The Partnership for Public Service recently announced on Thursday that the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has been named one of the best places to work in the federal government. GSA was awarded the sixth-best place to work in the 2020 mid-sized agency category, one spot better than the year before.

“The past year has been challenging for all of us, and I could not be more proud of the team at GSA for continuing to deliver for our partner agencies and for taxpayers,” commented Robin Carnahan, GSA administrator.

The rankings are developed by the Partnership for Public Service and provide an overview of employee perspectives on an organization’s innovation, leadership, pay, work/life balance and other topics.

GSA’s high ranking illustrates its work to assist with the federal government’s COVID-19 response, including high scores in leadership and availability of job resources during the pandemic. It also validates the Administration’s innovation and agency performance.

Altogether, GSA scored better across all categories than at any other point in the past eight years. The Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) accounted for many of the last year’s challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

The GSA is responsible for centralized procurement activities on behalf of the federal government, managing a nationwide real estate portfolio of nearly 370 million rentable square feet and overseeing approximately $75 billion in annual contracts. GSA’s mission is to deliver the best value in real estate, acquisition and technology services throughout government, supporting the Biden-Harris Administration’s priorities.

Naval Surface Warfare Center, Corona Division has produced a web-based tool that allows users to track, process and report cannibalizations, the act of reducing supply inventories to accommodate newer products.

The eCANNAB system serves as a centralized platform for the many cannibalizations across the Navy, NSWC said Tuesday. The tool harnesses NSWC Corona’s data sources to inform commanders and decision-makers in a business intelligence environment.

David Drake, operations research analyst and co-creator of eCANNAB, said the tool consolidates the service branch’s cannibalizations to grant all Navy personnel access to this information.

“The Navy can now track that (item duplicates) and develop solutions to try to avoid cannibalization for that part altogether in the future,” Drake said.

The Navy developed eCANNAB within six months and initially launched the platform in late 2017. NSWC has since been applying “spiral” updates, with the latest one released on May 7.

The Department of Energy (DOE) has unveiled a $27 million funding opportunity for research and development projects that will focus on converting ocean wave energy into carbon-free electricity. 

DOE said Tuesday that grant recipients under the Advancing Wave Energy Technologies through Open Water Testing initiative will create and test wave energy converters (WEC) at the PacWave South facility in Oregon.

The department expects the program to generate open-access data about wind, wave and other relevant measurements that could support WEC system design efforts for PacWave and the energy community as a whole.

"With wave energy, we have the opportunity to add more renewable power to the grid and deploy more sustainable energy to hard-to-reach communities," said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.

She added that the department seeks to encourage clean energy technology adoption through investments in the domestic business and academic sectors.

DOE will host a webinar on July 22nd to discuss the funding opportunity. Interested parties can submit concept papers through Aug. 13th and complete full applications until Oct. 5th.

Bob Newberry, head of the irregular warfare technical support directorate at the Department of Defense (DOD), talked about his top priorities as director and the first one he cited is “greater affordability at the speed of relevance,” which is part of the National Defense Strategy.

“We want to get to contracts in less than a year, so that is really tightening up a schedule from requirements to signing a contract, and we want to deliver whatever capability we’re trying to develop in one to two years,” Newberry said.

Another priority he mentioned is the use of analytical tools based on artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms for big data analysis.

“We’ve really expanded that this year on a recent broad agency announcement — we asked the vendors to look at how they could use artificial intelligence or machine learning on all of the requirements to reduce the workload on individual operators,” Newberry added.

Other priorities Newberry cited are increasing lethality with a focus on small teams and individuals, improving survivability for personnel and facilities, strengthening alliances, optimizing human performance and learning and addressing chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive threats.

Newberry also talked about the directorate’s reorganization effort and the focus areas of the irregular warfare subgroup.

He said industry can reach out to the directorate and present their technologies and ideas through industry days, tactical communications and telematics workshops and challenge programs.