On DoD

Improving the employee onboarding process across the Office of the Secretary of Defense

Mon, 28 Oct 2024 01:55:34 -0000

We spend a lot of time talking and about the federal hiring process and how long it takes. What gets less attention is the onboarding process: all the steps that have to happen once the hiring process is over to get new employees in a position to actually do their jobs.

Previous studies have shown the onboarding process is especially troublesome in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, a collection of 19 sub-organizations that tend to each do things their own way. From basic things like getting people signed up for benefits to issuing Common Access Cards and IT equipment, there’s not much of a structure in place to make the onboarding process efficient, so on average, it takes about 90 steps.

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks recently approved an implementation plan to modernize the onboarding process for OSD’s workforce. On this edition of On DoD, we’re joined by one of the officials will lead the effort: Danielle Metz, OSD’s chief information officer.

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Where we stand on DoD's long path toward a clean financial audit

Tue, 24 Sep 2024 18:26:00 -0000

It would be a bad idea for anyone to predict the exact year in which the Defense Department will relieve itself of its status as the only federal department unable to pass a financial audit. But the oversight body closest to the process seems to think there are glimmers of light at the end of what’s still a very long tunnel.

On this episode, a deep dive into where things stand with the DoD audit process. Our guests are Troy Robertson and Dr. Coralis Rodriguez with the DoD Inspector General's office. Both worked on the OIG's latest annual plain-language summary of the financial statement audit.

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Navy's sustainment system refocuses on real-world readiness

Thu, 25 Apr 2024 03:30:00 -0000

This episode features two discussions from the 2024 Sea Air Space conference, starting with a focus on sustainment and logistics. Over the past several years, the Navy has been using a sweeping process improvement effort to wring almost a billion dollars in savings out of its supply chains under a project called Naval Sustainment System-Supply. Now, under a 2.0 version of NSS-Supply, the focus is changing – to boosting the readiness of the Navy’s ship and aircraft fleets. For more on how it’s all going, Jared Serbu talked with Commander Kirk Engler, the director of NSS-Supply at Naval Supply Systems Command, and Melissa Olson, the project’s deputy director.

Later on the show, we’ll have some highlights from a panel Jared moderated at this year’s Sea Air Space conference on digital transformation with senior leaders from the Coast Guard, Navy and Marine Corps.

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In Japan, half of military spouse health workers unemployed amid 'shortage' of providers

Thu, 28 Mar 2024 04:54:56 -0000

Federal News Network has covered the difficulties federal employees and military members have seen when it comes to getting access to health care in Japan. On this edition of the show, we’re going to talk about that – but not just about that. We’re also going to talk about military spouse unemployment. In the case of Japan, and Okinawa specifically, the two things are very related. A new report by a volunteer group of experts called Hire Oki Spouses found there are actually plenty of spouses in Okinawa with health care expertise who could be working as nurses, for example, to solve the provider shortage there. They’re just not being hired.

On the show this time, we’re joined by two of the co-authors of the report who’ve both lived in Okinawa recently and seen a lot of these issues firsthand:

Elayne Saejung is an Air Force spouse and public health researcher

Kelly Pretorius, is Ph.D. health care researcher and licensed nurse practitioner

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Lt. Gen. Telita Crosland on the Defense Health Agency's new strategic plan

Wed, 15 Nov 2023 17:01:25 -0000

It’s been a decade of major change for the Military Health System in general, and the Defense Health Agency in particular. From its beginning as primarily a shared services provider, DHA has grown to become the sole operator of all of the military’s hospitals and clinics, the overseer of the TRICARE health plans and a central player in most other aspects of Defense health care.

On this episode of On DoD, Lt. Gen. Telita Crosland, DHA’s director, talks with Jared about the agency’s new strategic plan – including her intent to move DHA from a long period of transition to the “execution phase.”

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Commercial technologies are about to completely redefine IT capabilities in the Navy's afloat community

Thu, 26 Oct 2023 04:04:11 -0000

On this edition of On DoD, Jared talks with two leaders from the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command (NAVWAR) who are experimenting with technologies like 5G and proliferated low-earth orbit satellites. We'll talk about the massive increase in bandwidth those technologies allow and the improvements they might enable -- both for quality of life issues when sailors are underway, and for mission requirements.

Our guests:

-- Rob Wolborsky, NAVWAR's chief engineer

-- Ron Wolfe, the Navy's technical warrant holder for mobility

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Secret-level version of Microsoft 365 rolls out to top Pentagon offices as new OSD CIO marks its one-year anniversary

Fri, 20 Oct 2023 03:01:15 -0000

On this edition of On DoD: Up until a year ago, the Office of the Secretary of Defense was a bit of an outlier when it came to IT management and governance. Despite having 19,000 employees, there was no single person in charge of making sure those workers had a decent user experience, and no one in charge of delivering common IT services. That changed last October, when Danielle Metz became the OSD chief information officer. She joins Jared Serbu to talk about what’s happened and what’s ahead, including the impending rollout of Microsoft 365 at the classified level.

Later in the hour, Federal News Network’s Jason Miller talks with Leo Garciga, the Army’s new CIO. We’ll hear details about his plans to institutionalize and simplify cloud computing across the Army, and a big push to get the service to start moving toward DoD’s new JWCC cloud contract.

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Navy says it's achieved big UX improvements amid DoD effort to 'fix our computers'

Thu, 24 Aug 2023 02:53:43 -0000

Up until this summer, it wasn’t uncommon for Navy IT users, even at the most senior ranks in the Pentagon, to plan part of their mornings around the 10 minutes it took for their computers to boot. But as part of a concerted effort to improve user experience, the service has shown it’s possible to cut those maddening daily waits to only about 30 seconds.

On this episode of On DoD, Justin Fanelli, the Department of the Navy's acting chief technology officer talks with Jared about what the Navy's learned from its digital experience pilots so far, and how quickly they might be able to scale throughout the fleet.

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DoD financial management workforce gives low marks to decades-old PPBE system

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 01:07:09 -0000

The Pentagon’s decades-old planning and budgeting process doesn’t have a lot of fans – least of all the people who work within it every day.

The American Society of Military Comptrollers has been surveying the DoD financial management workforce for their views about the planning, programming, budgeting and execution process as part of a task force on PPBE reform. Among other things, ASMC found 71 percent of the workforce thinks PPBE keeps the department from quickly responding to its mission needs, and strong majorities say the information technology tools they use to plan hundreds of billions of dollars in spending each year are woefully inadequate.

On this episode of On DoD, we get an update from ASMC on the broader PPBE reform conversation -- including some new insights from the practitioners ASMC surveyed.

Our guests are:

Rich Brady, the CEO of the American Society of Military Comptrollers
Maj. Gen. Cameron Holt (Ret.), former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for contracting and member of the ASMC PPBE Reform Task Force
Michael Conlin, former DoD chief data officer and chairman of the ASMC PPBE Reform Task Force

Full results of ASMC's PPBE surveys are available in the most recent issue of the organization's quarterly journal, available at this link.

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Pentagon has a new plan for 'customer-led' IT service delivery

Thu, 08 Jun 2023 03:54:11 -0000

The Pentagon has a new plan to improve technology services inside the actual Pentagon – or big parts of it anyway. The first-ever enterprise IT implementation plan for the Office of the Secretary of Defense promises to take a user-centric approach to improving IT services for the 17 major offices that make up OSD.

Danielle Metz, the OSD chief information officer talks about the specifics in a wide-ranging discussion with Federal News Network’s Jared Serbu.

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An update on DoD's deployment of MHS Genesis

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 06:02:58 -0000

Holly Joers, the program executive officer for Defense Healthcare Management Systems talks with Federal News Network's Jared Serbu and Jason Miller about DoD's ongoing deployment of a new electronic heath record, how the new EHR will work with other federal agencies, and the centrality of data in PEO-DHMS's future mission.

