New Senate bill would create cybersecurity apprenticeship program

• A bipartisan bill in the Senate would direct the Labor Department to set up a cyber apprenticeship grant program. Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) introduced the Cyber Ready Workforce Act earlier this month. Under the legislation, Labor would award competitive grants that fund registered apprenticeships in cybersecurity, including technical instruction and workplace training. Lawmakers say more talent is needed to fill an estimated half a million open cybersecurity jobs nationwide.
  (Rosen, Blackburn introduce bipartisan legislation to support and expand cybersecurity apprenticeships - Sen. Jacky Rosen’s office)
• A new survey finds the Exceptional Family Member Program, which provides support to service members whose dependents require special medical or educational assistance, had met the needs of 83% of military families "to some extent." Of respondents, 43% said they were mostly satisfied with the program, while 25% were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied. The program services about 100,000 military families with disability-related needs. The survey provided more insight into the families' satisfaction with the program and if the program impacts service members' decision to stay in the military.
  (Exceptional Family Member program survey sheds light on service members' satisfaction with DoD's educational assistance services - Defense Department)
• Paul Dans, the director of Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, has stepped down. Project 2025 calls for a complete overhaul of the federal government, including the return of schedule F and other ideas impacting the federal workforce. The foundation said Dans left voluntarily, but others speculate his departure was caused by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s disavowal of the project. The Heritage Foundation's President Kevin Roberts will now run Project 2025 operations, which is sticking to its original timeline, according to the conservative think tank.
  (Project 2025 director steps down - Federal News Network)
• The cloud security program known as FedRAMP is out with yet another piece to its new look and feel. The program management office yesterday released a proposed set of metrics and is asking for feedback from government and industry alike. The first set of metrics focuses on end-to-end customer feedback. The second set would focus on how well the cloud service providers are meeting the security standards. FedRAMP wants to identify any gaps to better avoid unnecessary back-and-forth during the authorization process. The FedRAMP PMO is asking for industry and agency comments on the draft metrics by August 29.
  (FedRAMP metrics for public comment - FedRAMP)

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• Almost 1,400 small businesses have won a tentative spot on the OASIS+ professional services contract. The General Services Administration made the awards yesterday, just over a year since it released the solicitation. GSA said the 1,383 small businesses will be awarded contracts across seven domains barring any size status protests and final responsibility determinations. The domain areas include management and advisory services, logistics services, and technical and engineering services. GSA also will make awards under the OASIS+ unrestricted version and the socioeconomic pools like 8(a) and women-owned small businesses over the next several months. The 10-year OASIS+ contract replaces the popular OASIS multiple award contract that has seen more than $70 billion in obligations since 2015.
  (OASIS+ small business awards - SAM.gov)
• More taxpayers will be able to use the IRS’ free online tax-filing platform starting next year. IRS is partnering with Pennsylvania to roll out its Direct File platform to more than 1.5 million taxpayers. The IRS piloted Direct File with a dozen states during this year’s filing season. Now’s it’s making the program permanent, and inviting all states to participate. So far, New Jersey and Oregon have agreed to opt in.
  (Treasury announces Pennsylvania to join IRS Direct File for filing season 2025 - Treasury Department)
• The White House’s science chief is calling for more federal spending into AI research and development. The federal government spends about $200 billion dollars a year on total R&D. Arati Prabhakar is the director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy. She said a “pretty modest” share of that spending, about $3-4 billion dollars, is spent on AI research. “We’re not seeing a huge surge in public spending, partly because budgets are constrained,” Prabhakar said. The National Security Commission on AI, a blue-ribbon panel commissioned by Congress, recommended in its final report the federal government increase its AI spending to $32 billion annually.
  (White House science chief calls for boosting ‘modest’ federal AI R&D spending - Federal News Network )
• The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is preparing to deal with an influx of new cyber incident data. CISA is updating its IT systems and hiring extra staff to help manage new cyber incident reporting rules that go into effect next year. That’s according to a Government Accountability Office report, which found CISA and its partners currently share cyber incident reports through manual processes. But the cyber agency told GAO that automation will help it deal with what’s expected to be an explosion of reports under next year’s rules. The regulations will require organizations across all 16 critical infrastructure sectors to report cyber attacks to CISA within 72 hours.
  (DHS has efforts underway to implement federal incident reporting requirements - Government Accountability Office)
• The Defense Department is not adapting at the speed or scale necessary to address today’s global threats. A congressional commission recommends a new force construct to be able to handle multiple wars in different parts of the world. For the past two decades, the National Defense Strategies had the two-war construct, which required the United States to be able to fight and win two wars at once. The Commission on the National Defense Strategy said this model does not “meets the dimensions of today’s threat.” The commission also recommends educating the American public about the current environment and encouraging them to engage in national service.
  (Congressional panel calls for new force construct - Federal News Network)

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