Weekly Round Up: July 28-August 1, 2025

Defense

Military Testing Anti-Drone Technologies. U.S. and British soldiers teamed up this week to test systems designed to counter battlefield drone threats, putting into action Defense Secretary’s directive to accelerate drone integration and training across the military. Soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment and the British Army’s 1st Royal Yorkshire Regiment collaborated to assess technologies aimed at countering unmanned aerial systems (UAS) during the fourth iteration of Project Flytrap, a series of joint counter-UAS (C-UAS) military exercises held in Germany and Poland. The exercise focused on refining tactics and evaluating C-UAS systems in response to the growing use of drones on the battlefield.

GAO Warns DoD on Supply Chain Blind Spots. A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warns that the Defense Department (DoD) lacks sufficient visibility into its sprawling supplier base, leaving the U.S. military vulnerable to foreign dependency risks that could undermine national security. DoD relies on over 200,000 global suppliers for both weapons and noncombat items like batteries and equipment. While DoD has taken steps to gather supplier data, its efforts are disjointed and cover only a small portion of the overall defense industrial base. To address these risks, GAO recommends that DoD identify specific resources, priorities, and timelines to better integrate and share supply chain data across the department.

Space Systems Command Activates New Units to Deliver Space Sensing Capabilities. The U.S. Space Systems Command (SSC) has activated two new units to streamline collaboration between the U.S. Space Force’s acquisition professionals and system operators with the aim of advancing ongoing efforts for missile warning and space-based sensing and targeting. The new units, officially activated on July 10, are part of a broader reorganization within SSC.

General Services Administration

White House Nominates Wall Street Vet Edward Forst to Head GSA. The White House nominated long-time Wall Street executive Edward Forst to lead the General Services Administration (GSA) as its next administrator. The White House announced Forst’s nomination late Thursday to fill the vacant role at the top of GSA.  If confirmed by the Senate, Forst will be taking over an agency that has been headed in an acting capacity since earlier this month by Michael Rigas, who also is deputy secretary of State for management and resources. 

 GSA Launching GO.gov Travel Management System in November. The General Services Administration (GSA) said  it plans to launch its new GO.gov travel management system for all Federal civilian agencies in November. The GO.gov system is being created as part of GSA’s OneGov initiative that the agency launched in April with the aim of modernizing and streamlining Federal IT and other acquisitions through standardized terms and pricing.

GSA said that GO.gov will “serve as a single travel management solution for all civilian Federal agencies, providing a more intuitive experience for booking federal travel and better access to commercially available features like charge card integration and a mobile interface.”

Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services

White House, HHS, CMS Launch Sweeping Health Data Initiatives. The White House and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) unveiled sweeping data initiatives this week with the launch of a program to let Americans share medical records across privately-owned apps while consolidating HHS data into a single database. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is set to partner with major health technology companies –to develop an interoperable platform that patients can use to access their health information and medical records through apps and systems owned by private industry. 

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)

NARA: 71% of Agencies Are Managing Their Records Electronically. A coming report from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) reveals that 71 percent of federal agencies are managing all their records in an electronic format. This week, William Fischer, the acting chief records officer at NARA, offered a first look at how many agencies met the June 2024 deadline. Fischer said the complete data will be included in the 2024 Federal Agency Records Management Annual Report, which will be published this fall.

Leadership

Why Leaders Should Bring Their Best Self—Not Their Whole Self—to Work. While the idea of bringing your “whole self” to work is often glorified, it’s a misguided concept for senior leaders. Psychological research suggests that the most effective leaders are anything but unfiltered. To retain the critical boundaries between their personal and professional identity, senior leaders should: 1) Curate instead of concealing; 2) regulate before relating; 3) model values instead of performing them; 4) protect their personal live; and 5) choose empathy over ego.

When to Innovate and When to Imitate.   When is imitation a better strategy to drive performance gains? This research-backed framework helps companies make more informed decisions about their innovation or imitation strategy: First, companies need to determine their industry’s maturity; then, they must plot their company’s position relative to competitors along important criteria. Knowing where their company falls along these dimensions can help leaders make the right decisions, saving resources, reducing risk, and accelerating impact. 