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A progress report from the commission tasked with overhauling DoD's 60-year-old budgeting process

Fri, 10 Mar 2023 05:04:47 -0000

The expert commission Congress has tasked with proposing overhauls to DoD's planning and budgeting processes is still a year away from delivering its final report. But the Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Reform has already gathered a huge amount of information. In its first progress report, the commission says it’s held 27 formal meetings, interviewed 280 people and organizations, and launched research studies on more than a dozen topics.

For an update on the commission’s work, Jared Serbu talked with the panel's chair and vice chair: Bob Hale, a former DoD comptroller and chief financial officer, and Ellen Lord, a former DoD undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment.

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Air Force finds ways to bake cybersecurity into weapons systems, and bolt it on where necessary

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 04:15:07 -0000

The Air Force believes it's made significant progress toward improving the cybersecurity of its weapons systems -- both brand new ones, and systems that have been fielded for decades.

On this episode of On DoD, Jared Serbu talks with two leaders from the Air Force's Cyber Resiliency Office for Weapons Systems (CROWS) about how the Air Force is working to bake cybersecurity into new platforms, and bolt it onto the ones that have been in the inventory for decades.

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How DoD's own budget process keeps the military on the wrong side of the 'valley of death'

Wed, 21 Dec 2022 02:23:27 -0000

A new study by George Mason University's Center for Government Contracting chronicles the ways in which the Defense budgeting process has become increasingly inflexible over the last seven decades, how it's shackled technological innovation in DoD, and what to do about it.

On this episode, co-authors Jerry McGinn and Eric Lofgren talk with Jared Serbu about findings and recommendations from their report: Execution Flexibility and Bridging the Valley of Death

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Getting to work on fixes to the Pentagon's broken budgeting system

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 23:26:53 -0000

No one particularly likes the way the Defense Department andCongress handle the DoD budgeting process. It’s rigid, inflexible, and veryslow. But the PPBE process, as it’s called, has been encoded into the DNA ofthe Defense bureaucracy for more than 60 years, and turning the ship around isgoing to be very tough.

That’s why there are at least two panels of experts who’llbe working on the problem over the next year or more: one chartered by Congress, andone organized by the American Society of Military Comptrollers. On this week’sshow, Jared Serbu talks with several participants in the latter group:

-- Michael Conlin, former DoD chief data officer and chairmanof the ASMC PPBE Reform Task Force

-- George Kovatch, former DoD deputy comptroller and ASMC taskforce member

-- Maj. Gen. Cameron Holt (ret.), former deputy assistantsecretary of the Air Force for contracting, and member of the ASMC task force

-- Rich Brady, a retired Marine Corps colonel and the CEO ofASMC

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New initiatives to bring small businesses into the Army technology ecosystem, and a big acceleration of BYOD

Wed, 12 Oct 2022 22:52:24 -0000

We start this week’s show with an exclusive interview withGabe Camarillo, the undersecretary of the Army, about several new initiativesthe Army’s launching to incorporate small, innovative businesses into its technology ecosystem.

Later in the program, Kenneth McNeill, the National Guard’schief information officer, talks us about a big expansion of the Army’s pilot tolet soldiers use their personal devices to access Army networks.

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To institutionalize DevSecOps, Navy's Black Pearl aims to 'commoditize the boring stuff'

Wed, 27 Jul 2022 20:56:02 -0000

When the Navy Department set about the process of simplifying its journey to modern software development, officials decided it didn't make much sense to reinvent the wheel. So instead of building a software factory and development pipeline from scratch, they borrowed heavily from the Air Force's Platform One initiative and tailored it to the Navy's needs where necessary.

On this week's edition of On DoD, Jared Serbu talks with Manuel Gauto, the chief engineer for Black Pearl, and Bob Stevens, a vice president at Gitlab, the company that provides the development platform Black Pearl runs on.

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One reason Navy ship maintenance is taking too long: workers stuck waiting for supplies

Wed, 22 Jun 2022 20:08:23 -0000

Maintenance periods for the Navy’s ships and submarines are taking longer than they should. And there are a lot of reasons for that, but one that the Navy’s only recently discovered is that most of the supplies shipyard employees need to do the work aren’t on hand at the time the work’s supposed to start. On average, less than a third of the material needed for a given maintenance availability is even identified before the work starts.

The Navy’s trying to fix that as part of a broader logistics improvement program called Naval Sustainment System Supply (NSS-S). On this week's show, Rear Adm. Peter Stamatopoulos, the commander of Naval Supply Systems Command talks with Jared for an update on NSS-S -- including how it's tackling shipyard material availability.

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Five years into DoD financial audits, progress has stalled

Fri, 17 Jun 2022 00:57:32 -0000

The Defense Department and its components are now into their fifth year of having their financial statements independently scrutinized by independent auditors. In the first few years, there were some very promising signs that DoD was on the path to eventually earning a clean opinion, as every other federal agency has already done.

But the DoD inspector general says it’s getting more difficult to find clear signs of widespread financial improvement.

On this week's show, Marcus Gullett, the deputy assistant inspector general for audit, financial management and reporting, joins Jared to talk about the fiscal 2021 audit results, and what the OIG things DoD needs to do to get its financial improvement program back on track.

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Va. National Guard's 'Smart Weapon' aims to stop wasting airmen's time on paperwork

Thu, 19 May 2022 01:12:20 -0000

Just like innumerable other government agencies, the Air Force runs on paper-based forms that have to be filled out manually, and each one takes time. How much? That was a difficult question to answer until the Virginia Air National Guard’s 192nd Wing saw a chance to do things differently. ' Chief Master Sergeant Joe Young, who’s been leading the testing process, talks with Jared Serbu about the initiative, called HR Smart Weapon.

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Federal News Network Special Report | Nowhere safe to hide: What online harassment is doing to service members and the military

Tue, 26 Apr 2022 19:07:47 -0000

The internet is a forum for harassment that women in the military can't escape. They are being bombarded by toxic comments, vile memes and even stalking. Yet, the Pentagon has few answers for a problem that is hurting mental health and retention.In this extended special report, Federal News Network's Scott Maucione and Amelia Brust explore the problem in detail, and ask what the military services can and should be doing to address it.

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How the Pentagon's first chief software officer sees the state of software management in DoD

Wed, 06 Apr 2022 23:26:02 -0000

Jason Weiss was appointed back in January 2021 as DoD’s first-ever Chief Software Officer. Weiss has decided he’s ready to move back to the private sector. In this episode, he tells Jared Serbu about his takeaways from his tour of duty, including some of the ways DoD’s started to experiment with new funding models for software, how software factories have started to permeate the department, and how he wishes he'd had more authority to direct change. Later in the episode, Department of the Navy CIO Aaron Weis and Jennifer Edgin, the Marine Corps’ Assistant Deputy Commandant for Information talk with Jared about IT modernization in the Navy and Marine Corps.

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The logistics of fuel storage in INDOPACOM and the military's moving contract

Fri, 11 Mar 2022 04:46:51 -0000

On this episode of On DoD, a bit of a logistics focus. First, we talk with Tim Walton, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, about DoD's somewhat surprising decision to close down its Red Hill fuel storage facility near Honolulu. We'll also talk with Al Thompson, the CEO of HomeSafe Alliance. That's the company U.S. Transportation Command finally selected to reform the military's household goods moving system. HomeSafe has a green light to get to work on the multibillion dollar contract, now that the Government Accountability Office has dismissed each of the bid protests that challenged it.

