The Senate Armed Services Committee’s version of the fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act last week showed support for a 2% raise for DoD civilian workers and a 4.5% raise for military members. In a vote of 22-3 on June 13, committee lawmakers advanced the 2025 NDAA to the full Senate for consideration. The House passed its version of the NDAA last week.

Although the NDAA’s provisions only apply to Defense Department employees, both civilian DoD workers and the rest of the civilian federal workforce on the General Schedule would see the same percentage added to their paychecks, if the raise is enacted.

In House appropriations legislation, committee lawmakers remained silent on the topic of the federal pay raise, indicating a likely alignment with the president’s raise proposal. The GOP-led committee advanced legislation for a fiscal 2025 spending package last week along party lines. The Senate Appropriations Committee has not yet released its versions of fiscal 2025 spending legislation.

President Joe Biden’s request of a 2% pay raise for most civilian federal employees on the General Schedule, if enacted, would be the smallest annual raise for feds since Biden took office. The 2% proposal comes in contrast to the 5.2% federal pay raise for 2024, which was the largest raise for feds since the Carter administration.

Biden’s initial raise proposal in March, contained in the fiscal 2025 budget request, did not indicate a breakdown between base pay and locality pay. But in most years, presidents typically set aside 0.5% for locality pay and leave the remainder for the across-the-board raise.

For the federal pay raise, nothing is set in stone until Biden signs an executive order to enact it, which usually happens in December. Ahead of that finalization, federal unions and other employee organizations have spoken out in favor of a larger pay raise for feds in 2025, calling for a 7.4% boost rather than the 2% proposal.

Legislation titled the FAIR Act, if enacted, would offer that large of a raise to feds next year. Unions including the National Treasury Employees Union have endorsed the bill, which lawmakers first introduced in January.

“NTEU continues the fight to pass the FAIR Act,” NTEU wrote in a blog post Tuesday. “Such an investment in the federal workforce would help close the significant pay gap between federal employee and private sector pay and help the federal government compete with the private sector for talented employees.”

But many agencies are already trying to figure out how to incorporate the larger 5.2% raise into their budgets for 2024. Some agencies’ budgets this fiscal year remained relatively stagnant, while other costs, such as federal employees’ paychecks, have continued to rise.

The next step in the process toward finalizing the federal pay raise will likely come later this summer. To avoid defaulting to the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act (FEPCA), Biden will have to issue an alternative pay plan by the end of August.

Federal employees currently earn about 27.54% less in wages than those in the private sector with similar occupations, according to the Federal Salary Council. Although FEPCA allows for a large enough annual federal pay raise to bring the federal-private sector wage gap down to 5%, no president since 1994 has incorporated the fully authorized amount.

Decades of deviation from FEPCA have caused distortion of federal pay in multiple ways. It would now cost an estimated $22 billion to bring General Schedule salaries in line with the private sector.

Any potential changes in Congress that might break away from the current pay plans could still take place this fall ahead of an executive order in December.

The post Proposed 2% federal pay raise gets support in 2025 defense authorization bill first appeared on Federal News Network.

• Teleworking DoD employees are once again a target in the latest spending legislation from House appropriators. A policy rider in the fiscal 2025 defense spending bill would block any funding from going toward the costs of teleworking or remote working for defense employees and contractors. The GOP-led appropriations committee advanced the spending bill last week. The telework measure, however, may be unlikely to make it into the final appropriations package for fiscal 2025. Democrats, with a Senate majority, have remained largely in favor of federal telework. They say it fosters better workforce recruitment and retention.
  (Fiscal 2025 Department of Defense appropriations bill - House Appropriations Committee)
• Early signs are pointing in the right direction after some recent federal workforce reforms. The Office of Personnel Management’s initiatives over the last couple of years have included banning the use of salary history in hiring, creating a portal for internship openings and broadening eligibility for the Pathways Program. Larger impacts of those changes are likely still further down the road. But there are already some initially positive indications, especially for early-career recruitment: “It’s going to take a little more time. I do think what we’re seeing, though, is a renewed and increased interest in federal job opportunities by early-career talent,” OPM Acting Director Rob Shriver said.
  (Early-career federal job openings seeing ‘renewed and increased’ interest, OPM’s Shriver says - Federal News Network)
• The Energy Department wants to secure the future electric grid from cyber threats. Energy’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response (CESER) is working to set security expectations for using the cloud. Later this year, the CESER office will convene with big cloud service providers and the clean-energy sector to collaborate on cybersecurity requirements. The discussion comes amid growing threats to critical infrastructure, including the energy grid. Many renewable energy operators are relying on cloud computing for critical services.
  (Energy working with renewables industry, cloud providers on cyber requirements - Federal News Network)
• The Department of Veterans Affairs is looking to keep aging and disabled vets living independently. The VA is looking at how smart-home technologies and wearables like smartwatches can flag when aging and disabled veterans are having a medical emergency in their homes. Joseph Ronzio, VA’s deputy chief health technology officer, said the department is also taking steps to ensure veterans have a say as to who gets this data, and how it may be used. “Everyone nowadays has some smartness in their home, whether it’s a speaker, whether it’s light switches, whether it’s different types of lights or other physical devices — cameras, motion detectors that leave a digital service," Ronzio said.
  (VA looking at ‘smart home’ tech to keep aging, disabled vets living independently - Federal News Network)
• The Army has taken over the role of the Combatant Command Support Agent for U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM). The Department of the Air Force has served in this role since 2017. The shift mainly happened because the primary location of CYBERCOM operations is at Fort Meade in Maryland, where the Army has a significant presence. About 350 Air Force civilian employees in U.S. Cyber Command became Army civilians as part of the reshuffle. The Army will now provide administrative and logistical support to CYBERCOM. Congress mandated the transition as part of the National Defense Authorization Act.
  (Army becomes combatant command support agent for CYBERCOM - U.S. Army)
• The Defense Department has signed a $248 million deal with Duke Energy to deliver solar power to five military bases in the Carolinas over the next 15 years. The power will come from two newly-built solar arrays in South Carolina, and DoD has agreed to buy all the electricity those facilities can generate. Defense officials said the project helps meet the government’s energy sustainability goals, and – in combination with on-base microgrids – makes the five bases more resilient against disruptions to off-site power supplies.
  (DoD Announces Two Solar Projects to Supply Five Military Installations in the Carolinas With Clean Energy - Department of Defense)
• Three more agencies are getting nearly $30 million to accelerate their IT modernization projects. The governmentwide Technology Modernization Fund is granting $17 million to the Energy Department to update its human resources IT systems. The fund is also backing a Bureau of Indian Education project to modernize school websites for tribal communities. The Federal Election Commission is also getting funding to improve online services for political campaign filers.
  (Technology Modernization Fund announces investments to modernize tribal school websites, campaign finance software, federal HR system - General Services Administration)
• The Department of Transportation (DOT) is drafting a new cybersecurity strategy. Transportation officials told the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that the agency will finalize the plan by September. GAO said DOT needs a strong cyber risk management plan to address threats to its data and systems. The congressional auditor is also urging Transportation officials to take a closer look at their cyber workforce needs.
  (Priority open recommendations for Transportation Department - Government Accountability Office )
• The Space Force’s first chief technology and innovation officer, Lisa Costa, has officially retired from federal service. At the Space Force, Costa was responsible for developing strategies and policies that advanced science and technology efforts across the service. She also spearheaded the Unified Data Library project, a repository that collects space situational awareness data from military and commercial sources. Prior to her current role, she served as the chief information officer at U.S. Special Operations Command. There is no information yet as to where Costa will be working next.
  (Space Force’s chief technology and innovation officer retires from government service - LinkedIn)

The post Teleworking DoD employees targeted by House spending bill first appeared on Federal News Network.

National Guard Bureau Chief Gen. Daniel Hokanson, who is retiring in September, said sending Guardsmen to the U.S.-Mexico border does little to contribute to their military training, adds stress to their families and impacts the Defense Department’s long-term goals of building the “combat capable National Guard.”

“As I’ve expressed within the building as well, there is no military training value for what we do. This is a law enforcement mission under the Department of Homeland Security,” Hokanson said during the Senate Appropriations Committee budget hearing.

“I know that we’re providing additional support along there. But for our Guardsmen there, they might as well be deployed to Kuwait or somewhere overseas, because they’re away from their families. They’re doing mission sets that are not directly applicable to their military skill set and so it increases their personal operational tempo. And that time, I think, would be better utilized building readiness to deter our adversaries.” he said.

The National Guard  has been providing logistical support to DHS for the last seven years. Hokanson said there are currently 2,500 troops deployed at the Southwest border under Title 10, but the number of Guardsmen stationed there has gone up and down during the last seven years.

Lawmakers and some DoD officials have long expressed concerns over the Department of Homeland Security’s continuing reliance on the Defense Department to support its border-related operations, which is not part of the DoD’s mission set.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who approved the DHS’s request to extend the Pentagon’s border mission through September 2024 last year, said the Defense Department uses its operating budget to fund the deployment of National Guard troops to the border to support DHS’s operations.

“Of course that means that there’s something else that we’re not doing because of that support,” Austin said during a Senate Defense Appropriations budget hearing in May.

“The price tag spent is about $4 billion. But we are supporting the agency, and DHS is a lead agency — it’s important to our country and we’re going to do that.”

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who has criticized the White House’s border policies, pressed Defense Secretary Austin about DoD’s ongoing support of border operations and whether the administration should at all rely on the military to secure the border.

