The DoD Reporter’s Notebook is a weekly summary of personnel, acquisition, technology and management stories that may have fallen below your radar during the past week, but are nonetheless important. It’s compiled and published each Monday by Federal News Network DoD reporters Jared Serbu and Scott Maucione.

Is your pay correct? The Army wants to make sure as it moves to IPPS-A

The software program aimed at consolidating all of the Army’s payroll functions is planning for a huge milestone at the end of the year, but it needs soldiers’ help to make the process as smooth as possible.

The service will roll out the next phase of its Integrated Personnel and Pay System-Army (IPPS-A) on Dec. 21, encompassing more than 1 million soldiers into the program. This phase will bring in the reserve and active duty components.

However, the Army needs to ensure its payroll data for soldiers is solid and therefore is calling on troops to double check their personal information in the system.

“You’re only as good as the data that’s sitting inside of your system,” Roy Wallace, the Army assistant deputy chief of staff for personnel told reporters. “As we move forward in this we need soldiers to look at their data and make sure it’s right. Because when it when the data is bad, the outcomes are bad. We’ve got a concerted effort reaching out to each and every soldier to get in and look at their data and make sure it’s right.”

With the current decentralized pay systems soldiers are unable to see all the details in their personnel files. Soldiers will need to meet with their local unit personnel office to ensure things like salary, family size and other important information are up to date.

Since some paperwork may need to be processed in order to make sure those details are correct, the Army is encouraging soldiers to meet with their personnel office as early as they can before the switch.

IPPS-A will eventually be the Army’s one-stop-shop for all human resources related matters from pay and benefits to job selection.

The service already transitioned members of the National Guard over to the new program.

“We have every state and territory active in IPPS-A today, so more than 330,000 National Guard soldiers are all completely inside IPPS-A and we divested  from 54 versions of old army systems,” Col. Gregory S. Johnson, IPPS-A functional management division chief, said. “Those systems were early 80s technology that were put in place that the Guard had upgraded in each individual state. Now that is sunsetted. That is gone.”

Johnson said many of issues with IPPS-A during the earlier National Guard switch were based on data.

“The 54 retired pay systems had different code baselines, they had different data structures,” he said. “We had some issues pulling that data over and getting it clean. As we went live, and we focused tremendous amount of effort on making sure that data was correct.”

Johnson said that experience is a big part of why the Army is asking soldiers to confirm their current information. — SM

GAO finds ‘distortions’ in how private military housing firms are compensated

Some of the military’s privatized housing providers may be getting something of a  windfall because of a quirk in how DoD is reimbursing them for recent cuts in military housing allowance rates, while others appear to be getting shortchanged, according to a new review by the Government Accountability Office.

The root of the issue goes back to 2015, when DoD proposed, and Congress agreed, to start requiring servicemembers to pay some of their own housing costs in order to cut costs in its personnel budget. Those cuts took full effect last year, reducing the housing allowances they’d otherwise get by 5%.

But even as the reductions were first taking place, Defense officials worried about the effects they would have on their on-base housing providers. Those firms, after all, had planned their real estate management operations on a predictable revenue stream that was now being cut by 5%. Congress responded by ordering the military services to make up the 5% difference and pay it directly to their housing companies, with half that amount dedicated to underfunded projects.

But it’s possible lawmakers didn’t think fully think through the reimbursement methodology they directed. The Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) cuts — or “cost shares” — as DoD prefers to call them, are a fixed dollar amount no matter where a servicemember is stationed. The reimbursements to housing providers, on the other hand, are tied directly to local market-based BAH rates. And 5% of BAH in the San Francisco Bay Area is very different from 5% of BAH at Camp Lejeune.

What that means in practice, according to GAO, is that almost all of the reimbursements were either above or below what the companies needed to actually make them whole as a result of the original BAH reduction. Thirty-two  housing projects got more money than was needed to offset those cuts — six of them by $1 million or more. On the other side, 48 projects got less money, and 6 were shortchanged by $1 million or more.

“By requiring BAH reductions to be reduced by the national BAH rate and the congressionally mandated payments to privatized housing projects be based on the local BAH rate, Congress created unintended distortions in payments to the projects,” the watchdog noted.

For its part, DoD told GAO it simply did what Congress ordered it to do, both when it came to calculating the BAH reductions and the reimbursements to housing companies. But Defense officials told GAO reviewers it does make some sense to peg the BAH reductions to a nationwide, fixed dollar figure.

According to the report, “DoD noted [that[ implementing reductions in this way is equitable, because it ensures that the amount of the reduction (i.e., the amount that comes ‘out of pocket’ from servicemembers’ total compensation) is the same across any given pay grade and dependency status, regardless of where in the United States a servicemember is stationed.” —JS

Air Force readies civilian career development

The Department of the Air Force is offering more than 30 educational development programs for civilian employees for the 2022 cycle.

The programs prepare civilian Air Force and Space Force workers for the demands of their job and enrich their resumes. The courses range from leadership to academic pursuits.

“Civilian force development came about as a way for the department of the Air Force to invest in people and actively demonstrate a commitment to deliberately developing our civilian workforce,” Jana Ramon, an Air Force Personnel Center human resources specialist told Federal News Network. “We rely on military and civilian leaders to have the right competencies to accomplish the mission and win any high end fight. Leading in an ever changing environment is going to require critical thinking and strategic leadership skills. The courses that we offer help hone these skills and prepare our civilian leaders to work shoulder to shoulder with those military counterparts to ensure continuity of operations.”

The courses civilians can apply for are sometimes made for military service members or may be taught in a more casual setting like the National Defense University.

“Participation in developmental programs positively impacts retention and is one of the ways the department invests in its people,” Becky Venters, chief of the Civilian Leadership Development Program said.

The courses are broken into four subject areas: Developmental education, academic/fellowships, leadership seminars and experiential assignments.

“The experiential assignments are more of the on-the-job-type development still at an enterprise leadership perspective,” said Craig Pearson, the Air Force Civilian Strategic Leader Program manager. “The intent is still the same, to try to find that right person at the right time to develop those competencies, to increase the professional development and accomplish the mission. Those who are interested in these developmental experiential assignments have to first apply to the program — it’s competitive.”

Those interested for all the programs must send in their applications by Feb. 26. — SM

The DoD Reporter’s Notebook is a weekly summary of personnel, acquisition, technology and management stories that may have fallen below your radar during the past week, but are nonetheless important. It’s compiled and published each Monday by Federal News Network DoD reporters Jared Serbu and Scott Maucione.

DISA OTA for cloud-based internet isolation a sign of more to come

The Defense Information Systems Agency’s first-ever use of an other transaction agreement (OTA) for production work came at an opportune time. Just as the pandemic was creating massive strains on DoD networks, the OTA gave DISA a brand new way to move huge amounts of traffic off of them.