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DoD's Danielle Metz on how the multibillion dollar JWCC cloud contract will actually work

Thu, 20 Jan 2022 00:21:21 -0000

On this episode, an extended discussion with Danielle Metz, the deputy DoD chief information officer for information enterprise. Metz explains how Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle will actually compete for work under the up to $9 billion contract, in an approach that's novel for government procurement. Federal News Network reported on the key details of this interview in mid-December, when the coversation was first recorded. This episode of On DoD contains the full interview.

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Army's DEVCOM takes 'future of work' from concept to reality

Fri, 31 Dec 2021 01:23:03 -0000

It’s fair to say there are a lot of institutions across government that are still figuring out what the future of work will look like. In this episode, we revisit one of the Army organizations that’s much further along than most when it comes to answering some of those questions. John Willison, the deputy to the commanding general at Army Combat Capabilities Development Command makes a second appearance on On DoD. Last April, he talked with us about what was then just a concept paper for the future of work at DEVCOM. This time, he joins us to talk about what the command has done to turn that paper into reality, including by giving supervisors “maximum flexibility” to decide when and where their employees work.

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DoD's new moving contract and the Army's new unified network plan

Thu, 18 Nov 2021 03:39:42 -0000

On this week's show, we talk to Al Thompson, the CEO of Homesafe Alliance, the joint venture U.S. Transportation Command just picked for a $6.2 billion contract to overhaul the military's household goods moving system. Later, Jared talks with Maj. Gen. Rob Collins, the Army's program executive officer for command, control and communications-tactical, Brig. Gen. Jeth Rey, the director of the Network Cross-Functional Team at Army Futures Command, amd Joe Welch, the director of the Army C5ISR center about the Army's new Unified Network Plan.

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Demystifying Other Transaction Agreements

Wed, 03 Nov 2021 22:18:17 -0000

On this edition of On DoD: a deep dive on other transactionagreements.

According to the Federal Procurement Data System DoD’s useof OTAs has skyrocketed from 342 agreements worth $1.4 billion in 2016 to 3,200agreements worth more than $16 billion in 2020. Despite that growth, the rulesgoverning OTAs – what few rules there are – aren’t universally understood eveninside the department’s own acquisition bureaucracy.

To help demystify OTAs, we’re joined by Hallie Balkin, oneof DoD’s leading experts on OTAs. She is a government procurement attorney whocurrently works at Defense Acquisition University, where she’s the learningdirector for other transactions. Balkin is also involved in an effort with theOffice of the Secretary of Defense to update and reissue DoD’s OtherTransactions Guide.

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Top priorities for two of the Pentagon's newest senior technology executives

Thu, 21 Oct 2021 01:50:43 -0000

On this edition of On DoD, Jared Serbu talks with two newly-sworn-in DoD technology leaders about their priorities: -- Heidi Shyu, the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering -- Jay Bonci, the Air Force Chief Technology Officer

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DAU leadership's take on the future of Defense acquisition

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 01:38:34 -0000

The Defense acquisition workforce has faced challenges at other times in its history, but as of 2021, it’s living in interesting times. Contracting officers, program managers and other acquisition professionals are navigating their way through some big changes. Just to name a few: a major recent rewrite of the DoD 5000.02 series of policy instructions, a massive rise in interest in other transaction agreements and other nontraditional procurement vehicles, a new “pathway” designed for software acquisition, and new ways to budget for those software procurements. On this special edition of On DoD, we’re joined by three of the key leaders who are helping to prepare the workforce for these new challenges, and who are also finding new instructional and collaboration mechanisms to provide acquisition professionals with the tools they need to meet their missions. Our guests are James Woolsey, the president of Defense Acquisition University, Frank Kelley, DAU’s vice president, and Michelle Currier, professor of contract management at DAU.

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New approach to Navy readiness gives leaders ways to measure bang for bucks

Mon, 16 Aug 2021 02:53:35 -0000

Rear Admiral Pete Stamatopoulos, the commander of Naval Supply Systems Command joins us to talk about Naval Sustainment System-Supply -- NAVSUP's effort to provide Navy leadership with a holistic and businesslike approach to the Navy's supply and maintenance decisions. Over the past year since it's been up and running, it's saved an estimated $500 million.

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Why the fighting force is 'ever shrinking' despite robust Defense budgets

Sat, 31 Jul 2021 20:09:32 -0000

On this edition of On DoD, Jared Serbu speaks with Maj. Gen. (ret.) Arnold Punaro, who's just released a new book, The Ever-Shrinking Fighting Force. Punaro, a former staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee who's advised Defense secretaries of both parties on reform issues, argues there are three main categories of cost growth that have steadily decreased the military's tooth-to-tail ratio over the last several decades, and offers several ideas for how to begin to move the balance in the other direction.

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RIP Commercial Virtual Remote, the tool that forced DoD to behave like an IT enterprise

Sat, 19 Jun 2021 01:09:59 -0000

On this week's show, Danielle Metz, the deputy DoD chief information officer for information enterprise talks with Jared Serbu about the shutdown of Commercial Virtual Remote. CVR, the service DoD created to let employees work from home at the beginning of the pandemic, was a first-ever example of the entire DoD converging around a centrally-provided IT service, at least at this scale: 2.3 million users. After a few extensions, CVR reached its sunset date on June 15, to be replaced by a federated model in which the military services and Defense agencies will move into a federated Microsoft 365 cloud environment.

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13 ways the Defense Department needs to tighten its oversight of other transaction agreements

Thu, 13 May 2021 23:02:13 -0000

If you’re curious about exactly where DoD is spending its money on other transaction agreements (OTAs), you won’t find satisfying answers in any public spending databases. When the military services award OTAs through third party consortiums, as they often do, the actual records of which contractors are receiving the awards are stored on spreadsheets in contracting offices across the country. Because of that, not even the Pentagon itself has a clear picture of the billions of dollars it’s spending on OTAs each year, or what it’s getting for its investments. Those are among the findings of a new audit by the DoD Inspector General’s office. Assistant Inspector General Theresa Hull, who led the audit, is Jared Serbu’s guest on this week’s edition of On DoD.

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Army’s top R&D command charts a course for post-pandemic telework

Wed, 31 Mar 2021 23:23:37 -0000

On this week's show, John Willison, the top civilian leader at Army Combat Capabilities Development Command joins Jared Serbu to discuss how DEVCOM is thinking about telework in a post-pandemic environment. In a recent survey, 40 percent of the command's workforce said they want to keep working remotely 100 percent of the time, and DEVCOM thinks there are a lot of good reasons to help accommodate those wishes.

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A plain language version of what DoD's latest financial audit found

Wed, 24 Mar 2021 22:48:14 -0000

The Defense Department is now onto its fourth year of full-scale financial audits. At first glance, the results from the first three years aren’t encouraging: DoD has more auditor-identified financial problems now than it did a year ago. But there are some signs of forward momentum if you know where to look. Our guest, Carmen Malone, the Deputy Assistant DoD Inspector General for Audit, discusses some of those with Jared Serbu on this week’s show.

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What DoD's new Adaptive Acquisition Framework really means

Tue, 16 Mar 2021 01:04:24 -0000

In this edition of On DoD, the Defense Acquisition University's Mike Coolican joins Jared Serbu to explain the fundamentals of DoD's new Adaptive Acquisition Framework, and why this rewrite of the 5000 series is different from past efforts.

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New financing could start to improve Army housing as soon as this summer

Thu, 11 Feb 2021 23:45:11 -0000

Under a new agreement with LendLease, a large military housing operator, $1.1 billion in debt-financed housing improvements are expected to start as soon as May across six large Army bases. To explain how the deal will work, two guests from the Army's housing partnerships office join Jared Serbu. Scott Chamberlain is the chief of capital ventures in the office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Housing and Partnerships, and Jason Kallivokas is the office’s lead financial analyst.