“I agree, [we should not]. But if we’re required to assist, certainly we will continue to do so,” Austin told lawmakers.

Despite the challenges the National Guard faces, including potential budget cuts in 2025, Hokanson said the Guard is still focused on operational readiness and building a force that is “manned, trained and equipped.”

“These are not insurmountable challenges, but they represent risks and vulnerabilities,” said Hokanson. “If we fail to modernize our equipment and force design adequately, we increase the risk of sending America’s sons and daughters into large-scale combat operations with equipment and formations that may not be fully interoperable with the active duty forces we serve alongside.”

The post Guard’s support of DHS adds no military value first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Navy plans to invest more than a billion dollars over ten years to revitalize an old facility: The 19th century Naval Surface Warfare Center at Indian Head, Maryland. It is where the Navy plans to re-do the infrastructure and machinery to produce munitions. For details, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with the center’s technical director, Ashley Johnson.

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin
Give us the brief rundown on what happens now at Indian Head. I’ve actually been there. And it looks a little bit out of the way you might say.

Ashley Johnson
Yes, it’s out of the way. It’s been in Southern Maryland since 1890. But it is out of the way. Probably on purpose, to some extent, because of the nature of the business. But we have been at the forefront of what the Navy’s ability is to produce munitions and energetic materials for well over 100 years. And this evolution is really just the beginning of every modernization and sustainment activity for the capability that’s been in the Navy for over 100 years.

Tom Temin
Right now a lot of the work is testing of devices, for example, the chargers that release ordinance from the bottom of airplane wings, that kind of thing.

Ashley Johnson
It has a full spectrum munitions facility, it’s classified as the Navy’s only public arsenal. So we have activities that range from research and development through manufacturing, engineering, as well as tested evaluation, and even as far as it says demilitarization. So, when we say a full spectrum facility, we really do mean in a cradle to grave sense.

Tom Temin
And you also have a facility to make energetics, the stuff that makes pellets go in what looks like the world’s biggest bread mixer.

Ashley Johnson
Yeah, that’s true. Much of what’s used in the manufacture of energetic materials was borrowed from the baking industry. And that’s based on simplicity and the ability for us to control what is inherently pretty dangerous operation with simple equipment. But it’s obviously not quite that simple. But there’s a lot of similarities. And we have incorporated much of that equipment at very large scale, so that we can support production of not only, as you said, the propellants and the explosives or what I would call, more or less, intermediate materials. But we can make those materials and then put them into finished assemblies, like rocket motors, or warheads or other materials for combat capability.

Tom Temin
And tell us about the modernization then. The Navy apparently is committed to Indian Head. What’s going to happen over the next 10 years?

Ashley Johnson
Well it’s no surprise. So for those who are looking at the news, you’ve seen the pressures that have been applied throughout the world, particularly starting with Ukraine and potential adversaries. There is a renewed awareness of the need for conventional ammunition, and the consumption of that ammunition and munitions over a long conflict. So what we have realized is the United States is our munitions industrial base has shrunk over the last 15, 20-25 years, because of our focus in other areas. And as a result, the pressure that’s being put not only on commercial industry, but also on what we call the organic industrial base, or that which is owned by the government is at a premium, and Indian Head is significant in terms of its capacity. We are a very large part of what we call composite manufacturing, which is the modern way of manufacturing rocket motors and warheads and things of that nature. So the Navy, recognizing this, and the Secretary committing to this idea that it owns an arsenal, and it needs to use it in the context of this whole situation, has committed to a 10-year-program to essentially sustain and restore and to modernize the entire facility. Indian head has a site that’s worth replacement values, five to $6 billion. And it would be difficult to duplicate, even if you have that money. So investing in a facility like this is really much more efficient than trying to accomplish it some other way. So the Navy’s gonna invest first, to restore a lot of things that have been taken care of in a way that’s forced us to make decisions. So there’s some things that we should have been taken care of a little bit better than we have. And so we’re going to fix those things to unlock some latent capacity. And then we’re going to modernize equipment to get to more state of the art manufacturing methods, as well as just simply increasing capacity in the sense of multiplying three or four or 5x times the number of things that we can do. And this will get us down the road. As I said 10 years it will take to accomplish this. But we will start to get returns on that investment immediately. And then we will sort of reset the clock, if you will, for Indian head and into the future.

Tom Temin
We’re speaking with Ashley Johnson. He is the technical director of the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Indian Head, Maryland. And sounds like that you will be overseeing the construction of additional buildings or fixing up old ones, and also new equipment, new foundry gear and that kind of thing.

Ashley Johnson
Absolutely. It’s pretty much everything that you might imagine. Something very simple, even as simple as paving roads and facing electrical distribution systems or lighting or steam lines or fire protection systems which at first blush wouldn’t be the first things maybe you’d come to mind when you’re talking about state of the art munitions. But those are the things that you’re required right in order to run the factory. And then you know at the high end, as you said there’s very specific mixing presses, cutters, things that are directly related to the manufacturer of the material. And those need to be modernized and taken advantage of where we can depart from industrial age technology and moving into information age technology.

Tom Temin
I was gonna say even basic ordinance today has electronic components in it that might not have had in the World War II era. Tell us more about what that requires.

Ashley Johnson
Most of the advances, to be honest with you, over the last, say 30 or 40-50 years since major conflicts have been in what I would describe as the front end of a lot of these items for missile systems, guidance and control has been where a lot of advances have been made, and for good reason with regard to precision and accuracy. But a lot of what we still need, or still benefit from and need to improve is the items that are directly related to range, right to speed to what we call terminal effects or what the device does when it gets to its target. We also manage the signature or how well you can see the device as it’s doing its job as a function of energy and materials. So these are the parts that also have to be managed. And frankly, those have been left behind as opposed to some of the investments that have been made, as I said, in this guidance in control, or are more front end electronics of the business. So it’s a business of making sure that we don’t put too much emphasis on one aspect of ammunition, it’s all got to get better.

Tom Temin
And what about the manpower to do this production, it sounds like pretty skilled work. And you only got about 25, 2600 people down there. What about the human capital side of it?

Ashley Johnson
It’s a challenge for not only us, but also the entire industry. There’s a huge swing in these things. As you look over the years. In the United States there used to be 12 tactical rocket motor manufacturers at one point. Now there are only two, that’s commercial. And so the number of individuals that were associated with this in the commercial space, as well as the government space. And I do mean from laborers, to technicians, to engineers to advanced degree folks, the whole numbers down. So as an industry, both commercial and government, it’s a challenge for us to find folks that have any experience in this area, we’re taking on folks that are knowledgeable skilled, they have degrees, they have all that training. But it does require a significant amount of on the job training, as you might expect to handle something that says dangerous, is what it is that we handle. As I finally said, we don’t make toasters here. And that’s not an affront anybody that makes toasters, but the problem is it’s dangerous, and we can’t afford to make mistakes. Because it could be a significant risk to mission or risk to our force. And so we take that training very seriously. And it puts a premium on finding individuals that have the skills, but also on the time that it takes us to get them ready to do the job.

Tom Temin
The toasters are all made in China anyway, so who cares about them, but you’ll have to get more people, you have to increase the workforce, and therefore have a way of attracting them to Indian Head, Maryland, which is beautiful country, by the way. But it’s a little out of the way, relative to the Baltimore-Washington area.

Ashley Johnson
It’s funny you say that. It’s really an issue of first, of course, attraction. We don’t have a lot of problem, honestly, attracting people. The nature of our business is pretty exciting for lots of reasons. You can be a patriot, you can defend your country, you can be a civil servant. And people are excited about that one. So they learn what level of impact that they can have. I think the other is or the nature of our businesses exciting. Things that go wish and things that go bang and it’s an unusual, it’s an off the beaten path. Again, it excites people. The hardest part for us is really the time that it takes to get people to a high level of competence, as I started this on the job training and the patience that it requires to be there. And then also the retention which speaks to what you said, what is the area look around, people want nice things, people want a nice place to live, they want whatever their dunkin donuts or subways or whatever it is that they’re looking for close by. And so they look, and then they determine how long they want to stay. And these is really the issues that address how it is that we can maintain a workforce. And that’s why we work so hard to partner with local and state governments to make sure that we put our best foot forward. Because as we go to all that trouble of attracting and training talent, it’s pretty debilitating or disappointing when when people leave.

Tom Temin
And you have been at Indian Head now yourself for about 35 years fair to say, this must be kind of exciting from a personal standpoint.

Ashley Johnson
It is. Obviously you got some level of commitment to this. But it’s interesting, quite frankly, to see some of the parallels. They’re all story if you want a new idea, read an old book. I see a lot of similarities. I came here in 1987 nearing the end of the Cold War, and I was facing the adversary that was the Soviet Union. I see a lot of parallels. I’m not gonna make any predictions, but I see a lot of parallels to our situations now. And so it’s interesting to watch that happen. And it’s humbling and gratifying at the same time to be able to be a part of this renaissance in this resurgence in a facility that’s one of the oldest the Navy has. It’s got a rich and storied past of being able to deliver what the Navy needs and it’s getting ready to do it again.

The post How the Navy plans to modernize its one-and-only arsenal first appeared on Federal News Network.

In a step toward enabling the next-generation synchronized command and control, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks recently announced the Defense Department has delivered its initial iteration of the Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) capability. While this marks a notable advancement, DoD must continue its efforts to evolve CJADC2 beyond its current basic operational ability. To achieve seamless integration of assets and personnel, defense leaders should model after the successful implementation of the Mission Partner Environment (MPE) in the Indo-Pacific region, which offers valuable lessons.    

