Technology

Jerry Dotson, vice president of public sector at Avaya, wrote in a commentary published Thursday on Defense Systems that Department of Defense leaders should invest in the modernization of unified communications platforms to facilitate collaboration among remote employees, address voice and video challenges and maintain military readiness.

The Department of State announced that it will work to align its IT governance with bureau missions via the IT Executive Council (ITEC), FedScoop reported Friday. The ITEC was created in April 2019. “The goal of that is to bring together all of the collective requirements of the department, so we understand what needs to be done out there,” said the State Department CIO, Stuart McGuigan.

The Senate Appropriations Committee wants the U.S. Space Force to assess the potential gap in strategic communications as the service proposes budget cuts to the Evolved Strategic Satellite Communications program and plans to push back the planned replacement of Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellites with ESS satellites to 2032, Breaking Defense reported Wednesday.

NXT Communications has established a defense division focused on delivering antenna systems to provide special forces and other warfighters with satellite communications capability while on the move.

NASA has indicated its intent to award Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) a sole-source contract to continue helping the agency operate and maintain an Earth observation satellite built to primarily measure ice sheets, according to a SAM notice posted Tuesday.

Mitre’s tech foundation Engenuity has launched a consortium to bring together government, industry and academic institutions to advance 5G innovation. Founding members of the Open Generation Consortium are Ericsson, Nokia, Verizon (NYSE: VZ), Altiostar, FIRST iZ, HUSH Aerospace, Kittyhawk, CTIA - The Wireless Association, Northeastern University and Virginia Tech.

Dennis Reilly, vice president of federal at Gigamon, said agencies should have pervasive visibility into encrypted data and data in transit across cloud, on-premises data centers and virtual environments to better protect their information technology infrastructure from cyber adversaries.

The Department of Homeland Security has asked industry to submit comments on a draft solicitation for the third iteration of the FirstSource contract for commercial information technology products and services and software platforms.

The Department of Defense issued Friday details on acquisition program cost changes for the December 2019 reporting period and said that its acquisition cost estimate for 86 programs covered by Selected Acquisition Reports for the period was $2.02T.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has expanded its unclassified geospatial intelligence delivery system with images captured by commercial small satellites. NGA said Thursday that government agencies and international allies can now access small satellite imagery from Planet Federal and BlackSky Global through the Global Enhanced GEOINT Delivery platform to support various missions.