According to the updated notice published on Sam.gov Tuesday, the NIH is soliciting information for possible vendors to provide maintenance for the existing NIA Clinical Research Operations & Management System and develop new components.
Interested parties should consider the agency’s cloud migration and transition efforts in their responses.
The government intends to award a firm fixed price contract with a base period of one year and four option periods of one year each.
Responses to the RFI should be submitted by Oct. 15.
NIA is responsible for conducting and supporting research on aging as well as the health and well-being of older people. The CROMS system has boosted NIA’s research information capabilities by providing administrative and scientific information management, including real-time collection, tracking, reporting and management of its clinical research data and portfolio.
Register now to join the Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Healthcare Summit and catch industry luminaries, thought leaders and experts as they discuss the trends, innovations and critical issues surrounding the healthcare sector.
The Air Force Research Laboratory plans to perform in-flight testing of prototype antennas and radio receivers in late 2025 and early 2026 to evaluate their capability to provide multiorbit satellite connectivity, Breaking Defense reported Tuesday.
The devices, developed under the Global Lightning program, are designed to enable switching between different space architectures — a capability critical to addressing challenges brought by signal jamming technologies and implementing the Department of Defense’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control network.
Brian Beal, principal aerospace engineer at AFRL’s Strategic Development Planning and Experimentation Office, said the antennas and radio receivers are built to connect to commercial and government-owned constellations, including SpaceX’s Starlink and the Transport Layer, which the Space Development Agency is developing.
While the equipment trials are focused on aircraft connectivity, the AFRL also works with the U.S. Navy, Coast Guard and Army to integrate the capability into ground vehicles, ships and stationary applications.
According to Beal, if the Global Lightning program returns positive results, different program offices are expected to adopt and field the satellite communications products.
Various companies, including L3Harris, Northrop Grumman, SES Space and Defense, RTX and Viasat, are involved in the satcom antenna and receiver development.
Beal said the in-flight tests will include ensuring the devices can keep reliable, stable connections to any constellation, determining whether aircraft maneuvers could impact connectivity and measuring the transition time when switching between constellations.
Reps. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., have introduced the AI Grand Challenges Act, which would require the National Science Foundation to hold prize competitions for artificial intelligence innovations.
The legislation would incentivize AI development and encourage AI researchers and developers through prize competitions, Lieu said in a Wednesday statement.
“We must maintain American leadership in AI research, innovation and implementation while minimizing potential risks associated with the technology,” he noted.
Obernolte added that the Act would incentivize AI breakthroughs and advance the emerging technology’s potential capabilities to solve the most complex challenges that the United States faces.
The bill would direct NSF to conduct $1 million grand challenges that use AI to solve problems in several categories, including national security, cybersecurity, health, energy, environment, education, manufacturing, space and quantum computing.
Under the proposal, NSF is also mandated to collaborate with the White House and the National Institutes of Health, to oversee $10 million grand challenges for AI-enabled cancer breakthroughs.
The competitions will focus on detection, diagnostics, treatments and therapeutics for cancer and related comorbidities.
The House bill would be paired with companion Senate legislation filed by Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., Mike Rounds, R-S.D., and Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., in May.
The United Arab Emirates has become an extremely contested zone for semiconductor chip manufacturing and innovation. The country itself wants to be known as a go-to producer of both chips and artificial intelligence technology and this has caught the attention of multiple nations, including the U.S. and China, the Wall Street Journal said late last month.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung Electronics are eyeing UAE as a destination to build new “megafactories,” which could directly compete with the homegrown factories the U.S. is pushing right now, depending on the organizations’ cooperativeness.
At the Potomac Officers Club’s 2025 Defense R&D Summit, top Department of Defense officials will discuss how the U.S. is working to stay out in front of the global pack with its technology production and studies. You don’t want to miss this day — Jan. 23 — of networking, learning and GovCon collaboration. Save your spot before they sell out!
Last week, President Biden ratified the Building Chips in America Act, designed to break down barriers that might delay or prevent the U.S. from constructing its own chip megafactories. Among other measures, the bill excludes such factories from having to undergo environmental reviews prompted by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969.
As top brass at TSMC and Samsung visit UAE and the Gulf region to scope out a home for their factories, they are also holding court with U.S. federal officials about China’s potential involvement and investments in the region. The U.S. is particularly concerned about China gaining access to “advanced AI-related chips” that TSMC and Samsung are in talks to pump out.