The operational intricacy    

At their core, MPEs are designed to facilitate real-time communication of relevant information among U.S. military and mission partners while maintaining necessary security levels to guide warfighter decision-makers. Traditionally, it involves a desk with multiple screens, each connected to a different network, unique access codes and encryption protocols, and a KVM switch to control it all.     

In the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM), those days are gone.     

Taking a multi-enclave client (MEC) approach, the desk is now simplified to a single console. Authorized users can access and share relevant information from various sources using an integrated mission network, so decisions can be made in real time, and coalition environments can be formed in days instead of weeks.    

Conquering the complexity    

DoD can duplicate USINDOPACOM’s transformation to rapidly implement multi-enclave environments on a broader scale in support of CJADC2. The sheer volume of approximately 17,000 isolated and protected computing environments supported by the command’s network is a testament to the MEC capability built on a hyper-converged infrastructure and private cloud architecture. Virtual infrastructure, which includes desktop virtualization hosting desktop environments on a central server, plays a vital role in connecting all the elements of the MPE landscape, such as applications, data, clouds, APIs, processes, chat, voice and video devices.     

USINDOPACOM’s effective consolidation of siloed data, duplicate copies of information, and separate networks into a single sign-on, data-centric information domain represents a pivotal stride toward the realization of JADC2 and, ultimately, CJADC2. This demonstration of the U.S. military’s robust capability to share information across domains instantly and securely will encourage allies and partners to actively engage in the exchange of intelligence and collaboration necessary to establish a formidable and unyielding collective defense posture.     

However, the next step of enabling instantaneous but strictly controlled access to ensure the right data is released to authorized users is an intense undertaking. It requires a ground-up, zero-trust architecture design that undergoes continuous testing to detect vulnerabilities before malicious actors can exploit them.    

To facilitate safe and secure communication for the U.S. and its allies during peacetime and conflict, USINDOPACOM transitioned defenses from static, network-based perimeters to focus on the users, assets and resources. Bolstering security through zero trust identity verification to provide the right people access to the right information in the right place enabled granular control of data and assets, resulting in a more secure and controlled mission partner environment.    

Setting the stage for AI     

By prioritizing data and taking a rigorous approach to its access to ensure integrity, USINDOPACOM has paved the way for the adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning to support decision-making. In such a data-centric network environment, artificial intelligence and machine learning can be deployed to continuously monitor and analyze information to identify threats or opportunities as they emerge. The ability to quickly scour through thousands of pieces of data to elevate pertinent information for review and flag trends, threats and opportunities provides a significant decision advantage, allowing accelerated tasking and advanced force management. It is an example of a proactive approach to future readiness that can guide the evolution of CJADC2.     

Success template    

The deployment of USINDOPACOM’s MPE has been a sophisticated and collaborative effort that required a combination of best practices, advanced technologies and skilled personnel. It relied on a multi-team integration framework that functioned as a requirements traceability matrix for all projects. The project lifecycle comprised repeatable processes mapped to a structured work plan that supported over 250 standard and non-standard USINDOPACOM Theater Component Command requirements.    

Several operational lessons can be drawn from USINDOPACOM’s MPE deployment to aid CJADC2 success. First, designing, implementing and maintaining information domains involves adept configuration of hardware and software, security and integrity assurance, performance monitoring, and troubleshooting for numerous application service centers, hundreds of service points and thousands of endpoints. Second, a team of proficient network engineers is essential for this rigorous undertaking. Lastly, managing MPE enclaves and their authority to operate necessitates a disciplined, structured process and the integration of information security and risk management activities throughout the system development life cycle.  

 Proof positive  

USINDOPACOM has dramatically enhanced its capacity to exchange information and intelligence, collaborate, and establish interoperability with partner nations and organizations. That transformation illuminated the path forward for enabling JADC2 and, subsequently, CJADC2.  

Steve Robles is vice president of Coalition Network Engineering at SOSi.  

The post USINDOPACOM Mission Partner Environment success:  A blueprint for CJADC2 path forward  first appeared on Federal News Network.

• When it comes to speeding up the Defense Department’s acquisition processes for big weapons systems, things are headed in the wrong direction. That is one of the findings of the Government Accountability Office’s annual assessment of the Pentagon’s major procurements. GAO said on average, DoD’s major acquisition programs are taking 11 years to deliver their first capabilities — about three years longer than planned. The report also found slowdowns in DoD’s so-called “middle tier” of acquisition — a pathway that’s explicitly designed for speed.
  (Weapon Systems Annual Assessment - Government Accountability Office)
• The IRS is taking major strides to wean itself off paper. The IRS estimates more than 94% of individual taxpayers no longer need to send mail to the agency, and that 125 million pieces of correspondence can be submitted digitally each year. For taxpayers who still prefer filing paper tax returns, IRS is working on being able to digitize that paper return. “If you choose to send us the paper, we will process it. But we are ushering in some nice tools with the modernization," said Darnita Trower, the director of emerging programs and initiatives at the IRS. "We don't intend to have people continue keying in tax returns manually. We want to scan and extract that data,” Trower said.
  (IRS hit a ‘big milestone’ to wean itself off paper. What comes next? - Federal News Network)
• A National Science Foundation initiative aims to bring better data to the cyber workforce challenge. The Cybersecurity Workforce Data Initiative is out with a new report explaining how many official labor data sources do not fully account for cybersecurity work. That includes classifications used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Education Department. The initiative’s report recommends marrying up cyber workforce definitions with federal labor databases. And the initiative, led out of the NSF, is now preparing to potentially conduct a survey of the U.S. cyber workforce.
  (NSF initiative aims to bring better data to the cyber workforce challenge - Federal News Network)
• The Senate Armed Services Committee has greenlit a number of AI-related provisions in its version of the 2025 defense policy bill. The committee's version of the bill requires the Defense Department to initiate a pilot program that will assess the use of AI to improve DoD shipyards and manufacturing facilities operations. Lawmakers also want the Defense Department to develop a plan to ensure that the budgeting process for AI programs includes cost estimates for the full lifecycle of data management. The bill would also expand the duties of the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer Governing Council.
  (Senate lawmakers pushing a number of AI-related provisions - Senate Armed Services Committee)
• Victims of identity theft are waiting nearly two years, on average, for the IRS to give them their tax refunds. In cases where a scammer stole someone’s identify to get that person's refund check, the IRS took about 22 months to complete those cases. The National Taxpayer Advocate said the COVID-19 pandemic drove up wait times when the IRS shut down processing centers. But, so far this year, wait times are not going back down to pre-pandemic levels.
  (Identity theft victims are waiting nearly two years to receive their tax refunds - National Taxpayer Advocate)
• The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency just ran the federal government’s first artificial intelligence tabletop exercises. It involved more than 50 AI experts from government and industry, who convened last week at a Microsoft facility in Reston, Virginia. The exercise simulated a cybersecurity incident on an AI-enabled system. The event will help shape an AI Security Incident Collaboration Playbook being developed by CISA’s Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative.
  (CISA, JCDC, government and industry partners conduct AI tabletop exercise - CISA)
• Senate lawmakers are seeking to limit funding available for the Defense Department's initiative designed to support cyber operations across the military services. It is known as the Joint Warfighting Cyber Architecture (JCWA). The Senate version of the defense policy bill is looking to restrict funding available for the effort until the commander of U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM) provides a comprehensive plan to minimize work on the current JCWA. The Senate Armed Services committee also wants CYBERCOM to create a baseline plan for a more advanced version of JCWA. House and Senate leaders will begin negotiating the defense bill once the Senate clears its final version of the measure.
  (Senate seeks to limit funding for JCWA - Senate Armed Services Committee)
• The Biden Administration is contemplating a new acquisition policy that would clear up some confusion on when contractors have to follow the government’s rigorous cost-accounting standards. The Cost Accounting Standards Board is asking for public feedback on potential rules that would lay out exactly how those standards apply to indefinite delivery contracts. According to the Government Accountability Office, those types of agreements make up about half of federal contract spending, but there are not clear standards on when the cost accounting standards apply to them.
  (Whether and How to Amend CAS Rule - Office of Federal Procurement Policy, Cost Accounting Standards Board)

The post Major DoD acquisition programs taking too long, GAO says first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Rand Corp. looked into how nearly $13 billion is spent annually on these transition programs, specifically how the funding is allocated, where the potential overlaps between the programs are and if the programs are effective.

The researchers found that most of the federal budget set aside for these transition programs goes toward educational assistance and that there are almost no resources beyond the Defense Department’s Transition Assistance Program available to service members and veterans that assist with obtaining employment.

The report comes as college tuition fees continue to inch up year after year while a growing number of Americans are opting out of college — undergraduate enrollment in 2021 was 15% lower than in 2010.

“Dedicating significant portions of the transition budget [to education] is also unsurprising because of the high and growing costs of college. However, many veterans want or need to move directly into employment,” the report says.

For this study, the researchers examined 45 transition programs that are overseen by 11 agencies across the federal government, including major budgetary program such as the Post-9/11 GI Bill, DoD’s Tuition Assistance Program and Veteran Readiness and Employment, and smaller programs such as the Montgomery GI Bill and the DoD’s Transition Assistance Program.

Due to the involvement of various agencies, the researchers found that oversight of all these 45 federally-funded programs is “weak and fragmented,” and one of the outcomes of poor oversight is numerous redundancies in these programs and services. For example, the Post-9/11 GI Bill, one of the largest transition programs, provides limited information on how effective the program is, specifically how many service members and veterans use it and how many of them graduate from the program.