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The Defense Production Act and how the Biden administration might use it

Thu, 28 Jan 2021 00:26:49 -0000

The Defense Production Act is a special presidential authority we heard about quite a bit toward the beginning of the pandemic as the Trump administration used it to procure personal protective equipment, vaccine-related supplies and other materials. But President Biden has promised to take things a bit further – using the DPA to ramp up vaccine production and speed up the distribution process. On today’s show, two former Defense acquistion officials talk with Federal News Network's Scott Maucione about the DPA and how the new administration might use it. Our guests are Jerry McGinn, a former top official in DoD’s Office of Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy, and Andrew Hunter, a former director of the Joint Rapid Acquisition Cell.

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Big changes coming to how the Navy and Marine Corps buy cloud computing services

Thu, 07 Jan 2021 01:27:20 -0000

The Navy Department is making some big changes to how it buys and uses commercial cloud computing services. Within the next few months, all the Navy and Marine Corps’ cloud purchases will be funneled through a single “marketplace,” and program managers will no longer be allowed to use their own contracts to buy cloud. Jared talks with two guests from the Navy's program executive office for digital and enterprise services, which will play a pivotal role in implementing the changes. Later, the Army has a brand new strategy for how it’ll operate and modernize its installations between now and 2035. Alex Beehler, the assistant secretary of the Army for energy, installations and environment joins us to lay out the details.

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How the Navy is using data analytics, AI to boost aviation readiness

Wed, 16 Dec 2020 23:59:37 -0000

Like the other military services, the Navy has been working in recent years to improve the readiness of its aviation fleets – especially since cuts under the Budget control Act almost a decade ago dealt a serious blow to readiness. Bigger maintenance budgets over the last few years have helped, but money isn’t everything. The Navy is trying to innovate its way out of the readiness problem too, and with some success, thanks to a combination of processes borrowed from the commercial airline industry, data analytics and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence. On this week’s show, Jared Serbu talks to two of the people working to refine the Navy’s processes and apply emerging technologies to the aircraft readiness challenge. Robert Smith leads the reliability control board data analytics team at the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division in Patuxent River, Maryland, and Jason Thomas is the team’s principal analyst – he focuses on AI, modeling and simulation, and conditions-based maintenance.

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Pentagon can't fix software acquisition until it gains a better understanding of its own workforce

Fri, 04 Dec 2020 23:44:13 -0000

A new Pentagon working group is trying to bring more rigor to DoD’s management of its software acquisition workforce. But the department faces a major hurdle: it knows almost nothing about the workforce as it stands today – not even how many people are in it. The RAND Corporation recently published recommendations on how DoD can identify the workforce, and also how to build a standard competency framework for software professionals. Our guest this week is Bonnie Triezenberg, a RAND senior engineer and co-author of the report.

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Navy came late to the OTA game, but spending on IT, cyber now 'exploding'

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 00:47:59 -0000

In August, the Navy announced it was increasing the ceiling value for its Information Warfare Research Project OTA to $500 million. That’s after IWRP exhausted its initial 100 million dollar ceiling in just a little over a year and a half. To talk about how that happened and some of the technology that’s come out of IWRP since the OTA was first signed in 2018, Jared talks with two guests with us from Naval Information Warfare Center-Atlantic: Kevin Charlow, the Deputy Executive Director and chairman of the IWRP Executive Steering Group, and Don Sallee is the NIWC-Atlantic Acquisition Services Manager. Later in the program, Maj. Gen. Arnold Punaro (Ret.) joins us to talk about recent leaderships shakeups at the top of DoD's civilian leadership structure and how they might impact the presidential transition process.

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DoD's Space Development Agency shows how fast the FAR can be

Tue, 03 Nov 2020 00:15:27 -0000

The Pentagon's acquisition system often gets a bad rap -- often deservedly so. But DoD's fledgling Space Development Agency is offering the latest example in why the Federal Acquisition Regulation doesn't have to be synonymous with slowness. SDA just awarded a major multi-million dollar systems integration contract in the span of three and a half months as part of its effort to build the new National Defense Space Architecture. On this week's show, Ryan Frigm, SDA's deputy director, joins Jared Serbu to discuss the work involved in building the new satellite constellation and why the agency sees itself as a "constructive disruptor" in the space domain.

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Army cutting costs by sharing services with local communities

Thu, 08 Oct 2020 02:13:50 -0000

The Army is finding new ways to partner with the communities around its bases. Thanks to a 2015 law that lets the military services sign service agreements with local governments without the pain of traditional federal contracts, the Army has now signed dozens of Intergovernmental Service Agreements for everything from snow removal to animal control. The latest of those agreements happened just last month at Fort Stewart Georgia. Later in the program, we discuss how the Navy is using digital twins and digital threads to change the way it supports its ships. Ashley Holloway, the chief architect for the NAVSEA's Model Based Product Support program joins us for that discussion.

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Gearing up for great power competition also helped the Air Force prepare for COVID-19

Wed, 23 Sep 2020 22:28:28 -0000

On this week's program, Maj. Gen. Cameron Holt, the deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for contracting joins Jared Serbu to discuss a wide range of lessons the acquisition community learned from COVID-19.

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How the Army is rethinking its financial managment systems (it's not just an IT problem)

Wed, 09 Sep 2020 23:07:31 -0000

On this week's program, Jonathan Moak, the Army's top financial management official, and Greg Garcia, its top IT official, join Jared Serbu to discuss a new initiative to modernize the Army's approach to financial management.

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Unresolved IG recommendations piling up at DoD

Wed, 12 Aug 2020 14:00:00 -0000

Troy Meyer, DoD's principal deputy inspector general for audit joins Jared Serbu to discuss why open recommendations are headed in the wrong direction (there are now 170 that are five years old or older, compared to 80 last year). Later, we get an update on the Air Force's experiments with Enterprise IT as a Service from Maj. Gen. Kevin Kennedy, the assistant deputy Air Force CIO for digital transformation.

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Pentagon CMO claims billions more in savings as Congress seeks to eliminate the position

Thu, 09 Jul 2020 03:29:24 -0000

Lisa Hershman, DoD's chief management officer, joins Jared Serbu to discuss the role and mission of the CMO. The office only existed since 2018, but has achieved billions of dollars in savings through long-term business reforms, Hershman says. Congress is leaning toward eliminating the CMO position altogether, but Hershman says lawmakers need to give the department more time to fully prove the value of a senior official dedicated to business transformation.

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Pentagon IG offers advice for effective contracting during pandemic

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 22:58:42 -0000

With billions of dollars in CARES Act funding yet to be spent and several billion more potentially in the appropriations pipeline, it’s far too early to tell how effectively the Defense Department is spending its share of the disaster funding. But according to the Pentagon’s inspector general, DoD – and its auditors – have more than enough experience with prior emergencies to know what to do, and what not to do, to make sure money is spent well even when contracts have to be executed quickly. On this week's program, Theresa Hull, the assistant inspector general for acquisition issues joins Jared Serbu to discuss a new special report that tries to outline what the OIG considers best practices for contracting under time pressure.

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Navy aims to unify its IT networks with NGEN-R contract

Thu, 21 May 2020 01:30:02 -0000

On this week's show, Capt. Ben McNeal, the program manager for Naval Enterprise Networks talks with Jared Serbu about how the Navy hopes to use its latest NGEN contract to consolidate its networks (there are still 140 of them). Later, Maj. Gen. Arnold Punaro (Ret.) talks about the Defense Business Board's latest study on how to restructure the Pentagon's organizational chart to drive meaningful business reform.