In August, the agency awarded By Light Professional IT Services a nearly $200 million agreement to start deploying a technique called cloud-based internet isolation (CBII). As the name implies, the program moves Defense users’ web browsing off of their actual desktops and laptops; indeed, off of Defense networks entirely. The actual browsing activity happens in a commercial cloud environment.

The move was originally intended mainly as a security measure. After all, if the browser is in the cloud, any malware users happen to run across stays there too. But since the program keeps both good and bad traffic in the cloud, it also has the potential to dramatically reduce the amount of traffic that has to traverse through DoD internet access points.

Christopher Barnhurst, DISA’s executive deputy director, said CBII let DISA avoid an estimated $300 million in expenditures it would otherwise have had to make to expand the capacity of the interconnections between DoD’s own networks and the public internet.

“We have a constantly increasing demand for bandwidth capacity, and at the same time, we have sensor capacity for cyber defense, both of which can be restrictive. The department was on a path where those two things were increasing exponentially,” he said last week at an event hosted by AFCEA D.C. “CBII allowed us to think differently about how to solve that problem — not go down the linear path of just constantly upgrading capacity, but maybe figure out a way to offload some of that bandwidth and increase security at the same time. That’s the kind of mindset that I think will help us increase our speed and capability and break down barriers.”

DISA first began development work on CBII two years ago. By 2019, it had decided to use an other transaction agreement to prototype the concept, and two different firms had been piloting their technologies for about a year before the agency awarded By Light a follow-on agreement to deploy their approach at large-scale. It was DISA’s first use of a statutory authority that lets DoD move directly into production OTA contracts as long as the prototypes were awarded competitively.

But Steve Wallace, the systems innovation scientist for DISA’s emerging technologies directorate, said it’s unlikely to be the last.

“Where we started in our thinking with CBII is not actually where we ended up: Our thinking evolved over a year or two. And the OTA was key,” he said. “Without that, we would have written a set of requirements that likely, once it all played out, wouldn’t have been exactly what we want wanted. But it was a lot of work in partnership with industry that got us there, so we want to take that same philosophy and continually apply that and get faster about it.” —JS

Navy training sailors for future weapons systems

The military has put a lot of effort into trying to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to new technology. But, what about the people who will be using that technology?

The Navy is taking a hard look at itself to find out where it has “lethality training gaps,” areas where sailors may not be up to date on using the most state-of-the-art technology or may not be prepared for that technology when it comes out.

“This work will ensure that we are really ready to train for future capabilities like Constellation Class frigate plans, unmanned hypersonic, etc. before those platforms get here,” said Vice Adm. John Nowell, deputy chief of naval operations for personnel, training and education. “The team has done some ‘I worry’ work to align your internal structure to better focus on the warfighter in the future Navy.”

Nowell said the Navy is working to have a virtual training platform at every port, which can simulate new systems.

The Navy is also looking at its learning centers to see what gaps need to be fixed and what training systems they may need.

The Navy plans on closing its lethality gap by improving training systems, putting more curriculum online and putting an emphasis on high quality instructors.

“We need your passion, we need your expertise,” Nowell said. “Please know that we as a community we value this service, and we will reward it in training board and selection boards.”

The Navy is also focusing on improving training and education in other ways as well. The service just started its community college, which allows sailors, Marines and members of the Coast Guard to get college credit for some of their training.

“A key to building a mission-ready total workforce is investing in our people and their education,” said Gladys Brignoni, director of the Coast Guard’s Force Readiness Command. “The Naval Community College effort will help develop the skills of our workforce through formal education opportunities. This is an exciting opportunity for the Coast Guard and we look forward to all of the future possibilities this holds for our service and our workforce.” — SM

DoD still struggling to account for billions in intra-departmental transactions

If the Defense Department ever hopes to earn a clean opinion on its financial audits, one of the problems it will need to solve is the accounting discrepancies that happen when one part of DoD sells goods or services to another part. And it’s a big problem.

The Government Accountability Office’s latest review of DoD’s intra-departmental transactions – one of the many material weakness areas in the department’s financial statements – noted that DoD had to make corrections for $112 billion of those transactions as it closed out its 2019 books. Of those, $102 billion were deemed to be “unsupported.”

Those corrections, called “top-side adjustments,” come into play when, for example, the Air Force sells spare parts to the Navy, but their separate financial systems record different dollar amounts, or they’re not reported in the same quarter. If there’s no way to reconcile the differences with reliable data, the Defense Finance and Accounting Services simply changes one of the two amounts so that they match. And auditors tend to frown on that sort of thing.

DoD’s long-term plan to fix the problem is to have all the military services and Defense agencies adopt the Treasury Department’s G-Invoicing platform. The upside is that Defense components would all be using a single system with shared data about terms and conditions, orders, payments and delivery, pretty much eliminating the possibility that an Air Force system and a Navy system would disagree about what actually happened in a given transaction.

The downside is that DoD officials claim the Treasury system doesn’t actually meet their business needs in several key areas.

According to GAO, DoD wants G-Invoicing changed in several ways. For example, some of DoD’s transactions require sign-off by three or more senior officials; the Treasury system can only accommodate two. They’ve also complained the system can’t accommodate partial orders, and that some data elements in the system don’t match up with DoD’s needs to assign an accountable official for each transaction.

DoD has started developing workarounds in case Treasury doesn’t change its platform in the way the department wants, but there’s no telling how long either pathway will take. —JS

Army turning its soldiers into video game stars for recruitment

The Army is trying to mix virtual atmospheres with hands-on experiences to get Generation Z excited about joining the military.

The service is offering a deeper look into what it’s like to be a soldier by highlighting 12 career fields on social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter and YouTube between now and April 2.

The Army will follow 12 specific soldiers working in each of the fields by posting videos, interviews, account takeovers and other media.

“When we launched ‘What’s Your Warrior?,’ we established a new world for Gen Z to inhabit and explore its Army on their terms — and we know they liked what they saw thanks to a nearly 53% spike in online interest in the first year alone,” said Maj. Gen. Alex Fink, chief of Army Enterprise Marketing. “To continue the momentum, now we’re inviting youth deeper into this world through the eyes and experiences of real soldiers. Who better to introduce America’s youth to the wealth of opportunity in the U.S. Army than the soldiers who live and breathe it every day?”

The Army picked the 12 career fields out of a total of 200 possibilities. Each soldier is given a video game-type avatar. They include:

The Dragon Tamer (1^st Lt. Phillip Fluke, Aviation Officer*): It takes a near-mythical level of skill to harness the power of an Army helicopter. Army pilots’ determination and specialized training allow them to do the seemingly impossible.