“This finding could be because oversight of these programs is fragmented; numerous congressional committees are responsible for overseeing portions of some programs, and various federal agencies are involved in operating these programs,” the report states.

In addition, there is not enough evidence to support that these federally-funded employment transition programs are effective at all. 

In fact, the researchers found that the DoD’s Transition Assistance Program participants experience lower wage growth where they earn $1,974 less than non-participants at 6 months post-separation, $1,362 less at 24 months post-separation and $1,238 less at 36 months post-separation.

Similarly, student veterans participating in the Post-9/11 GI Bill program also saw lower earnings after leaving the service. In some instances, it has even led to negative returns on investment in education.

Meanwhile, smaller programs don’t have enough reported data to determine their effectiveness. 

“The most notable gap is the paucity of program evaluations. Although there have been congressionally mandated assessments of some programs, much of the information we find on program effectiveness comes from small-scale or otherwise limited studies,” the report states. 

The researchers suggested that Congress needs to get involved and mandate consistent budget reporting for all military-to-civilian programs, not just the ones assisting with finding employment.

“There is a need for policymaker intervention to require agencies to standardize their budget and performance reporting—a mandate that should not be limited to programs that support employment transitions. As we have attempted to update those findings, we often find outdated and conflicting budgetary information, even for large programs,” the report reads.

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Lots of people, even those who should know better, often misconstrue the fundamental purpose of the U.S. military. The Federal Drive with Tom Temin‘s guest has written a provocative essay on the subject of deterrence, at a time when not much in the world seems deterred. Melanie W. Sisson is a fellow in the Foreign Policy program’s Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology.

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin  Lots of people, even those who should know better, often misconstrue the fundamental purpose of the U.S. military. Our next guest has written a provocative essay on the subject of deterrence, at a time when not much in the world seems deterred. Melanie Sisson is a fellow in the Brookings Foreign Policy Program, and she joins me now in studio. Ms. Sisson, good to have you with us.

Melanie Sisson  Thanks very much. Great to be here.

Tom Temin  And you have written, the very first paragraph of your essay is probably a surprise to many, as you say, the mission of the United States Department of Defense is not to fight and win the nation’s wars. And I can’t tell you how many star officers I’ve heard say that it is instead, quote, to provide the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation’s security. Why is that important nowadays, if everyone already knew that or should have?

Melanie Sisson  Well, I think first I’m not sure everybody does know that. And it requires a shift in thinking in terms of what we rely on the military for and why. The United States has had this enormous military advantage now, for decades, the best fighting force in the entire world, no question about that. But of course, we don’t want to have to use it that way and we certainly don’t want to have to use it to the extent that we did in earlier generations. D-Day, for example, that reminds us how terrible these large, in sort of defense circles would call these high end wars, can be. And so the Department of Defense very rightly, has fashioned its primary objective as pursuing, promoting, defending U.S. national security interests without having to fight that kind of battle again.

Tom Temin  Sure. And we had the great Reagan buildup, just to use a piece of shorthand that people use, and lots of technologies to give a technical advantage were developed at those times, and we’re still living off that. I guess, before we get into what deterrence is going to look like in the future, let’s presume that some of the facts going on now. The shipbuilding has slowed so that the replacement rate is not there, and so many ships are in dry dock at a given point. The Air Force says it wants to retire 1,000 planes in the next few years, but it’s not going to buy 1,000 more, and so on and so on. And the Army can’t fill its ranks, even as they are at 475,000 active duty with recruitment. Are we a deterrent at this point? Yeah, there’s autonomy. There is all this robotic, masked clouds of drones and so forth, and the military knows about it, and AI, and they’re trying to pursue it. By the way, we’re speaking with Melanie Sisson. She’s a fellow in the Brookings Foreign Policy Program and has written an illuminating article about the idea of deterrence. And let’s take an example. We would like to deter China from taking over Taiwan. And that gets into all kinds of foreign policy nuance because we acknowledge it’s, you know, and so and so and nobody liked Chiang Kai Shek, and etc. This goes back a long time, however strict logically, we’re dead without Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation. I mean, so much of the economy in the military relies on that, more the economy. How do you deter, when that would mean making China say we don’t dare touch Taiwan, because they’ll squash us in five minutes? That would be deterrence. But that’s not the case.

Melanie Sisson  So, you did two really excellent things here. The first is you reminded me I didn’t entirely answer your first question. And then second is to highlight some of these really other important dynamics in the current environment. So you had previously asked about, you know, why ought we be thinking about how the Department of Defense deters today? And the short answer is because the environment we’re now living in requires us to acknowledge that there are other larger states than there have been for the last 30 years whose interests diverge with ours, and that they are becoming more assertive, and in Russia’s case, certainly aggressive in pursuing those interests, even and especially where they conflict with the interests of the United States. And so we don’t have a choice but to start thinking about the role of the U.S. military, in deterring those actors from degrading, eroding or countering our pursuit of our own goals. So that’s one element. The second is then you introduced, what it takes to deter. When you ask about the composition of our forces, the number of service members that we have available, those who might be interested in being available in the future. All of these are very important factors when we think about what kind of pressure or perception we can convey on to or to those sorts of adversaries. So my belief when I look at the U.S. military is that we remain militarily enormously strong, enormously capable, and largely equipped to deter in the ways that we need. That said, there is no question that to protect our interests into the future, and even to a certain extent increasingly in the current moment, we’re going to have to reassess and reevaluate the material and equipment and the people that we have available to do that. There are new and emerging technologies that are very important. And we need to think carefully about how to integrate them into what we have today to well position us into the future.  So first, let’s do exactly as you started and acknowledge just how much nuance there is when it comes to the Taiwan question and just how long that nuance has been a factor in U.S. foreign policy. So not to discount that at all. The second part I would highlight here is that you’re right, the way you described it as being able to squash China, if they were to try, is certainly one convincing form of deterrence. Unfortunately, I don’t think that form is available to us anymore. And I don’t think it will be in the future, either. And so that demands that we think about deterrence in a different way. Now, I tend to look at the dynamics over the Taiwan Strait, and not be as worried as some in the community are about the state of deterrence. I think, in part for the reason you described about Taiwan’s role in the semiconductor industry, the economic implications of the sheer volume of goods that transit through and around the Taiwan Strait, the economic disincentive for violence in that area is already quite high. So it is not the case that we only need to rely on military deterrence in order to dissuade any actor from behaving in a particular way. And in this case, to dissuade Beijing from moving with force against Taiwan, we can use all these other tools of national influence, and some of them that are created by the conditions, right? So the globalized economy and the role of Taiwan in that economy is one such condition.

Tom Temin  Yeah, that’s a big difference nowadays versus the Cold War, because even though the Soviet Union was gigantic, and so on, and I mean, I lived through those years, but we didn’t buy much from them. We didn’t have much economic dependence on them, because everything the Soviet Union made was junk, except for the caviar, China is different. We are completely integrated with their economy. And, you know, no more iPhones and so on. Maybe that’s shifting a little bit. But that seems to be, therefore, acting to deter both China and us because of the economics as much as the military differential.

Melanie Sisson  Absolutely. Look, I think it’s really important to use history as we think about contemporary problems. But the trick is to use history appropriately, and to use it as well as we can. So we don’t want to over draw comparisons between periods. And you may have heard, I’m sure you have, the comparison of oh, you know, we’re in a new cold war with China. Right. And that resonates for us, we get that as Americans, about what a Cold War looks like, because we did it for a long time. And it ended in a way that was very positive for us, right? So I understand the desire to sort of draw that parallel, just to say that we should be cautious about it, for some of the reasons that you rightly identify, that there are some things that may be similar. They’re not the same. And there are many things that are different, and the extent of our economic integration, the extent of China’s global economic integration, those are enormous differences from prior periods. We also need to acknowledge that, you know, there are other differences in terms of China’s domestic politics are not the same as Soviet politics. Chinese leaders are not the same as Soviet leaders. And you can say, you know, similarly here in the United States, history moves on, right?

Tom Temin  Sure. And let’s take a look into the near future. One of two people that nobody wants is going to be the next president. 50% don’t want this one and they’re not happy with what they do have. And 50% don’t want that one and they’re not happy with what they’ve got. So I’ll go that far in politics, and we don’t pick sides around here. What do you anticipate will be the differences in approach, and therefore military policy, acquisition policy and budgeting policy between the Trump side and the Biden side?

Melanie Sisson  So I’ll start with the one that I think is answerable. And that is what would I expect if there is a second Biden administration. And what I would expect is pretty much what we’ve seen thus far. I think that even if I have my own sort of differences with the administration, in terms of some of the ways in which it is pursuing both its competition with China, and its relationship with Taiwan, in terms of, you know, pursuing peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, they nonetheless, I acknowledge, have been quite consistent in their approach, and I would not expect that to change. I would expect them to continue to be firm that the U.S. interest is in peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.

Tom Temin  And they have gone along with some decent budget increases.

Melanie Sisson  That’s exactly right.

Tom Temin  Costs go up even if you don’t acquire any more weapons because of the cost of a volunteer force.

Melanie Sisson  That’s exactly right. So there’s defense budget increases. There’s increasing collaboration and communication on Taiwan about their own defense investments. There’s a lot of work, as you mentioned before, being done in the Pentagon about new and emerging technologies that are specifically applicable to the Taiwan Strait and its surrounding waters. So I would expect more of the same on that. I’m going to be very disappointing when it comes to saying anything about the possibility of a Trump administration, because I think it’s entirely unpredictable. I never make predictions about the future, like someone else that we know has always said. But in this case, I think it’s doubly dangerous to try to make predictions. Trump is mercurial. We don’t know who will be in his administration, staffing which roles. And so to me, the picture is just a big shoulder shrug and hand raise until we have more actual information.

