companies do when it comes to allowing developers different operating systems and administrative and application rights. But SolarWinds has since imposed tighter policies, procedures and controls on its development team. They’ve “kind of slowed things down,” but the development team has been “very accepting” when they wouldn’t have been even six months prior, Brown said.

Check-ins to source code no longer just require a peer review but also an architect review. And SolarWinds stood up a triple-build environment, where it builds in a disconnected clean room — with both a developer and lab environment — compares results and prevents anyone from having access to all three, Brown said.

Pentagon leaders emphasize role of emerging technologies in battle

The top two leaders in the Pentagon in some of their first major public speeches shared visions for a Department of Defense that heavily relies on emerging technologies and creating new strategies to use them.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin emphasized the need to depart from previous ways of waging war and focus on new, technology-driven tools and strategies during his first major speech, given in Honolulu at the change of command ceremony for Indo-Pacific Command last Friday. The same message was echoed later that same day by Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks, who said that the department must “aggressively take steps to be a data-centric organization” and create new ways to use data in the field and in command centers.

These remarks designate a much more specific stance than in past administrations around building a military force of the future that is dependent on tech.

They want “to mark a departure from the approach of DOD under [former Secretary of Defense James] Mattis,” Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told FedScoop about the leaders’ remarks.

Mattis focused on traditional lethality and readiness during his two years as President Trump’s secretary of defense, rather than the long-term technology-driven competition. And Mark Esper, Trump’s second confirmed defense secretary, often referenced artificial intelligence changing the “character” of warfare, but rarely spoke on its applications or specific uses.

But Austin and Hicks are taking a very different, much more direct approach when it comes to tech. “Our fiscal year [2022] budget will provide early insight into our strategic approach,” Hicks said at the Aspen Security Forum. “It will support defense research, development, test and evaluation funding. This will lead to breakthrough technologies that drive innovation and underpin the development of next-generation defense capabilities.”

While not mentioned directly by either Hicks or Austin, both implicitly pushed the capability that the new digital concept of operations called Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) promises to deliver. The idea is to create a so-called “internet of military things” where weapons can share data to enable distributed, speedier decision-making. It’s a wonky topic that has been getting increasing nods of support from leaders in public.

“In this young century, we need to understand faster, decide faster, and act faster,” Austin said in his speech. “Our new computing power isn’t an academic exercise.”

Austin also foot-stomped the domains where threats are increasingly proliferating: space and cyberspace.

“So what we need is the right mix of technology, operational concepts, and capabilities — all woven together in a networked way that is so credible, flexible, and formidable that it will give any adversary pause,” he said.

Hicks directly identified China as the leading threat driving the department’s accelerated tech-driven push. China has the advantage of combining its economic, military and tech capabilities to challenge U.S. interests, she said.

And while China is the top threat, it isn’t the only one. “We have never had the luxury of being faced with only one threat,” she said.

This landscape will require the DOD to overcome “institutional inertia” and find new processes that can keep pace with rapid changes to capabilities. Hicks stressed the need to change the budgeting process to account for what the DOD needs to buy, including software and tech that changes faster than the current two-year cycle allows for.

“Platforms will always matter, but it’s the software…it’s those pieces that make such a critical difference in our capability,” she said. “That’s a different funding picture.”

Neither Austin nor Hicks detailed exactly how their view of tech-driven warfare will play out. But that was to be expected, Clark said. With the department’s full budget request coming in late May, they wanted to keep their cards close to the chest.

“They started out in a very aligned point,” he said. “That’s different and I think that’s useful for them.”