The Army’s Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems is embracing agile software development and delivery in the cloud.

Through the move, Rob Schadey, acting deputy program executive officer at EIS, said his office is shifting many software systems that were previously under the Army’s defense business systems policy into the service’s software pathway policy.

That includes the Global Force Information Management System, ArmyIgnitED, Army Contracting Writing System and several others, Schadey said during Federal News Network’s DoD Cloud Exchange 2024.

“We’re beginning with the flexibilities of software development from an agile perspective,” Schadey said.

The Army earlier this month announced a new policy for software development focused on iterative development and close coordination with users.

Agile software development typically relies on the power of cloud computing. And while there are many approaches to agile development, Schadey said PEO EIS ultimately settled on using the Scaled Agile Framework, or SAFe, method.

“It allows us to deliver capability through agile release trains and program increment, or PI, planning in coordination and cooperation with our customers,” he said.

PEOEIS can incorporate the user and the user experience consistently into software builds, rather than playing a guessing game, as Schadey put it, that comes with traditional waterfall software development.

“More often than not, you’re really focused on the integrated master schedule itself and trying to hit a date, whereas in agile, there’s flexibility there to work with the customer to hit on capability delivery and progress over two-week sprints,” he said. “So instead of playing the guessing game with a date, we’re getting more concrete with delivery of software by leveraging agile SAFe and working with our customer and functional [commands] on the capability and delivery needs that they have.”

FinOps ‘rigor’ key to cloud savings

For the last several years, PEO EIS has also fine-tuned a financial operations practice aimed at maximizing the cost savings opportunities of moving systems and data into the cloud.

Schadey said a team of three people working on FinOps has achieved an $18 million cost avoidance over the last four years.

“That includes leveraging the cost savings plans, modifying storage types, supporting automated patching and catching misconfigurations or inaccurate scripts,” he said. “So an $18 million buy-down to bend the curve over four years to me is a great return on investment. And it really shows that if you put the right rigor and you get the right team in place, you can really identify cost savings to be plugged into other places.”

The Army is also eyeing opportunities to take advantage of the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract. But Schadey said, so far, the contract doesn’t have enough volume to keep costs down.

“We’ve done the cost comparisons, and we’re just not at that point where we could transition because it would actually increase the cost to the Army, based off of those cost differences and volumes that we’ve got in place,” he said. “At some point, it will make absolute sense to help drive down those costs on the next contract vehicle that the Defense Information Systems Agency and JWCC work to put into place.”

Keeping cloud cybersecurity a priority

Schadey also emphasized the importance of maintaining cybersecurity in the cloud and understanding the shared services model that customers enter when they move data to the cloud .

The Army’s recent shift to software as a service includes partnering with industry to receive audit logs and other cyber capabilities from cloud providers, he said.

PEO EIS is also working on a new capability, called Neighborhood Watch, to advance cloud cybersecurity.

“That very much will be a capability where we’re consolidating and collapsing to a security information/event management capability and solution,” Schadey said. “We are working to put that in place within the cloud. And we will apply the same financial operations rigor because it will be in the cloud.”

Although logging capabilities can drive up storage costs, he said it’s not always about saving money.

“Not everything that’s done from a cloud perspective is done with the intent to drive down costs,” Schadey said. “It’s there to enable efficiencies and automations and tap into the services that cloud can offer. And in this scenario, we will be able to enable machine learning and other things over those datasets to help us get better details and logs with the threats that we’re up against.”

Discover more articles and videos now on Federal News Network’s DoD Cloud Exchange event page.

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Leonel Garciga has been on a sprint with a bulldozer.

Since becoming chief information officer of the Army last June, Garciga has been clearing policy obstacles, built up over the course of decades, to help spur digital transformation from the private to the general to the service’s secretary.

For most, the job of CIO is a marathon. But Garciga needed to start at a sprinter’s pace to — in the words of Army Secretary Christine Wormuth — “start breaking through the bureaucracy of the department.”

Even so, he acknowledges that the marathon part of his job will begin once the policy obstacles are cleared. But for now, he continues to open the throttle on the bulldozer.

“If it’s a policy challenge, if it’s a standard operating procedure challenge, I’m the guy with the pen. Help me fix that. If you’ve got lessons learned inside industry or in the commercial space, bring those standard operating procedures, bring those policies over, bring those guardrails over. Let’s put it on paper, and let’s get it signed out. Don’t let that prevent us from delivering,” Garciga said during Federal News Network’s DoD Cloud Exchange 2024.

“That’s the big thing that I keep pushing. Instead of saying, ‘Hey, policy doesn’t let me …,’ tell me this is what the policy should say, and let’s get that signed out. Let’s work through the friction and get that done. I continue to tell folks like that’s where we need the most help. We need to make sure that we get that alignment done because right now you’ve got someone who likes moving really fast, and I’m willing to underwrite a significant amount of risk when it makes sense.”

Focusing on 5 software reforms for Army DevSecOps

In March, Garciga pulled out his bulldozer to topple the Army’s approach to software development. Wormuth issued a new agile software policy detailing five changes to reform what she called the institutional processes of the Army.

The software reforms include everything from changing the way the Army writes requirements to emphasizing flexible acquisition approaches and training the workforce in these methods.

Garciga said the policy changes will help the service streamline its ability to build contracts based on agile and DevSecOps methodologies.

“A really big push includes centralizing some of that work at an acquisition digital center of excellence, which will be focused around these core agile contracts that we want to get out the door to support software development efforts,” he said. “The next big piece is really changing our approach to requirements by taking the holistic view we’ve had before to write these large dissertation type requirements and scaling them down to capability needs statements. So what it really does is take that requirements process and bring it down to core functionality versus those [individual systems] and allowing teams to have a little bit more left and right limits as they move forward.”

These changes aren’t just for IT or development teams. Garciga said the acquisition and nonacquisition workforces, as well as the test and evaluation experts, must all move in the same direction to meet the Army’s digital transformation goals. Otherwise, he said, creating a modernized foundation to build off of will be more difficult.

The Army can’t just write a policy and expect change to happen, which is why Garciga said the new digital center of excellence at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland will take the lead in procuring software.

“The center will include subject matter experts who understand software development, who can help customers really flesh out how they want to get from that contract, put it in place in the most agile way that really does include all those requirements for agile development, sprint cycles and all those things that you need expertise in,” he said.

“The other piece, which is a Step 2 that’s happening simultaneously, is a team the CIO’s office is standing up. It’s a very small cell, which is really focused on helping either big programs or really critical programs in the Army run through the wickets of a better software contract. Whether it’s legacy stuff that we have that may need some shaping to get the right agile contract in place or to get the right task orders in place, we would bring our expertise with some software development experts and some engineers to help the command or the program really reshape their contracting efforts in coordination with the center of excellence for digital contracting.”

Turning to industry partners for Army cloud assist

The software expert cell already is working with a handful of Army commands on specific and critical programs. Garciga said the next step is to create a governance structure to help manage expectations and data. He said that will come together this spring.

Garciga expects that the changes will help the service work better with existing and potential vendor partners.

“With the traditional contracting approach, we alienated some of our more leading edge partners because we were telling them to go backwards to deliver,” he said. “I think that this is going to give some flexibility to these companies to bring in some expertise and so they can more healthily compete in the environment. For some of the folks that have been supporting us a long time, are good partners who haven’t had the opportunity to take that next step, this is really going to give them a landing pad to accelerate some of those efforts.”

Along with the new software policy, Garciga has led the effort to update guidance around reciprocity of security authorizations, use of a software container policy and a new software as a service policy.

All of these efforts, of course, are underpinned by the use of cloud services. To that end, Garciga said his office is close to releasing the revamped cArmy platform, with cArmy 2.0 launching possibly in the April.

The service added agility based on all the lessons learned and made the cloud platform bit more user-friendly for Army partners, Garciga said.

“A lot of work is happening in that space. We’re working the AWS side to create a new landing zone. We’ll start to transition some of the existing customers into a new landing zone, which I’m excited about because it’s going to ease a lot of their pain and some of their challenges with just getting day-to-day operations done,” he said. “Then after that, we’ll move on to Microsoft Azure, and we are still looking at where we have opportunity with some of our other cloud service providers.”

Applying lessons from early Army cloud moves

The decision to update C-Army meant the service took a “tactical pause” over the last few months in moving workloads and applications to the cloud.

Garciga said the pause let the Army reevaluate its delivery model around cloud services.

“Like most traditional folks and enterprises who moved to the cloud, we raced in some areas, and we made some mistakes. We did some things that made sense at the time but don’t make as much sense now. And as new cloud services have become available in the regions across all our cloud service providers, it’s really caused us to rethink some of some of the technical work that’s been done,” he said.

“We made some decisions that made sense to do, like physically lifting and shifting a capability and just run the infrastructure as a service. It made sense at the time for the services that were available and for what we were trying to do to overcome some challenges that we had as an Army and in some of our server rooms. But we did that probably in the least optimized way. As we’re now two, three, four years down the road, we’re like, ‘Wow, that’s really suboptimized. Our costs are really high here.’ ”

That’s particularly true for some of the services and systems the Army move to the cloud early on, Garciga said. The end result? The Army created new legacy technology debt in the cloud, he added.

The new C-Army platform should streamline the service’s ability to deliver core enterprise cloud services, reduce the number of trouble tickets the help desk receives and provide standardized templates for vendors and customers alike.

“You can be a little bit more predictable on what kind of capabilities you want to deliver and how you want them delivered. We are really focusing on some foundational things that will allow the acquisition community and our partners to understand what the environment looks like in a more streamlined way,” Garciga said.

“We will streamline onboarding services and really automate as much of the onboarding for customers as we can. We really want to deliver a lot of the information upfront. What does the environment look like? What do our images look like? What baseline managed services are we delivering as an Army to your tenant? Getting that out is hugely important. So our focus is going to be making sure that we make that available to all the folks that are coming into the environment. This will make it a little bit easier for folks to come in.”

Discover more articles and videos now on Federal News Network’s DoD Cloud Exchange event page.

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From the Education Department to the Homeland Security Department to the Air Force to the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), federal leaders are retiring or heading to new opportunities in the private sector.

Starting with the Education Department, Luis Lopez, the chief information officer since December 2022, is leaving on March 22 for a job with INOVA Healthcare.

An Education Department spokesman confirmed Lopez is leaving for the private sector.

“We are preparing for a smooth transition by posting the position before he departs,” the spokesman said.

It’s unclear who will be acting CIO when Lopez leaves. Education already put out the job announcement to hire a new CIO. Applications are due by March 14 so only a two-week opening.

Federal News Network has learned Lopez will be vice president of IT operations for Inova Health Care Services.

Lopez has worked in federal service since 2008 and been with Education since 2017.

In his short time as CIO, Lopez said in a recent interview that he set up a customer advisory council last summer to help explain to non-IT executives why the 2014 law matters to them and it’s more than just a technology priority. He also led the effort to consolidate and standardize the number of video teleconferencing and collaboration tools used by Education Department employees.

Along with his work at Education, Lopez also worked at the Defense Health Agency and the Walter Reed National Medical Center.

Joining Lopez in heading to the private sector are two other technology leaders.