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Federal agencies apply supercomputing resources toward COVID-19 pandemic

Wed, 22 Apr 2020 23:40:58 -0000

From modeling airflows aboard medical evacuation aircraft to simulating vaccine candidates, the Defense Department's supercomputing resources are being brought to bear on various aspects of the government's pandemic response. Dr. Will McMahon and Dr. Kevin Newmeyer from the DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program join Jared Serbu to share some examples. Later, we talk with Dr. Piyush Mehrotra, the chief of the Advanced Supercomputing Division at NASA about how his agency is contributing to the government's supercomputing consortium for COVID-19.

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Pentagon releases last of four solicitations to test 5G technologies

Wed, 08 Apr 2020 21:51:59 -0000

Last week, the Defense Department released its latest in a series of requests for prototype proposals (RPPs) to help pave the way for incorporating 5G technologies into military networks. Depending on how the project pans out, it could lead to significant improvements in how 5G networks operate in the commercial sector too. Sal D’Itri, the chairman of the spectrum consortium joins Jared Serbu to discuss the new RPP, focused on dynamic spectrum sharing, and the previous three 5G solicitations DoD has already published.

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Nearly 200 military doctors, nurses graduating early to help with coronavirus

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 22:01:06 -0000

Because of the coronavirus crisis, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences is conferring medical degrees early so those new clinicians can get to work right away. 150 M.D.s and 33 advance practice nurses got their degrees on Wednesday. Dr. Art Kellerman, the dean of USU's Hebert School of Medicine at USU joins us to talk about how the early graduation was accomplished. Also: a look at how the federal oversight community is going to be involved in the more than $2 trillion pandemic relief bill Congress just passed. And we'll discuss exactly what authorities federal agencies have under the president’s recent invocation of the Defense Production Act.

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Navy's 'RAISED' process aims to reduce cybersecurity approval processes from months to one day

Wed, 11 Mar 2020 22:22:00 -0000

The Navy is jumping on the bandwagon of federal agencies who are reforming their IT security processes to speed new capabilites through the approval process in as little as a day. That’s a far cry from the 13-18 months it currently takes new capabilities to make their way through the Navy’s implementation of the Risk Management Framework. Capt. Susan BryerJoyner joins Jared Serbu to talk about the forthcoming changes under a program called Rapid Assess and Incorporate Software Engineering in a Day (RAISED).

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Defense Innovation Unit picks 5 commerical companies to help military counter small drones

Fri, 06 Mar 2020 16:18:00 -0000

A little over three years ago, when the forerunner to what’s now called the Defense Innovation Unit was still in its infancy, one of the first projects the Pentagon asked its new Silicon Valley outpost to tackle was the emerging problem of threats from small drones. That’s partly because several well-funded startups had already started to emerge to help companies and other non-Defense customers, like stadium and critical infrastructure operators, deal with the problem of countering unmanned aerial systems (UAS). So DIU was tasked with trying to bring those commercial technologies into the Defense fold – exactly the sort of thing it was designed for. On this week's show, Lt. Col. David Willard, DIU's counter-UAS program manager joins us to talk about how things have progressed since 2016, up to the point where DoD now has five commercial companies on contract to build prototypes.

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DIU picks 5 commerical companies to help military counter small drones

Wed, 04 Mar 2020 16:05:00 -0000

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2019 Pentagon audit shows some signs of progress, OIG says

Wed, 12 Feb 2020 05:00:00 -0000

After its first two years of full-scale financial audits, the Defense Department is starting to get some of its first concrete indications of how much work likes ahead of it before it can finally earn a clean audit opinion. And according to DoD’s inspector general, there are clear signs of progress – though they’re not necessarily to be found in the number of audit findings the department has been able to fix. On this week's show, Carmen Malone, the Deputy Assistant Inspector General for Audit joins Jared Serbu to discuss the plain-language summary the OIG just released on DoD's 2019 audit findings.

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Pivotal year for overhaul of Army's contracting IT systems

Wed, 05 Feb 2020 05:00:00 -0000

For almost a decade now, Congress has been pressing the Defense department to modernize and consolidate the IT systems it uses to write contracts. This is a pivotal year in accomplishing that: The Army is beginning to roll out its new Army Contract Writing System, and the Navy is expected to follow shortly thereafter with one that's based on the same commercial product. On this week’s show, we talk with Cherie Smith, the Army’s program executive officer for enterprise information systems, and Stuart Hazlett, the deputy assistant secretary of the Army for procurement, about how the two services are working together, why this procurement got off to a rocky start, and the potential for how it could change things if all goes well. This interview is part of a broader report on the contract writing system changes. For the bigger picture, check out Jason Miller's related story.

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Army's Project Sentinel aims to fix authorization bottleneck for IT systems

Wed, 22 Jan 2020 05:00:00 -0000

It’s been five years since the Defense Department adopted the Risk Management Framework to assess the cybersecurity of its IT systems. It was a rough ride at first, but DoD organizations have started to work the bugs out. The Army has just launched a three-phase RMF reform effort called Project Sentinel. Nancy Kreidler, the director of cybersecurity and information assurance in the Army CIO’s office talked with Federal News Network’s Jared Serbu about what the Army’s changing, and why.

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Family and supply chain issues join Pentagon's top management challenges this year

Wed, 04 Dec 2019 05:00:00 -0000

The Defense Department Inspector General has released its annual list of the top ten management challenges facing the Pentagon. Most of the items in the 2020 edition are familiar: shoring up financial management, countering challenges from China, Russia, and global terrorist networks, and defending DoD networks from cyber threats. But there are two new entries this year: One deals with taking care of servicemembers and families. The other points toward the Pentagon’s need to securing and better manage its supply chain. On this week’s show, Brett Mansfield, Senior Advisor to the DoD Inspector General, and Courtney Fones, the IG’s Program Director for Audit join Jared Serbu to discuss the specifics behind those two additions.

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Maj. Gen. Peter Gallagher and Maj. Gen. David Bassett on the Army's integrated tactical network

Tue, 26 Nov 2019 05:00:00 -0000

It’s been a little more than two years since the Army’s chief information officer memorably declared that the battlefield network it has is not the network it needs. Now the service is nearly ready to start buying significant quantities of equipment to start constructing a network it believes will keep pace with technology and survive on a modern battlefield. On this week's show, Maj. Gen. Peter Gallagher, the director of the Army’s Network Cross Functional Team and Maj. Gen. David Bassett, the program executive officer for command, control and communications-tactical (PEO-C3T) join Jared Serbu to talk about what's next for the integrated tactical network. Also, Brian Dunbar, the assistant director of security for National Counterintelligence and Security Center talks with Federal News Network’s Nicole Ogrysko about major changes to the federal security clearance process as part of the government's Trusted Workforce 2.0 initiative.

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With new ad campaign, Army wants to highlight its 'breadth and depth'

Fri, 08 Nov 2019 05:00:00 -0000

The Army’s newly-christened marketing office is set to launch its first ad campaign on Monday, and if there’s one consistent theme that ties the multi-platform messaging strategy together, it’s that the Army wants to pivot from reinforcing what people already know about military service to educating them about what they don’t. Brig. Gen. Alex Fink, the chief of the Army Enterprise Marketing office joins Jared Serbu to talk about the campaign and the standup of the new marketing operation.

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Dr. Bruce Jette, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology

Wed, 23 Oct 2019 03:00:00 -0000

Dr. Bruce Jette, the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology sits down with Jared Serbu for a wide-ranging discussion on the Army's intellectual property strategy, advanced manufacturing, and how the service's modernization bureaucracy has changed with the standup of Army Futures Command

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How the Army will 'ruthlessly' enforce its forthcoming data strategy

Thu, 26 Sep 2019 03:00:00 -0000

On this edition of On DoD, Lt. Gen. Bruce Crawford, the Army's Chief Information Officer/G6 talks with Jared Serbu about the Army's forthcoming data strategy -- and the new standards the service will use to enforce it.