The Wavelength (Sgt. Jennifer Smith, Signal Support Systems Specialist): Signal warriors have the technical expertise to capture and send the critical communications we can’t see. This allows the seamless connection between units and the entire Army across the globe.

The Virus Hunter (Maj. Derese Getnet, Microbiologist): It takes a certain kind of power to confront and neutralize the not-so-little threats to human health.  The microbiologists work to not only handle ongoing threats but ones that may occur in the future.

The Chameleon (Sgt. 1st Class Jean-Noel Howell, Infantryman*): A sniper gains a tactical advantage by disappearing into the landscape. Their mastery of stealth, reconnaissance, and weaponry makes them the deadliest unseen force on the battlefield.

The Thunder Maker (Staff Sgt. Jada Madson, Multiple Launch Rocket Systems Crewmember): Firing rockets and missiles from miles away, they provide tactical support and clear advantage on the battlefield with each resounding rocket impact and flash.

The Ground Breaker (Sgt. Frincee Prado, Technical Engineer): An expert in design and construction, the technical engineer imagines structures and works collaboratively with the engineering community to build them into existence.

The Code Fighter (Maj. Erika Alvarado, Cyber Operations Officer): The Army needs those with digital chops to hold the frontlines of the future. Here cyber warriors battle threats that attempt to come across the digital network day in and day out.

The Sharpened Steel (Col. Roy Danks, General Surgeon): As powerful as any weapon in battle, a surgeon’s expert skills can be the instrumental difference between life and death.

The Replenisher (Sgt. Josthin Josue Servellon Hernandez, Culinary Specialist): Army chefs fuel the force by providing the critical nutrition our Soldiers need to succeed in any mission.

The Force Multiplier (Sgt. Maj. Zachary Bowman, Special Forces Senior Sergeant): A “force multiplier” has the ability to scale their power. In this case, it’s the Special Forces Soldier’s training of indigenous forces to protect and defend themselves. Special Forces Soldiers have various roles they master, enabling them to be the solution in any climate and place.

The Nerve Center (Spc. Marian Jones, Intelligence Analyst): When the data pours in, it takes a corps of experts to analyze it and find the advantages, turning information into action.

The Upper Hand (Sgt. Javaughn Harrison, Unmanned Aircraft Systems Operator): With a mighty fleet at their fingertips, unmanned aircraft systems operators give their nation the ultimate aerial advantage.

The Army is changing to way it recruits in order to bring in more Gen Zers. The service is focusing more on urban areas than in the past and has created an esports team to engage with children. — SM

Caring for service members one text at a time

The Defense Health Agency is offering a limited-time program to keep service members and their families healthy during the coronavirus pandemic.

The My MilLife Guide is an eight-week “course” that sends text messages to the military community to boost overall wellness and navigate stress during COVID-19.

“Our service members and their families deserve the best possible care. I want to utilize all available tools to ensure their health, wellness, and readiness records are easily accessible,” said Army Col. Dr. Neil Page, deputy and military chief of the clinical support division for medical affairs at the Defense Health Agency. “The COVID-19 pandemic showed us that sometimes these tools are best provided through digital health services. We in the Military Health System are excited to partner with Military OneSource to provide a text-based wellness program that puts valuable resources at our beneficiaries’ fingertips, in a new and innovative way.”

The program will cover areas like stress relief, getting better sleep, self-care, strengthening relationships and managing finances.

The course prompts users to start each week with a goal and take small steps to accomplish that goal.

The program will end Feb. 12. Service members can sign up by testing “MilLife SM” to GOV311. Spouses can sign up by texting “MilLife Spouse” to the same number. Users can receive up to four text messages a week. — SM

The DoD Reporter’s Notebook is a weekly summary of personnel, acquisition, technology and management stories that may have fallen below your radar during the past week, but are nonetheless important. It’s compiled and published each Monday by Federal News Network DoD reporters Jared Serbu and Scott Maucione.

DoD bringing companies into the fold for sensitive info

After a years long pilot, the Defense Department is establishing a permanent program that will let some trusted companies in on critical military information to help build needed systems.

“As the world sees a return to great power competition, DoD must strengthen its engagement with the defense industrial base in order to respond to the national security challenges facing the United States in a more responsive and cost efficient manner,” a Dec. 15 memo signed by Pentagon acquisition chief Ellen Lord states.

The memo goes on to state that, increasingly, technologies and information are squirreled away in special access programs.

Those are programs that exceed regular classified information and entail highly sensitive operations and black projects.

“The Special Access Program Corporate Portfolio Program was deliberately developed over the past several years to ensure it is a strong and sustainable program,” Pentagon spokesperson Jessica Maxwell told Federal News Network. “The pilot effort was established in 2016 and successfully carried forward into the current administration.  The director of the Department of Defense’s Special Access Program Central Office is responsible for executing this program and that position is filled by a military general officer (currently an Air Force  Major General). The DoD believes the Corporate Portfolio Program is an important effort and that it will be sustained into the future.”

DoD said the program will integrate DoD and corporate interests with the goal of increasing technology development and cost efficiency. The Pentagon hopes the program will allow the industrial base to gain more insight into what DoD needs for the purposes of independent research.

DoD says the program will also provide private sector professionals with accesses that will help them protect information better and allow companies to work better to serve their own missions.

Only certain companies will be able to participate in the program. For example, a corporation must be on contract with DoD for 15 or more special access programs to be eligible. — SM

DHA moving ahead with transition after pause and military service concerns

The Defense Health Agency said it is continuing to take over the military services’ hospitals and clinics despite concerns from the leaders of the branches.

DHA put the transition on hold in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The pause in Military Health System (MHS) transition let us compile a number of lessons learned,” Barclay Butler, DHA assistant director for management, said. “We then applied those lessons learned to MHS reform. We also used the pause to improve the transition planning, and the transition products.”

DHA said those lessons included standardization of military health metrics reporting to the DoD. Previously, each military service reported that information separately to the DoD. DHA has now turned that into a collective system.

Butler said that one of the most important results of the past year was the confirmation that the DHA is progressing in the right direction with the market model. That model rearranges how family members and retirees can use treatment facilities. Some facilities would take on more of those patients, while about 200,000 others would be forced to find care in the private sector.

“The services asked the defense secretary to re-asses the approach and the secretary took that information and made a decision on the 9th of November to continue forward with our plan,” Butler said.

The leaders of the military services wrote a letter last August expressing concern that the transition may harm military health.

“The DHA end-state, as designed, introduces barriers, creates unnecessary complexity and increases inefficiencies and cost,” the military officials wrote. “Service command and control of the MTFs as military units, through our direct support, was critical to commanders’ operational response [to coronavirus] and swiftly adjusting resources across the enterprise.”

The letter asked DoD to stop the transition of MTFs, personnel and resources, and to return all MTFs to their respective services until the best course of action can be determined.