Federal News Network has confirmed Drew Malloy, the technical director for DISA’s Cyber Development Directorate, and Robert Wood, the chief information security officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, also are leaving for new positions outside of government.

Malloy, who has been with DISA for 14 years and served in government since 2003, will join a small systems integrator.

Malloy has led DISA’s cyber directorate since 2020 where he oversaw the agency’s portfolio of cybersecurity capabilities, including identity and access management, the Joint Regional Security Stacks, cybersecurity situational awareness and zero trust.

He wrote on LinkedIn that he also “developed the modernization strategy for our network and security architecture in accordance with zero trust principles resulting in Project Thunderdome for the DoD enterprise.”

It’s unclear when Malloy’s last day will be or who will replace him even on an acting basis.

In addition to running the cyber directorate, Malloy ran DISA’s services development directorate and was the chief engineer for the Cyber Situational Awareness and Analytics Division.

He also worked at Naval Research Laboratory before coming to DISA.

CMS CISO Wood taking new role

As for Wood, who has been CMS CISO since November 2020, he will join a new venture with Sidekick Security, while also continuing to invest in and grow the non-profit Soft Side of Cyber.

Federal News Network has learned that CMS deputy CISO Keith Busby will be stepping up to lead the program until a permanent CISO is hired.

During his time at CMS, Wood focused on improving the culture at CMS around cybersecurity, building a security data lake to break down silos and advancing the technology strategy through cyber enablement.

Before joining CMS in 2020, Wood spent most of his career in the private sector working in cybersecurity positions with Cigital, Simon Data and N95.

Retirements at DHS, Air Force

Two other federal technology leaders decided it was time to call it a career.

Ken Bible, the Department of Homeland Security’s chief information security officer, and Eileen Vidrine, the Air Force’s chief data and artificial intelligence officer, have submitted their retirement papers.

Bible said his last day will be March 29 and has no firm plans for his post-federal life.

“I am looking forward to taking some time to enjoy my home in Charleston, S.C. and perhaps engage in helping in both the education arena as well as helping at the state and regional policy levels in the future,” Bible said in an email to Federal News Network.

He has been DHS CISO since January 2021 and worked in government for almost 39 years. Bible, who received a 2023 Presidential Rank Award,  started his career in 1985 at the former Charleston Naval Shipyard, where he rose to be a nuclear qualified engineering supervisor for three engineering branches.

During his time at DHS, Bible launched a pathfinder last summer to begin evaluating existing contractors with cyber hygiene clauses in their contracts and focused on addressing broader supply chain risks through a strategy.

Before coming to DHS, Bible served under the headquarters Marine Corps Deputy Commandant for Information as the assistant director for the information command, control, communications and computers division (IC4). He also served as the Marine Corps’ deputy CIO and CISO. Additionally, he worked at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) for almost two decades.

Vidrine is retiring on March 31 after 38 years of federal service.

She has been the Air Force chief data officer since 2018 and CDO/CAIO since January 2023 when she returned to the service after a one-year detail serving as the senior strategic advisor for data to the Federal Chief Information Officer in the Office of Management and Budget.

Last March, Vidrine told Federal News Network that her new title reflects the central role data has in getting AI projects off the ground.

Vidrine said AI readiness for the department comes down to establishing a baseline set of data and AI skills for airmen and guardians, as well as making sure they have access to the digital infrastructure and tools needed to advance breakthroughs in AI research.

Vidrine began her government career in 1986 as an enlisted member of the Army where she received her commission in 1987 through the U.S. Army Officer Candidate School Program as an Army transportation officer.

From 2006 to 2012, Vidrine served in various positions of leadership at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence culminating as the chief of staff for the Assistant Director of National Intelligence for Human Capital.

Army PEO-EIS leader moving to new agency

Finally, one federal executive who isn’t leaving federal service, but is on the move to a new role.

Rob Schadey, the acting deputy program executive officer for the Army’s PEO-Enterprise Information Systems (PEO-EIS), is joining the Defense Counterintelligence and Service Agency (DCSA) to be the program manager of the National Background Investigation Services.

Federal News Network has learned Schadey’s last day will be in March and it’s unclear who will take over for him even in an acting role.

Before stepping into the acting deputy PEO-EIS role in January, Schadey served as the assistant program executive officer and as the director of the business mission area, both at PEO-EIS.

As the program manager for NBIS, Schadey will have to continue to modernize the systems that help federal employees obtain security clearances.

OMB recently approved the Personnel Vetting Questionnaire (PVQ) in November, according to the third quarterly update on the “Trusted Workforce 2.0” initiative from the Performance Accountability Council. The questionnaire consolidates the SF-86, “Questionnaire for National Security,” along with several other vetting questionnaires used for federal jobs, including public trust and non-sensitive positions.

DCSA is now working on plans to integrate the PVQ into the new “eApp” web portal for background investigation applications as part of its NBIS.

The post Education, DHS among agencies seeking new IT leaders first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Army plans to shrink the size of its force by about 24,000 troops as it transitions from supporting counterinsurgency and counterterrorism missions for the last two decades to conducting large-scale combat operations against technologically advanced militaries.

The job cuts won’t affect active-duty soldiers as the service is looking to get rid of already empty positions that were created to support counterinsurgency operations but are no longer needed given current strategic priorities.

“We’re moving away from counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, we want to be postured for large-scale combat operations. So we looked at where there were pieces of force structure that were probably more associated with counterinsurgency, for example, that we don’t need anymore,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told reporters during Defense Writers Group breakfast Tuesday.

Wormuth, along with Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, spoke to reporters ahead of the release of an Army Force Structure Transformation white paper that lays out what the service learned from a year-long assessment of its structure through a process known as Total Army Analysis.

After consulting with Congress, Army officials made a decision to bring down its authorized troop levels to 470,000 soldiers by fiscal 2029. It will allow the service to narrow the gap between force structure, which was designed to accommodate up to 494,000 soldiers, and the Army’s authorized force structure, which is currently set at 445,000 active duty soldiers.

The service plans to reduce Army special operations forces by about 3000 spaces. Service officials will focus on eliminating positions that are historically vacant or hard to fill.

“We tried to identify jobs that [special operations forces] had trouble filling, things like print media, psyops capabilities that are no longer needed. Those are the kinds of things that we look to get rid of,” Wormuth said.

Additionally, based on the analysis, the service decided to relocate engineers initially assigned to brigade combat teams to the division echelon. The move will allow the Army to reduce the overall number of engineer positions while giving division and corps commanders greater flexibility to deploy and concentrate engineer assets during large-scale combat operations.

By identifying these kinds of efficiencies, the service was able to cut almost 10,000 posts.

About 10,000 additional cuts will come from the inactivation of cavalry squadrons within continental US-based Stryker brigade combat teams and infantry brigade combat teams, conversion of infantry brigade combat team weapons companies to platoons and elimination of some positions within security force assistance brigades.

At the same time, the service will add 7,500 troops to support air and missile defense at the corps and division levels.

The new force structure will also include five multi-domain task forces designed to provide the Army with enhanced intelligence, cyber and long-range fire capabilities.

The Army will assign three task forces to the U.S. Army Pacific, and one task force will be assigned to the U.S. Army Europe-Africa. The service will retain another task force with a focus on the U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility.

One task force’s headquarters is already located in Germany and another is stationed in Hawaii.

The service is undergoing major force transformation to prepare for large-scale combat operations while struggling to meet its recruitment goals.

In fiscal 2022, for example, the Army missed its recruitment goal by 15,000 soldiers.

The service is making a more fundamental shift in how it recruits future soldiers by creating a professional recruiting workforce. At the same time, initiatives like the soldier referral program and the future soldier prep course have brought in over 14,000 new soldiers since 2022.

The post Army cutting empty posts in major force structure transformation first appeared on Federal News Network.

It’s a new year and federal executives are on the move.

Let’s start with the TMF program management office where Larry Bafundo has been named the TMF deputy executive director and also will serve as acting executive director.

He comes to GSA from the Labor Department, where he was the director of the IT modernization strategy. He also was the deputy policy director for the Office of Unemployment Insurance Modernization.

“Most recently, he led a $2 billion effort at the Department of Labor to modernize the nation’s unemployment insurance systems and I am thrilled he will be lending his extensive expertise to the TMF mission,” said Katy Kale, GSA deputy administrator in an email to staff, obtained by Federal News Network.

Raylene Yung, who was the TMF program management office’s executive director for two years, stepped down in October to join the Energy Department as the chief of staff in the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations.

Jessie Posilkin, who took over as the acting executive director when Yung left in October, will continue to work with the TMF PMO as its customer experience portfolio director.

“Jessie has helped guide the fund during a time of major growth and provided much-needed continuity of leadership for this innovative funding program. While acting, she has enabled and supported major TMF website improvements, launched a new impact report, announced targeted funding for 21st Century IDEA projects as well as some additional announcements to come in the next two weeks,” Kale wrote.

A GSA spokesperson said GSA will continue to strengthen the TMF PMO team, including identifying an executive director in the future.

This is Bafundo’s second stint at GSA, joining the 18F organization in 2015 as a product manager working on several projects, including the FBI’s open crime data resource initiative. He also worked in the private sector for Code for America and Ad Hoc.

Bafundo came back to federal service in January 2022 at the Labor Department as the deputy director for technology for unemployment insurance modernization.

GSA did not say what its plans are for naming a permanent director.

Two execs join White House

Two other federal executives who are landing new jobs are Jeff Rothblum and Kirsten Wilson.

Rothblum joined the White House’s Office of the National Cyber Director within the Executive Office of the President as the new director of cyber policy and plans. He comes to the office after spending the last five years as a senior professional staff member on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee working on cybersecurity and technology security.

“My five years working for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee have been incredible. It’s been an honor to work for Chairman Gary Peters (D-Mich.), leading his cybersecurity and technology security portfolio, planning hearings, drafting and passing legislation, and supporting his policy goals,” Rothblum said on a post on LinkedIn. “The HSGAC team is outstanding and I’ve been lucky to work with such great people, and make so many wonderful friends.”

Among the focus areas Rothblum had with the committee were serving as the lead author or negotiator for more than 30 provisions that eventually became part of laws, including the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act and the creation of the Office of National Cyber Director. He also led oversight of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Office of the Federal CIO (within the Office of Management and Budget) and private sector cybersecurity — including leading hearings and legislation to address Log4Shell (Log4j), SolarStorm (SolarWinds), Colonial Pipeline, Microsoft Exchange and other significant cyber incidents and vulnerabilities.

Before coming to the Senate committee, Rothblum worked for industry at Mitre, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

Joining Rothblum at the White House is Kristen Wilson, who is joining the Office of Federal Procurement Policy as the strategic acquisition data management lead.

“I’ll be supporting the exciting work that the Office of Federal Procurement Policy is leading in two of my favorite subjects: governmentwide data and governmentwide acquisition policy, including the Hi-Def initiative,” she wrote in a post on LinkedIN.

Wilson has worked at OFPP since October on detail, but moved into a permanent role in January.

She joins OFPP as it launches into its new acquisition data effort announced in November. As part of its new Better Contracting Initiative, OFPP issued a draft circular, which included more details about how it will implement the high definition acquisition data framework (Hi-Def).

