The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has recommended that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) develop clearly defined processes and update documents to facilitate coordination on spectrum management. 

GAO said in a report published Monday that are no clear processes for addressing matters when agencies cannot reach an agreement on issues related to spectrum management.

The FCC and NTIA regulate use of radio frequency spectrum to prevent potential interference and coordinate with other agencies through interagency groups and agreements. 

GAO evaluated collaborative mechanisms for spectrum management against leading collaboration practices and found that agencies' collaborative activities did not fully reflect the practices of clarifying roles and responsibilities, developing written guidance and agreements and defining outcomes and monitoring accountability.

The congressional watchdog assessed the country’s participation in the International Telecommunication Union's World Radiocommunication Conferences and found that the lack of updated documents guiding agencies’ coordination efforts when it comes to developing U.S. positions also affected collaboration.

“For example, disputes among the agencies and the inability to reach agreement on U.S. technical contributions challenged the U.S.'s ability to present an agreed-upon basis for decisions or a unified position,” the report reads.

Lightbridge will work with Battelle Memorial Institute's Pacific Northwest Division and the Department of Energy (DOE) to demonstrate a manufacturing process for the company's nuclear fuel technology under a $663,000 research and development agreement.

The company said Monday that it will demonstrate the use of depleted uranium-zirconium material in manufacturing the Lightbridge Fuel, which is made for use in small modular and light-water reactors.

Lightbridge Fuel is designed to boost a reactor's fuel proliferation resistance, safety and economy-friendliness. The effort marks Lightbridge's second project under DOE's Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear or GAIN program aimed at driving the country's use of nuclear power.

“Partnering with the GAIN program enables us to save the high costs of time and capital to create these experiments ourselves while retaining our intellectual property and fast-tracking our R&D efforts,” said Seth Grae, president and CEO of Lightbridge.

The U.S. Army and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) have turned to a National Security Agency (NSA) program to obtain pre-vetted platforms designed to secure classified government data in remote environments, FedTech Magazine reported Monday.

David Ziska, deputy director of NSA's Commercial Solutions for Classified program, said the CSfC inventory has 22 categories across multiple product lines with most of the offerings already familiar to customer agencies.

"With the approved list, the components are more accessible and procurement can be less of a challenge," Ziska added.

The Army implemented tools from the CSfC products list for a pilot program at Fort Gordon in Georgia that aimed to help the service branch's remote workers gain access to its unclassified and classified networks using one computing device.

Meanwhile, AFRL adopted a virtual private network tunnel framework via the CSfC program to support classified telework of senior Air Force leaders.

Reps. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and Susan Wild, D-Pa., partnered with Sens. Angus King, I-Maine, and James Lankford, R-Okla., to present a bill that aims to secure critical U.S. research from China, Russia and other foreign threats.

The bicameral bill would task the secretary of state to identify allied countries that pursue critical technology research in partnership with the U.S., Gallagher's office said Wednesday.

Leaders of the Department of Energy (DOE), the National Security Council (NSC), the Office of Science and Technology Policy and other agencies of relevance will provide input to help the state secretary come up with the list. The State Department would report these results to Congress.

The legislation would then require agencies to develop security policies that aim to protect sensitive research pursued by commercial, academic and government entities.

“American researchers are responsible for some of the world’s most cutting-edge research in key technological fields, and it is critical that we protect our breakthroughs from rival nations who would seek to steal our advances and turn them against us,” King said.