The letter also asked DoD to direct the military departments to establish a working group to provide a concept plan for what the next steps should be and what legislation might be needed.

“The proposed DHA end-state represents unsustainable growth with a disparate intermediate structure that hinders coordination of service medical responses to contingency operations, such as a pandemic,” the officials wrote. “It was the services’ legacy structures that provided the streamlined command and control and the stability required for execution of plans and deployment of medical forces.”

DHA seems to be saying that it has assessed the concerns and is still moving ahead.

Congress also wants to push forward with the plan. It is heeding the advice of the military services, however. While the transition started in 2018 and was supposed to originally only take a couple years, lawmakers pushed the deadline to 2022 out of caution.

In the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, lawmakers pushed the movement of the service medical research arms to 2025.

“DoD must continue on the path required by law to eliminate the inefficient, stove-piped MHS structure that inevitably leads to turf wars among the services and the DHA, while simultaneously paralyzing decision-making and stifling healthcare innovation,” lawmakers wrote in the 2021 NDAA conference report. “The conferees expect that the DHA shall oversee, manage, and direct the MHS’s delivery of direct and purchased healthcare.”

DoD makes changes to how it certifies women-owned small businesses

The Pentagon will no longer let its own contracting officers make their own determinations about whether companies are eligible for set-aside contracts under the government’s women-owned small business programs, and is telling them to rely instead on a database maintained by the Small Business Administration.

A memo DoD’s office of Defense Pricing and Contracting issued on Dec. 17 tells procurement officials that sole source and set-aside contracts targeted toward women-owned small businesses can only go to firms that SBA has registered in its Dynamic Small Business Search system. The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Council is working on a change that would eventually apply similar dictates governmentwide, but the Pentagon has chosen to do it early via a class deviation.

Both the deviation and the FAR case are meant to implement changes SBA itself made last year when it made changes to how women-owned small business gain certification. They’ll no longer be able to self-certify as eligible for those awards; rather, either SBA or a recognized third-party assessor will have to verify they meet the criteria as either a women-owned small business (WOSB) or economically disadvantaged women-owned small business (EDWOSB).

In rulemaking filings last year, SBA predicted the changes will increase the share of government contracts that go to women-owned small firms – largely because agency contracting officers will now be able to consult an authoritative database, rather than doing the legwork of verifying a contractor’s eligibility themselves.

“Under the existing system, the burden of eligibility compliance is placed upon the awarding contracting officer. Contracting officers must review the documentation of the apparent successful offeror on a WOSB or EDWOSB contract. Under this rule, the burden is placed upon SBA and/or third-party certifiers,” the agency wrote in a notice in May. “This will encourage more contracting officers to set aside opportunities for WOSB program participants as the validation process will be controlled by SBA. Increased procurement awards to WOSB concerns can further close a gap of under-representation of women in industries where in the aggregate WOSB represent 12% of all sales in contrast with male-owned businesses that represent 79% of all sales.”

The changes are part of legislation Congress passed in the 2015 Defense authorization bill. It gave agencies the authority to make sole-source awards to WOSBs, while also telling SBA to take a more active role in the certification process.

Under DoD’s latest changes, women-owned firms who are on track to get a DoD contract but aren’t yet certified in SBA’s system are supposed to get a fast-track treatment: SBA has promised to process their certifications within 15 days if an award is pending, according to the DoD memo. —JS

The DoD Reporter’s Notebook is a weekly summary of personnel, acquisition, technology and management stories that may have fallen below your radar during the past week, but are nonetheless important. It’s compiled and published each Monday by Federal News Network DoD reporters Jared Serbu and Scott Maucione.

AWS needed to make allegations of improper influence in JEDI contract long ago, attorneys argue

Lawyers for Microsoft and the government are asking a federal court to dismiss key portions of Amazon’s lawsuit over the Defense Department’s JEDI Cloud contract, in a nutshell, because the claims in question were raised too late to be legally viable.

In court filings unsealed late last week, attorneys asked the Court of Federal Claims to dismiss the portions of Amazon Web Services’ bid protest that allege DoD awarded the contract to Microsoft because of political bias, bad faith or conflicts of interest.

They argue those claims, even if accurate, are almost entirely based on information Amazon knew or should have known before Microsoft was chosen as the surprise winner of the JEDI contract in Oct. 2019. And if Amazon had evidence of bias, it needed to raise those issues in a pre-award protest, they contend.

“If AWS had raised its bias allegations in a timely pre-award protest, this court could have adjudicated those claims before DoD spent many months evaluating — and then reevaluating — the proposals. If AWS had persuasively shown bias, this court could have directed DoD to replace its allegedly-biased source selection team, before DoD and the offerors expended the months of time and effort associated with the corrective action, which involved numerous proposal submissions and amendments to the solicitation,” Microsoft attorneys wrote. “The court also would have resolved AWS’s objections before DoD twice disclosed Microsoft’s price to AWS in post-award debriefings. AWS’ serial ‘wait and see’ approach to litigating its bias claim is directly at odds with Blue & Gold’s policy of discouraging strategic, untimely protests.”

“Blue & Gold” is a Court of Federal Claims precedent which holds, generally, that if protestors see problems with a procurement, they need to challenge them before an award is made, not after they’ve lost.

Amazon, unsurprisingly, has a different view of the matter. AWS contends it was operating on a presumption that DoD source selection officials would operate in good faith, and that it only became aware of many of the issues the company is raising now during the post-award debriefing process.

“The debriefing materials and the administrative record underlying DoD’s corrective action revealed that DoD’s re-evaluations were designed to reach a pre-determined, politically expedient re-award to Microsoft,” AWS attorneys wrote. “The record demonstrated that, following AWS’s emergence as the lowest priced offeror, DoD purported to find ‘new’ strengths for Microsoft and ‘new’ weaknesses for AWS. These ‘new’ evaluations, manufactured to justify a re-award to Microsoft despite its substantial price premium, are demonstrably pretextual.”

Even if the court sides with Microsoft and DoD in their motions to partially dismiss the lawsuit, the key word is “partial.” Amazon’s allegations of improper political influence by President Trump and others make up only one of the four counts of the latest complaint it filed after DoD took corrective action and re-issued the contract to Microsoft. The other three counts allege DoD failed to follow its own solicitation when it evaluated bids, treated the two companies differently in the source selection process, and made an “irrational” best value decision.

None of those claims would be barred by Blue & Gold, and in the one instance the court has made a ruling in the JEDI case so far, it was on one of those more run-of-the-mill bid protest issues, not Amazon’s claims of political bias.

In February, judge Patricia E. Campbell-Smith issued a preliminary injunction stopping work on JEDI, finding Amazon was likely to win the lawsuit because of a defect in DoD’s award process dealing with cloud storage.