Before her detail, Wilson was the deputy director for governmentwide category management for four-plus years. In that role, she led data and digital transformation efforts, including the establishment of the governmentwide category management analytics platform and the launch of AcquisitionGateway.gov.

She also worked in industry before joining the government with KB3 Consulting and BearingPoint.

Guckert retires from Army PEO-EIS

While those three executives found new homes, several others are exiting stage left.

Ross Guckert, the program executive officer for the Army’s PEO-Enterprise Information Systems (PEO-EIS) is retiring after almost 35 years in government.

“As I say farewell, I think back to 1989 when I started my civil service as a young engineer supporting countermine programs. Most of my day was spent standing by the copy machine making 50 or so copies of statements of work that I authored, and then putting them in envelopes and mailing them to stakeholders as part of the staffing process. We’ve come a long way in today’s digital age. Today, operations are at lightning speed, and although speed and efficiency have given us back countless hours, we still manage to fill them — and then some. I know this organization, and our IT industry in general, work harder than ever to get capability to our soldiers. Just know that your hard work and dedication doesn’t go unnoticed, and I couldn’t be more proud of what you have accomplished in the last few years,” Guckert wrote in a message posted on the PEO-EIS website. “It’s really unprecedented if you think about it: a wholesale transformation across the portfolio, pivoting to Agile and delivering success story after success story. Organizing around Agile, redefining technical services, using the right contract vehicles and language, upskilling the workforce, prototyping against the right criteria, and partnering with functionals and industry with new expectations to deliver at speed.

Bill Hepworth became the new PEO on Friday after serving as the deputy PEO for the past year.

Guckert said Hepworth “brings to the table an acumen for Agile and expert insight into industry practices that help us transform at the speed of need.”

Hepworth previously served as a contractor to various organizations within the Army, including the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology the Army Materiel Command.

Before joining PEO-EIS, Hepworth was the RecoveryTrac technical product manager at Tetra Tech in Maitland, Florida, and also worked at Blackstone Federal, eGlobalTech, Enigmatrix Consulting and the Octo Consulting Group.

Guckert leaves federal service after having served in a variety of leadership roles in PEO-Solider, PEO-Aviation and with the Office of Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology.

Along with Guckert, the State Department, the CIA and the Homeland Security Department saw IT and acquisition leaders head out the door.

Jaime Garcia, the director for strategic enterprise programs at State’s Center for Acquisition Experience, announced he is leaving federal service on Friday after more than six years and three agencies.

“In the ever-evolving world of public service, achieving every ambition or overcoming every challenge is impossible. I hope innovators and change agents across the government remember that their efforts are not in vain. No matter how small, each step taken contributes to the greater good,” Garcia wrote on a post on LinkedIN. “As for my next steps, I will take some time for my health and my family and continue to help government agencies improve their procurement operations. These challenges will continue getting more complex, and new strategies are needed, such as procuring and using emerging technology, especially artificial intelligence. I want to continue helping solve these problems through education and other opportunities to help the government rethink the art of the possible.”

Joining Garcia in heading out the door are Jennifer Ewbank, the CIA’s deputy director for digital innovation, and Bill Pratt, the Homeland Security Department’s director of enterprise technology governance in the CIO’s office.

Ewbank left the CIA after more than 30 years of federal service, including the last four years in her deputy director role.

“Serving as deputy director of CIA for digital innovation has been the honor of a lifetime, and I can think of no better way to end this amazing career than to help build the future of intelligence. The CIA is a unique place, with an exceptional mission, and the officers of DDI inspired me each and every day. I will miss them all,” she wrote on LinkedIN.

Ewbank said she plans to join the private sector to continue to work in the national security sector.

As for Pratt, he leaves federal service after more than 15 years all with DHS and its components.

Pratt joined REI Systems as its executive director of customer relations.

The post Labor’s Bafundo assumes new role with TMF program management office first appeared on Federal News Network.

Armies in other parts of the world have called on the U.S. Army, and other armed forces, for platforms and ordnance. This as the U.S. military ponders its own supplies, readiness, and the overriding question of the capacity and resilience of the defense industrial supply base. For an update on what’s going on at the Army Materiel Command, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with Deputy Commander, Lt. Gen. Chris Mohan.

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin And this whole DIB issue has arisen because of the difficulty on the Navy side of getting their ships built, but also on the supplies of the basic ordnance, the howitzer shells and so forth, and the platforms to launch them. What does it look like from your point of view right now?

Chris Mohan I think we have to remember a couple of things. One, we are part of the global supply chain. It’s very easy to start thinking that in terms of, well, we’ve got a military supply chain that just supplies military hardware. But that is not the case. The companies that supply us with castings and forging, for example, are the same companies that supplied John Deere International Harvester and some of the bigger manufacturers, caterpillar, etc., etc.. So we have to be cognizant of the trends and some of the challenges that they have that will have roll down effects to us as well. The other piece of that we have to think through is how we clearly communicate our demands to industry. And I think we do a pretty good job of that using what we call our operational tempo, using the historical data that we have for our fleets. But then there’s anomalies in the system. An anomaly was COVID, where we had a global shutdown in reality that caused the the bottlenecks that you saw sitting off the coast of the United States. They call a slowdowns in distribution around the globe and also here in the United States. We’re a part of that, and so we were impacted by that. Then you have another spike in requirements, which was our support to our partners in the Ukraine. I know that’s been a topic of big interest, and it put a significant amount of stress on our supply chain, and we are reacting and getting ahead of it, but it’s been a challenge for us.

Tom Temin In the case of something like casting shops make all different sizes and shapes of castings when it comes to say something like a 155 millimeter shell there. That is a specific thing that lots of armies use. And so therefore you’re competing not with the other needs in the United States for casting capacity, but for world wide needs of that particular item. So I guess my question is that is also supplied by the organic industrial base of the United States, but also foreign countries make the same compatible type of item, correct?

Chris Mohan Yeah, that is correct. And in some cases it’s a combination of both. So for some of our munitions rounds in particular, different companies make different components. And then they come to an industrial base OIB facility for their lab process and load assemble pack, which is the final process of putting the round together, testing it, packaging it, and then sending it out for distribution across the Army. It’s a combination in a lot of cases.

Tom Temin And by the way, what about small arms rounds? Is that the same situation or is that pretty good in terms of supply capacity right now?

Chris Mohan Yeah. So we’ve done very well with small arms ammunition based upon the long standing relationship we have with the commercial vendor that operates Lake City Ammunition Plant. So that’s been a longstanding organization that is very well suited to ramp up and ramp down from a production standpoint.

Tom Temin Because in that situation, you compete with the consumer market of all things. And I remember a couple of years ago, the small arms rounds were like $0.80 a piece when people were used to $0.15 a piece. And it was a situation.

Chris Mohan Oh, absolutely. And so the company that operates like City Force, they ramp up and ramp down production based upon the market and what our demands are. They come first, we’re first in line, and then the residuals and other production it goes to the private market. And again, that’s one that we’ve done very well with in this past ramp up of not only increasing the number of units that we send to Europe in response to the Russian invasion, but also the amount of military materiel we have provided to our Ukrainian partners. And then there’s another piece to it, Tom, that also is great news for our weapons and for the effectiveness of our weapons based upon what our partners and allies are seeing as a result of the Ukrainians have had using our weapons systems on the battlefield. We’ve seen a significant increase in demand in the defense industrial base for U.S. supplied weapons to contracts, for military sales, etc., etc.. So it’s a good news story on one end. On the other end it’s placing additional pressure on the, organic industrial base and the entire supply system.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with Lt. Gen. Chris Mohan, deputy commander of the Army Materiel Command. And just switching gears here, you have two hats actually in your position. You’re also Redstone Arsenal senior commander. That means there’s a lot of real estate going on down there. What is the latest?

Chris Mohan Well, I will tell you that for background, this is the fourth time I’ve been a senior commander. And this by far, is the most dynamic installation that I have been privileged to serve on, because we’re more than an Army post. We’re very proud of us being a federal center of excellence. And if you look at the 45,000 people that work here, it is not just people who work for the Department of Defense. We are the lion’s share. But we have a long, long history of working with NASA, and the Marshall Space Flight Center is a critical partner in what we do for our national defense, but also we have a growing relationship and footprint of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We’ve long had the Department of Justice here with alcohol, tobacco and firearms, which is part of the explosive ordnance disposal piece, all those guys get trained here. But then you put a significant training load from the FBI. It’s just going to continue to build out that federal center of excellence. And it’s a huge win for us and the local community as well. It’s very exciting.

Tom Temin And tell us about the proliferated warfare space architecture. What is that and what’s going on with it?

Chris Mohan The proliferated space warfare architecture. I would say that when you look at the folks that we have here from Space and Missile Defense Command, the Missile Defense Agency, and now this has always been here, and we have a significant number of partners who are deeply involved in not only ballistic missile defense, but also development of offensive weapons. The return of the Rapid Capabilities Technology Office is leading the Army’s effort to field hypersonic weapons. So we are not just terrestrial anymore from an Army standpoint, we are extra terrestrial if you want to use an ugly term. So it is not just ground based aviation. It is all the way to space. And a significant portion of that research and development is happening in the greater Tennessee Valley.

Tom Temin Yeah. So that creates another kind of cross bridge in the joint effort, because there is a space Command now. And so that’s somewhat separate from the Air Force, not entirely. And I guess that must make for some complicated meeting setups.

Chris Mohan Yeah. So yesterday I attended the change of command and retirement of a friend of mine, Dan Carper, who, turned over Space and Missile Defense Command after four years in command. And it was the first time I’ve ever been to a change command that had two ceremonies. So he had the army chief of staff. We had the army chief of staff here who did the change command for the Army component, SMDC. And then General Dickenson from Space Command was here. Who did the change command for the [Joint Functional Component Command (JFCC)], the Joint Force Ballistic missile defense, which is another element that is headquartered here. And so it was, again, the first time I’ve ever seen a dual change of command. So that speaks to the complexity of some of the operations that are taking place here.

Tom Temin Well, glad to hear that Dan Karbler finally got to retire. I guess some of these things were held up because of the politics in Washington, because he’s been on the show, too. And so we wish him well in retirement.

Chris Mohan He’s a wonderful human being.

Tom Temin You bet. And getting back just to that supply chain issue, I guess my question is, how do the different components of the military talk to one another about it? Is it a concerted effort?Because you’re buying different things than the Air Force, which is buying different things in the Navy. But it all comes down to, as you point out, the energetics, the castings, the casings, all the electronics that go into a lot of these things. So there’s a common industrial base as you break it down from the finished product.

Chris Mohan Yeah. And within the munitions portfolio, we’re exceedingly joint. We have the Joint Munitions Command, which is one of our subordinates, our ammunition depots, like the depot I commanded out in, Utah. We stored a significant portion of Marine Corps ammunition. We were doing work for Navy shipboard air defense systems. That’s very, very joint. Within the repair parts and other consumables, that’s also very joint. But that is, we all tie in and plug in and put our demands on the Defense Logistics Agency. And so they provide a significant portion of our repair parts, for example, as they do for the the Marine Corps and the Navy and the Air Force. So we talk to our sister services, but more so we talk to the Defense Logistics Agency. Highlight the fact that we are a federal center of excellence here. And then the fact that while we see challenges in the supply chain and the pressure we are seeing in the supply chain, for example, we are doing more things with Bradley Fighting Vehicles right now than any time I’ve seen in my career. That is from a standpoint of how many units we have rotating into Atlantic Resolve CTC rotations. We are transitioning from a Tuesday, so Red River Army depot is running two shifts, for example, as we convert. And then we are cascading fleets of older Bradleys from one unit to another. And then we’ve got a significant number of Bradleys we provided to the Ukrainians, and we continue to provide them, repair parts and technical expertise as we go over the shoulder using tell a maintenance, if you will, to support our partners and allies.

