PEO Pulse - April 24, 2020

►► PEO PULSE - April 23, 2020 

The "PEO Pulse" is a weekly digest of relevant news, recent PEO EIS events and updates to keep our workforce informed.   

►► UPCOMING EVENTS 

• Postponed - PEO EIS Newcomers Brief (originally scheduled for May 13) 

• May 26 - PEO EIS Lunch and Learn 

►► CONGRESS 

The House passed the $484B Stimulus Bill yesterday by a vote of 388-5. The package includes provisions for small businesses, hospitals and testing to battle Coronavirus. The President is expected to sign the bill.  

►► AROUND EIS 

GFEBS-SA DEPLOYS CLASSIFIED BUSINESS SYSTEM TO NATIONAL GROUND INTELLIGENCE CENTER (NGIC) DURING COVID-19 

(Apr. 23) The General Fund Enterprise Business System – Sensitive Activities (GFEBS-SA) fielded and went “live” with the classified version of the Army’s accounting, financial management and auditability software system to about 100 initial users at the National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC) on Wednesday, April 15, 2020.  

PM DCATS LEADS MODERNIZATION OF ARMY INSTALLATION PUBLIC SAFETY COMMUNICATIONS 

(Apr. 23) The Project Manager Defense Communications and Army Transmissions Systems (PM DCATS) recently conducted a two-day “scrum” meeting at the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) on Fort Belvoir to address the emerging public safety communication requirements for Army installations worldwide. 

CVR ENVIRONMENT 

The Commercial Virtual Remote (CVR) Environment was created to help unify the DoD community and provide telework capabilities from anywhere in the world during the COVID-19 National Emergency. Launched this month, the CVR can be used to chat, meet with audio and video, and work collaboratively on files. Registration is ongoing—look for an email with instructions.  Please note you have 14 days to register before it expires.  

MICROSOFT 365 

Unified Capabilities account holders will be migrated from the AT&T hosted cloud environment to the new Army UC SCSS Skype On-line service hosted out of MS Office 365. This change is largely transparent to users as the Skype for Business (SfB) client loaded on your computer will automatically point to O365 the next time you log-in.  The UC SCSS Help Desk is asking that for user experience feedback for this migration: usarmy.belvoir.peo-eis.mbx.uc-scss-att@mail.mil. 

►► ARMY 

US ARMY CONFIDENT ANY TECH SCHEDULE SLIPS ARE RECOVERABLE 

(Defense News, Apr. 23, Joe Gould) The U.S. Army is girding for modernization program delays and a rise in acquisition costs as the coronavirus pandemic ripples across its installations and through its network of suppliers.    

COVID-19 WON’T SLOW NEW ARMY WEAPONS: MCCARTHY, MURRAY, JETTE 

(Breaking Defense, Apr. 23, Sydney Freedberg) The Army and its contractors are coping with the COVID-19 pandemic so well that the service expects no delay in the fielding of future weapons, the Army Secretary and his two top modernization officials told reporters today. The “rigorous” review of acquisition programs for the 2022 budget request is also still on schedule, Sec. Ryan McCarthy said.   

ARMY TO TEST PROTOTYPE COVID 19 VACCINE ON HUMANS IN SEPTEMBER, AFTER MICE TRIAL 

(Warrior Maven, Apr. 21, Kris Osborn) Army scientists plan to start testing new COVID 19 vaccines on humans as soon as this coming September, if small animals -- such as mice now being tested -- succeed in developing antibodies after receiving a new prototype vaccine. 

ARMY AWARDS FIRST TWO PRIZES FOR COVID-19 VENTILATOR CHALLENGE 

(Inside Defense, Apr. 24, Jaspreet Gill) The Army today selected two companies to develop prototype emergency ventilators to be used in the field in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, according to a press release.  

ARMY RESEARCH SHOWS HOW DO-IT-YOURSELF FACEMASKS CAN BE AS SAFE AS N95S 

(Defense One, Apr. 23, Patrick Tucker) Shortages of facemasks have many people making their own — not just grocery shoppers and Pentagon staff, but even medical professionals in coronavirus-wracked hospitals. Scientists with the Army Research Lab, working with a Massachusetts hospital, have figured out the best easy-to-find materials for making homemade masks: a layer of absorbent cloth combined with a water-repelling fabric, preferably one treated with Scotchgard.  