That ruling prompted DoD to take the contract back for corrective action, but it’s still unclear if the court will be convinced the department has actually done so, or that Amazon’s other claims about technical defects in the source selection process don’t have merit. Indeed, Campbell-Smith made clear at the time of the injunction that she was not examining Amazon’s other allegations just yet, because the cloud storage issue was serious enough on its own to merit a JEDI work stoppage.

Microsoft and DoD filed a similar motion to dismiss the case earlier this year, but the court never ruled on that petition because DoD’s decision to take corrective action made the issue moot for the time being. The defendants in Amazon’s lawsuit contend that since there have now been two awards in the procurement, AWS has had two chances to file pre-award protests that would have been in line with Blue & Gold, and has now forfeited its right to raise the bias issues twice. —JS

Army outlines ambitious plan for installations

The Army is preparing its installations for 2035 and beyond. To do that it is implementing a strategy that takes into account new security assumptions that involve higher levels of leadership than plans of the past.

The installations strategy, which was released last week, is a comprehensive outlook of what the Army needs to do for its people, readiness, security, modernization and sustainment of bases and the assets on them.

“It’s the first Army enterprise-wide strategy that identified the need for modern, resilient and sustainable installations,” Alex Beehler, Army assistant secretary for installations, energy and environment, told Federal News Network. “It outlines how best to move forward to support what we call the multidomain force for the next 15 years. It also puts an emphasis on how Army installations, services and systems can best be protected from attacks, climate change and environmental degradation.”

Beehler said the plan not only has the approval of Army leaders, but also all of the generals from Army commands. The Army received comments from more than 150 different service leaders in an attempt to intertwine the installations strategy with other recent plans set out by the military branch — such as the Army’s People Strategy and modernization effort. The installations strategy is also entrenched in the National Defense Strategy, which puts an emphasis on near-peer competition and moving military operations and business management into the 21^st century.

In following the National Defense Strategy, the Army had to throw out a key assumption: That the bases in the homeland were safe from attack. With the cyber and space domains becoming more important domains, attacks on installations can happen anywhere.

“We are more exposed to a whole host of threats,” Beehler said. “You could put them in two broad categories: Near peer power threats — that would include things like cyber security — and then climate change, which is specifically mentioned in the strategy, that’s a very important component of what we want the installations to be focused on.”

To deal with those issues the Army has short-, mid- and long-term goals. Those include determining capability gaps and integrating security sensors. In the long-term, they encompass environmental remediation and enhancing protection of bases.

“Army installations must possess both active and passive protection measures that preserve critical capabilities, assets, and activities essential to meeting National Defense Strategy requirements,” the authors of the strategy state. “To achieve this, the Army will develop comprehensive risk-based assessments for installations and reflect these risks in a common operating picture at echelon. These assessments should inform a prioritized list of protection capabilities required to anticipate, prevent, or mitigate adversary actions.”

The strategy looks at installations in terms of retention and readiness. The military is competing with the private sector, which can offer certain perks that the Army is hoping to rival. At the same time, after seeing failures in the public-private housing partnership, the service is trying to clean up the issues of mold, pests and lead paint in privatized Army housing.

“The installation strategy will provide a holistic approach on investment and use of all of the facilities on any given base with the idea that the number one focus of investment, and of management, should be and starts with the people on the base,” Beehler said. “I think that is a sea change, a cultural change that will then permeate through in the areas such as housing.”

The Army is investing billions in remediating and building new houses and the private companies are also investing funds. However, there are still issues, and some soldiers and their families continue to report problems with privatized military housing.

“If a soldier is worried about the housing or some aspect of the family or childcare, that is a distraction,” Beehler said. “That is really unnecessary and that should be corrected so that the soldier can focus as much as possible on the mission facing that soldier.”

At the same time, the strategy pushes base modernization for security and mission but also for building a better life for soldiers.

The Army is working on experimental autonomous shuttle programs to take soldiers to work or easier ways to access bases.

“Future soldiers will expect installations to modernize at pace with civilian sector smart cities initiatives,” the authors of the strategy state. “Opportunities that leverage technology through creation of data-informed, smart installations will allow the Army to pivot from an industrial-age paradigm, characterized by rigidity and purpose built specialization, to a data-rich, reconfigurable, and technology-enhanced information-age construct. The Army must take advantage of American ingenuity, innovation, and culture of performance to learn and adapt in real time to rapidly evolving conditions enabling commanders to make better decisions about installation operations and quality of life for our people.”

All this is happening with a budget that is notoriously underfunded. Installations are usually one of the first things on the chopping block when budgets get tight.

“We estimate that we have an overarching sustainment maintenance backlog of some $40 billion,” Beehler said. “In order to address all of that, plus, be able to get the installations transition into 21^st century, we’re going to have to basically get more out of fewer dollars.”

Beehler said he believes the installations strategy is the first step in doing that because it is a generalized agreement that commanders need to use data to drive decisions, which the Army hopes will save money. — SM

New survey hopes to address race in military communities

One of the most prominent organizations representing military families and their communities is conducting a survey to look at race and diversity within the military environment.

The survey, conducted by the Association of Defense Communities (ADC), encompasses service members from all areas of the military, family members, veterans, civilians and even people who live near installations.

ADC is conducting the survey as part of its One Military, One Community initiative, which was created in response to the national conversation on racial justice that sparked up further this year.

“While today our country’s military is more diverse than ever, some of our defense communities are the least diverse places in the country,” Tim Ford, ADC CEO, told Federal News Network. “This means the military may be asking service members to live in communities where they may not feel completely welcomed. ADC’s initiative One Military, One Community seeks to provide support, information and resources for those interested in exploring these issues of diversity, inclusion and equity in defense communities.”

Ford said that it expects thousands of responses, based on the strong response ADC has received in just the first few days. The report on the survey will be available in early 2021.

“Multiple events of racial injustice in the past year have highlighted the issue of racial inequality in America and shaped an ongoing national discussion,” Ford said. “This conversation has been embraced by our military leadership – both uniform and civilian – who have made it clear that the military needs to do more.  We also know equity issues will be a priority for the Biden administration and their nominee for secretary of defense, retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin.  As defense communities, we work to reflect the values of the military and support their mission – and that mission now includes strong efforts to address racial inequalities.”

The DoD Reporter’s Notebook is a weekly summary of personnel, acquisition, technology and management stories that may have fallen below your radar during the past week, but are nonetheless important. It’s compiled and published each Monday by Federal News Network DoD reporters Jared Serbu and Scott Maucione.

Congress to Pentagon: Reform thyself

Considering that last year’s Defense authorization bill explicitly said Congress intended to do away with the position of DoD chief management officer in this year’s bill, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the final legislation unveiled last week would do just that. What’s maybe more surprising is what lawmakers decided to replace the CMO’s office with: absolutely nothing.