Tom Temin Yeah, items are on the shelf until they’re not, in other words.

Chris Mohan Exactly. And from that standpoint, we are moving out rapidly to start doing some additional additive manufacturing. So for example, where we have stock out, the manufacturer can’t repair or can’t replace and build new repair parts, control arms or suspension parts or whatever. We have engineers who have taken those and they’re doing the analysis. If we have the tech data, we are taking the tech data and machining those around the industrial base, particularly the Rock Island arsenal. And if we don’t have the tech data, we are reverse engineering them and then machining those. And that is an effort that is rapidly accelerating, and one that we are going to continue to pour resources in as we look at a potential conflict in the Pacific, for example. Look, it’s easy, Tom. It’s easy to get to Europe, to be totally honest. We have a very robust distribution system. Europe’s got lots of roads, it’s an industrialized, it’s easy for us to do business. But when we think about island warfare in the Indo-Pacific, how are we going to shorten the supply lines? And we think a way to do that is through additive manufacturing, manufacturing, whatever you want to call it. And so we’re moving out on that right now. And so if you think about our ability to take the machinery and place some of the machinery forward, you look at the rapid advancement of just 3D printing. When 3D printers first came around, I was a depot commander. When we bought our first one, I think it cost $25,000. Or you could probably buy one that’s just as capable right now for $300. And so we have 3D printers that are printing hard metal now. And so we’ve got to take advantage of that technology use the lessons learned that we were getting off the battlefield in Ukraine to propel us forward, both in a ability to print and also the thought process and the process behind it. Two separate things intimately entwined, but two separate things that we have to attack both on.

Tom Temin Yeah, you answered one of my questions. You think of additive manufacturing generally as plastic, and people think of metalworking as subtractive. You’ve carved it away on a lathe and so forth. But there is additive metallic manufacturing then.

Chris Mohan Absolutely. And I think that we are on the leading edge of capability. The piece that we have to work through are the authorities, and that work is ongoing right now. So you say, well, what do you mean by authorities? So think about the intellectual property rights of a company that we have bought a piece of equipment from. The intellectual property rights. In some cases, we didn’t buy the IP. So we don’t necessarily have the tech data. So we have to do negotiation with that. And that’s taking place at the highest levels of our Department of Defense to work through that or think about the piece of kit that is obsolete. So the company that made, this one little widget is now either out of the business and they don’t work with DoD anymore, or they went out of business. And we had 50 of them on hand. And we’ve burned through those 50 because increased demand, and now what? That’s where we’re really focusing on okay. How do we take one of those, reverse engineer it, prototype it, rapidly print it, test it and then get it out to the field in a semi temporary basis. You assign a risk assessment to it. Make sure commanders understand that there could be potentially some limitations to these parts. And then at the same time, you’ve got the demand on the normal supply system that is going to get you the fully engineered part at some point. But what we’re trying to do is generate the readiness that we’re required for our operational commanders. We think this is something we’re definitely going to have to really get right for the future battlefield, just based upon the speed, the dispersal that we think we’re going to have. So we’re going to be widely dispersed on the battlefield. The battlefield is going to be highly lethal. So if you don’t continue to move, if you could be spotty, you could be killed. So that’s going to demand us and require us to think differently about how we do precision sustainment. So we’re not going to be able to have large stockpiles of parts. So we got to think through how we potentially reverse engineer manufacturer to new technology, 3D printing, advanced machining and then do distribution from sanctuary. But we’ve got to get as close as we can to those points of distribution so that we can impact the readiness and provide the readiness that our commanders demand.

Tom Temin Sounds like in the case of a real situation where there’s national security at stake, you would go ahead and make the parts you need, wherever you might need to make them, and worry about the courtroom battle over IP at some other point.

Chris Mohan Well our soldiers have long proven that when you give them a problem set, they’re going to drive on solving that problem in order to generate that combat readiness that they demand. And so we’ve just got to help them. And I agree with you that in times of national emergency, we’ve got to be willing to take those steps necessary to provide the necessary things to our partners and allies and our own forces.

The post Update on supplies, supply chains from Army Materiel Command first appeared on Federal News Network.

The old days of “post and pray” to recruit employees into civilian positions in the Army is over.

Instead, the Army is moving toward a more active, and less passive, model of recruitment.

The principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs said the service is replacing “word of mouth” recruiting with an approach that is more targeted and understanding of the employees’ expectations for their career.

“We recognize that there is a lot of talent out there in the country that we need to be able to tap into. We need to push out the message that there are opportunities as an Army civilian, and that they should take advantage of those opportunities. Our recruiting message has modified from ‘hey, you need to come in and serve for 30 years as an Army civilian,’ which is pretty daunting to our younger workforce, to what we are now adopting, and what Dr. [Agnes] Schaefer [the assistant secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs] has coined this term, the ‘jungle gym’ model,” Bourcicot said on Ask the CIO. “This is where people come in and do three years in as a civilian, and then jump to something else. They go to the private sector for a couple of years, and then come back in, and then go back out and maybe start a business. They can do all different kinds of things. We’re telling people that civilian service should be a part of an overarching career path. It’s an enabling thing. It’s not an off ramp, and that we have amazing career and training opportunities for them to build skills that are that are just harder to get than in the private sector.”

The Army has about 500 occupations separated into 11 career fields that it’s trying to hire civilian employees for.

While USAJobs.gov remains a key piece to the ‘jungle gym’ recruiting effort, the Army has taken several steps to change how it approaches recruitment, starting off with a revamp of GoArmy.com by adding a “civilian workforce” tab to the military and National Guard areas of the website.

“Another thing that we’re doing is expanding our online footprint. So instead of just USAJobs, which is still the portal that people are going to use to apply, they can go to LinkedIn, and we are taking advantage of going to places where the people are by posting our jobs on platforms like Yello, in order to reach out to that cohort that doesn’t necessarily know, ‘hey, I can apply to an Army job,’” Bourcicot said. “We are going to career fairs and we are offering jobs on the spot. We’ve given offers at the Black Engineer of the Year awards, some 70 job offers there. We are updating our procedures to try and get the security clearance process going as well. So we’re really trying to make those jobs not only visible, but also accessible.”

A key piece to that visibility and accessibility is shrinking the time to hire so the Army can be more competitive in hiring for tough to fill positions like cybersecurity, data science and many others.

Time-to-hire still too long

The Army currently is averaging about 93 days to hire a civilian employee, which Bourcicot said isn’t too different than the private sector when it comes to certain highly skilled jobs.

“One of the things that we’re changing is how we communicate and how we manage expectations. In my own experience in technology, I had a warm body that I could send an email to and say, ‘Hey, where is my package and am I still under consideration?’ I had an experience when I applied to a job through USAJobs years and years ago, where I sent my resume in and then like eight months later, I got a message back that I wasn’t going to be hired. Of course by that time, I had a new job and I had completely forgotten about it,” she said. “I know that our team has been working directly with USAJobs in order to improve customer experience. One of the things that Army has done is we’ve stood up the Army Civilian Career Management Activity (ACCMA), where we have organized around our strategy. One of the things that we’re doing is giving some structure to having those touch points with candidates so that we keep them warm and make sure that they know that they’re valued, that we’re interested in considering them.”

The Army, at the very least, is now getting much better about sending automated notices to candidates to keep them informed about where they are in the process as part of how they are improving the applicant experience.

It’s not just recruiting the next generation of civilian employees that the Army is focused on. Once they do get on board, Bourcicot said it must keep them trained and give them a career pathway.

Focus on the Army 2040 strategy

Bourcicot said ACCMA is providing a more deliberate management approach of employees’ careers.

“ACCMA really enables upskilling and reskilling so that the information that somebody needs in order to manage their career is easily accessible. In addition to their supervisor, they’ll have a human resources specialist that they can work with,” she said. “If they are a GS-5 and want to become a GS-7, or a GS-15 and want to know how to become a member of the Senior Executive Service (SES), it can feel overwhelming. How are we providing resources to people so that it is more accessible to them?”

Additionally, ACCMA is bringing more consistency and standards to the civilian talent management processes as part of the Army 2040 strategy.

Bourcicot said as part of the 2040 strategy, the civilian workforce must have the capabilities to support the warfighter over the long term.

“We’re thinking ahead. We know that these people are going to be part of that fight, and we know that it’s going to be in high demand,” she said. “We’re working on getting after that pipeline. We have a pilot program with Carnegie Mellon University, for example, where we are sending folks to get to get Master’s degrees in developing the skill sets and bringing them on board. We’re standing up our prevention workforce and there’s a need for data scientists to analyze our soldier programs to make sure that they’re delivering what we need in order to meet the strategic objectives to reduce harmful behaviors in the force. We have a whole cyber workforce that we have just transitioned to the cyber excepted service, and some of those jobs are going to be white hat hackers. We want those folks to come on board. We’re working on cultivating the pipeline. We’re working on being competitive, so that people want to move over and have a lateral shift and also move up the management ranks.”

The post Army turns to ‘jungle gym’ model to promote opportunities in the civilian workforce first appeared on Federal News Network.

“It’s going to build out that infrastructure that is the plug and play for data, and allow us to expose all of our data that really is largely locked in systems now. We’ll be able to view and use data as a product, and exchange that data seamlessly across all our programs,” Jennifer Swanson, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for data, engineering and software, said at the AFCEA Army IT Day on Jan. 11.

The service recently completed version 1.0 of the UDRA while also building out an implementation plan of the framework in partnership with the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM). Swanson said that they are halfway done with the implementation plan and expect to finish all the work by March.

“That [implementation plan] does a few things for us. Number one, it helps us to make sure that the UDRA as it stands today is what we want it to be,” Swanson said.

“Number two, it allows us to begin doing some [program of record] integration. So we want to get after being able to determine, with our current programs of record, which ones we can maybe start migrating. Maybe not to all of this, maybe we’re not going to comply with every single thing in today’s programs of record immediately. But I think we can start taking credit for some of these things this year, and the UDRA is going to help us to get after that,” she added.

The Army expects UDRA to bring together principles and efforts for data mesh and data fabric. While data mesh involves a decentralized approach where data product ownership is distributed across teams and domains, the data platform will facilitate seamless access and integration of data products from different formats and locations.

Swanson said that a 100-day plan is currently underway, which will identify specific programs that will begin implementing the architecture. The plan will also include roadmaps for fiscal 2024.

“The clock will start ticking on those 100 days this month. And that is really going to be focused on program integration,” Swanson said.

UDRA 1.0, Swanson said, has been ‘greatly’ simplified, from 14 top-level services down to six, including data product consumption, orchestration, and production.