Tom Temin  Melanie Sisson is a fellow in the Brookings Foreign Policy Program. Thanks so much for joining me.

Melanie Sisson  This has been great. Thanks so much for having me.

Tom Temin  We’ll post this interview along with a link to her article at federalnewsnetwork.com/federaldrive. Subscribe to the Federal Drive wherever you get your podcasts.

The post Not-quite-accurate common assumption about military’s main purpose first appeared on Federal News Network.

Fresh from their annual baseball game, members of Congress are back at work on the Hill. Lots of activity centers on the National Defense Authorization Bill, which has, for starters, passed the House. And, strangely, there’s been some movement on the slow-moving, but never-ending topic, surrounding a new FBI headquarters. For this week’s outlook, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin talked with WTOP Capitol Hill correspondent Mitchell Miller.

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin  Fresh from their annual baseball game, members of Congress are back at work on the Hill. Lots of activity centers on the National Defense Authorization Bill, which has passed the House, anyway, and, strangely, on the never-ending topic of a new FBI headquarters. This week’s outlook now from WTOP Capitol Hill correspondent, Mitchell Miller. And Mitchell, let’s start with the NDAA. Now that it has passed the full House, will that spur the Senate so they can get started on reconciliation soon?

Mitchell Miller  Yes, a lot of things really moving forward now on the defense bill and on the defense front. The NDAA passed in the House largely along party lines. It includes a 19.5% pay increase for the lowest military ranks. That is going to add billions of dollars into the budget. But overall, $895 billion, and this, of course, is one of the biggest bills that they will take up all year long. And what is interesting about this is there are a lot of similarities as to what happened last year in that Republicans have added a lot of amendments that are clearly going to be opposed in the democratically-controlled Senate. One of those was an amendment that was passed in connection with restricting payment for military officials to have any kind of abortion or reproductive activity. And so that one is among the things that is going to be pushed back on by Senate Democrats, no doubt. There are also a lot of other things in connection with this bill that were taken up. One of the amendments that was easily defeated was one from Georgia’s Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene that would have banned further military aid to Ukraine. So a lot of back and forth here in connection with the NDAA. But I have been in contact with Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, and he is pleased with a lot of the progress that they’re making on the Senate side. So, a lot of things moving forward on this.

Tom Temin  Well, hopefully, they’ll agree on how many bombers you know, and troops and things in the NDAA.

Mitchell Miller  There’s all these little ancillary things that have been added in. But I think on the biggest issues, as you allude to, the weaponry, the military equipment, I think they are making a great deal of progress.

Tom Temin  And that idea of the reproductive rights or abortion rights, whatever you want to call them, kind of mirrors what is happening with in vitro fertilization legislation for the Federal Employee Health Benefit plan. This is something Democrats wanted.

Mitchell Miller  Right. This is another big issue that we’re in the middle of an election year, obviously, and Senate Democrats tried last week to get enough votes to essentially have a national right to IVF in connection with this legislation. And the way it affects federal workers is that it would actually expand the coverage of fertility treatments for the Federal Employees Health Benefits plan. This was included in legislation that also includes some other provisions. But ultimately, Democrats did not get the 60 votes that they needed. This was probably pretty likely, even Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer knew that this was probably not going to pass. Interestingly, OPM Office of Personnel Management, did increase the federal requirements for IVF treatments for this current plan year, but the legislation that was proposed last week would have gone beyond that. However, that has not moved forward. And it does not look like it’s going to anytime soon.

Tom Temin  We’re speaking with Mitchell Miller, WTOP Capitol Hill correspondent. And the issue that will not die is the FBI headquarters. And, golly, what’s the latest there now? Whether they’re ever gonna move?

Mitchell Miller  Well, you know, it’s interesting, because I was on a call with Virginia Senator Mark Warner in connection with this, and he was asked about what is happening in the House. And basically, the House Republicans have proposed pulling more than $3 billion that would go toward the early development of this new FBI headquarters in Greenbelt. And he clearly indicated he is frustrated. He said that, you know, the fact that the building in Washington on Pennsylvania Avenue is literally falling apart with netting at the top to catch pieces of concrete, really frustrates him. And of course, he’s even more frustrated by the fact that Virginia lost out to Maryland, but he does want something to happen to get moving. So, the appropriations process is kind of holding things up at the moment for the FBI building. At some point, this will get resolved, because a lot of Democrats obviously are opposing this plan. But all of this is delaying what has already been a much delayed process, as you know. Even if everything moves forward as fast as possible right now, the building would actually not begin for another five years. And it wouldn’t be that federal employees with the FBI would not be actually in that space until 2036. And I think right now, actually, that may be optimistic, but we’ll see what happens as this legislation sausage making grinds forward.

Tom Temin  Yeah, you really marvel at the inflation, because $3 billion just for kind of preparatory work, that’s not the building itself. As opposed to something like I think it was 60 million for the old headquarters they abandoned, you know, back in the 70s.

Mitchell Miller  Right, yeah. I think it’s pretty safe to say this cost is just going to keep going up and up and up. But on the bright side, they did, after more than a decade of battling over where to actually build the headquarters, it is eventually going to move forward.

Tom Temin  Too bad they tore down the Cap Center.

Mitchell Miller  That’s right. They could have repurposed that, maybe.

Tom Temin  With a curvy roof. And congressional pay raise, this is something that’s been kind of a third rail for Congress. But now some members are talking about, well, maybe they should be paid a little more.

Mitchell Miller  Right. There was a proposal last week within the House Appropriations Committee that’s repeatedly come up. Some people that have been in Congress longer as well as some newer members of Congress are actually on the same page on this. Congressman Steny Hoyer is among those who has said there should be at least a cost of living increase for members of Congress, because they have to have two homes generally, here in the Washington area and their home district. The cost of living obviously is going up. But of course, this is kind of the third rail for a lot of lawmakers too, because they know that when a member of Congress is making $174,000, that there’s not a lot of sympathy from average Americans related to those costs. But the pay raise did not move forward in the House Appropriations Committee last week. So once again, they will stay at that level as they have since 2009. By the way, if there had been general cost of living increases since 2009, the average member of Congress would be making close to $240,000 right now, but again, this is on hold and not surprising, I don’t think, since this is, as we mentioned earlier, an election year.

Tom Temin  And we should note too, that the pay for politically appointed members of the executive branch, I don’t think those salaries have risen either in the same period.

Mitchell Miller  No, they’ve all been holding pretty firmly. And that’s really an issue that a lot of the people that are proposing these increases also point out that if you’re going to get people in public service, you’re going to have to eventually raise the pay. Now there is another controversial element to all of this, that Congress kind of quietly, within the last year or two, approved a provision that allows for lawmakers to essentially add to their expenses without having actual receipts. And this is something that was added in because, again, because they say that there are added costs with housing and paying for meals, etc. And that has actually percolated and caused some controversy for lawmakers. Because with no receipts, of course, it’s unclear exactly how much extra money they’re getting. It usually, on the higher end, has been between $25,000 and $30,000. But I have a feeling that will be coming under some more scrutiny too.

Tom Temin  And just a brief word on the baseball game, because it does go for a good cause, even if it seems to be played by people that aren’t liked very much. But as the one of the broadcasters there and we helped produce that here at Federal News Network, how’d it go money wise?

Mitchell Miller  It was really a great event, once again. The congressional baseball game has been raising money for local charities as you know, for many years and they set a record, $2.2 million brought in for charity, which is just absolutely fabulous. It’s just been steadily going up every year that George Wallace and WTOP and I have been doing this from you know, closer to one and a half million several years ago. And so that participation, again, it remains strong. The Republican team, by the way, remains the stronger of the two parties on the baseball diamond anyway. They won pretty handily, 31 to 11. But it was a great event as usual. 25,000 plus people came out and the fact that they’re raising this kind of money, it’s just nice to see a rare bipartisan event and happening right near Capitol Hill.

Tom Temin  Even if they do thump each other with fast balls. Mitchell Miller is Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP. Thanks so much.

Mitchell Miller  You bet.

Tom Temin  We’ll post this interview at federalnewsnetwork.com/federaldrive. Hear the Federal Drive on demand, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

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From virtual desktops to email and collaboration, the Navy has been leaning heavily on cloud services to speed up its digital modernization efforts. But those efforts have come with a big question: Will any of this work aboard ships? It turns out the answer is yes.

In a pilot project, the Navy has shown it’s possible to consistently move several terabytes of data each day between the cloud and thousands of users onboard an aircraft carrier every single day, an advance officials say is a “game changer”

The project is called Flank Speed Edge, an extension of Flank Speed, the Navy’s broader cloud environment. The largest test case has been aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, which is currently underway in the Pacific, and represents the first major example of the Navy connecting a vessel at sea with cloud services in a way that’s on par with what sailors get on shore.

Leveraging P-LEO satellites

It’s mostly thanks to the advent of Proliferated Low Earth Orbit (P-LEO) satellite services — massive constellations of small satellites that form mesh networks via optical links with one another in space, and deliver high-bandwidth, low latency communications to users back on Earth.

Cmdr. Kevin White, the combat systems officer aboard the Lincoln, said the initial idea was to install a gigabit’s worth of satellite connectivity aboard the ship and see what the ship’s 5,000 sailors and Marines could do with it. It turns out, quite a lot.