ARMY EYES PERMANENT SHIFT TO DISTANCE LEARNING FOR SOME PME COURSES 

(Military.com, Apr. 22, Matthew Cox) U.S. Army training officials are studying how the service's increased dependence on distance learning during the novel coronavirus pandemic may become a permanent part of leader education. 

ARMY WANTS TO STUDY HOW HUMANS TEAM WITH AI—AND VICE VERSA 

(NextGov, Apr. 21, Aaron Boyd) A new contract will focus on the teaming aspect of artificial intelligence in warfare by analyzing how humans and machines think when working together.  

ARMY’S CLOUD OFFICE IS ‘FUNCTIONALLY OPERATIONAL’ BUT MISSING SOME PERSONNEL DUE TO PANDEMIC 

(Fedscoop, Apr. 21, Jackson Barnett) The Army’s recently established Enterprise Cloud Management Office says it is up and running even though the service has been unable to finish assigning some personnel to their new positions because of the coronavirus pandemic. 

ARMY AUDIT FORGES AHEAD DURING COVID-19  

(Army.mil, Apr. 17, Thomas Brading) Despite challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Army’s third annual audit is underway and on track to wrap up this fall, says a top Army comptroller, as the force aims to build off last year’s progress. 

►► FEDERAL 

THIS IS THE PLAN TO GET ALL SERVICE MEMBERS TESTED FOR COVID-19 

(Military Times, Apr. 22, Meghann Myers) The Defense Department has set a goal to be testing 60,000 service members a day for coronavirus by June, but they won’t get there all at once. The plan is to start testing the most at-risk and most essential troops first, then work their way toward the rest of the force as testing capacity increases.   

MILITARY PLAN TO ROLL OUT COVID-19 TESTING WOULD PRIORITIZE NUCLEAR FORCES AND TROOPS DEPLOYED IN COMBAT ZONES 

(Washington Post, Apr. 22, Missy Ryan) The U.S. military on Wednesday announced plans to roll out expanded covid-19 testing beginning with nuclear forces and troops engaged in combat, a process that would be widened to include other service members as more diagnostic materials become available.  

THE PENTAGON’S CYBERSECURITY CERTIFICATION PLAN INCLUDES CONTINUOUSLY MONITORING CONTRACTORS   

(NextGov, Apr. 22, Miriam Baksh) The accreditation body overseeing the Defense Department’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program—the CMMC-AB—issued a request for proposal that provides insight into how the group plans to keep track of contractors outside of conducting physical audits.   

OFFICIALS PROBE THE THREAT OF A CORONAVIRUS BIOWEAPON 

(Politico, Apr. 23, Natasha Bertrand, Daniel Lippman and Lara Seligman) The Pentagon and the intelligence community are more forcefully investigating the possibility that adversaries could use the novel coronavirus as a bioweapon, according to defense and intelligence officials, in a shift that reflects the national security apparatus’ evolving understanding of the virus and its risks. 

AIR FORCE TESTING NEXT GENERATION HELP DESK WITH 70K USERS AS PART OF EITAAS 

(Federal News Network, Apr. 6, Jason Miller) As the Air Force rolls out its proof of concept under the enterprise IT-as-a-service, one of the first pieces to go live is something as basic as a modernized help desk. It’s one of several efforts underway, including next generational networking and infrastructure, cloud services and data architecture that will create this digital Air Force of the future.  

►► WORKFORCE 

TONI FREELAND KEEPS AN OPEN MIND 

(Apr. 21) Toni Freeland, product officer for Command Centers in the Installation Information Infrastructure Modernization Program (I3MP), is this week’s #PEOEISTeammateTuesday.  

AWARDS: 

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS FOR THE WORKFORCE RECRUITMENT PROGRAM AWARDS  

S: 30 APR 2020.  

***FOR ALL AWARDS QUESTIONS, PLEASE CONTACT: tobias.l.smith.civ@mail.mil 

This message contains curated content from external sources, and does not indicate PEO EIS endorsement of the views or ideas expressed therein. 

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