As the service is moving forward with the implementation plan, it has also soft-launched an innovation exchange lab with DEVCOM to test out industry capabilities. The innovation exchange is a cloud-based offering where industry partners can bring solutions for UDRA and determine their compliance. The lab will be available to all vendors once it’s fully launched next month.

“We want to make sure before we open it up to everybody, that we have our processes straight, and that it’s going to be efficient and effective,” Swanson said. “When we do that full launch, that’s something that will be available to industry to be able to bring in your solutions and determine, ‘Are you compliant?’ Obviously, it’s a business decision, but do you want and or need to make tweaks to your solutions to be more compliant with the UDRA?”

Swanson also said that the service is focusing on data rights and the things they need to own for the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN), the service’s battle management system enabled by artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The Army developed HYDRA API, a government-owned application programming interface, which addresses data exchange across the Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare, and Sensors portfolio regardless of the commercial off-the-shelf acquisition strategy.

Industry APIs are often tied to proprietary cores of capability, limiting control and flexibility for the department. “When that core goes away, the whole thing falls apart,” Swanson said. The HYDRA API will provide a higher level of flexibility, allowing the department to maintain that core and introduce other components.

“There are pieces that we have to be able to own and control in the government to do plug and play. And so, when we rely on commercial solutions, a lot of those are proprietary, and they are vendor-locked. And that’s what we want – to be able to bring those solutions in. But we need to be able to own the pieces, we need to change out those solutions over time, and TITAN is getting after that in their approach,” Swanson said. “That’s really setting the stage for us moving forward from an open architecture perspective.”

The post Army implementing new data architecture, launching innovation exchange lab next month first appeared on Federal News Network.

Back in 2013, I started with an idea of pulling tidbits and short items that were interesting or newsworthy, but there wasn’t quite enough there yet for a story. Like many things, it evolved into a long-form analysis driven, and sometimes investigative, feature.

The top Reporter’s Notebooks of 2023 continue to demonstrate the interest and desire for in-depth reporting, digging out more than the tidbits, but the stories behind the news.

Four of the top 10 stories focused on the Defense Department, while three followed the theme of people, jobs and agencies changing the role of agency technology leaders.

As always, I encourage you to submit ideas, suggestions, and, of course, news to me at jpmiller@federalnewsnetwork.com.

Here are the top 10 Reporter’s Notebooks of 2023:

Air Force’s corrective action fails to satisfy unsuccessful bidders for EITaaS contract

Synopsis: Bidders for the $5.7 billion enterprise-IT-as-a-service (EITaaS) wave 1 contract continued to press their case over the Air Force’s award decision to CACI the contract.

Key fact: Peraton and Accenture again have raised conflict of interest challenges stemming from CACI’s allegedly having hired former Air Force employees. The companies also allege that these individuals provided CACI with inside knowledge of, and access to, non-public competitively useful information. Through that information, Peraton and Accenture allege that CACI gained an unfair competitive advantage and therefore CACI should be excluded from the competition.

Current status: The Air Force awarded CACI the Wave 1 contract again in April and the unsuccessful bidders didn’t file new protests. Current Air Force CIO Venice Goodwine said in December EITaaS will roll out to 17 bases in fiscal 2024.

High per-license cost pushed many military services, Defense agencies away from DEOS

Synopsis: The Defense Enterprise Office Solutions (DEOS) is struggling to live up to expectations as many of the military services and defense agencies have found better and cheaper ways to accomplish the same goals.

Key fact: Multiple former government sources and industry experts say the price negotiated through the DEOS contract for O365 licenses is as much as 20% higher than what the services and Defense agencies could get through the Navy enterprise software initiative (ESI) contract.

Current status: The Defense Information Systems Agency, which runs DEOS, says it is working with the DoD chief information officer’s office and the acquisition and sustainment office to address enterprise software buying from a policy perspective. Chris Barnhurst, the deputy director of DISA, said in November that the goal is to “speak with one voice with vendors, especially for tools or software where we are using it as an enterprise. We want to buy as one and not subdividing to our own detriment.”

What to expect from the new IT/cyber/innovation House subcommittee

Synopsis: Throughout the federal technology community, there were tiny celebrations and the undercurrent of a sense of dread with the reconstitution of the House Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee on federal IT, cybersecurity and government innovation.

Key fact: Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), chairwoman of the subcommittee, offered a little insight in her press release announcing her new chairwomanship, “Securing our nation’s data, protecting our cyber infrastructure, and studying emerging technologies of the future like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and blockchain integration is more important today than ever.”

Current status: Mace’s subcommittee held about 11 hearings, most of which focused on artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. She did not hold a Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) hearing at all in 2023, much to the dismay of Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), the ranking member of the subcommittee.

The reason why the Air Force pulled the plug on a huge cyber contract may surprise you

Synopsis: The Air Force took the unusual step of pulling the plug on the Enterprise Cyber Capabilities acquisition for reasons that may make sense on the surface, but was baffling to long-time acquisition experts and especially to the vendors, who spent more than a year and hundreds of thousands of dollars or more on proposals.

Key fact: Long-time acquisition experts say they can’t remember a time when an agency cancelled an acquisition because there was too much interest.

Current status: The Air Force hasn’t publicly discussed its next steps for an enterprisewide cyber capabilities contract. There are currently no open solicitations or even sources sought notices on SAM.gov that have the key words “cybersecurity services” or “cybersecurity capabilities.”

NIH breaks up its technology executive roles

Synopsis: NIH decided to separate its chief information officer role from the director of the Center for Information Technology and create two distinct positions after almost 25 years of combining the roles.

Key fact: NIH formally created the CIT in March 1998 bringing together functions and missions of its Division of Computer Research and Technology, Office of Information Resources Management, and the telecommunication branch. The position of CIT director and CIO has been one since 1998 with a handful of acting directors holding only one of the roles.

Current status: Nearly a year after splitting up the roles, NIH still doesn’t have a permanent CIO or permanent CIT director. Dennis Papula, who has been the acting CIO, and Ivor D’Souza, who has been the acting CIT director, both since January, remain their respective roles.

Login.gov’s problems further break down confidence in TTS, and now GSA

Synopsis: The third scathing inspector general report since 2016 once again reinforced how GSA headquarters can’t make the Technology Transformation Service play by the government’s rules, in turn leading agency chief information officers and other technology executives to question whether GSA, as a whole, can be trusted.

Key fact: While many technology executives said they weren’t surprised by the IG’s findings that TTS misled agencies for four years about how Login.gov met certain identity proofing requirements under the National Institute of Standards and Technology Special Publication 800-63-3, the IG report signals TTS remains a horse that cannot be broken, despite multiple attempts across multiple administrations.

Current status: GSA has detailed several changes to the management of Login.gov, including in October outlining several ways it will meet the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s 800-63-3 IAL2 guidelines. GSA says all cabinet agencies now using Login.gov for at least one program or application.

NSF joins a growing list of agencies reconfiguring its CIO’s office

Synopsis: The National Science Foundation is joining a small but growing number of agencies remaking their CIO’s office.

Key fact: Both the NSF and NIH decisions to reconfigure their CIO and technology oversight offices are the latest step in this 25-plus year evolution of the agency’s lead technology role.

Current status: Terry Carpenter became the CIO and chief technology officer at NSF in July. He came over to NSF from the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency where he was the CTO and program executive officer.

GSA joins EPA in putting the brakes on how employees use generative AI

Synopsis: The General Services Administration issued an instructional letter (IL) to provide an interim policy for controlled access to generative AI large language models (LLMs) from the GSA network and government furnished equipment (GFE).

Key fact: GSA’s instructional letter is one of several similar policy-like documents issued by agencies over the last few weeks. The Environmental Protection Agency in early May sent a note to staff saying it was blocking ChatGPT, OpenAI and similar sites.

Current status: President Joe Biden signed out an executive order in late October and the OMB issued a draft policy around AI on Nov. 1. Included in the proposed requirements is one that directs agencies to explore the use of generative AI tools, like ChatGPT, with “adequate safeguards and oversight mechanisms.”

Navy CDO Sasala jumps ship to the Army

Synopsis: The Navy is losing its chief data officer. Tom Sasala is joining the Army as the deputy director of the Office of Business Transformation.

Key fact: Sasala has been the Navy CDO since October 2019 after coming over to the service in April of that same year as the director of data strategy.

Current status: Duncan McCaskill remains the acting CDO nearly a year after Sasala left the position under unusual circumstances, to say the least.

GSA’s commercial platforms gaining steam, but data, other concerns persist

Synopsis: Three years into the Commercial Platforms Initiative, the vision Congress had for the initiative isn’t necessarily coming to fruition. But new data and analysis shows that doesn’t mean it’s a failure by any means. The number of agencies using the platform more than quadrupled between 2020 and 2022 to 27 and the spending, while far below initial estimates of $6 billion have increased to $40 million last fiscal year.

Key fact: The top agencies using the commercial platforms are the departments of Veterans Affairs and Agriculture.

Current status: GSA is facing a new protest over the CPI program, and had to extend the current contracts with Amazon, Fischer Scientific and Overstock an extra three months to March 2024.

The post Investigations into DoD struck a chord in 2023 first appeared on Federal News Network.

There are some big examples of the U.S. military conducting complicated acquisition projects very quickly. Maybe the most famous is DoD’s rapid fielding of mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles during the war in Afghanistan. The downside was it took a full-court press by the Pentagon’s most senior leadership to make the acquisition system work as quickly as it needed to.

Then there’s the hundreds of new communications capabilities the military rolled out to troops during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars: commanders got them fielded via urgent operational needs statements. The downside is they didn’t always fit into or scale with the military’s longer-term needs, which has led every Army CIO for the past decade to complain about integration challenges.

But Army Futures Command is thinking about rapid acquisition in a way that’s meant to avoid those problems, according to Gen. James Rainey, AFC’s commander.

“We need to transform, be agile be adaptive inside the next 18 to 24 months. We want to go fast, but you can’t go so fast that you just dump kit onto formations. So we have to think a little bit about training, sustainment, leader development,” he told an audience organized by the Association of the U.S. Army last week. “The bottom line is there are things that are absolutely available and doable in the world right now that we don’t have in our formations, and that we need. So we’re taking a different approach. I want to buy capabilities, not systems.”

One of the first capabilities the Army’s targeting with that new approach is loitering munitions – sometimes called suicide drones. Rainey said the demand, for now, is coming mainly from the Army’s special forces community. But AFC wants to also send a clear signal to industry that, over time, it’s going to want to buy the same types of capability at a larger scale – just not all at once.

Another area where Rainey thinks the approach fits well is new capabilities to counter opposing forces’ unmanned systems.

“The Army’s going to buy a bunch of [counter-UAS capabilities], but we only want to buy them for three brigade combat teams at a time. The capability doesn’t change over time, but I want to re-compete that every 18-to-24 months and buy it in tranches so that we make sure we have the best capability,” he said. “We’ll want to buy anything that works, that is trainable, and is not landlocked – UAS is UAS, and we’re never going to have enough … it’s going to be a character of the future of war. “

And the Army’s new approach to rapid acquisition might be characterized as much by what it doesn’t buy rapidly as what it does.

Rainey said AFC has some safeguards in place to make sure it avoids those problems of the past – buying numerous proprietary systems that are difficult to integrate into a formation or the Army’s broader networks.

