GovConJudicata Weekly Debrief (2/3–7)
This week's Weekly Debrief covers the multi-billion dollar CIA cloud, Space Force, election security, ODNI's updated counterintelligence strategy, and how NIST is exploring data security.
CIA
"The Central Intelligence Agency released a draft request for proposal Wednesday for its Commercial Cloud Enterprise, or C2E contract. Obtained by Nextgov, the draft RFP indicates C2E will be a multi-award commercial cloud computing contract with a five-year base period and two five-year options for a period of performance of up to 15 years. The draft RFP does not indicate an expected value, but the CIA estimated C2E would be worth “tens of billions” of dollars in contracting documents released last April."
Space Force
"You’ve got to enjoy the remarkable efforts going into building the new Space Force. Since Congress created the new service in December last year, only Gen. Jay Raymond, chief of space operations, has been sworn in as a member. That’s because Air Force and other services’ officers must formally resign their commissions before being transferred to the Space Force, but they and the enlisted people must have defined jobs and pay scales before they can be assigned. And that requires Congress to pass laws governing the service."
"There are soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen. But what do you call members of the U.S. Space Force? Top Pentagon leaders still don’t know, a month after the 2020 Defense Authorization Act ushered in the military’s newest branch. But they’re crowdsourcing options and hope to settle on an answer soon."
Election Security
"The latest Senate report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, released Feb. 6, contained several broad recommendations for how the government can improve effectiveness in securing American elections. While the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s third volume lists seven recommendations for correcting shortfalls made by the Obama administration in responding to Russian election interference, the federal government has already made progress in several of the recommended areas since the committee started its report."
ODNI
"The Office of the Director of National Intelligence will release a new counterintelligence strategy next Monday that takes a long-term approach to nation-state threats. Bill Evanina, the director of ODNI’s National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said the strategy will focus on a “whole of society” response to these threats that extends beyond the federal government."
NIST
"The cybersecurity leaders at the National Institute of Standards and Technology want industry help on two new projects related to data confidentiality. In a Feb. 4 notice in the Federal Register, NIST’s National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, a hub for private-public collaboration on cybersecurity projects, released its first call for industry to “provide products and technical expertise to support and demonstrate security platforms” for NIST’s work in identifying cybersecurity challenges as part of its Data Confidentiality Building Block."
. . .