“I’ve seen a tremendous value from from this afloat. All of the staff are using their Flank Speed capabilities to maintain continuity,” he told the Navy CIO’s recent IT conference in Norfolk, Virginia, during a live video demonstration from the Pacific Ocean. “They’re using their NMCI phones to call home over voice over IP, or to call the beach to say, ‘Hey, I need this part rushed to the ship.’ We’re using it across all of our departments and embarked commands for quality-of-work type areas. Everything from our training department — ensuring that all of our readiness in our training cycle is up to date — to our medical department, to our supply department, they’re all reaching out over websites and services to ensure that we have continuity of operations, and ensure that this ship is ready to go when the time comes that we have to turn these services off.”

One thing the Navy has learned from the Lincoln experience is that Flank Speed Edge doesn’t require a huge amount of manpower. It’s taken just three full-time sailors to operate and maintain the new satellite and Wi-Fi infrastructure aboard the carrier.

And in return, it’s also dramatically expanded the kinds of software upgrades and updates that can be performed on other systems on the ship, White said. Traditionally, that’s the kind of work that can only be done at a pier with a physical network connection.

“While we’re out at sea right now, with this P-LEO capability, a cloud connected node and all the right elements in place, we’re able to scale new capabilities as they become available and rapidly deploy them while they’re monitored from the shore side,” he said. “One of the big challenges we have is the cycle of Windows updates and the cycle of patches, and with that high-speed capability, we can have those update services enabled. Onboard, we have 2,000 staff folks, all of which are live at their home commands on Flank Speed. Imagine a future where we are able to migrate that data to an embarkable [laptop], and allow them to interoperate with that data when we have to turn off our connections.”

The approach does have its limitations. Besides the obvious need to sometimes shut down those high-speed data links for operational reasons — leaving the ship with only its onboard tactical cloud nodes — the P-LEO connections, so far, are only authorized for unclassified data.

But White said the on-board infrastructure is designed to be transport agnostic — so that it can use whatever connectivity mechanism is available — from traditional military SATCOM to commercial services like Starlink. It’s also designed to incorporate software defined networking, so that the network capacity available through those data links can be used however the Navy sees fit, and can be reallocated on the fly.

“Right now our logs are showing that we’re able to pass between 3 and 5 terabytes of data per day, which is absolutely massive. And what we’re able to do with software defined networks is scale exactly how that data is used,” he said. “Right now we’re demonstrating pushing applications like air wing maintenance apps that live in the cloud, and all of our pay and personnel apps. And that’s just scratching the surface.”

Other applications ashore

The Navy is using similar concepts in other places of the world that may not be as hard to connect as ships, but still have tended to have communications challenges.

The service’s 5th Fleet is serving as a pilot site for a shore-based implementation of Flank Speed Edge. At the command’s headquarters in Bahrain, staff have recently started using Flank Speed services, including Nautilus Virtual Desktop.

Lt. Cmdr. Tricia Nguyen, a staff member at Naval Computer and Telecommunications Station Bahrain said so far, the Flank Speed approach has turned out to be more seamless and resilient than the Navy’s traditional overseas networks.

“It is a vast improvement compared to the previous assets and legacy architecture,” she said. “The user interface is quick and responsive — applications are able to be opened natively instead of using browser-based workarounds. Simple things matter here: The file sync is seamless. I don’t have to log in multiple times like I used to; now I just boot up and my files are there. And back in March, there was a Teams service outage, which I understand was worldwide. However, here in Bahrain, we did not experience an outage at all. That was because of the architecture: We have a primary and secondary means of transport that are terrestrial based, and a tertiary that’s commercial satellite. We had an automatic failover and it was completely seamless and transparent to our end users. I didn’t even know about it until after the fact.”

Bob Stephenson, the chief information officer for U.S. Pacific Fleet, said some of what the Navy has learned through the pilots — especially their uses of secure WiFi — may also be applicable to communications on installations, such as his command’s headquarters at Pearl Harbor.

“We’ve been using the same technology in our buildings that we’ve used since the late 90s. As our staff changes and grows, it’s very difficult for us with a wired infrastructure to bring more people into the building, or rearrange the office,” he said. “So we’re doing a pilot now sponsored by PEO Digital where we’ve gone to wireless in the buildings. We still have to use fiber for our secret networks, and we’d like to change that, but this is going to give us an enormous capability to modernize our buildings like we’re modernizing our ships.”

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The Army tackled one of its toughest challenges: Creating a common operating picture for all of its allied partners.

The recent Yama Sakura 85 exercise demonstrated how the Army, the Australians and the Japanese could securely share information by using an architecture based on zero trust principles.

Col. Rett Burroughs, the chief information officer & G6 for the Army’s I Corps, said over the course of the 10-to-12 day training event last December, the Army successfully brought their allied leaders onto a single and secured network at the tactical edge.

“What we are looking at is properly being distributed across the entirety of the Pacific. We could have a command and control node anywhere in Australia, Thailand, Philippines, Japan, Korea, Hawaii, Guam or Alaska, and back here at Joint Base Lewis McChord, Washington so that now every node has roles and responsibilities. How do we ensure that conductivity happens across all of those different nodes that are very disparate and spread out? And then how do we leverage the technology of transport to ensure that we’re getting applications all the way to the edge?” Burroughs said on Ask the CIO. “We spent months preparing to ensure we had right safeguards in place. In its simplest form, in the application for the warfighter, which is definitely my area of concern, it brought the Australians and the Japanese together because before it was the Australians and the Americans, and then it was the Americans and the Japanese. The Australians couldn’t be in the same Tactical Operations Center as the Japanese. Now we have the ability for the first Australian division commander to talk directly with senior generals from the Japanese Ground Force Command.”

Burroughs said in previous exercises, the Americans and Australians would talk, and then the Americans and Japanese would talk, with the Army acting as the “go-between” for the Australians and Japanese. And Burroughs readily admits everyone knows what happens when you play the game of telephone.

“Our goal here was to establish one common operating picture and the ability to voice video chat, and share specific information,” he said. “The application of this proved critical in the ability for staff to make informed recommendations, and for commanders to make informed decisions. We weren’t just slinging all this data just because commanders need and want everything.”

Broader application than just the Army

The success of the Yama Sakura 85 exercise proved this shared network and zero trust concept for more than just the Army, but any federal organization can take the basic concepts to create a common operating picture.

John Sahlin, the vice president of cyber solutions for General Dynamics-IT, which supported the Army with integration expertise, said these same approaches could help agencies such as FEMA, which has to create shared networks to help cities or states recover from disasters.

“I’ve been fascinated by this problem set ever since I deployed for the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts back about 15 years ago. We started thinking about a military mission for that humanitarian assistance effort and it turned very quickly into an interagency and even local government support mission,” Sahlin said. “We had good communications. We had a good sight picture. We had good mapping data, which nobody else in the area did. We had to quickly share that data with first responders, the local hospital, the parish sheriff, non-government organizations like the Red Cross. I think that these are lessons of zero trust at the tactical edge for information sharing to inform that on scene commander, are lessons that can be learned, not only for the military at the tactical edge, but for any organization that has field-deployed, forward-deployed organizations that need to share data to execute a mission rapidly and make those changes dynamically with first responders with interagency support, things like that.”

Burroughs added this approach of creating a distributed network supported by zero trust tools isn’t just important for the tactical edge, but for Army commanders in garrison or commands who have to coordinate with the National Guard or local first responder communities or anyone outside of the service.

“Now we don’t have to have these disparate networks that do not talk to each other because of classification and policy, which you clearly went through during the Katrina catastrophe,” he said. “Now what we’re doing is we’re taking need to figure this out on the fly out during a catastrophe. We’re actually getting ahead of it now by addressing it before the next catastrophe. So when something does come in competition or crisis, we’re actually able to deal with it in a methodical way instead of reacting.”

Shift toward data-centricity

In many ways what Burroughs and Sahlin are describing is how the Army, and really every agency, must be more of a data-centric organization.

Lt. Col. Roberto Nunez, the chief of signal services support for Army I Corps, said the implementation of zero trust capabilities forces the end users to shift that data culture because they have to tag and label information much more specifically and consistently.

“You can say ‘all right, here’s all my data that I want to share, all my users that are also tagged and labeled as well as what they’re authorized to use and what they cannot use. Therefore, you can plug in with other mission partners to share that information and you can create that common environment moving forward, whether it’s joint coalition, at least from a DoD point of view,” he said. “If you want third parties to join in, whether it’s corporate America, academics, other organizations or other government agencies, you can do that if everything’s data-centric, labeled and tagged accordingly. This is what is great about zero trust.”

Burroughs said planning for the next Yama Sakura 87 exercise in December already is underway. But he said these capabilities aren’t turned on during the exercise and then turned off. The network is always on and therefore the Army is always iterating how to make secure information sharing better, faster and easier.

Chief Warrant Officer 4 Phil Dieppa, a senior services engineer for Army I Corps, said what the Yama Sakura 87 exercise and other demonstrations have shown the service that the “come as you are” model works because of the zero trust capabilities.

“The great thing about zero trust is that we don’t trust anything until we explicitly have that conversation and say that ‘I trust you.’ Once we do that, then we can start communicating and making those services available one at a time,” he said.

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Vice Adm. Carl Chebi, head of U.S. Naval Air Systems Command, which has responsibility for the aircraft military-wide, told lawmakers at a House oversight hearing into a series of recent crashes that it will be at least another six to nine months before the command will be able to complete all of the safety and performance assessments for the Osprey.