Instead, the latest National Defense Authorization Act gives an enormous amount of discretion to President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming Defense secretary to figure out how to make things work. They will have to decide how the CMO organizations’ current responsibilities should be redistributed throughout the department — a process that has to be finished within the next year, when the position will officially be abolished.

The Defense Business Board, before President Donald Trump fired most of its members last week, had also advocated to disestablish the CMO. But the board also offered Congress and Defense policymakers three different options to make sure there still was a single accountable official focused on business reform. But lawmakers punted on that question, instead telling DoD to return to Capitol Hill with any changes in legislation the secretary thinks are necessary to wind the CMO operation down in an orderly way.

The one stipulation on the secretary’s discretion: Whoever’s going to handle any of the existing responsibilities of the CMO office can’t be someone who’s ever served as DoD Chief Management Officer.

Even while the Pentagon is spinning down its only central organization in charge of business improvements, it will also need to spend the next year building new plans for the reforms it was charged with. Another section of the bill orders the secretary to “establish policies, guidance, and a consistent reporting framework” across five “covered elements”:

• Business systems modernization
• Enterprise business operations process re-engineering
• Expanded and modernized collection, management, dissemination, and visualization of data
• Improvements in workforce training and education for business reform
• Improvements to decision-making processes to enable cost savings, cost avoidance, or investments to develop process improvements.

Those areas closely match the current CMO’s duties, as articulated by Congress when it created the office just three years ago.

In an interview with Federal News Network earlier this year, Lisa Hershman, the incumbent CMO argued her office simply has not had enough time to accomplish the herculean task of fixing DoD’s management weaknesses, particularly since Congress has had a tendency to further reorganize the department in ways large and small during each NDAA cycle.

“The problem is they’re changing things so quickly that we don’t always get a chance to make progress,” she said in the July interview after both houses of Congress had voted to abolish her position. “[The change of responsibility for] business systems is a great example. It went into place on Jan 1, 2019, and within four months, we had NDAA language to change it back [to the CIO]. It’s very difficult to get your arms around the problem and start showing demonstrable improvement when the shifts are happening that rapidly.”

The explanatory language accompanying this year’s bill offers no comment about what Congress hopes to achieve with this year’s management reform, nor does it say explicitly why lawmakers decided to get rid of the CMO. It’s also silent on how DoD should continue to increase its oversight and management over the “fourth estate” — the Defense agencies outside the military services — in the absence of the CMO.

That issue has been a major focus for Hershman, who considers herself the de-facto “secretary of the fourth estate,” and one of Congress’ major stated reasons for creating the office in the first place. —JS

DoD survey finds military spouse quality of life declining

Military spouses are continually becoming less satisfied with military life, according to a new report from the Defense Department.

Every two years, the Pentagon takes the temperature of military spouses. DoD just released its 2019 results and it saw a pretty significant decline in satisfaction. About 56% of military spouses said they were satisfied. That’s a decline of 4% from 2017 and an 8% decrease from 2015.

Marine Corps spouses were the least satisfied of the bunch with a 53% satisfaction rate, while the Air Force was the highest with 60%. The Air Force shouldn’t take that number as a win, though — eight years ago 72% of spouses reported being satisfied.

The highest rate of satisfied spouses came from the O-4 to O-6 levels (68%), while the least satisfied were married to the E-1 to E-4 ranks (23%).

Part of the issue for military spouses may be the fact that spousal unemployment is at a level much higher (22%) than the national average and that military childcare is still tough to come by. That makes it hard for spouses to live their own lives, especially after moving to new duty stations with their service members.

One number that may be concerning for DoD is that many spouses were not aware of some of the financial assistance available to them.

A total of 46% of spouses said they were not aware of the Military Spouse Career Advancement Accounts Scholarship, which provides $4,000 to the advancement of a career. Only 4% of spouses said they actually used the scholarship in the past year and 12% said they used it more than a year ago.

DoD found that it was fairly spread out in how long it took spouses to find employment after a permanent change of station. Sixteen percent said it took less than one month, 29% said it took one to four months, 21% for four-to-seven months, 9% for seven-to -0 months and 26% for more than 10 months.

About 59% of spouses favored staying in the military, a drop from 61% in 2017 and from 68% eight years ago.

The survey also took a look at what benefits spouses valued the most. Coming in at number one was access to quality health care. Spouses also highly valued job security for their service member, a good retirement plan and recreation and fitness activities

Savings on groceries and retail merchandise were lower ranked benefits.

There was some good news for military spouses. Financial comfortability remained largely the same at about 70%. — SM

Will the latest study on military women’s health actually matter?

Last month, the Defense Health Board reported there was a major flaw in the Military Health System: Its one-size-fits-all approach to health is leaving women behind.

The DHB set out a list of extensive recommendation for how to fix the problem and issued a stark reminder of how often women’s health is ignored in the military.

“The differential incidence of these conditions among active duty women have persisted despite 70 years of integration efforts and the creation of more than 10 advisory and decision-making groups, specifically created to improve active duty women’s health, fitness, safety, and performance,” the authors of the report stated. “The groups capably identified best practices and recommended their adoption. But, lacking authority and accountability, few of their recommendations have been implemented.”

This yearlong study, however, may actually make a difference. Peter Graves, a spokesman for the Defense Health Agency, said at last update, the cumulative concurrence and partial concurrence by DHA over the life of the board were 73% and 15%, respectively. Meaning the board’s recommendations might not fall by the wayside like many studies in the past.

“Recommendations will be evaluated in the light of the authority, direction, and control of the DHA,” Graves told Federal News Network. “Coordination and collaboration for identifying and minimizing practices that adversely impact and promulgating practices to benefit active duty women is a joint responsibility.”

That’s welcome news for people like Lucy Del Gaudio, a former active duty service member, sexual assault survivor and advocate for military’s women’s health.

“A lot of women would rather go off post and try to facilitate treatment in other avenues because they know they’re not going to get the fair treatment in their clinics on post,” she told Federal News Network. “I know a lot of people who don’t feel comfortable.”

Del Gaudio said much of the military and VA’s medical practices are “male-centric.”

“Sometimes if you go into a smaller clinic, they might not be equipped for a woman’s specific need,” she said.

Del Gaudio recounted experiences of women who had to be propped up on bedpans for gynecological examinations for lack of proper medical tools.

She said that takes a serious toll on retention, when women are constantly running into obstructions to care.

DHB said it wasn’t just care that was the issue.

Clothing and armor made for men cause issues for women, the lack of proper footwear and the need for better support through sports bras also contribute.

Access to contraceptive services and sexual education differs between services and influences the rate of unintended pregnancies, the board states.

