GovConJudicata Weekly Debrief (8/14–18)
This week's Weekly Debrief covers securing Army's clouds, the Organic Industrial Base, NASA's mission to study the Arctic ice caps, space mining, and GAO's snapshot of FY22 contracting.
Defense
"As the Army adopts more large cloud services, one senior officer warns that some of the tricks and easy solutions for fast software development that work in the private sector, such as open code libraries, won’t work for the military without extra security."
"With the US Army preparing to invest nearly $4.5 billion over the next 15 years to modernize its Organic Industrial Base (OIB) in order to support a next-generation vehicle fleet, an Army officer said Thursday those dollars will be prioritized towards improvements in tooling, machinery, energy consumption and cybersecurity."
NASA
"NASA is teaming up with US-based launch service provider Rocket Lab to research naturally occurring radiation at the Arctic and its implications for the climate crisis. The publicly traded company announced yesterday (14 August) that it will help NASA launch two small satellites to a 525km circular low Earth orbit from the Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand from May 2024."
"Our small steps back to the moon today could build a rich new industry. There's lots of buzz about mining the moon. Satellites have spotted water at the lunar south pole. There could also be minerals lying underneath. Moreover, NASA is leading an international Artemis Accords plan to send excursion missions to the surface in the next decade, both crewed and robotic."
Contracting
"While the federal workforce performs a wide range of duties, federal agencies also enter into contracts with outside companies and organizations. These contracts are used to provide products and services ranging from aircraft and software to food service and health care. In Fiscal Year 2022, the federal government committed about $694 billion on contracts, an increase of about $3.6 billion from FY 2021 after adjusting for inflation."
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