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Redhorse Corporation Acquires Allied Associates International; John Zangardi Quoted
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Redhorse Corporation Acquires Allied Associates International; John Zangardi Quoted

Redhorse Corporation has acquired Gainesville, Virginia-based Allied Associates International, which will operate as a Redhorse business unit under the oversight of the current A2I leadership team.

A2I is a cybersecurity and engineering company focusing on cyber data analytics and software development, with customers in the defense, federal law enforcement and intelligence sectors, Redhorse said Tuesday.

The acquisition results in the addition of cyber intelligence to Redhorse’s existing data analytics, engineering and artificial intelligence/machine learning capabilities.

A2I CEO Aaron Winters said the merger will result in new opportunities to serve customers.

For his part, Redhorse CEO and Wash100 winner John Zangardi praised the expertise that A2I brings to his company, adding: “The combination of A2I’s highly qualified and respected team with Redhorse’s analytics capabilities firmly establishes the combined entity as a premier National Security platform that has an extensive track record of delivering comprehensive and innovative solutions that address our nation’s most complex challenges.”

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Andrea Fletcher Shares How CMS Is Centering Customer Experience
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Andrea Fletcher Shares How CMS Is Centering Customer Experience

The way American citizens interact with the government has changed dramatically over the past decade as the digital world expands. Executive Mosaic spoke with Andrea Fletcher, chief digital strategy officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, to learn more about how the agency is working to transform the customer experience.

Andrea Fletcher Shares How CMS Is Centering Customer Experience

Andrea Fletcher will be a keynote speaker at the 2023 Healthcare Summit hosted by the Potomac Officers Club on Dec. 6! Join this event to be a part of the conversation with public and private sector healthcare experts, decision makers and innovators. Register here.

“I’ve become really passionate lately about customer experience and the way that we are engaging with the people that we serve,” Fletcher told Executive Mosaic’s Summer Myatt in a new video interview.

“So making sure that when somebody comes to a website to again, fill out a form or sign up for something, that it’s the most delightful experience,” she added. “I don’t think people often associate government websites with excellent user experience and are excited about it. How do we change that?”

Fletcher said part of looking at the customer experience includes prioritizing accessibility. Many of the populations CMS serves use screen readers, speak languages other than English or have disabilities. In her role, Fletcher is passionate about providing these individuals and the broader public with the tools they need to have a “delightful” experience interacting with the agency.

“I hope that in the future, somebody sits down to sign up for health care and they have their kid sitting on their lap, dinner’s in the oven and they only have a couple of minutes to fill this form out, and they get it done and they move on with their day and it is a wonderful experience rather than, I think what we often feel, which is, ‘Oh my gosh, this is so stressful,’” Fletcher shared.

Meet and learn from Andrea Fletcher in person on Dec. 6 at the Potomac Officers Club’s Healthcare Summit! Save your seat today — register here.

NOAA, BSEE Seek to Promote Environmental Sustainability of Offshore Energy Activities Through MOU
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NOAA, BSEE Seek to Promote Environmental Sustainability of Offshore Energy Activities Through MOU

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement will work together on areas with regard to environmental stewardship and energy activities on the Outer Continental Shelf under a memorandum of understanding.

The MOU supports the current administration’s commitment to advancing improvements in the environmental sustainability and safety of offshore energy development initiatives, NOAA said Thursday.

Under the agreement, areas of possible collaboration and mutual interest include environmental planning, preparedness, forecasting, monitoring and response; maritime policy coordination; ocean data and observations; science and research; outreach and engagement; compliance and enforcement; sustainability; environmental justice; and rulemaking.

NOAA Administrator Richard Spinrad and BSEE Director Kevin Sligh signed the MOU, which calls for both agencies to advance data sharing, develop additional agreements outlining cooperation on individual projects and programs and support interagency training.

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Margarita Brose Appointed SEC Deputy Chief Data Officer
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Margarita Brose Appointed SEC Deputy Chief Data Officer

Margarita Brose, agile transformation lead at the Securities and Exchange Commission since December 2015, has been appointed deputy chief data officer at the SEC.

“I am looking forward to working with Austin Gerig again, and overseeing the data governance program, as well as supporting the data management program,” Brose wrote in a recently published LinkedIn post.

Brose led the SEC’s agile transformation and program and project management community of practice for nearly eight years. This marks Brose’s second stint at the SEC, having previously served as a senior counsel at the commission’s enforcement division.

Before rejoining SEC, she served as a management consultant at IBM and PwC and as a director at Barclays and Fannie Mae.

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CISA White Paper Discusses Activities Encouraging Advanced Encryption Standard Adoption by SLTT Agencies
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CISA White Paper Discusses Activities Encouraging Advanced Encryption Standard Adoption by SLTT Agencies

Work is being carried out to encourage state, local, tribal and territorial agencies to optimize their use of federal grants to acquire, implement or expand services and equipment that enable the Advanced Encryption Standard, or AES, as a replacement for the Data Encryption Standard, or DES, according to a white paper issued Friday by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Federal Partnership for Interoperable Communication.

Due to budgetary constraints and other factors, SLTT agencies have continued to use DES rather than AES to secure land mobile radio communications even though DES is a compromised encryption algorithm, whose use has been discouraged by the National Institute of Standards and Technology since 2005, the FPIC white paper said.

The continued use of DES exposes sensitive information to unnecessary risk and disrupts interoperability with agencies using AES, the paper went on to say, adding: “The transition to AES encryption is the only solution that would provide a lowest common denominator of available interoperable encryption for LMR voice and data communications for all public safety entities at all levels of government.”