There is also variability in screening protocols for eating disorders — a mental health issue that disproportionately affects women — which causes “stark differences” in the reported prevalence of diagnoses, the board said.

Those issues compounded with sexual harassment and assault, and the higher prevalence of women to leave the military for family reasons results in many fewer women staying in the service and reaching leadership positions.

DHB made a slew of recommendations. They include establishing an overarching office to approve recommendations related to women’s health, fitness safety and performance.

The office would focus on minimizing gender-associated differences in healthcare delivery, personnel, research, supply chains and policies. It would also look for traditional male-centric values within the culture that are harming health.

DHB also suggests looking into training programs.

“Basic training and ongoing fitness-for-duty evaluations have two foundational fitness components: health fitness standards that are gender-specific, and occupationally-focused fitness standards that should be gender-neutral,” the study authors state. “A ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach for health fitness contributes to training injuries in a mixed-gender population.” — SM

Air Force considering coaches for future leaders

Put me in coach! The Air Force and the military as a whole have had trouble in recent years filling certain positions. That includes cyber jobs, maintainer positions and much more. But, sometimes all you need is a little coaching to get where you want to go.

The Air Force is conducting a pilot program that gives airmen certified coaches to work with at key points in their careers.

“The coach is there to give them ideas and feedback on how to improve themselves in executing their mission, leading people, managing the resources, improving the unit, and offering observations,” said Lt. Gen. Brian Kelly, Air Force deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel and services.

The pilot started with 30 people, some were generals, some were senior executive service, others were colonels or chief master sergeants.

“We gave them the opportunity over a six-month period to work with those coaches, have one-on-one sessions periodically,” Kelly said. “We left it to the coaches and the individuals to decide when they would talk when they would meet what they would cover.”

The Air Force is in the process of finishing up the pilot and getting feedback.

The service hopes to open up to coaching to 10,000 to 15,000 airmen who might be in key leadership positions and could benefit from the work.

“Based on the feedback, we’re pretty excited that it is definitely a helpful and needed tool,” Kelly said. “The participants, almost without exception, saw a benefit and saw that they had a better success rate, learned faster and found more success in the new positions as a result of having the coach.”

The DoD Reporter’s Notebook is a weekly summary of personnel, acquisition, technology and management stories that may have fallen below your radar during the past week, but are nonetheless important. It’s compiled and published each Monday by Federal News Network DoD reporters Jared Serbu and Scott Maucione.

Defense health is failing women, study says

A prominent government panel says the Defense Department is failing to provide proper medical care to military women, potentially harming the chance to retain talented female service members.

Even though some military services have made recent changes — like offering refrigerators for women to store breast milk and trying to find better ways for women pilots to use the bathroom in-flight — a yearlong study by the Defense Health Board suggests the Pentagon is not providing proper medical care to women, and therefore wasting money and hurting readiness.

Despite multiple studies going back decades, the military’s one-size-fits-all approach to healthcare leaves women challenged with musculoskeletal injuries, reproductive and genitourinary issues and improper mental health care.

“Active duty women continue to experience high rates of stress fractures and other musculoskeletal injuries, urogenital infections, unintended pregnancies, sexual violence, anxiety, depression, adjustment disorders, and eating disorders. These conditions adversely affect active duty women’s readiness and health,” the authors conclude.

A lot of problems stem from clothing and equipment. Clothing and armor made for men cause issues for women, the lack of proper footwear and the need for better support through sports bras also contribute.

Access to contraceptive services and sexual education differs between services and influences the rate of unintended pregnancies, the board states.

There is also variability in screening protocols for eating disorders — a mental health issue that disproportionately affects women — which causes “stark differences” in the reported prevalence of diagnoses, the board said.

Those issues compounded with sexual harassment and assault, and the higher prevalence of women to leave the military for family reasons results in many fewer women staying in the service and reaching leadership positions.

Previous studies have fallen on ears unwilling to listen, according to the board.

“The differential incidence of these conditions among active duty women have persisted despite 70 years of integration efforts and the creation of more than 10 advisory and decision-making groups, specifically created to improve active duty women’s health, fitness, safety, and performance,” the authors of the report stated. “The groups capably identified best practices and recommended their adoption. But, lacking authority and accountability, few of their recommendations have been implemented.”

To remedy the situation, the health board recommends DoD establish an overarching office to approve recommendations related to women’s health, fitness safety and performance.

The office would focus on minimizing gender-associated differences in healthcare delivery, personnel, research, supply chains and policies. It would also look for traditional male-centric values within the culture that are harming health.

DHB also suggests looking into training programs.

“Basic training and ongoing fitness-for-duty evaluations have two foundational fitness components: health fitness standards that are gender-specific, and occupationally-focused fitness standards that should be gender-neutral,” the study authors state. “A ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach for health fitness contributes to training injuries in a mixed-gender population.”

DHB suggests gender-specific aerobic and strength conditioning before going into the military to reduce the risk of injury and says DoD should implement two level fitness assignments. One with gender specific standards and the other with gender-neutral occupation- and skill-specific standards.

DoD is already working on one recommendation by embedding licensed sports medicine professions within units to promote best practices for training and injury recovery.

The board also says DoD needs to buy gender-customized equipment to reduce injuries and improve readiness.

Another recommendation deals with pregnancy.

“Unintended pregnancy is approximately 50% higher for active duty women than for civilian women, and is approximately the same as the incidence of planned pregnancy among active duty women,” the authors wrote. “The occurrence of unplanned pregnancies creates significant adverse health and major mission impacts. Studies show that long-acting reversible contraception counseling and walk-in contraceptive clinics decrease unintended pregnancies.”

The board says DoD needs better contraceptive education, including a sexual education campaign for all service members, contraception decision support and promotion of long-term contraceptives.

Other recommendations include a zero-tolerance approach to sexual harassment and assault in the workplace, better post-partum fitness training and better mental health screening. — SM

Miller’s appointment as acting DoD secretary was probably legal, but not what Congress intended

President Trump’s selection of an official from outside the Pentagon to serve as the new acting secretary of Defense was within the law, but it also wasn’t what Congress had in mind the last time it visited the issues of DoD’s civilian leadership structure.

That’s according to Arnold Punaro, who served as staff director to Sen. Sam Nunn while he and Sen. Barry Goldwater were working to move the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act through the Senate Armed Services Committee.

In an interview, Punaro told me there’s “no question” that Congress intended for the deputy secretary of Defense to be next in line upon the secretary’s departure. Though he conceded the language of Goldwater-Nichols could have been clearer on that point.