Later, Scott Maucione talks with Molly Dunigan and Steve Dalzell, two senior political scientists at the RAND Corporation, about new research into methods the military's reserve components might use to alleviate shortfalls in some critical skill areas.

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Building a 'Digital Air Force'

Wed, 11 Sep 2019 03:00:00 -0000

On this week's show, an extended discussion with Matthew Donovan, the undersecretary of the Air Force, and Gen. Stephen Wilson, the service's vice chief of staff. They discussed the rollout of the "Digital Air Force" initiative with Federal News Network's Scott Maucione.

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Navy's new 'strategic' approach to supplier management

Fri, 30 Aug 2019 03:00:00 -0000

For decades, the Navy’s relationship with its spare parts suppliers has been relatively straightforward: when the service needs a batch of items, it places an order, and industry fulfills it. But officials at Naval Supply Systems Command say they’ve come to realize that arms-length transactional approach doesn’t give the Navy nearly enough insight into the health of its supply chain, nor does it give vendors enough of a view into the military’s long-term needs. Karen Fenstermacher, NAVSUP's executive for strategic initiatives joins us to talk about how the command is trying to build deeper relationships involving more communication with vendors through its Strategic Supplier Relationship Management program.

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DoD IG's ADR program yields major increase in resolved whistleblower claims

Thu, 25 Jul 2019 03:00:00 -0000

In the Defense world, formal investigations rarely substantiate whistleblower retaliation claims, especially those from contractor employees. But a new alternative dispute resolution program has already resolved more than 80. Nilgun Tolek, the DoD OIG's director of whistleblower reprisal joins Jared Serbu to discuss the ADR program.

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Army to select three vendors to start overhauling IT on its bases

Wed, 17 Jul 2019 03:00:00 -0000

First on this weeks show, officials from Army Cyber Command and the Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems join Jared Serbu to talk about the kickoff of the Army's Enterprise IT-as-a-Service pilot, which will begin the process of outsourcing network services on Army installations. Later, Lt. Gen. Dorothy Hogg, the Air Force Surgeon General joins us to discuss the new health care delivery model the Air Force is implementing, partly in response to possible staff reductions in the service's uniformed medical corps.

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Army Secretary Mark Esper; Maj. Gen. Cedric Wins, commander, Combat Capability Development Command

Wed, 12 Jun 2019 03:00:00 -0000

The Army is front and center in this episode. We begin with an exclusive interview with Mark Esper, the Army secretary. Later, Maj. Gen. Cedric Wins from the Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command discusses where artificial intelligence fits in with the Army's near-and-long-term modernization plans.

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Modernizing military training in the sea services

Wed, 22 May 2019 03:00:00 -0000

A special edition of On DoD, featuring an abridged version of a panel discussion Jared Serbu moderated at this year’s Navy League Sea-Air-Space expo in National Harbor, Maryland. This conversation is focused on personnel, and specifically, what the sea services say is a coming revolution in how military training is conducted.

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The Air Force's new plan to dig out of a $33 billion facility maintenance backlog

Thu, 04 Apr 2019 02:00:00 -0000

Like the other military services, the Air Force has knowingly underfunded its facility maintenance accounts in recent years while its O&M budgets have been squeezed. But officials have come to the conclusion that they'll never reverse the trend of buildings steadily falling into disrepair without both more money and a new scheme to prioritize funds. Richard Hartley, the Air Force’s principal deputy assistant secretary for installations, environment and energy talks with Federal News Network's Scott Maucione about the service's newly-released Infrastructure Investment Strategy.

Later, The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency thinks social media platforms might be able to teach the R&D community a thing or two about how to quickly connect information from around the globe. DARPA's John Main talks with Jared Serbu about a new platform called Polyplexus.

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A narrowing supply base for spare parts challenges the Pentagon

Thu, 14 Mar 2019 03:00:00 -0000

It’s not easy for DoD contracting officers to determine whether they’re getting fair and reasonable prices, particularly when they’re dealing with relatively small-dollar value transactions where there is only one supplier. That's according to a new DoD IG audit, which found one supplier, Transdigm, marked up its parts by as much as 4,400 percent.

Theresa Hull, the assistant inspector general for acquisition joins us to discuss the findings and the IG's recommendations for broader reform.

Later, Capt. Matthew Friedell, project officer at the Marine Corps Advanced Manufacturing Operations Cell talks with Federal News Network’s Scott Maucione about the Marines’ new 24/7 help center for 3D printing.

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Why the Pentagon invested research dollars into warp drive, wormholes and invisibility cloaking

Thu, 07 Mar 2019 05:00:00 -0000

We’re turning this week’s show over to Federal News Network’s Jason Miller, who recently talked to several experts about a recently-released DIA report that listed more than three dozen research reports the agency funded as part of something called the Advanced Aerospace Threat and Identification Program.

The technologies ranged from the somewhat-plausible to physics-defying. On the far end of the spectrum: manipulation of other dimensions, “warp” propulsion, and travel through wormholes.

Jason talked to three S&T observers about the value of these sorts of projects: Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, whose FOIA request uncovered the list in the first place; August Cole, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council; and John Amble from West Point’s Modern War Institute.

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The Navy's new approaches to identity management, cloud computing

Wed, 20 Feb 2019 05:00:00 -0000

On this week's program, two senior Navy IT officials join Jared Serbu to talk about the service's latest plans for identity and cloud computing. Capt. Ben McNeal, the program manager for Naval Enterprise Networks (PMW-205), discusses the Navy's move to derived credentials on mobile devices and the role identity will play in network security going forward. Later, Travis Methvin, the project manager for Navy Commercial Cloud Services (PMW-270), talks with Jared about his new office and its role in helping Navy organizations migrate their legacy systems to the cloud.

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The 6 most serious problems uncovered by DoD's first financial audit

Wed, 30 Jan 2019 05:00:00 -0000

The documentation accompanying DoD's first-ever financial audit is tough for non-auditors to decipher. But as part of its work this year, the DoD Inspector General also released an explanation of the results in layman's language; it also pointed out what the IG believes are the six most significant material weaknesses the audit uncovered.

Carmen Malone, the Deputy Assistant Inspector General for Audit and Financial Management Readiness, talks with Jared Serbu to break down those six areas of concern.

Later in the program, Alba Aleman, the CEO of Citizant joins us to talk about how her firm survived the latest government shutdown, and what companies can do to prepare for the next one.

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Pentagon's top management challenges; Navy's latest plan for "maritime superiority"

Wed, 02 Jan 2019 05:00:00 -0000

We have two guests on this week's show:

Brett Mansfield, senior advisor to the Principal Deputy DoD Inspector General talks with Jared Serbu about DoD's top ten management challenges for 2019.

Also, Adm. John Richardson, the Chief of Naval Operations, talks with Scott Maucione about the newest iteration of the Navy's Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority. The Navy released a "2.0" version of the document in December.

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JEDI protests: one down, but possibly several more to go

Wed, 28 Nov 2018 05:00:00 -0000

The Defense Department has survived the first protest of its JEDI Cloud contract. But there’s at least one more – and mostly likely several more – still to come. Lauren Brier, an associate attorney with The Federal Practice Group joins us to talk about the legal issues involved in the protest Oracle filed, and why losing bidders might have more luck challenging the procurement after an award is made.

Later, Jim Langevin (D-R.I.), the presumptive incoming chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on emerging threats and capabilities joins us to discuss his oversight and legislative priorities for the new Congress.