Other efforts underway to encourage the adoption of AES include coordinating with federal agencies with the aim of establishing a multi-year AES transition grant program for SLTT entities; determining whether cybersecurity funding can be repurposed to finance SLTT AES transitions; and formulating a stakeholder engagement strategy to increase awareness about the need to adopt AES.

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AFMC Forms Task Force to Accelerate Digital Materiel Management Implementation
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AFMC Forms Task Force to Accelerate Digital Materiel Management Implementation

Air Force Materiel Command has formed a new task force to advance the implementation of AFMC’s digital materiel management objectives and help drive digital transformation initiatives across the service branch.

The Digital Acceleration Task Force will focus on modernizing information technology infrastructure, establishing industry consortia, creating a DMM playbook and identifying common data standards and data sharing structures, AFMC said Friday.

DATF aims to collaborate with defense and industry partners to accelerate its efforts across all focus areas and identify best practices for acquiring and implementing digital technologies.

“By working in collaboration with the defense industrial base, we can address legacy defense processes and more rapidly implement newer, faster ways of doing business across the life cycle,” said Lt. Col. Ryan Pospisal, deputy director of DATF.

In June, AFMC released a white paper detailing its approach to harnessing the power of data, models and infrastructure to deliver warfighting capabilities.

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DOE Invites Public Comment on Proposed Acquisition Regulation Amendment
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DOE Invites Public Comment on Proposed Acquisition Regulation Amendment

The Department of Energy is inviting external comments on its plan to streamline its procurement rules in order to complement or supplement the Federal Acquisition Regulation.

In a notice published Thursday on Federal Register, DOE unveiled its proposal to eliminate obsolete policies as well as rules that are also found in FAR.

The Department of Energy Acquisition Regulation was established with the National Nuclear Security Administration to create mutual procurement rules in compliance with the Office of Federal Procurement Policy Act.

To keep the agency-specific regulation up-to-date, the Energy Department is drafting provisions including new instructions for the preparation and submission of requests for individual or class deviations from DEAR.

DOE also proposed a new section that requires contractor self-identification when communicating on the agency’s behalf, as a supplementary rule to the FAR Contractor Code of Business Ethics and Conduct.

Interested parties may submit their comments until Dec. 26, the agency said.

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Rob Wolborsky: Navy Eyeing 5G, P-LEO Satellite Constellations for Better Network Connectivity
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Rob Wolborsky: Navy Eyeing 5G, P-LEO Satellite Constellations for Better Network Connectivity

Rob Wolborsky, chief engineer at Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, said the U.S. Navy is exploring commercial technologies such as 5G and proliferated low Earth orbit satellite constellations to help advance shipboard information technology modernization and deliver network connectivity to ships at sea, Federal News Network reported Friday.

“What we’re looking at with 5G and P-LEO is the same level of transformation, but much more profound and a much greater exponential curve,” Wolborsky told FNN on an interview.

“The capability that is in orbit today is multiple orders of magnitude more bandwidth that we can deliver to the fleet and the warfighter today, and it is a catalyst for a significant amount of activity and transformation,” he added.

Wolborsky cited NAVWAR’s efforts to advance 5G adoption.

“We’re doing quite a bit of experimentation and work right now on the ships with 5G as a pier surrogate, and it’s actually demonstrating significant benefit to the fleet,” he said.

The chief engineer noted that the Starlink service has been fielded on some ships and the command has built an open architecture framework to enable the service to easily implement offerings from other satellite providers.

DOD Contracting Officers Complete 1st Immersive Commercial Acquisition Program
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DOD Contracting Officers Complete 1st Immersive Commercial Acquisition Program

The first cohort of the Defense Acquisition University’s Immersive Commercial Acquisition Program has completed the 12-month initiative that aims to educate defense contracting officers on how to acquire innovative commercial technologies effectively.

ICAP is a competitive program for defense acquisition professionals that incorporates virtual classroom and experiential learning methods to carry out prototype projects, DOD reported Friday.

The inaugural ICAP fellows are Mariluz Chan-Endres, contracting officer for the Naval Surface Warfare Center Port Hueneme; April Davison, contracting officer for the Air Force Sustainment Center Contracting Directorate; Maj. Michael Gerbasi, a contracting officer for the U.S. Army; and Maj. Shamika Woodruff, former deputy division chief at the Air Force Installation Contracting Division.

The program was launched in 2022 as part of a collaboration between DAU and the Defense Innovation Unit.

A new group of defense contracting officials will join the second cohort of ICAP to help bridge the gap between DOD and the commercial technology industry.

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CISA Highlights Promising Results of Preemptive Cybersecurity Initiatives; Eric Goldstein Quoted
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CISA Highlights Promising Results of Preemptive Cybersecurity Initiatives; Eric Goldstein Quoted

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has led the remediation of more than 12 million known exploited vulnerabilities across 102 government departments in the past two years, said Eric Goldstein, CISA’s executive assistant director for cybersecurity.

In a testimony before Congress on Wednesday, Goldstein detailed progress on programs such as the “no-notice” SILENTSHIELD program, which conducts penetration testing across federal entities to preempt hackers in finding serious network vulnerabilities in their systems.

Goldstein told the House Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection that CISA was able to deploy endpoint and detection response tools to 52 government agencies, allowing them to proactively detect and evict online intruders before they can cause harm.

Its Federal Attack Surface Test program led to the discovery of 1,000 vulnerabilities in official federal websites before they could be exploited by malicious actors. The agency also published vulnerability disclosure information relevant to industrial control systems, operational technology and medical devices in its Common Security Advisory Framework.

On Nov. 15, online security will be one of the numerous issues raised at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2023 Homeland Security Summit. Join the event by registering now.

POC - 2023 Homeland Security Summit
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