All posts by : Shamima A

Unclear contract requirements and unrealistic expectations have contributed to delays in efforts by the Veterans Benefits Administration to implement and transition to a Digital GI Bill platform, which is meant to improve the delivery of education benefits, according to a report by the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General.

The report, which the VA OIG released on Aug. 28, details the results of an audit that the office had conducted to assess the progress VBA was making in implementing the platform, which originally involved a 10-year, $453 million deal with a contractor.

According to the OIG, the VBA has so far only delivered one of three test environments that, under the original contract, should have already been available as of October 2022. The OIG attributed the backlog to limited resources and infrastructure.

The VA watchdog also noted that the deployment of the Digital GI Bill platform depends upon the decommissioning of older systems like the Benefits Delivery Network. The BDN was originally scheduled to be decommissioned in September 2023 but the target date has now been pushed back as far as spring 2025.

The inspector general also called out the VBA for its failure to effectively communicate critical information to the contractor, including the project’s integrated master schedule, which plots the scope of the effort. The VBA had not even formulated the master schedule until February 2023.

The same communication issues also resulted failures in the critical path, a schedule’s sequence of activities.

The VBA has since renegotiated the contract, which is now worth $932 million. The renegotiation is also expected to further delay the platform’s implementation.

To address these issues, the VA OIG recommended the establishment of a mechanism to monitor the project’s progress, better communication with the contractor and the formulation of strategies to address critical path failures.

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Sara Siegle, most recently reauthorization lead for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s Section 702 at the National Security Agency, has been appointed NSA’s chief of strategic communications and senior adviser to the board of directors.

NSA said Tuesday Siegle will oversee the agency’s communications strategy and lead a global workforce of communications professionals.

“Sara’s 20 years of experience in the Agency is evident in her passion for the people, the partnerships and the mission,” said Gen. Timothy Haugh, director of NSA and commander of U.S. Cyber Command.

“As Chief of the Authorities Integration Group, Sara played an integral role in working with our partners in Congress to ensure the continuation of authorities that are crucial to NSA’s mission,” added Haugh, a 2024 Wash100 awardee who also serves as chief of the Central Security Service. 

In 2004, Siegle joined NSA as an intelligence analyst.

Since starting her career at NSA two decades ago, the newly appointed head of strategic communications has held various roles within the agency’s operations and cybersecurity directorates, including deputy chief of the Cybersecurity Collaboration Center.

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The U.S. Department of Energy has selected 16 experiment and analysis projects to receive $17 million in funding to support the development of criticality benchmark data, which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will use in licensing and regulating high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU.

The projects, which won funding through a criticality benchmarking solicitation, involve six national laboratories and include partnerships with six universities and multiple industry partners, the DOE said Friday.

The teams will perform research and development covering five topic areas: UF6 transportation with moderator exclusion, 10 percent to 20 percent enrichment gap, non-fissile material validation, fissile salts and advanced moderator nuclear data.

According to Michael Goff, acting assistant secretary for nuclear energy, the data collected from the projects will help ensure HALEU infrastructure is licensed and regulated in a timely manner for reactor demonstrations and deployments.

“Many advanced reactor developers require HALEU to achieve smaller designs, longer operating cycles, and increased efficiencies over existing technologies,” he explained.

The DOE plans to issue two more proposal calls for criticality benchmark data development, with the next solicitation expected in early 2025.

Andrew Scott, a cybersecurity veteran with over 20 years of experience working for the U.S. government, has joined the Central Intelligence Agency as its top China specialist, The Record reported Friday.

Scott previously served as associate director for China operations at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Entrusted with managing CISA’s China initiatives, Scott oversaw the interdisciplinary team tasked with enhancing cybersecurity efforts against hybrid threats from nation-states.

CISA Director and Wash100 Award recipient Jen Easterly, noting Scott’s pivotal role at the agency, said, “Andrew was instrumental in working across the agency to develop a comprehensive multi-year plan to address the threat posed by PRC cyber actors to U.S. critical infrastructure.”

Before joining CISA, Scott was with the National Security Council as senior director for cyber policy. He served as the special assistant to the president at the same time. In addition, Scott held various positions for the State Department including deputy director for information technology of the executive secretariat.

Scott’s appointment comes on the heels of the hacking perpetrated by the Volt Typhoon, a group of Chinese government-linked hackers that managed to break into U.S. internet service providers.

At a recent summit, Scott emphasized the need for the U.S. to prepare for China’s evolving digital threats in the event of a conflict between the two nations.

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The White House Office of the National Cyber Director is seeking to mitigate the internet security weaknesses of the Border Gateway Protocol through the guideposts of its report titled ”Roadmap to Enhancing Internet Routing Security”. 