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Two senior officials describe what's next for the Army's tactical network

Wed, 31 Oct 2018 03:00:00 -0000

It has been a little over a year since the Army began making some fairly monumental changes to its IT networks, including by cancelling the $6 billion dollar Warfighter Information Network Tactical (WIN-T). Two of the senior Army leaders who’ve been working on what's next join us to talk about what's happened in the months since the Army determined that the network it has is not the network it needs.

Later, we discuss organizational and training changes in Army cyber and electronic warfare with Maj. Gen. John. Morrison, the commanding general of the Army Cyber Center of Excellence at Fort Gordon, Ga.

Also, a brief discussion with Marten Mickos, the CEO of HackerOne, on DoD's latest round of contract awards to expand its "Hack the Pentagon" initiative.

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DoD's Joint Task Force Civil Support has a small footprint in a no-fail mission

Thu, 11 Oct 2018 03:00:00 -0000

If you’ve never heard of a Defense Department organization called Joint Task Force Civil Support, that’s understandable. And arguably, it’s a good thing. JTF-CS may be the smallest task force in the military’s force structure: its headquarters at Fort Eustis, Virginia, has less than 200 people working there, and it's main mission is to organize the military’s response to a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack in the United States. Our guest this week is Maj. Gen. Bill Hall, who became the commander of JTF-CS earlier this year. He says he's wanted to command the task force ever since he learned of its existence a decade or so ago. He talked with Jared Serbu about why that's the case.

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To improve civilian personnel system, DoD says it needs to start with it HR workforce

Sun, 30 Sep 2018 03:00:00 -0000

The general topic of human capital management has been on the Government Accountability Office's list of federal "high risk" areas since 2001. But the Defense Department has come to the conclusion that deficiencies in its own HR workforce is one significant factor. The HR profession, itself, is at high risk, officials say. On this week's show, Veronica Hinton, DoD's deputy chief human capital officer talks with Jared Serbu about a new effort to reinvigorate the HR workforce with new training, more strategic management, and perhaps, eventually, a simplified regulatory structure.

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Army uses unconventional challenge process to advance data science for electronic warfare

Wed, 12 Sep 2018 03:00:00 -0000

The Army wants to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to help its electronic warfare officers sort out signal from noise on the battlefield. And to pick the best solutions, it’s using an innovative approach. Instead of a traditional procurement, it gave industry and academia a set of challenges, using real-world data from Army sensors. Rob Monto, the Emerging Technologies Director for the Army Rapid Capabilities Office, joins Jared Serbu to talk about the results.

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Pentagon IG highlights more than 1,500 open recommendations, some dating back a decade

Wed, 22 Aug 2018 03:00:00 -0000

For the second year in a row, the Defense department’s inspector general has just released a “compendium” of open recommendations. The document is a list of all the recommendations the DOD IG has issued to the Pentagon that have gone unresolved for a year or more. There are 1,558 of them, including 56 that have been open for at least five years. The compendium also singles out 33 recommendations that the IG says could save the department $2.3 billion dollars if DoD implemented them. Troy Meyer, the assistant DoD inspector general for audit joins us to discuss the compendium. Also, the Defense Department recently announced it’s changing the name of its Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, dropping the word “experimental.” The Pentagon says the change reflects the “permanence” of what’s now called DIU and the ongoing need to engage with nontraditional firms in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. But there’s more going on than just a name change. Sean Heritage, DIU’s acting managing partner, joins us to share details.

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Army begins moving cyber exercises from sterile "ranges" to a real city

Wed, 15 Aug 2018 03:00:00 -0000

The Army already owns what amounts to fully-functional city it uses that it uses for traditional military training events in southeastern Indiana. But until recently, it hasn't been used for cyber training. Officials have high hopes that a new set of exercises at Muscatatuck Urban Training Center will give cyber protection teams a much more realistic training experience than they'd get at the "cyber ranges" DoD currently operates. Ed Skoudis and John Nix from the SANS institute join us to discuss the "Cybertropolis" environment SANS has been helping the Army build in southeastern Indiana. Also on this week's show, Chris Cornillie from Bloomberg Government talks with Jared about Bgov's latest analysis on DoD's spending on other transation agreements. And Bill Woods joins us from the Government Accountability Office to talk about GAO's latest recommendations to revitalize DoD's moribund processes for buying commercial goods and services.

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The biggest challenges in setting up the new Army Futures Command are still ahead

Wed, 01 Aug 2018 03:00:00 -0000

Ever since they first announced the idea last Fall, Army leaders have intended the new Army Futures Command to serve as a single entity to oversee the service's sprawling acquisition and modernization bureaucracy. AFC is now up and running in Austin, but the hardest parts of achieving the initial vision are yet to be accomplished. Our guest this week is Lt. Gen. Eric Wesley, the commander of the Army Futures task force that's been leading the design of the new command. He talked with Jared Serbu about governance and cultural challenges the Army still faces.

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A few of the acquisition experts who helped inform our series on other transaction authorities

Wed, 25 Jul 2018 03:00:00 -0000

On this week’s edition of On DoD, we go a bit deeper into Federal News Radio’s series, Danger at High Speed: OTAs in Action. This edition of the program features some of the extended interviews Scott Maucione conducted with acquisition experts as part of the reporting process for his two-part series on the Defense Department’s use of acquisition authorities: -- Angela Styles, a former administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, now a partner at Bracewell. -- David Berteau, the president of the Professional Services Council and a former assistant secretary of Defense for logistics and materiel readiness -- Scott Amey, the general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight

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With an emphasis on speed, Navy's $100 million OTA for information warfare aims for two-way relationship with IT innovators

Wed, 18 Jul 2018 03:00:00 -0000

For the Navy, a new $100 million other transaction agreement focusing on information warfare isn’t just a way to turn government requirements into prototypes and fielded products at a faster clip than is possible under Federal Acquisition Regulation. It is that, but the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command sees the value in the Information Warfare Research Project as a way to pull new ideas from industry at the same time it’s asking companies to solve specific problems. Bill Deligne, the deputy executive director of SPAWAR's Systems Center Atlantic joins Jared Serbu to talk about IWRP's objectives, including how it plans to maintain proper governance and oversight in the world of OTAs, where most of the government's usual acquisition rules don't apply.

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DoD's latest plan to manage its "total force" of servicemembers, civilians and contractors

Wed, 27 Jun 2018 03:00:00 -0000

Last year, the White House called on all federal agencies to draw up plans to reduce the government's civilian workforce. The Defense Department responded with a plan that explicitly rejected the presumption that civilian employees are too numerous, calling them an essential part of the total force, and asserting it needs more of them, not fewer. In this week's edition of On DoD, Thomas Hessel, the department's deputy director for total force manpower and resources joins Jared Serbu to discuss what the Pentagon has termed a "bold shift" in its approach to managing civilian employees.

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NAVSUP looks for ways to turn data into better business decisions

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 03:00:00 -0000

Naval Supply Systems Command is not suffering from a lack of data. But the information it holds about its responsibilities to move food, parts and supplies around the world tends to be unstructured, trapped in legacy IT systems, and not used on a day-to-day basis to help the command make better business decisions. NAVSUP is exploring ways to change that via a pair of prototype programs, both focused on the way the command does its contracting. Kurt Wendelken, NAVSUP's assistant commander for supply chain IT talks with Federal News Radio's Jared Serbu about the prototypes, and the workforce's role in helping to develop them.

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Section 809 panel's recommendations not just sitting on the shelf

Tue, 12 Jun 2018 06:00:00 -0000

The Section 809 Panel -- the commission Congress chartered to study reforms to the federal acquisition system -- is already seeing some of its work reflected in federal legislation. The House's version of the 2019 Defense authorization bill includes several provisions that closely match the changes commissioners recommended in the first volume of their report, and there are still two more volumes to come. On this week's edition of On DoD, we hear from several Section 809 panel members about the rationale behind the reforms that made their way into the House's NDAA.