“When we look at something and say, ‘Hey, we need this,’ before we decide to take the rapid acquisition approach, we’ll ask whether we have a plan to transition it to program a record,” he told reporters. “I wouldn’t sign up for rapid acquisition of something if we didn’t have a transition and landing spot for it. That’s one, but a bigger one is, if you have to build a training facility, if [the capability] comes with a big motor pool requirement or backside sustainment, that’s not a reason to not do it, but that automatically puts it in the deliberate modernization category. If something had a monstrous integration challenge, I wouldn’t go after it as a rapid acquisition, I’d take a little more deliberate, slow and steady approach.”

But Rainey said that’s what makes something like loitering munitions so attractive for a rapid acquisition pipeline. Since they’re essentially kamikaze drones, the Army can think of them in the same way it thinks about any other munition. And if it acquires them properly, they’ll fit into formations that way too.

“Their mortar platoon that they already have could shoot it, their weapons company that they already have could shoot it, a good rifle squad could shoot it,” he said. “Same thing with a UAS. We can’t rapidly acquire a UAS if it needs a platoon of soldiers and a launcher and a support system and contractor field service representatives. But we can go out and buy an attritable UAS system that shows up through the class nine system – replacement parts, not end items – and if the unit crashes it, they crash it.”

Rainey says that’s not to say there aren’t still dangers to moving quickly. One of them might be rapidly acquiring too many disparate systems and handing them off to Army units all at once.

“Is it possible to do so much rapid acquisition that sum of three or four or five things exceeds the capacity of a unit to receive it? That is a valid concern that we’re paying attention to,” he said.

The post Army Futures Command to focus more on rapid acquisition, with an eye toward potential pitfalls first appeared on Federal News Network.

“About 20 years ago, just over a quarter of youth had never thought about serving in the military. In recent years, more than half of youth have never thought about serving in the military. Youth of today are not saying no to what the military has to offer. They simply don’t know much about military service,” Ashish Vazirani, under secretary of the Army for personnel and readiness, said during the House Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday.

This lack of awareness combined with a strong labor market,  restricted access to schools in the post-Covid world, concerns about the risks of military service and distrust in public institutions have “turned into a perfect storm,” creating a difficult recruiting environment, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Manpower and Reserve Affairs Alex Wagner said.

In fiscal 2023, the military services collectively missed recruiting goals by about 41,000 recruits. 

“Look, our military is facing its greatest recruiting shortfall since the inception of our all-volunteer force over 50 years ago…There is no doubt that the dwindling connection between our nation’s younger generations and knowing family or friends who have served in the military are influencing their willingness to put on America’s uniform.” Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J) said.

“We know this is a challenge money alone cannot solve,” he added.

In addition, over 77% of today’s eligible population doesn’t qualify for military service without some kind of a waiver, a factor that is greatly contributing to the shrinking recruitment pool. 

“The causes of the recruiting challenges we face are complex and multifaceted. Some contributing factors are shifts in the nation’s economy and population. Others are unique to the military,” Agnes Schaefer, assistant secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, said. 

Schaefer said it’s important to understand what eligible applicants are looking for in their career paths and adjust accordingly.

“Clearly, they [Gen Z] are looking for purpose in their careers,” she said. “They’re looking for flexible career paths, which would cause us to sort of shift away from our hierarchical siloed career paths that we currently have to more of a jungle gym model, which is what they’re looking for. So we are trying to infuse some more of that flexibility,” she said.

For the last several years, the Army has been struggling to meet its recruitment goals. In 2023, the service missed its recruitment goal by approximately 10,000 recruits. 

While some of the efforts the service put in place, including the marketing campaign ‘Be All You Can Be” and the future of soldier preparatory course are paying off, officials say it’s not nearly enough.

Earlier this year, the Army conducted a study to get to the root causes of the ongoing shortages and identify long-term solutions. The study showed that the service doesn’t have a robust recruiting enterprise that is crucial to bringing in the talent.

“The study looked at 25 years worth of recruiting data, identified external and internal root causes of the recruiting crisis, examined the recruiting structure and performance of our sister services, as well as best practices from the private sector and developed recommendations for how the army could transform its recruiting enterprise to better position itself as an employer of choice,” Schaefer said. 

Multiple levels of hierarchy, having no single point of accountability and recruiters not being trained or managed in alignment with workforce management practices hinder the Army’s efforts. The service has also struggled with incorporating data collection into its recruitment process, Schaefer said.

Based on the study’s results, Christine Wormuth, the secretary of the Army, said that the service will change its approach to selecting and managing recruiters. It will also create an evidence-based learning capability in the headquarters that will allow for the incorporation of data collection into the recruiting process. Lastly, the recruiting enterprise will get consolidated and realigned as a command led by a three-star general and will report to the secretary of the Army. 

“We are making a shift towards a professionalized recruiting force, which is an industry standard. Right now, we are working off of a borrowed manpower model in which we pull people from different specialties to become recruiters,” Schaefer said. 

“We were looking actually at the other services as well. And one of the things that makes the Marine Corps so effective in recruiting is that recruiting is a path to leadership in the Marine Corps. You have to be you, have to be a recruiter in order to, you know, become the commandant,” she added.

The post Military struggles to bring Gen Z into the armed forces first appeared on Federal News Network.

• A federal agency was hit by hackers who took advantage of outdated software. Thus, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is reminding agencies — and the public — to patch their software after an unidentified federal agency was hacked earlier this summer. Not much is known about the suspected hackers, but they were able to take advantage of older versions of Adobe software to compromise two of the agency’s servers between June and July. CISA said the hackers were trying to map out the agency’s network, but there is no evidence they were able to steal data or go any further than the initial intrusion.
  (CISA issues patch reminder after federal agency hacked via outdated software - Federal News Network)
• There is less than a week left to take advantage of Open Season. Not every enrollee in the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) program necessarily needs to make a change to his or her health, vision and dental plan options for next year. But at the very least, federal health experts say it is wise to learn how your plan will change in 2024. Updates to Medicare Part D, expanded coverages and increasing premiums are just a few reasons that experts encourage enrollees to weight their costs and benefits. Enrollees have until 11:59 p.m. on Monday to make their final health care selections. And if feds do nothing, their current options will roll over into 2024.
  (What feds should know before Open Season ends this year - Federal News Network)
• The Office of Management and Budget has named four more high-impact service providers (HISPs). On the second anniversary of the customer experience executive order, OMB continues to expand the plumbing that helps agencies improve how they serve citizens. Jason Miller, the deputy director for management at OMB, said the four new HISPs join the 35 others across government. "The Indian Health Service, the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency and the International Trade Administration, so we are growing that infrastructure," Miller said. Miller added that the results from these CX efforts are proven out in part by federal agency satisfaction scores increasing by 5% over the last two years.
  (OMB Deputy Director for Management Jason Miller - Federal News Network)
• A Republican senator is making a ‘naughty list’ of federal agencies with the most under-utilized real estate. "Use it or lose it." That is what Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee Ranking Member Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) is telling agencies with excess real estate. “While it’s not the Night Before Christmas quite yet, there’s not a creature stirring – not even a mouse – in the halls across this city," Ernst said. Ernst released new federal building data from the Government Accountability Office that finds the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Small Business Administration both had a 7% average utilization rate at their headquarters in early 2023.
  (Ernst tells top ‘naughty list’ agencies to use or sell underutilized office space - Federal News Network)
• The Defense Intelligence Agency is set to get a new leader, as the Senate on Wednesday voted to confirm Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse as the next DIA director. He will take over for Army Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, who has served as director since 2020. Kruse is currently the adviser for military affairs to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines. He had previously served as director for defense intelligence at the Pentagon and as the director for intelligence at the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.
  (Haines statement on the confirmation of Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse to lead the Defense Intelligence Agency - ODNI)
• As skills-based hiring ramps up, agencies now have access to two new training courses. They will cover how to design an overall candidate assessment strategy, and how to assess applicants based on their skills. The effort from OPM comes after a 2020 executive order that called on agencies to start focusing more on applicants' skills, rather than their education. Agencies can access the new courses on demand in OPM's virtual training center.
  (Launch of OPMʼs designing an assessment strategy - Office of Personnel Management)
• DoD’s ongoing implementation of its new electronic health record (EHR) is still playing a big role in the military services’ recruiting challenges. But leaders told the Senate yesterday they hope to have some solutions ironed out by next February. That is when a working group the deputy secretary of Defense appointed is expected to finish its recommendations. Officials said the problems do not have much to do with the EHR itself. The main issue is the new system, MHS Genesis, which gives the military much more information about recruits’ medical history than they have had in the past. Under current policies, once recruiters know about past health issues, they need to pursue waivers to let prospective members continue the recruiting process.
  (EHR implementation still poses military recruiting challenges - Testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee)
• The Department of Veterans Affairs is looking to bring new hires in more quickly, but federal watchdogs are finding gaps in how VA screens candidates for health care jobs, including flagging those with a drug-related criminal history. The Government Accountability Office found more than 12,000 employees at the Veterans Health Administration with “indications of controlled substance-related criminal histories.” In a sample of 300 employees, GAO confirmed 50 of them had one or more controlled substance-related felony convictions.
  (VA watchdogs raise alarms about steps missed screening hires with drug felonies - Federal News Network)
• The military did not meet its recruitment goals this year. At a hearing yesterday, the services told the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel that recruiting efforts fell well short, but they do have a plan to fix it. In 2023, the Army and the Navy were in the worst position among military services. The Navy is 12,000 sailors smaller than it was in the previous year and the Army has 30,000 fewer service members. During the hearing, the military services committed to providing more information on how they track medically disqualified applicants, which is one of the main barriers to recruitment.
  (DOD struggles to meet its recruitment targets - Senate Armed Services Committee)
• Agencies must now consider climate-related risks, along with natural hazard risks, as part of their property asset management and investment decisions. New guidance from the Office of Management and Budget tells agencies to create climate vulnerability assessments that answer four questions, including whether architecture and engineering changes would help with the buildings' or property's resilience. OMB's guidance also includes climate-smart infrastructure technical best practices for federal financial assistance programs for infrastructure. These include consensus-based building and energy codes, and high-performance standards. The guidance implements the Disaster Resiliency Planning Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law last December.
  (OMB's guidance for the Disaster Resiliency Planning Act - White House)
• The Defense Department is trying to make requesting public information a little easier. DoD is now updating some administrative aspects of how it implements the Freedom of Information Act. Starting next year, U.S. Cyber Command, Southern Command and Space Command will have their own authorized FOIA Requester Service Centers. The final rule also updates organizational names and clarifies language around DoD’s participation in dispute resolution. The National Archives and Records Administration will govern the alternative dispute resolution process.
  (DoD updates Freedom of Information Act procedures - Federal Register)

The post One big reason for military recruitment crisis is unfit youth first appeared on Federal News Network.