According to the 19-page report issued on Tuesday, the main technology routing internet traffic across independent networks provides inadequate security to current threats. 

The ONCD report recommends that internet service providers and entities operating enterprise networks or internet protocol address resources adopt a Resource Public Key Infrastructure to mitigate BGP vulnerabilities.

The roadmap builds upon ONCD’s Implementation Plan of the National Cybersecurity Strategy that includes a requirement for registration service agreements for federal agencies’ IP space, which will lead onward to federal networks’ establishment of route origin authorizations, or ROAs.

In line with one of the roadmap’s key guideposts, ONCD is establishing an Internet Routing Security Working Group in partnership with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Communications and Information Technology Sector Coordinating Councils.

The working group’s tasks include providing network operators with a risk assessment framework for prioritizing IP address resources and route originations to apply routing security measures, such as ROAs and route origin validation.

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program plans to hold small focus groups to gain input from agencies, cloud service providers and independent assessors regarding the configuration of a platform it had acquired to advance its modernization efforts.

FedRAMP said Tuesday that the platform will work to automate the authorization process, expand continuous monitoring capabilities, facilitate collaboration and communication and deliver better FedRAMP Marketplace metrics.

The modernization push is expected to result in improved FedRAMP trustworthiness and superior security outcomes.

Concerning feedback about the platform, of particular significance to the program is input from individuals with visual or hearing impairments or those with upper-motor disabilities. Input from such individuals will help test and refine FedRAMP’s ability to comply with the requirements of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.

Interested parties have until Sept. 15 to indicate their desire to participate.

The Department of Defense’s Office of the Chief Information Officer has released a document establishing policy to manage access to DOD’s information technology resources hosted by systems and system components as part of efforts to ensure security of the department’s information systems.

The latest DOD Instruction, which took effect Tuesday, Sept. 3, outlines the responsibilities of the DOD CIO, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency and the chief data and artificial intelligence officer, among other officials, to facilitate access management for the department’s IT systems.

The document, for instance, directs the CIO to provide guidance to facilitate the implementation of access management procedures; coordinate with heads of other DOD components to build and maintain requirements for identity, credential and access management platforms; and work with CDAO and other component heads to track migration to dynamic access to meet mission requirements.

The new policy also covers IT resource and system protocols, enterprise authoritative services approval processes and implementation procedures for access requirements, authoritative attribute service requirements and non-person entity access, among others.

Leslie Beavers, acting CIO at DOD and a 2024 Wash100 awardee, approved the latest instruction.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is expected to open a $700 million opportunity for industry to provide artificial intelligence and data labeling capabilities, SpaceNews reported Tuesday.

Under the multi-vendor indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract, the agency will look to improve machine learning systems designed to examine satellite imagery and other geospatial data.

Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth, director of NGA and a multiple Wash100 Award winner, said, “This represents a significant investment in computer vision, machine learning and AI.”

“NGA will engage with commercial partners to navigate the challenges posed by increasing levels of geoint data,” Whitworth added.

The IDIQ contract will prioritize deciphering raw data, including images and videos, to make findings comprehensible for machine learning models. The NGA also aims to manufacture computer vision programs to classify these objects in new unlabeled images. In terms of satellite imagery, specific objects like buildings, roads and vegetation will be labeled. 

Whitworth told reporters that a request for industry bids should be released by the end of September. The IDIQ contract represents the NGA’s most ambitious data labeling initiative to date.

The Department of the Air Force plans to elevate cyber functions by dividing the offices of the deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, known as A2, and the deputy chief of staff for information dominance, called A6, Federal News Network reported Monday.

Lt. Gen. Leah Lauderback, who has been deputy chief of staff of ISR and cyber effects operations at the Air Force since 2022, said she hopes the Senate will confirm a three-star officer by the spring of 2025 to lead the newly created A6, which will focus on cyber issues.

She added that she expects A2 to return to its function of overseeing ISR efforts at the department.

The move is one of the 24 changes proposed by the department’s senior leaders in February to reoptimize the Air Force and Space Force for great power competition.

According to the lieutenant general, the move to split A6 from A2 aligns with Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s efforts to transition Air Forces Cyber into a standalone service component command.

“It needs to be elevated so that it is on par with air superiority, with mobility superiority, with electromagnetic superiority,” Lauderback said of the move. 

“I think that this elevation of both the 6 and then of AFCYBER is going to put this at the forefront of all of the senior leadership within the Department of the Air Force so that they understand you can’t work without comms and you can’t work without cyber operations, attacking the enemy and defending from the enemy,” she added.