NewsBrief September 6, 2019

DOD releases unified cybersecurity standard for contractors

(FCW) A draft of the unified cybersecurity standard model Defense Department contractors must follow was just released, and a senior official wants vendors to “tear it up” in the comments. Katie Arrington, DOD’s chief information security officer for the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, announced the release of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification framework Sept. 4, during a panel discussion at the Intelligence and National Security Summit in National Harbor, Md. Read More

What the federal cloud market could look like in 5 years

(Federal Times) A new report on the federal cloud market expects the government to increase its expenditure on cloud computing by nearly $4 billion in the next five years. According to Deltek’s forecast of the federal cloud market, released Aug. 30, the government will likely spend $9.1 billion in fiscal year 2024 on cloud computing, an increase form $5.3 billion in FY2019. Deltek, a enterprise software and information solutions company, found that cloud spending in the last two years has increased dramatically among civilian agencies. The Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Veterans Affairs have both spent over $1 billion from FY2016 to FY2018. Since FY2016, the VA’s cloud spending has increased 258 percent. Read More

The Price Boeing Is Paying

(Seeking Alpha) As an analyst dedicated to the aerospace industry and more particularly the commercial aircraft part of that industry, I have been covering many aircraft programs. The Boeing (BA) 737 MAX is no exception, and since the crashes with the Boeing 737 MAX that coverage has only intensified as it put Boeing in a deep crisis. Since October 2018, we’ve been analyzing the MAX more intensively, focusing on where the Boeing 737 MAX or MCAS lacked robustness, what the fix looks like and why MCAS was needed in the first place. I packed together all “engineering research” that I conducted for the past 10 months into a piece, which you can read here. Together with news that Boeing is preparing itself to return the MAX to service in Q4, it has sparked a recovery in Boeing’s share price. Read More

Team of GDIT, Dell and Minburn wins $7.6 billion DEOS blanket contract

(fedscoop) CSRA, Dell Marketing LP and Minburn Technology Group are the recipients of the Pentagon’s potential $7.6 billion back-office collaboration cloud contract known as DEOS, the General Services Administration said Thursday. The trio of CSRA — now owned by General Dynamics IT — Dell and Minburn, a Virginia-based Microsoft reseller, created a contractor teaming agreement to secure the winning bid for DEOS, short for Defense Enterprise Office Solutions. Read More

Pentagon awards multibillion-dollar cloud contract (no, not that one)

(Federal Times) The Pentagon awarded a 10-year, $7.6 billion cloud contract Aug. 29: the Defense Enterprise Office Solutions (DEOS), a huge contract that hasn’t attracted the attention of the DoD’s far more controversial procurement, known as JEDI. DEOS was awarded to CSRA, an IT solutions and services company, and its contractors Dell and Minburn Technology. The solutions will be built on the Microsoft Office 365 platform. CSRA was acquired by General Dynamics in 2018. The DEOS contract will provide “productivity tools,” such as filing sharing, email and spreadsheets. The services replace legacy office applications and will provide the DoD with a “standard cloud-based solution across all military services,” according to the news release. Read More

NASA Awards Contract Modification for Research, Development, Engineering Support

(NASA) NASA has awarded a contract modification to Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, to maintain APL’s capabilities to execute robotic space missions for the agency through the full mission life cycle, from mission concept and formulation through data analysis. This modification increases the maximum potential value of the Aerospace, Research, Development, and Engineering Support Services (ARDES) contract by $200 million. ARDES is an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with a new maximum potential value of $1.7 billion. Funding is obligated on cost-plus-fixed-fee and hybrid, cost-plus-fixed-fee/incentive-fee, task orders. Read More

Sandia Aims to Improve Flight Vibration Tests via Sounding Rocket Program

(ExecutiveGov) The New Mexico-based Sandia National Laboratories conducted a series of experiments to improve the accuracy of computer simulations or field tests of flight vibrations through the High Operational Tempo Sounding Rocket Program. A team led by Greg Tipton, an SNL structural dynamics engineer, installed pea-sized vibration measurement instruments within HOT SHOT rockets and analyzed data from the onboard sensors to determine the effects of a launch mission on nuclear deterence technology prototypes, Sandia said Friday. Read More

Department of Energy puts AI to biomedical use

(fedscoop) The Department of Energy wants to lend its world-class artificial intelligence technology for private sector biomedical and public health research to develop better treatments for brain diseases and disorders. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and Weill Family Foundation founder Sandy Weill signed a memorandum of understanding this week establishing a public-private partnership seeking supercomputing breakthroughs addressing neurological disorders like traumatic brain injuries. Read More

THow an Autonomous Self-Assembling Space Robot Could Transform NASA’s Future Missions

(nextgov) NASA recently awarded a $73.7 million contract to develop and launch an autonomous space robot that can manufacture and assemble itself and other materials in orbit—a feat that could transform the future of space exploration. The agency is working with Made in Space on a cutting-edge spacecraft called Archinaut One, with the goal of launching by 2022. The project also demonstrates the necessity of public-private partnerships in preparing for future missions to the moon and Mars. Read More

Artificial intelligence used to recognize primate faces in the wild

(Science Daily) ‘For species like chimpanzees, which have complex social lives and live for many years, getting snapshots of their behaviour from short-term field research can only tell us so much,’ says Dan Schofield, researcher and DPhil student at Oxford University’s Primate Models Lab, School of Anthropology. ‘By harnessing the power of machine learning to unlock large video archives, it makes it feasible to measure behaviour over the long term, for example observing how the social interactions of a group change over several generations.’ Read More