The General Services Administration has announced that its single sign-on platform, Login.gov, will start offering partner agencies a new identity verification option that complies with the National Institute of Standards and Technology 800-63 Identity Assurance Level 2 standard, or IAL2.
GSA said Wednesday partner agencies will now have the option to pick an IAL2-compliance offering that requires a higher identity assurance level to help customers perform remote identity verification.
“Proving your identity is a critical step in receiving many government benefits and services, and we want to ensure we are making that as easy and secure as possible for members of the public, while protecting against identity theft and fraud,” said GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan.
“Login.gov’s new IAL2-compliant product offering is another milestone in ensuring agencies have a wide variety of strong identity verification options,” she added.
In April, GSA announced that its Login.gov platform will start piloting facial matching technology in accordance with NIST’s Digital Identity Guidelines to achieve remote identity verification at IAL2.
According to the agency, the IAL2 certification covers in-person and remote identity verification offerings and marks the transition of the offering from the pilot phase to general availability.
About Login.gov
Login.gov is a shared technology service within GSA’s Technology Transformation Services and enables the public to use a single account to facilitate secure access to services across participating government websites.
Since its launch in 2017, the platform has reportedly supported more than 300 million annual sign-ins and over 500 applications and has served more than 50 federal and state agencies.
U.S. military agencies such as the Air Force, Army and Central Command are exploring applications of generative artificial intelligence tools, TechTarget reported Wednesday.
CENTCOM has deployed a large language model on the government’s classified network, Secure Internet Protocol Router, to facilitate machine-assisted disclosure and support code augmentation and generation.
“We think the obvious reason that it was particularly successful is it’s quite easy to catch errors very candidly with quick utility, but also very quick to notice if your code just doesn’t generate the output and low risk in general, if it is not doing it correctly,” Schuyler Moore, chief technology officer of CENTCOM and a 2024 Wash100 awardee, said of the LLM during a panel discussion at a summit on Tuesday.
The Air Force has developed NIPRGPT, an AI chatbot that answers users’ questions and enables them to code in a secure environment and perform other tasks.
Collen Roller, a senior computer scientist at the Air Force Research Laboratory, said people are using NIPRGPT to develop presentation outlines or roll-ups of meetings.
Meanwhile, the Army is testing an AI model called CamoGPT.
“From the Army’s perspective, we’re going to experiment a lot on … [and look at] what it means to adopt some of these technologies,” Isaac Faber, director of the U.S. Army AI Center, said during the panel.
Climate science is receiving once-in-a-generation funding to solve the problem of our planet heating up and poisoning itself.
But the resulting innovation will face major headwinds once it’s ready for market: That’s because the government isn’t investing enough in the communication of climate science.
Earlier this year, the American Petroleum Institute launched an eight-figure campaign promoting U.S. natural gas and oil as integral to supplying the world with “cleaner, more reliable energy.” That’s just one example in a legion of astroturf and greenwash campaigns fighting climate-change solutions.
The federal government, unfortunately, has not yet mounted a creative communications counteroffensive.
The time has come to rethink how the federal government allocates the $14.9 billion the GAO says was spent on ads over the past 10 years, and what those investments need to accomplish.
The largest portion of this money is spent on military recruitment, a priority unlikely to change. But after that, the government and its scientists and professionals need to steal the megaphone from lobbyists and demagogues on climate and other scientific advances.
Here are three suggestions for how to do that:
1. Bake marketing into these climate tech investments: Federal grant applications should require budgets for marketing and communications. Without a plan to communicate findings to the general public, the data and results will get mangled in culture wars.
2. Be creative: Government agencies need to spend more money and more effort to communicate boldly and creatively. Think about how Nike markets shoes, or the best anti-tobacco ads ever. The government needs to bring its “A” game” to climate by, for example, partnering with the Ad Council.
3. Be nimble: Agencies must be ready to change tactics and messages in response to the opposition and to stay on the cutting edge.
Here’s a foreboding example. Direct air capture will likely play a pivotal role in the fight against climate change. This emerging technology uses giant fans to capture carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere — sucking air like a giant Dyson vacuum and using chemical processes to separate the CO₂.
The greenhouse gas can then either be “sequestered” in underground storage, or used in products such as synthetic fuels or building materials.
We can already imagine what less-informed people are going to say about this if marketers don’t start working in tandem with scientists: “You’re stealing our air!”
