Weekly Roundup February 10, 2023

Announcing the 2023 Federal 100. Meet the 100 outstanding individuals being honored for going above and beyond in support of federal IT over the past year.

Remembering Professor Carter. Steve Kelman reflects on the former defense secretary's life in government and academia.

Inflation, workforce issues challenge defense contractors amid security pivot. The defense industrial base is facing workforce and inflationary headwinds just as the U.S. is refocusing its strategic lens on competition with China and Russia. Some of these challenges – inconsistent appropriations and continuing resolutions – are longstanding but more recently inflationary costs, barriers to market entry, consolidation and workforce challenges are complicating the ability of vendors to execute on the strategic pivot.

DoD Testing AI Tech to Help With Contract Writing. The Department of Defense (DoD) is experimenting with AI technologies to help with contract writing and other ways to speed up Federal acquisition processes, a Pentagon official said this week. Bonnie Evangelista, who is Tradewind execution lead within DoD’s Office of the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer, talked about the department’s move to test more AI technologies to advance acquisitions goals during ATARC’s Federal IT Modernization Summit.

DoD to Release Cyber Workforce Strategy ‘Any Day Now’ The Department of Defense (DoD) plans to release a cyber workforce strategy and implementation plan in the near future that will outline several initiatives for recruitment and retention of high-skilled cyber talent, said a Pentagon official during a Billington Cybersecurity virtual roundtable. 

GSA Sets AI Competition For Better Medical Care Services. The General Services Administration (GSA) on Feb. 8 launched an artificial intelligence (AI) challenge that seeks diverse and practical solutions to help Federal agencies provide the highest level of medical care. Prize money for the latest GSA AI challenge totals $100,000.

OIG finds oversight issues with GSA's performance-based contracts. The General Services Administration is failing to properly manage performance-based service contracts while struggling to resolve longstanding contract administration challenges, according to an inspector general’s audit. The report claims GSA contracting personnel are not adequately fulfilling performance-based contract oversight, which could result in underperforming contractors and wasted government funds. 

Congress Told HHS to Set Up a Health Data Network in 2006. The Agency Still Hasn’t.  Since 2006, federal officials have been charged with setting up a network to let various parts of the U.S. health system share information during emergencies. It still hasn’t been built or even planned, even after the communication and data-sharing failures put on display during the pandemic.

NIH Makes Two New Tech Appointments. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently made two new technology appointments, including the hire of Jennifer Wendel as the agency’s deputy chief information officer (CIO), and Wei Ma as the acting director of the Office of Computer and Communication Systems (OCCS) at the agency’s National Library of Medicine (NLM)

House panel presses FAA to speed up modernization. Members of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure pressed an FAA official on what it would take for the agency to modernize faster, including its plans to update a system that caused a nationwide ground stop last month.