Over the lifespan of the program, Chebi said a total of 64 service members have been killed in air and ground accidents, and 93 have been injured. In the last two years, four separate crashes killed a total of 20 service members, and two of those crashes involved catastrophic materiel or mechanical failures the program had not experienced before.

Following a November crash off the coast of Japan that killed eight service members, the fleet was grounded for months. The Ospreys started flying again in a very limited format in March and do not perform the full range of missions, including carrier operations, that the aircraft was made to carry out.

In use since only 2007, the Osprey can fly like an airplane and land like a helicopter. Critics say its innovative design has systemic flaws that are driving the unexpected failures.

One of the reasons for the extension of restricted flight: The military is still working to fix a clutch failure that was identified as one of the primary factors in a June 2022 crash that killed five Marines in California.

The clutch component, like many other parts of the aircraft, has been wearing out far faster than expected. This led to an unprecedented dual hard clutch engagement in the 2022 crash, creating a situation in which the pilots had no way to save the aircraft.

The military has not yet said what exact part failed in the November crash, but Chebi told the panel Wednesday that the cause was something “we’d never seen before.”

Rep. Stephen Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat, told Chebi to reground the entire fleet until all safety issues were fixed.

“What do you think the consequences will be if we have another V-22 go down and we lose more brave Marines or Airmen between now and the time?” Lynch said. “Your whole program’s done. It’s done. If another Osprey goes down, we’re done. This program’s done. So why don’t we ground this now?”

Families of service members killed in Osprey accidents sat behind Chebi as he testified. Each held a photograph of their family member killed, and after the hearing, he stayed to listen as they told him their concerns.

“We’re afraid that they’re aging out, and now we are having all these crashes,” said Bart Collart, whose son Marine Corps Cpl. Spencer Collart was killed in a 2023 Osprey crash off the coast of Australia.

The committee is looking into whether the program has adequate oversight, but to date, it has not received the data and documents it has requested, members said at the hearing.

Among the information that the House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, the Border and Foreign Affairs has requested but has yet to receive is the wear and replacement rates on Osprey proprotor gearboxes, a component that was a factor in the crash off Japan.

Committee members also have asked for internal crash reports that the military conducts with surviving air and ground crews and witnesses. The reports aren’t available to the public and cannot be used to punish a crew — they are in place to identify and quickly share any safety issues among the fleet.

To date, the staffers said they had received about 3,500 pages of documents, but information was redacted, leaving them unable to conduct oversight. The committee staffers spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

The staffers said the documents they have reviewed left them concerned about whether Pentagon leadership has maintained a close watch on the Osprey program. Some of the problems with the aircraft date back a decade or more but still haven’t been fixed.

After mechanical and material failures led to the 2022 Osprey crash in California, the military said it had instituted changes to prevent the issue from happening again.

“However, the recent fatal crash and ongoing investigations suggest that more transparency and rigorous testing is needed to verify these claims,” Rep. Glenn Grothman, a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the committee, said in a statement to the AP ahead of the hearing.

The Marine Corps is planning on using the Osprey through 2050, while Air Force Special Operations Command has already begun to talk publicly about finding another type of aircraft to conduct missions.

Osprey producers Bell Flight, the Boeing Co. and Rolls-Royce, which supplies the engines, are facing a new lawsuit from families of the five Marines killed in the 2022 California crash. The lawsuit alleges that the companies did not address known parts failures or safety issues that were a factor in the crash.

Boeing and Bell have declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.

The staffers say the Pentagon has not provided details on what the restrictions are as the aircraft returns to operations.

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The Non-classified Internet Protocol Generative Pre-training Transformer, or NIPRGPT, is part of the Dark Saber software platform, an ecosystem where airmen experiment, develop and deploy their own applications and capabilities.

The platform is not the end tool or the final solution, said Air Force officials, but rather a testing ground that will allow the service to better understand practical applications of generative AI, run experiments, take note of problems and gather feedback.

The Air Force Research Laboratory, which developed the tool, used publicly available AI models, so the service has yet to commit to a particular vendor. But as commercial AI tools become available, the platform will help the service to better gauge the best approach to buying those tools.

“We’re not committing to any single model or tech vendor — it is too early in the process for that. However, we are leveraging this effort to inform future policy, acquisition and investment decisions,” Chandra Donelson, the Air Force’s acting chief data and artificial intelligence officer, told reporters on Monday.

“We aim to partner with the best models from government, industry and academia to identify which models perform better on our specific tasks, domains, as well as use cases to meet the needs of tomorrow’s warfighter.”

While NIPRGPT is only available on unclassified networks, the service is considering expanding it to higher classification levels depending on demand and interest from airmen and guardians.

“The research will absolutely follow demand. We have already had people signal that there’s interest there working with different and appropriate groups. I think that’s why starting intentionally and clearly so we can learn any of those guardrails but, as you can imagine, people want relationships with knowledge at all levels. And so that has absolutely been considered,” said Air Force Research Lab Chief Information Officer Alexis Bonnel.

As uses of generative AI have exploded in the commercial sector, the Defense Department has been carefully exploring how it can leverage the technology to improve intelligence, operational planning, administrative, business processes and tactical operations. The Pentagon’s Task Force Lima, for example, is evaluating a wide range of use cases and working to synchronize and employ generative AI capabilities across the military services.

In the interim, the Air Force’s office of the chief information officer along with the chief data and artificial intelligence office recently wrapped up a series of roundtables with industry and academia where they explored the potential applications and best practices for adopting GenAI across the service. Air Force CIO Venice Goodwine said the roundtables showed how fast the field of generative AI is growing.

“Now is the time to give our airmen and Guardians the flexibility to develop the necessary skills in parallel. There are multiple modernization efforts going on right now across the federal government and within the DAF to get tools in the hands of the workforce. This tool is another one of those efforts,” said Goodwine.

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It’s now on the House floor and forming in the Senate committee: The National Defense Authorization Act for 2025. This week, though, will also bring some important matters forward, like the congressional baseball game. For an update on military defense and national-pastime offense,  the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with Bloomberg Government Deputy News Director Loren Duggan.

Interview Transcript:  

Tom Temin
It’s now on the House floor and forming in the Senate Committee, the National Defense Authorization Act for 2025. That is, this week though we’ll also bring some important matters forward like the congressional baseball game, an update now from Bloomberg Government, Deputy news director, Loren Duggan. And the NDAA is kind of leapfrogging through the House and Senate to the house maybe a little bit ahead. What’s the latest?

Loren Duggan
Yeah, we’re going to see a vote this week on the House floor on that legislation, pretty sweeping. And one of the must pass bills this year, where not a lot is likely to get done. This is one of the bright spots, usually, where no one wants to be the armed services chairman who doesn’t get the job done. So what we’ll see this week is probably a lengthy debate on the House floor with a lot of amendments, I think more than 1300 were submitted by Friday to weigh by the Rules Committee and potentially debate on the floor. But it’s wide ranging, of course, obviously sets defense policy and how much later they will provide through the appropriations bills, but also a number of policy issues at the Pentagon and abroad, which could be one of the sticking points, obviously.

Tom Temin
What are some of the top policy issues that are outside of pure defense authorization?

Loren Duggan
Well, always Ukraine will come into play and whether there will be amendments around that and what to do. Obviously, we had the lengthy debate earlier this year about how much to fund and what conditions to put on it. But anytime a bill like this comes up, that’s a natural place to look for that. There’s also a lot in here for the Defense Department about improving the quality of life for service members, whether it’s a pay boost for younger troops, or are trying to find ways to attract more people into the military. That’s been one of the focuses. And it’s actually in the title of the bill, about quality of life there. And some diversity issues have come up as well, that’s been a sticking point in a lot of the bills with House Republicans in particular, looking to curtail DEI programs, things like that. And because the Defense Department has its own schools, there’s definitely a nexus there. So we’ll be looking there and just what other things may hit you right as it moves forward.

Tom Temin
Sure. And then on the Senate side, there’s just because of everything else going on in the two parties, is likely to be different, leading eventually to some tough reconciliation.

Loren Duggan
There could be. It’s worth noting that despite the partisanship in the house, the committee there approved the 57-1, with only one Democratic vote against it, that could change as the bill gets loaded up with different provisions. We’ll be looking for that final passage vote for that indication of how it can be reconciled with the Senate, where often the starting position in the Senate is a little more bipartisan, just because that’s the only way to get a bill across the floor. Much of the work in the Armed Services Committee has a secret, they do it behind closed doors, and then tell us when they’re done. So we’ll be looking to see what they’ve agreed upon as they work through that bill over the course of the week.

Tom Temin
And we did see a slice of the houses version of regular appropriations for 2025. And for the sliver of government that they have in general government work, there is significant cuts, again, proposed from the House side, is that likely what we’re going to see in the large agency appropriations work? And will that be coming out any of it this week?

Loren Duggan
Yeah, we’ll be seeing more there. So the House passed one bill last week for military construction projects, a small sliver of what DoD gets plus the Veterans Affairs Department. Veterans Affairs, there are some increases there, which is the usual, but as we get more bills that are more in the true domestic agencies will likely be seeing more cuts, as we did with Bill funding the IRS where I think there was a $2 billion cut. And as we see the bills covering the Ag department, and eventually when we get to the Labor HHS Education bill, which is all domestic, that’s where if you’re going to meet this top line number of reduction, there’s probably going to be a lot of chunks there. So we’re planning to see I think six bills move through either subcommittee or full committee over the course of this week. So a lot of action to come there in the house. Their goal is to get them all out of committee by July 10. Pretty tight, but we’ve seen them make a lot of progress so far.

