The executive committee of an interagency council focused on election security has released a joint statement on the group’s commitment to implementing a unified and coordinated approach to the 2020 elections.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said Thursday that the statement comes after the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council (GCC) facilitated a virtual meeting on how the federal, state and local governments must prepare for Election Day.

According to the GCC executive committee, the federal government is “actively monitoring for threats” against U.S. systems including foreign disinformation campaigns. They added that intrusion detection sensors have already been deployed across the country to protect election infrastructure.

GCC also enlisted the help of cybersecurity professionals in the public and private sectors in addition to conducting a tabletop exercise with over 2,100 participants, the committee noted.

“Elections will look different this year, but we want voters to know our election community is ready and taking active measures to ensure every ballot is counted as cast,” according to the committee.

Members of the GCC executive committee include Bob Kolasky, assistant director of CISA; Benjamin Hovland, chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission; Paul Pate, immediate-past president of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS); Lori Augino, president of the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED); and David Stafford, Supervisor of Elections at Escambia County, Fla.

The U.S. Space Force will require its workforce to pass a minimum level of training to prove their knowledge, skills and capabilities, and become digitally fluent, Federal News Network reported on Friday.

U.S. Air Force MG Kim Crider, mobilization assistant to the chief of Space Operations, has developed a strategy to integrate the Digital University that will provide a minimum level of education to Space Force servicemembers and civilians.

“Crider is establishing a core set of knowledge and training activities that every single member of the Space Force will be required when it comes to digital,” said LTG David Thompson, vice commander of the U.S. Space Force. 

Crider’s finalized plan will be delivered to Space Force commander and 2020 Wash100 Award recipient, John Raymond, in fall 2020. Crider has also planned the development of a digital headquarters from a process and procedure perspective will not rely on disparate, disconnected systems.

“Another one of the elements she’s building on is a pure digital strategy. How we handle our data, how we process our data, how we expose our data and how we allow others access to and manipulate the data,” Thompson added. “She already is full and deep in terms of having built and execute a strategy to make us a digital service.”

Crider also stated that the service is set to publish its 2020 science and technology roadmap and recognizes the need to work with industry to bring that plan to fruition, ExecutiveGov reported on Thursday. 

“We agree with the industrial base report,” Crider said of the “State of the Space Industrial Base 2020: A Time for Action to Sustain U.S. Economic & Military Leadership in Space” report released by the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in July. “We have to coordinate with industry and other government leaders.”

She said Wednesday at the Ascend virtual conference that the service branch backs the idea of establishing “unity of effort” across industry, academia and government to incentivize the industrial base.

Crider cited examples of technology areas where the Space Force can work with industry, including satellite-based communications, power generation in space, space transportation, logistics and positioning, navigation and timing.

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) Office, within the Department of Energy (DoE), has announced its plans to launch an AI training module in fall 2020 to develop talent in computer science, the FedScoop reported on Friday. 

“One of the things we’ve heard is that the scientists really want to work in the area of their specialty, but they don’t want to become AI experts to utilize these tools or to manage the data,” said Cheryl Ingstad, director of AITO. “So how do we get data managers and how do we get AI experts to the operational levels here and the research levels to support our scientists that way?”

Future modules will be developed by the Artificial Intelligence and Technology Office (AITO) in coordination with DOE‘s 17 National Laboratories and see experts explain the benefits AI can bring to their organizations.

DoE has faced challenges to recruit, retain and develop a workforce structure for AI professionals. With the training module, AITO has planned to convert the technology workforce employees with an interest in AI into specialists. 

The department has drafted an AI strategy that will be integrated throughout DoE; however, it must be reviewed before the agency takes action. DoE has also projected that the department will chair an AI working group to share best practices and provide dashboards that inform transformations across agencies.

DoE’s AI strategy has included partnerships between internal offices and external agencies, academia, first responders and the industry to address adversarial AI and cyberattacks that cause machine learning models to misinterpret system inputs. 

AITO adversarial AI partnerships are in the beginning stages, but DOE sees itself as entering a new “space race” with AI for the next several decades most likely, Ingstad said. “It matters who wins,” Ingstad added. “We are in this race against others, who do not have the same values that we have.”

The DoE AITO has also launched a consortium with Microsoft to advance the development of AI-based tools to enable first responders to better respond to natural disasters and help them save lives and protect property.

The First Five Consortium will bring together government, industry, academic and nonprofit organizations to develop AI platforms in support of humanitarian relief and disaster response efforts. 

“AITO is proud to lead on getting near real-time information into the hands of our First Responders,” Ingstad said in regards to the First Five. “This will allow them to save more lives and protect assets and our nation’s resources. This is just one project of the broader effort, which will include contributions from all our partners, to use technology to improve humanitarian assistance and disaster response in our nation.”