• Agencies may soon have an easier time offering pay incentives to their employees. Federal employees working in hard-to-fill positions can receive recruitment or relocation bonuses to try to get them to stay in their jobs. But right now, agencies have to get these bonuses officially approved by the Office of Personnel Management. Now OPM has proposed changing the rules so agencies could offer pay bonuses directly, without the need to go through OPM. The goal is to make it easier and quicker for agencies to offer the incentive, while freeing up time for OPM to focus on broader policies. The proposal would not change the total dollar amount that employees can receive, or the requirements for when bonuses are allowed by law.
  (Agencies would have an easier time approving pay bonuses under OPM proposal - Federal News Network)
• Improper payments crept up in 2023. The federal improper payment rate last year comes in at 5.43%, a slight uptick from the 5.12% in 2022. The Office of Management and Budget said the growth is mainly due to an increase in payments with insufficient documentation. The administration also found that if three pandemic relief programs — the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, the Paycheck Protection Program and the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan program — are excluded, the improper payment rate was 4.03%, which is the lowest level since 2014. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Medicaid program saw some of the biggest reductions, dropping its improper payment rate by more than 7%.
  (Improper payment rate for 2023 increases slightly, OMB says - White House)
• It is taking longer for the government to process some security clearance cases. The security clearance backlog is back on the rise for the first time in years. That is according to the latest update on the Trusted Workforce 2.0 initiative. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023, it took the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency an average of 115 days to do a top-secret clearance investigation. That is well up from 84 days on-average at the end of last year. Officials attribute the increase to higher-than-expected clearance applications and an IT system outage in September.
  (Why some security clearance cases are taking longer lately - Federal News Network)
• In the last decade, there have been only minor changes in the representation of racial minority groups in the federal workforce. But in just the past few years, the federal workforce has proven to be more diverse than the nationwide labor force. That is according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. GAO added that women in racial minority groups have made small gains in holding positions in the Senior Executive Service. But despite the improvements, these groups remain underrepresented in the SES compared with the federal workforce overall.
  (Federal workforce: Data reveal minor demographic changes 2011-2021 - Government Accountability Office)
• For each dollar invested in the Government Accountability Office, the government received $84 in return. New data from GAO shows the government saved $27 billion from the audit agency's reporting alone. GAO said the government also received another 1,200 benefits that cannot be measured in dollars, but led to program and operational improvements across the departments. Among the major impacts in 2023, GAO said its fraud and risk management framework led the Office of Management and Budget to clarify guidance and helped the Treasury Department implement IT project controls to further protect data. In fiscal 2023, GAO received 647 requests for work from 93% of the full committees of the Congress. The agency issued 671 total products and made more than 1,300 new recommendations.
  (GAO 2023 performance results - GAO)
• The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is relaunching an old working group to learn from new cyber data. Last week, CISA announced the re-establishment of the Cybersecurity Insurance and Data Analysis Working Group. The goal is to combat ransomware and other cyber threats by better understanding what security controls work best to defend against cyber incidents. The group will work with Stanford University’s Empirical Security Research Group to dig into the data and help government and industry better understand where to invest cybersecurity resources.
  (Cybersecurity Insurance and Data Analysis Working Group re-envisioned to help drive down cyber risk - CISA)
• Pentagon leaders continue to call on the Senate to end Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-Ala.) hold on the confirmation of hundreds of military officers nominated for leadership roles. The secretaries of the Army and the Ar Force said the holds are "problematic." They said the holds harm the military, its service members and their families. A Senate panel recently approved a resolution to block the hold, but that must head to the Senate floor and get nine Republicans to vote in favor of it.
  (Leaders want the military holds to end - Federal News Network)
• TRICARE participants or those eligible only have a few weeks left to enroll or make changes to their plans. The Defense Department’s health care system, TRICARE, has its open season until December 12. Open season applies to the TRICARE Prime and TRICARE Select plans. Selections will take effect on January 1, 2024. Some out-of-pocket expenses like enrollment fees and co-pays have increased from 2023 for certain groups. Additionally, participants can mix and match plans amongst their family members.
  (Participants have until mid-December for TRICARE open season - TRICARE)

The post Pentagon leaders call hold on military confirmations ‘problematic’ first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Army’s six-year journey to implement a modern contracting writing system is about to hit a key benchmark.

After testing its minimum viable product with about 100 users at 29 different sites over the summer, the Army plans to triple the number of users in the early part of 2024.

Bill Hepworth, deputy program executive officer for the Army’s program executive office enterprise information systems (PEO-EIS), said this attempt to develop an Army contract writing system will be different than previous efforts, which have fallen well short of expectations.

“We were performing a lot of research to determine how best to get this contract writing solution in the hands of the contracting professionals as quickly as possible. The Air Force contracting IT solution was actually being used very effectively by the Air Force, and as we began having conversations with them, we realized there’s a tremendous amount of synergy between Army contracting and the Air Force’s contracting approach,” Hepworth said on Ask the CIO. “At such a point, we looked at it and said that the actual shortest path is not to continue on the path that we are presently on, but rather to pivot and to use an existing government-off-the-shelf (GOTS) product. That kind of informed our decision to enter into an interagency agreement with the Air Force and also the Department of Agriculture, who was acting as the integrator, and then the Defense Logistics Agency, subsequently, for the hosting. What we really have now is we are leveraging an existing capability via government interagency agreements, which is working out exceptionally well.”

Over the last 15 months, Army PEO-EIS took an agile approach to develop and launch capabilities using the Air Force CON IT as its baseline, which is based on technology from Appian. The Army is using the CON IT as a common core of the contract writing system, and then the Army is conducting business process reengineering efforts to move more toward commercial approaches.

Hepworth said applying an agile development methodology has been a major difference with the move to CON IT and previous attempts.

“The goal behind that was to put it out there, start getting the users experiences and get their feedback so that we can continue to improve the product in a series of small increments in the first quarter of 2024,” he said. “We’re hoping to expand that out to 350 additional users, and then in the six months after that, we will also be expanding out the user scope to about 2,800 users, which will be dependent upon us completing the General Fund Enterprise Business System (GFEBS) interface, which will unlock a whole new set of functionality and features and start making the system is really super compelling at that point.”

The Army had to shift to the Air Force CON IT system after pulling the plug on its contract with CGI in 2022. The Army hired CGI under a 10-year, $133.9 million contract in June 2017. The program struggled for several years, including in 2019 when the Army issued a “cure” letter to CGI.

In addition to the Air Force, several agencies in the Fourth Estate also are using the CON IT contract writing system.

The Navy, which also struggled under its contract with CGI to develop a contract writing system, released a request for information for a new path in August for something called the “core contracting module.”

Measures of Army’s success

Hepworth said despite the challenges with the CGI led project, PEO-EIS learned a great deal from that experience.

“I would say we’re able to take advantage of an awful lot. So one of the most expensive parts of building a system really doesn’t always come from the IT side frequently, it comes from the business process reengineering efforts, the requirements definition, and starting to figure out your data taxonomies. It also includes starting the service level agreements (SLA) process with your data partners,” he said. “We were able to leverage pretty much all of that. There was heavy usage from what came before, and I think the PEO really does not take it lightly ever to have to pivot. Once we get a plan down, we like to execute that plan. However, we hold ourselves to a very high standard in terms of delivering capabilities, and our obligation is to our functionals to make sure that we get them the products they’re asking for at the fastest possible delivery cadence we can. So that ultimately, I think, was the tipping factor to pivoting to the Air Force system.”

Hepworth said the measures of success of the new contract writing system are mainly focused on user adoption and experience.

The goal is for contracting officers and other acquisition workers to drive changes to current capabilities and push for new ones.

PEO-EIS conducts studies and collects feedback about how the latest module is performing or capabilities is meeting the user’s needs. Hepworth the user experience focus is a key factor in the move to iterative or agile development.

“Our long term vision is we would like to have around 10,000 of the Army contracting professionals using the system and I think that incorporates compasses some 300 sites. We would like a CWS to be the contract writing solution, bar none across the Army,” he said. “The key tenant of agile is you’re responding to change, it’s designed to handle change. So we do expect there may be priority changes, there may be features that are required faster than others that we’re planning today. So I will only say that it will be conditions based and once the product is ready for full rollout, then it will go. But we do hope it’s over the next couple of years, and we do envision you will see a steady cadence of releases with ever increasing populations. We are very keen and anxious to retire the three legacy systems that support it today. So for us moving that date left is always an objective.”

Hepworth declined to give a specific date or timeline for when the Army would complete the initial roll out of the entire contract writing system.

Shutdown legacy systems

Part of how PEO-EIS will shut down the three legacy systems is through the “strangler” pattern of development, meaning as new capabilities replace old ones, those old ones will be turned off.

“ACWS will increasingly stand up and take over the role for numerous capabilities of the system before we ultimately retire that system out. But at no point in time, will we have both systems receiving data entry,” Hepworth said. “Now in certain cases where it might be necessary for a period of time to populate data from a new system into the old system for continuity purposes. We are already investigating using things like artificial intelligence and robotic process automation to help us to that. We have numerous strategies already in place to help us deal with the evolution to the new target platform.”

The use of agile development for the contract writing system is one of several programs that will initiate a significant shift in PEO-EIS.

Hepworth said the shift to agile from waterfall techniques is a major priority in 2024.

“Every one of our programs now is investing in training their staff on the Scaled Agile Framework, which is our default agile framework for agile program management. Within that, we are leaning on our technology service providers to come to bear with highly trained, skilled, agile staffing,” he said. “This organization has already changed significantly in the terminologies we use, our style is more adaptive and designed to decompose large problems and solve all the small ones on a consistent basis. At the same time, the digital transformation itself has been nothing short of phenomenal that we are no longer just redefining business processes, putting on a piece of paper and saying go build, we really are now bringing the system integrators in to help solve the business process problems, and to help guide us using technology to improve all of our business processes, which is kind of like the Holy Grail of digital transformation.”

The post Early success spurs Army to expand contract writing system MVP first appeared on Federal News Network.

After rounds of FOIA requests and even litigation, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) received a copy of the A-10C and F-35A close air support fly-off test report. The test was to compare how both aircraft stack up in providing all-important close air support to ground troops. After analyzing the heavily redacted document, POGO analysts found that despite what the Air Force had been saying, it appears the F-35 may not be well-suited for providing that support. For more, the  Federal Drive with Tom Temin  Executive Producer Eric White spoke with Dan Grazier, Senior Defense Policy Fellow at POGO.

Interview Transcript:  

Dan Grazier Overall, we really just wanted to find out if the F-35 really could replace the capabilities that are currently provided by the A-10. And our history with this goes way back.

Eric White Don’t we know it.

Dan Grazier Goes back more than a decade just with this test. So this was before I started working at POGO in 2015, where my predecessor had spent time on Capitol Hill urging lawmakers to mandate this comparative test starting back 2013-2014 timeframe. And I kind of picked up that effort and carried it forward a little bit. And then we finally did get that provision included in the FY 2017 National Defense Authorization Act. And then the tests happened the next year. Well, the next two years really kind of unfolded between 2018 and 2019. But then there was nothing. We knew the test happened, but nobody ever produced any of the results from it. And you just had Air Force officials spitting out talking points about how much better the F-35 is than the A-10. And we just said, Ok, we’ll show us the receipts. We know these tests happen. But for years, nobody even acknowledged that there was a report and there was actually reason for that. It was because the report wasn’t written until about three or four years after the test had happened. And then, yes, it did take a [Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)] requests that was ignored and then a lawsuit in federal court to actually shake out what we did get, which was a heavily redacted version of the report that was written in, I think it was February 2022.