The government must start marketing direct air capture and similar game-changing technologies like Apple markets its new phones. Because this is a helluva lot more important to our survival than a neat app.
We call for this revolution to clarify and simplify information about climate science and technology, and to recognize the persuasive power of marketing.
Powerful tactics are needed to communicate information to non-experts and to combat waves of mis- and disinformation.
Government and scientists can lean into their strengths: credibility, conviction and innovation.
The stories of the future — the stories that will save us — need to be told more convincingly, in a more engaging way. Right now, that’s not the comfort zone or the skill set of the innovators. But they can build the best team to own the narrative.
The world depends on it.
David Nitkin is a Maryland-based policy and communications consultant, and was chief of staff to former Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh and for a Johns Hopkins community hospital. Melissa Harris is the CEO of M. Harris & Co., a marketing agency, and an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. Both are former journalists at the Baltimore Sun.
The U.S. Army has rolled out to the military branch’s intelligence units worldwide a cloud-based data platform designed to enable warfighters to speed up the collection, analysis and distribution of intelligence data.
The service branch said Wednesday that the Army Intelligence Data Platform, or AIDP, is the first Department of Defense program to be fully deployed in a military intelligence cloud environment.
Army Intelligence Data Platform for Multidomain Operations
Within a year, the Army rolled out and operationalized AIDP across all priority theaters, serving as a tool for intelligence units supporting tactical and strategic operations.
“24 months ago, we were testing AIDP with intel units stateside trying to stress the system and fine tune the system to meet the needs of intel soldiers,” said Brig. Gen. Ed Barker, the Army’s program executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors.
“Thanks to early adopter units and user feedback, AIDP transformed into the intel system the Army needs to increase our effectiveness in multi-domain operations,” added Barker.
The service’s Project Manager Intelligence Systems and Analytics—PM IS&A—is implementing the AIDP New Equipment Training and delivery program with a focus on functionality and critical task training.
“AIDP acts as a high-tech detective that can not only find all the clues but also piece them together to show the big picture,” said Col. Chris Anderson, PM IS&A. “The platform analyzes the collected data to uncover patterns and insights, then presents them to leaders on the battlefield in a way that’s easy to understand, like charts or maps.”
According to the Army, AIDP establishes the foundation for future integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning, big data analytics and other technologies.
Federal employees aiding in disaster response and recovery efforts are facing threats that could lead to harm, Homeland Security Department Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas cautioned on Thursday, saying his agency would help protect those being targeted.
The threats followed significant misinformation regarding the federal government’s response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, including false rumors pushed by former President Trump. The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the rest of the Biden administration have repeatedly sought to correct the record, but federal responders are now facing consequences from the distribution of various hoaxes and distorted narratives.
“We are seeing horrific hate speech of all types propagated on online platforms,” Mayorkas said from North Carolina during a White House briefing Thursday. “That deplorable speech has an impact on people’s lives, and it is also a motivating force for people to do harm. And it has got to stop.”
FEMA has launched a “rumor response” page on its website in an attempt to put out more accurate information about its relief efforts. It has clarified, for example, that it has adequate funds to meet immediate needs, does not solicit cash donations, is not diverting disaster relief funds to migrant processing or housing and is not limiting relief to only $750 per person.
More than 5,000 federal employees are currently deployed in response to Hurricane Helene, while thousands more are assisting after Milton devastated Florida on Wednesday.
Mayorkas said it was DHS’ responsibility to push back on the threats FEMA and other personnel are facing.
“It is our work in the Department of Homeland Security to combat hate in all its forms,” the secretary said. “We will continue that work.”
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an anti-extremism non-profit organization, found in its analysis that federal officials in recent weeks have faced a “deluge” of hate and threats.
“Falsehoods around hurricane response have spawned credible threats and incitement to violence directed at the federal government,” ISD said. “This includes calls to send militias to face down FEMA for the perceived denial of aid, and that individuals would ‘shoot’ FEMA officials and the agency’s emergency responders.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland earlier this year vowed to prosecute anyone making threats against career federal employees, which he said have spiked to unprecedented levels.
“We will do everything we can in our power to investigate, deter and prosecute anyone who makes threats against public servants,” Garland said in June.
Federal officials have warned that threats against civil servants have increased in recent years, including at the Environmental Protection Agency, Internal Revenue Service and FBI. Those agencies, in conjunction with the Homeland Security Department’s Federal Protective Service, have taken steps to harden federal buildings and issue warnings to their workforces.