Tom Temin
And they’re around yet for another few weeks, right until the July 4 break?

Loren Duggan
Well next week is going to be a little broken up because of the Juneteenth holiday. I think the Senate might be coming in around that, and the House might be actually out of town so that people can be back in their districts for that. But it is kind of a choppy summer as we saw last week. It was a short week because of D-Day. There’s a lot on the agenda between world events and conventions coming up later in the summer.

Tom Temin
We’re speaking with Loren Dugan, deputy news director at Bloomberg Government. And then speaking of broken up week, they do have, it’s not a bipartisan event. It’s partisan versus partisan, but maybe not quite as Ill themed and that’s the baseball game.

Loren Duggan
Yeah, they band together in a different way where the Republicans and the Democrats will take the field at Nationals Park for this annual event. It’s pretty sacred on the calendar for them to keep that and try to clear floor votes to allow it. We actually saw one subcommittee hearing for one of the appropriations bills moved two weeks into the future to make sure that everybody could get to the game who wants to go. And even if the members aren’t playing, they usually come and sit in the audience or take part in that and it’s kind of a fun little DC tradition that I always tell my interns from out of town. We’re swinging by if you want to see kind of a little slice of DC life.

Tom Temin
And there’s a few members that actually have some baseball chops?

Loren Duggan
Oh, yeah, absolutely. There’s people who either played in college or whatever. I don’t think there’s as many pros as in the past when Jim Bunting was in the Senate or something like that. But some people are really good and take it very seriously with practice and trying to keep their record going, and get as many strikeouts or hits as they can. So people take it very seriously.

Tom Temin
And getting back to more serious business, the Senate has some FERC nominees. And that’s a big deal, because obscure as FERC is, it does have a new multi 1000 page rule out there that completely changes governance and regulation of the grid. And so those nominations matter.

Loren Duggan
Absolutely. And it’s a commission that’s a five member commission with a mix of Democrats and Republicans. The folks coming in here now our were approved last week by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee with a pretty solid support. So we’ll see if they can all get over the line in the Senate this week that would fill the void and make sure that it’s got all the members that needs to do the kind of work you were talking about, but kind of odd to see all three back to back to back like that in one week. But they’re moving quickly to try to get that done as soon as possible.

Tom Temin
Right electric car charging, subsidized by one state to another is at stake here. But the vote on those nominees from the committee wasn’t totally party line.

Loren Duggan
No it wasn’t. There was one senator, I think Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who voted against all three. And he said he was disappointed in some of the answers they’ve given. But there could be some at least bipartisanship here, when they have the votes.

Tom Temin
All right. And then the other place that is having some problems, FDIC, the workplace culture, interestingly, the Chairman said he would resign when there’s a successor, which means he’ll be here for the rest of the Biden administration. What’s going on a hearing coming up?

Loren Duggan
The House Financial Services Committee is digging into that. And they say they’re looking at both the failed leadership and the workplace culture. And as you noted, it does get pretty low marks. I think it was 25 out of 26 in a recent survey, and there’s some concerns about how harassment claims have been handled. So a lot to talk about there. And there are definitely people who would like to see Greenberg go sooner. And he lost support among Democrats, which is I think what pushed this forward different Committee, the Senate Banking Committee, where Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio.) is the democratic chair there and up for re election and a pretty tight race was one of the people to come out against him and say he needs to go. So I think this is an agency that will have a lot of discussion around and this will be a concentrated look at the issues there.

Tom Temin
And there’s also a vote on IVF legislation. And that has something to say about the federal employee health benefits plan.

Loren Duggan
Right. This is the second bill in two weeks that Senate Democrats are trying to push. They’re more messaging because the dynamics been there likely won’t get across the finish line. But this one is about IVF coverage, including requiring carriers and the FEHBP to offer IVF services as part of this broader guarantee of access to IVF services.

The post Good Ship NDAA maneuvers steadily through congressional shoals first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Marine Corps celebrated a much sought after milestone in February: obtaining an unmodified audit opinion for fiscal 2023.

This two-year effort proved that the corps’ 2023 financial statements “present a true and fair reflection of the Marine Corps’ financial information,” which is about $46 billion in total assets.

While audits say there still are seven areas where the Marines still need to improve, Greg Koval, the assistant deputy commandant for resources for the Marine Corps, said this historic feat means, for maybe the first time ever, they can provide accountability, transparency and validity for their spending.

“It gives us transparencies into the cost of production, and in the future, it means the tracking of the cost of maintenance for many of our weapons system platforms,” Koval said on the discussion Marine Corps Milestone: Unqualified Audit Insight. “What it does over time is allow us to really plan, program, budget, execute better and identify those programs, where maybe they cost a little bit more, a little bit less, get those funds to the right place more timely so that we’re better able to execute and give the warfighter what they need to execute the mission. Ultimately on the financial side, we’re here to support them, help them and give them everything they need. So when they deploy, they’ve got the best solution, the best weapons systems they can have at that point in time.”

Like most of the Defense Department, the Marine Corps has been under pressure from Capitol Hill for decades to achieve a clean audit and has been putting more significant resources and focus on the challenges since 2017.

Marines new general ledger system

The Marines came close previously to a clean audit before the 2023 opinion. For example in 2012, the Marines thought it had achieved a “favorable opinion,” only for the DoD inspector general to reverse that decision in 2015.

DoD, as a whole, is targeting fiscal 2028 to achieve a clean financial opinion.

The Marines success demonstrates that it is possible for the largest organizations in DoD to successfully align their data, systems and processes to achieve this goal.

“At the beginning of this journey, we moved to a new general ledger. We had what we called SABRS, which was known and loved across the Marine Corps for over three decades. We took everybody off of that accounting system and moved into this new modern enterprise resources planning (ERP) system, which had its set of challenges. We basically adopted a system that smaller DoD components used, and some of our business processes were new to the system, new to the process, so there was a huge learning curve there,” Koval said. “That learning curve didn’t just impact the financial folks, but they impacted supply and procurement. There were times where we were working hard to pay vendors on time because the system wasn’t working as our old system did. But I think it really brought some additional discipline and internal controls to the financial processes that ultimately helped us understand some of our procurement and logistic processes a little bit better. It really kind of opened our aperture on some of the costs that we were incurring, who we were paying, and it gave us that additional transparency and visibility into the data.”

That major shift in the way the Corps did business, Koval said, really kicked the entire effort into gear by providing the financial team with the agility needed to understand and improve its data.

For any agency or large organization, the big data challenge can be daunting, said Joe Nave, principal federal finance transformation lead for KPMG, which helped the Marines achieve the clean audit opinion.

Analyze and assess risks

“You had to sift through the business processes across the board for geographically dispersed organizations such as the Marine Corps. You look at all of the integration across the rest of the DoD and the different partners outside of the spectrum that the Marine Corps has operational control over, and you start to look at how complex and complicated those processes can really be. From our perspective, it was helping them analyze, assess risk, boil down a couple of them and get the activities that we really needed to accomplish down to a finite list, where we could really focus our efforts and help them move some of these big rocks associated with the material weaknesses and audit deficiencies,” Nave said. “I think over time, you look at the way that the workforce is structured and having to do 100% of the day job, and then you add in some of these audit priorities and you add in some of the samples, we’ve really had to look at ways to modernize and automate those processes to help facilitate quicker reviews, quick requests, quality control ease, and make sure that we’re set up for success and able to respond efficiently and effectively to the audit.”

Nave said moving to the new ERP accounting system played a significant role in helping the Corps adapt processes and procedures as the needs change during the modernization process.

“I like dash boarding as a way to make sure that our clients have the insight that they need to see in real-time where progress is being made, and where progress is being made against those discrete buckets [of goals],” he said. “Then usually, we like tiger teams to assess progress against that. These small, mobile, tactical units, if you will, are going out and solving these problems with brute force, and then focusing on the sustainment of that. That really gets us to our end goal of a modified opinion and being able to continue that modified opinion, year in and year out, layering in that automation and modernization to those tiger team efforts.”

Auditors say the Marines still had seven material weaknesses to resolve.

Koval said a lot of those were on the property side and the need to better integrate data from disparate systems.

“What the audit did for us was really bring those organizations closer together. It broke down a lot of the walls and communications in the way that we work with each other,” he said. “Now, supply, logistics, procurement and accounting all have a better understanding of what we do, how we impact each other and what needs to change to make the organization more efficient, effective and to save costs, frankly, going forward.”

Going forward, among the Marines’ goals are to continue to build upon the previous two-year effort to further integrate processes and systems to make them a more efficient organization.

Nave said the Marine Corps now are set up for long term sustainment because of the process and procedural changes they’ve made and for audit response overall.

The key lessons learned from the Marines’ experience that other military services and organizations can heed, Nave said, is adaptability, being comfortable with the plan, and understanding that plans will change over time.

“We really want systems working for us, not against us. We want to make sure that our IT environment is squared away. We want to make sure that all of the interfaces or feeder systems that we have are clearly laid out. And we’ve looked at the complexity of those different processes and made sure that those all make sense,” he said. “So it is really just a rationalization of your portfolio and trying to make the sandbox smaller. First make sure everything’s in the sandbox, and then what can you do to make it smaller? Then I think leadership must set the tone from the top, cascading that information down and emphasizing the importance. Whether it’s an audit or any other objective you’re trying to accomplish, having that buy-in and tone from the top has been critical.”

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