Eric White All right. So we’ll get into what the report itself actually said in a second. But let’s set the groundwork here. What were these kind of tests? Were they just seeing the capabilities of both of them? And what was there, a race? What did they do?

Dan Grazier Right. So the designers of the test set up a series of scenarios where the pilots flying the respective aircraft would have to take instructions from a ground controller about a target location and then all that information to be really up to the pilot. Had to correlate that and then had to try to attack the target. And so I forget exactly how many actual test runs there were. But each aircraft was supposed to fly the exact same scenario, kind of back to back just to see which aircraft performed better, attack times. They tested a whole bunch of different parameters. And it was those test results that we were really interested to see.

Eric White And so let’s get to the results now. So what did what did it say and what capabilities? Was there a little bit of give and take, or was it kind of one sided?

Dan Grazier Well, so the the report that we did finally receive, after we filed suit, was heavily redacted. I would say at least 90% of the information in the report was blacked out. But what was left did actually tell a story. So, one, the main purpose of the test was to see if the F-35 was actually better than the A-10 provided in the attack role. So there’s three missions that go along with that. There is close air support, which I think most people are pretty familiar with. There was airborne forward air control, which is basically instead of having a controller on the ground, you have another aircraft that locates the target and then passes that information to another aircraft  that’s actually the shooter. And then there’s combat search and rescue, which is, if you have a pilot that ejects ends up on the ground behind enemy territory, then you have an aircraft that flies cover trying to protect that pilot until rescue forces could come in and pick him up. So those are three really key mission capabilities that right now are provided by the A-10. And we wanted to make sure that the F-35, which was supposed to replace the A-10, can actually perform those missions. And the one thing that was really obvious right off the bat when I got a copy of the report was if the F-35 was better, was vastly superior to the A-10, it should have been in big, bold, clear letters right in the first paragraph of the report. And that wasn’t there because that first paragraph is not redacted. So with all the other information, it’s pretty clear that the evaluators found a lot of shortcomings in the F-35 in these roles. And one of the ways that we know that is essentially the last page of the report is a list of recommendations for how to improve the F-35 performance in those roles. There were eight bullet points. All the text was blacked out, but there was not a similar list of recommendations for the A-10. So clearly there were a lot of shortcomings that were identified.

Eric White And so do you have a feeling, what was the reasoning given to you when there was resistance in releasing this report? Was it did they say security as usual, or was there something else at play here in your instincts?

Dan Grazier Well, so the redactions are marked and they’re they’re coded. And so all the redactions were for national security purposes. So the official line is that they’re trying to protect national security concerns. The real reason, I think, is a lot more nuanced than that. I think it’s these tests did not fit within the narrative that Air Force officials had been using to retire the A-10. It didn’t bolster their argument. And so they really didn’t want anything that could possibly contradict their talking points. And I’ll give you a really good example of that. So the main argument against the A-10 is that it can’t survive in a modern threat environment. There’s a lot of debate about that because we have A-10 pilots who have come back and have talked about how they had to limp back their A-10 that did get shot up, because they do fly low and close to the ground. And the pilots landed safely because the aircraft is designed to do that. Like an F-35 takes one hit and the F-35 is going down. Now, we saw in South Carolina just a couple of weeks ago that what looks like a an electrical glitch led to a pilot, an F-35 pilot having a punch out just because a computer needed to restart or something like that. We have to wait till the investigation to get all those details. So in the test in the authors of the of this A-10, F-35 close air support fly off report, they kind of make the point a couple of times in the unredacted parts of it that they didn’t even test in a high threat environment. There’s a lot of problems with that. But I thought that was really telling. Like if they just make the natural assumption that the A-10 can’t survive and the F-35 can. Well, why don’t we just test that? They can do that. They can set up tests where they have a whole lot of simulated enemy air defense systems. And let’s see what it is, because now it’s just a talking point. That’s all it is. It’s not been proven. It certainly wasn’t proven in these tests. And they just say, oh, we didn’t need to do it because the F-35 is an obvious advantage in this. Well, ok, just prove it. And they didn’t do that. So there’s still a lot of questions that need to be answered.

Eric White Dan Grazier is with the Project on Government Oversight. And also a point about is that the length of time it took for them to actually make the report itself. Was there maybe some hope in a loss of interest or things getting lost in the bureaucracy there or in the paperwork? Did your antenna go up on that as well?

Dan Grazier Oh, it absolutely did, because normally a testing report from operational test or written within 90 days of the of the end of the tests. No, because there’s a lot of things that go on in testing or just observations that people make. I mean they scribble notes and everything. But you want those memories fresh so you can accurately report what happened. And so I think all the officials just kind of dragged their feet. Quite frankly, I think that there must have been some kind of pressure someplace to actually get them to draft this report. Because when we started asking questions after the test had concluded about, hey, where’s this report? And the only response that we could ever get was, oh, well, we’re going to include all that in the bigger F-35 initial operational test and evaluation report, which when I first started asking about these back in 2018, we anticipated [Initial Operational Test & Evaluation (IOT&E)] for the F-35 program to last another probably five years. And I was right, because here it’s the end of 2023, and we still haven’t seen that report. But this was a fly off between the A-10 and the F-35. This was largely separate from the other operational testing for the F-35 program. This was a specific mandate from Congress in the National Defense Authorization Act in 2017 that was made after the initial operational test and evaluation program had already been signed off on. It had begun by that point. And so we just started saying, hey, this should be a separate report, because this is a separate testing event beyond initial operational test and evaluation. So, yeah, I think they were dragging their feet because, again, this shattered their narrative. They’ve been trying to make this case for a long time that the A-10 is no longer relevant and considering modern combat. And there’s plenty of debate to be had about that. So they didn’t want any receipts, especially they frankly didn’t want me out here being able to report about what happened during these tests.

Eric White Yeah. Making the case from the Air Force point of view. Kind of, officials are probably between a rock and a hard place trying to make these claims. And obviously these tests, there’s a lot of complications that come in who’s piling them, who’s evaluating them over the course. And you’ve been reporting on this for so long of the F-35 history. And we’ll probably still be reporting on this when we and you are long retired. It seems as if because it’s just been going on so long. Where do things stand at the moment and where does this lie in the timeline of the F-35?

Dan Grazier Well, there’s actually kind of two timelines involved here. So this fly off tests that happened in 2018 and 2019 kind of fell towards the beginning of the initial operational test evaluation process for the F-35 program. Now, testing has been going on for a long time before that. But the real formal like kind of final IOT&E part, this kind of fell right in the middle of that. That process is going on for four years. And it only just ended this summer when the Joint Strike Fighter program officials were finally able to cobble together somewhat of a working verified simulator to test the 64 missions that they needed, the really high end, this is what we’re paying extra for missions. So that only happened this past summer. So I kind of expect, honestly, any day now for the IOT&E report to come out. Which would be kind of funny because, again, IOT&E for the F-35 program just ended a couple of months ago. And if it comes and if the report for that comes out here before the end of the year, then that kind of really raises some more questions about this comparative fly off report and why it took three or four years to emerge. So that’s one timeline. The other timeline, that’s a little more critical, and this is the Congress is on the cusp of authorizing the retirement of two A-10 squadrons. So when this budget goes through, if it goes through as as drafted right now, two squadrons out of Davis-Monthan and Arizona, A-10 squadrons are going to be retired. So it’s going to greatly shrink the fleet. It’s going to make it kind of difficult to maintain the rest of the eight tens that are still in service.

Dan Grazier And so that’s problematic, because I always have to point out this is not trying to protect the A-10 as an aircraft. This whole fight has never been about that. It’s about preserving the close air support capability that is resident in the Air Force right now. And if the A-10 retired without a dedicated attack aircraft replacement, then all of the corporate knowledge that has been built up over the last nearly 50 years now in the A-10 attack pilot community is going to vanish very quickly. And I can give you a really good example of that. During World War Two, the Army Air Forces, and it was mostly led by General Pete Quesada, developed a very effective air ground coordination measures. So after D-Day, General Quesada always set his tent right next to General Bradley’s tent. So those two could easily coordinate. And then using the P-47, they put radios that could talk to the aircraft in tanks and vehicles that were moving with the ground forces, even pulled pilots out of P-47 and put them with the ground forces so the pilots could talk to other pilots to describe what the targets were, because a pilot knows exactly what another pilot is looking for. And that was very effective means of coordination. So they became very good at that. World War Two ended in the middle of 1945. We started fighting in Korea in June of 1950. So that was actually less than five years. And in that time, the newly independent Air Force had completely decimated their tactical aviation capabilities so that when American soldiers were hastily rushed to Korea during that initial advance from the North Koreans as going moving down towards the Pusan perimeter, that’s when the army needed very effective close air support. And they didn’t have it. And it took less than five years for the Air Force to completely rid itself of that capability. That will happen again if the tens retire without a dedicated replacement. And soldiers fighting in the next war, particularly in the initial parts of it, are not going to have the air support that they need. So there’s going to be soldiers, young American soldiers, who are going to die needlessly just because the Air Force didn’t have this capability to help them win and to protect them.

Eric White Yeah. And that speaks to just the difficult task that the Air Force has in trying to find a replacement aircraft, because you’re trying to prepare for the next war and you don’t necessarily know what the needs are, or are they looking at that far ahead with the F-35 where it has to kind of upgrade while they’re evaluating it sort of deal.

Dan Grazier Well, they say they are, but especially in the attack role. So for supporting troops. The F-35 just is not the right platform for it and for a whole bunch of reasons. Like one, you don’t need a stealth aircraft to perform close air support, because by the time that you’re bringing close air support aircraft in, then presumably the F-22s and the F-35s. And at some point, I guess the NGADs and the B-21s, they’re going to have already gone in and and cleared out a lot of the air defense measures. They’re not going be able to clear everything. So you’re going to need an aircraft to support ground troops that is capable of taking some hits. But here’s the thing that a lot of people miss when they’re talking about this issue. And again, I’m talking about this from from the ground perspective. I was a tank officer in the Marine Corps. So I know, like I’ve worked with aircraft on the ground. Now where we have friendly forces maneuvering and we’re bringing aircraft in to attack targets pretty close to us. Like I felt the blast effects of big £500 bombs that have dropped that close to my position. And when ground forces are planning operations, and particularly combined arms operations with aircraft. One of the things that we think about, like almost off the top is, what do we need to do to protect the aircraft? So I can show you fire plans that I’ve created where we have an aircraft coming in. You can see it marked in the chart and then you can see the duration suppression mission, the suppression of an enemy air defense mission that precedes the aircraft coming in just to tamp down any potential threats to the aircraft. So it I mean, it’s combined arms warfare. This mutual support, where the strength of one arm covers the weakness of another arm. And but most people who talk about close air support and talk about the A-10, talk about it in a vacuum, like you’re going to just fly the A-10 in by themselves through heavily defended airspace. Well, if you do that with any aircraft, including the F-35, it’s going to get decimated. Now, just then, the nature of modern air defenses, stealth capabilities, you’re going to evaporate very quickly. And so when we’re talking about combined arms, ground troops being supported by aircraft, it’s a whole different ballgame. And you don’t honestly, I can’t really foresee a future scenario where we would put ground troops into a high, high air threat environment, because that means that there’s a lot more dangers to those ground troops than there would be to any aircraft flying over their head potentially.

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