Now Is the Time for Courage.  Research has shown that fortune favors the bold, not the cautious. But in volatile and uncertain times, many leaders hesitate to act, and others simply freeze up. The question is, can bravery be acquired? In this article an HBS professor argues that everyone can—and should—learn to be courageous. Risk management helps tamp down fear, of course, but it isn’t enough. The author uncovered five specific strategies used by people who demonstrate bravery.

Technology

NIST’s Cyber AI Framework to Map and Secure Full AI Stack. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is looking to dive deep into the full artificial intelligence tech stack in its forthcoming “Community Profile” that aims to give organizations a framework for securing artificial intelligence systems and using them for defense. The new Cyber AI profile is based on the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) and will provide guidance for the cybersecurity community on security risks associated with AI use and development. 

Federal Agencies’ GenAI Use Cases Surged 9X Last Year. Federal agency use cases for generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technologies rose sharply last year, signaling increased interest in GenAI tech deployments across the 11 agencies reviewed by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in a new report.  Despite the increase in GenAI use cases, GAO also said the government continues to face implementation challenges for GenAI tech.  GenAI use cases increased from 32 to 282 between 2023 and 2024. The only agency surveyed by GAO that didn’t report any GenAI use cases was NASA as of June 2024. Meanwhile overall AI use cases doubled across the two-years period, going from 571 to 1,100, according to GAO. 

FTC Secures $14.6M TMF Grant for Cloud-Based Data Analytics. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is receiving a $14.6 million award from the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) to build a cloud-based and artificial intelligence-powered data analytics platform.

Shared Services

Sharing services is essential for the federal government. Here’s how to make it work. COMMENTARY | Tackling the big problems facing federal agencies requires collaboration that goes beyond performance metrics to reach a solution.  A big answer, according to a pathbreaking University of Maryland study conducted in concert with the Shared Services Association, is that too often it’s too hard to develop performance metrics that point to “‘mission benefit’—how shared services contribute to agencies’ goals beyond efficiency.”

Workforce

Border Patrol, State Dept. Embrace AI, VR to Modernize Workforce. The State Department and the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Customs & Border Protection component are two of the latest federal agencies to deploy artificial intelligence-driven chat bots and virtual reality systems to guide their hiring processes and support workforce training – with more use cases on the horizon – agency officials said on July 29. For CBP – which recently received the funding from Congress for an additional 3,000 Border Patrol agents and 5,000 customs officers – AI has begun to play a key role in streamlining the hiring process and shortening timeframes to get new employees on board.  

Agency layoffs do not constitute illegal impoundments, GAO rules. Federal agencies are not inherently violating spending laws by laying off employees for budgetary savings, says the Government Accountability Office (GAO) -- clearing the Trump administration of one potential legal pitfall as it continues to scale back the federal workforce. In one of its two reports issued on this week, GAO found the Homeland Security Department’s mass layoffs in March did not violate the 1974 Impoundment Control Act. The finding upheld a decades-old GAO precedent that agency reductions in force did not automatically constitute an illegal impoundment, updating it to note agencies cannot simply pocket any resulting savings. 

THIS WEEK @ THE CENTER 

RECENT BLOGS

Leading NATO’s Digital Transformation: Insights from Manfred Boudreaux-Dehmer, Chief Information Officer  by Michael J. Keegan. This essay synthesizes the key themes and insights from my conversation with Manfred Boudreaux-Dehmer, NATO’s Chief Information Officer, highlighting NATO’s approach to digital transformation, cybersecurity, and leadership in a complex geopolitical landscape.

ICYMI – Powering NATO's Mission Through Technology: A Conversation with Manfred Boudreaux-Dehmer, Chief Information Officer at NATO. This week Michael J. Keegan had an exclusive interview with Manfred Boudreaux-Dehmer, NATO's Chief Information Officer. They explored how NATO is shaping its IT strategy, leveraging cutting-edge technologies to boost operational effectiveness, and securing its tech infrastructure against modern threats.