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Amid mandate to move to milCloud, DISA offers tools to smooth the transition

Wed, 16 May 2018 03:00:00 -0000

DISA's milCloud 2.0 is about to get a wave of new customers, thanks to a Pentagon mandate to move "fourth estate" applications to the new service.

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In DoD, a new approach to testing weapons systems for cybersecurity

Mon, 14 May 2018 03:00:00 -0000

In this week's edition of On DoD, Robert Behler, the Defense Department's new Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, talks with Jared Serbu about new procedures the department is using to test the cybersecurity of its systems. The processes include a new push to track DoD's IT supply chain, and an increased emphasis on how resilient its weapons systems will be to the cyber attacks they'll inevitably face.

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A conversation with the personnel chiefs of each of the sea services

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 03:00:00 -0000

A special edition of On DoD: This week's program is an abridged version of a panel discussion at the annual Sea Air Space conference with the personnel chiefs of the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard, moderated by Jared Serbu.

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How the Army plans to compress its IT acquisition process into under a month

Wed, 04 Apr 2018 03:00:00 -0000

Some members of Congress and some corners of the Defense Department have become enamored of the idea of using other transaction authorities instead of traditional contracts as the way to force the DoD acquisition system to move as quickly as its appetite for technology. But OTAs, in and of themselves, are not the magic bullet for speedier acquisitions. That, at least, is the Army’s take when it comes to acquiring new tools to defend its networks. On this week's show, Scott Helmore, the Army's product manager for defensive cyberspace operations talks with us about the various other pieces of the acquisition bureaucracy puzzle the Army had to get right before it could settle on a speedier process for acquiring new cyber tools, one that it believes will successfully operate in cycles of 30 days or less.

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DoD Inspector General Glenn Fine; Army uses IT to make its headquarters orgs more efficient

Wed, 21 Mar 2018 03:00:00 -0000

Glenn Fine, the Defense Department’s principal deputy inspector general joins us in the first half of this week's show to talk about the audit of DoD’s consolidated financial statements, and some of the internal changes his own office has made to earn it a new award as the "most improved" place to work among DoD sub-agencies. We also talk with officials from the Army's Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems about a new electronic tool that's making the process of moving paper and tasks around the Pentagon dramatically more efficient.

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How DoD is using Code.mil to kickstart open source software for Defense

Wed, 14 Mar 2018 03:00:00 -0000

Under this year’s Defense authorization bill, the Defense Department has until June to start moving much of its custom-developed software source code to a central repository and begin managing and licensing it via open source methods. The mandate might prove daunting for an organization in which open source practices are relatively scarce, especially considering that, until recently, there was no established open source playbook for the federal government. That’s begun to change, however, with the Office of Management and Budget’s Code.gov, and its DoD corollary, Code.mil, run by the Defense Digital Service (DDS). Jordan Kasper and Ari Chivukula, two engineers on the Code.mil team join Jared Serbu to talk about open source software in DoD and Code.mil's February "relaunch."

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Rear Adm. Danelle Barrett, Navy CIO on cloud computing and "Compile-to-Combat in 24 hours"

Wed, 28 Feb 2018 05:00:00 -0000

Rear. Adm. Danelle Barrett, the Navy’s chief information officer is our guest for the full hour this week.

She and Jared Serbu spend the bulk of the hour discussing some major changes her office has just directed to reorient the way the Navy buys commercial cloud computing services.

Also, a new pilot program the Navy’s launching this spring: “Compile-to-Combat in 24 Hours.” As the name implies, the idea is to deliver new software capabilities to ships in less than a day, rather than the 18 months it takes to deploy new systems right now.

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Amid wave of Army data center closures, ALTESS is "staging area" for apps not ready to move to cloud

Wed, 14 Feb 2018 16:00:00 -0000

It’s now been a little over a year since the secretary of the Army issued a highly-prescriptive directive telling its commands and installations exactly which IT systems needed to move from which data centers, which data centers had to be closed, and when. But it became clear pretty quickly that a lot of those applications just weren’t ready to move. In many cases, their design was too antiquated to run in a modern cloud computing environment. One solution to that problem has been ALTESS, something of a hybrid between a traditional data center and a cloud environment operated by the Army in Radford, Virginia. Jared Serbu discusses more On DoD from Federal News Radio.

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Air Force's new Installation and Mission Support Center marks full operational capability; IBM brings AI into Army logistics

Wed, 27 Sep 2017 18:01:00 -0000

On this week's show: The new command the Air Force announced three years ago to centralize its installation management and other support functions reaches its full operating capability. Maj. Gen. Brad Spacy, the commander of Installation and Mission Support Center joins us to talk about what the center's done to make the Air Force more efficient and effective.Also, Kevin Aven from IBM joins us with details on a $135 million contract the firm just won to support the Army's Logistics Support Activity (LOGSA). Watson, the company's artificial intelligence platform, will play a key role.

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Army sets out on two-year effort to standardize IT in combat formations

Wed, 13 Sep 2017 18:01:00 -0000

On this week's show, three guests from the Army's program management office for Mission Command join us to discuss an ambitious, two-year effort to upgrade the hardware and software used by some 400 Army units to a common baseline. Joining us are Col. Troy Crosby, the project manager for Mission Command, David Meickle, a Product Support Manager with PM Mission Command, and Niraj Kadakia, Deputy Product Manager for PM Mission Command's Strategic Mission Command.

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Cybersecurity: Elevating CYBERCOM, and DoD's latest bug bounty

Wed, 23 Aug 2017 18:01:00 -0000

On this weeks show, we discuss three cyber topics: President Trumps long-awaited decision on the future of U.S. Cyber Command, the results of Hack the Air Force, DoD's latest bug bounty, and a federal lawsuit which claims a DoD-operated website is putting servicemember and veterans personal data at risk.

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Michael McGhee, Executive Director, Army Office of Energy Initiatives

Fri, 14 Jul 2017 18:01:00 -0000

The Army's Office of Energy Initiatives is the service's central hub for managing the financing and planning for "utility scale" renewable and alternative energy projects. Michael McGhee, OEI's executive director, talks with Jared Serbu about some of the major projects in the pipeline, and the Army's desire to use the power they generate to make its bases energy-independent.

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Rear Adm. David Hahn, Chief of Naval Research

Wed, 21 Jun 2017 15:01:00 -0000

Rear Adm. David Hahn, the chief of Naval research joins Jared Serbu to discuss the Navy's Concept Challenge: a call to the public for "leap-ahead" technologies.

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Sailor 2025: 40+ initiatives to help the Navy compete for talent

Wed, 31 May 2017 15:01:00 -0000

Our guest this week is Vice Adm. Robert Burke, the chief of naval personnel. He talks with us about progress so far in a Navy personnel reform initiative called Sailor 2025, including ongoing efforts to modernize the Navy's performance evaluation and information technology systems.

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Hacking the Air Force; Moving the Army to the cloud

Wed, 03 May 2017 15:01:00 -0000

In this week's edition of On DoD, Peter Kim, the Air Force's chief technology officer, Alex Rice, the CTO at HackerOne, and Reina Staley, the chief of staff of the Defense Digital Service join is to talk about the latest of DoD's bug bounties: Hack the Air Force. Well also talk about changes in how the Army buys cloud computing services as part of a broader effort to shut down expensive, government-owned data centers.

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Experts assess the legacy of DoD's Better Buying Power initiatives

Wed, 01 Mar 2017 09:01:00 -0000

This week's edition of On DoD is part of a Federal News Radio special report: Defense Acquisition at a Crossroads. We'll hear from several Defense acquisition experts to hear their assessments of what DoD accomplished with its Better Buying Power initiatives.

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