“We wanted to enhance civilian control of the military, and we put a provision in that said in the absence of the secretary of Defense, the deputy secretary shall be the acting secretary and able to exercise all the statutory powers of the secretary, because we did not want the Vacancies Act to be used. We wanted to make sure that the person would be someone that had gone through the Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation process and be up to speed on everything that was going on,” he said. “I wish I’d been smarter when we wrote that law, because the Justice Department and White House Counsel have opined over the years that the Vacancies Act takes precedence. Unless [Congress] specifically said Title 10 takes precedence over the Vacancies Act, it does not. So the president used the Vacancy Act legally. Whether it was a good idea or not, I’ll leave that to others.”

The Vacancies Act — last updated in its modern incarnation by the Federal Vacancies Reform Act in 1998, also sets an agency’s “first assistant” — in this case the deputy secretary – as the presumed acting secretary, unless there’s an agency-specific statute saying otherwise. But it also gives the president the discretion to appoint an official from another department to be acting secretary, as long as that person has been confirmed by the Senate for their current role.

That’s what the president did a week ago, when he named Christopher Miller, the recently-confirmed director of the National Counterterrorism Center as acting secretary. Miller had previously served as deputy assistant secretary of Defense for special operations and countering terrorism.

Miller’s initial message to the DoD workforce seemed to indicate counterterrorism would remain a focus area during what’s expected to be a short tenure as acting secretary.

“We remain committed to finishing the war that Al Qaida brought to our shores in 2001. This war isn’t over. We are on the verge of defeating Al Qaida and its associates, but we must avoid our past strategic error of failing to see the fight through to the finish,” he wrote in a brief letter to the department on Thursday.

In a seemingly-contradictory passage, he added: “We are not a people of perpetual war — it is the antithesis of everything for which we stand and for which our ancestors fought. All wars must end. Ending wars requires compromise and partnership. We met the challenge; we gave it our all. Now, it’s time to come home.”

Without criticizing Miller specifically, Punaro said Congress needs to amend Title 10 — the section of U.S. Code that governs DoD — to ensure an Defense secretary appointment can’t be made from outside the normal line of succession again.

“We thought we had prohibited that. But the modern Vacancies Act passed after 1986, and we should have spotted it and gone back and amended that provision,” said Punaro, who is now chairman of the National Defense Industrial Association. “I certainly as an individual — not somebody with any authority or anything — and certainly going to be talking to the Armed Services Committee next year about fixing this.” —JS

Pentagon will start thinking ahead about parts obsolescence

Across the military services, officials in charge of maintenance are spending a lot of time thinking about how to buy or replicate hard-to-find parts and other materials whose original suppliers no longer exist.

But a new Defense Department instruction aims to make sure the acquisition and sustainment community isn’t facing the same problem decades from now. Going forward, new weapons systems will need to have a long-term plan to identify the potential for parts to become obsolete, and how those problems will be mitigated down the road.

The new approach – called “diminishing manufacturing sources and material shortages management” (DMSMS), in DoD parlance, tells the military services and other Defense organizations to draw up a DMSMS strategy “a soon as feasible” once a new program is authorized. The strategy needs to consider how future program managers for that system will deal with material shortages and obsolete parts across its entire lifecycle.

It’s the first time since 1974 the department has published a new policy on how to deal with parts obsolescence, according to George Mason University’s Center on Government Contracting, which notes that 70% of electronics in military systems are already obsolete by the time a system is fielded.

GMU is hosting an event with DoD officials to explain the new policy on Dec. 2. —JS

USO offering remote job training during COVID

People may not be able to go into the office for work, but the USO is still trying to help transitioning service members find jobs.

This week the service member-support organization is providing webinars along with corporate sponsors and industry experts to help troops leaving the military put their best foot forward when searching for a new occupation.

“This is part of our larger Pathfinder Transition Program,” Christopher Plamp, senior vice president of operations, programs and entertainment at USO, told Federal News Network. “Because of COVID we’ve been doing a lot of webinars and we’re combining them together and putting them in a week of focus.”

The webinars will be hosted by people like Vincent Vargas, an Army veteran and actor, who will talk about the entertainment industry.

There will also be webinars about blogging, women empowerment and vocations like plumbing.

“Transitioning out of the military is always a difficult task,” Plamp said. “I once had a Marine who told me the hardest day in the Marine Corps was a day that he left, because his life was changing. You go through the military, and you end up coming out. You don’t necessarily have an idea of where you go. Somewhere over 60% of the people from my experience, who are getting out, want to go do something different than what they did when they were in the military.”

USO tries to teach troops resume building skills, interviewing skills and other talents that will help them succeed in life after the military.

“There’s more than 200,000 service members from the active duty force transitioning every year, about another 50,000 out of the Guard and reserves,” Plamp said. “Then there’s a very large number, in the hundreds of thousands, of military spouses who are always looking for work as they move from location to location, so this problem continues to remain forefront in a lot of people’s minds.”

Plamp said USO has about 700 to 800 people sign up for transition services a month. — SM

Military OneSource is now handheld

Service members and their families will have much easier access to resources provided by the Defense Department with a new mobile app connected to Military OneSource.

The My Military OneSource mobile app is available on Google Play and the Apple App Store and provides many services troops would usually have to use a web portal to access.

Through the app, users can get information on:

• Child care options
• Relationship counseling
• Domestic violence awareness
• Parenting tips
• A Morale, Welfare and Recreation Program digital library
• Tips for communicating in a long-distance relationship
• Moving and housing
• Tax services
• Confidential help
• Financial and legal assistance
• Education and employment
• Confidential non-medical counseling
• Health and wellness
• Benefits finder
• Recreation, travel and shopping
• Installation program directory

The purpose of Military OneSource is to put as many resources as possible in one place, so people have an easier time finding what they need, Erika Slaton, Defense Department associate director for military community support programs said last week. The app makes it more convenient when users are away from their computers and are only carrying a smartphone.

Military OneSource offers services to about 5.2 million users. DoD tested the app with more than 300 service members and spouses.

“To ensure the My Military OneSource mobile app continues to meet the needs of the military community, we will evaluate user feedback to help inform ongoing updates and enhancements, as well as new features,” Slaton said. — SM

The DoD Reporter’s Notebook is a weekly summary of personnel, acquisition, technology and management stories that may have fallen below your radar during the past week, but are nonetheless important. It’s compiled and published each Monday by Federal News Network DoD reporters Jared Serbu and Scott Maucione.

DoD’s in-air, on ground testing indicates commercial aircraft present low risk for COVID transmission

In the midst of pandemic, all available evidence shows it’s a very good idea to keep oneself away from large gatherings of other people and to avoid unnecessary travel. But if you really need to go somewhere, it’s extraordinarily unlikely that you’ll contract the virus during a plane flight.

That’s according to a just-finished study by U.S. Transportation Command and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which officials say is the largest study of airborne particles in airplanes that’s ever been conducted.

Defense officials launched the research to help determine the risks of moving service members and their families aboard contracted commercial aircraft — most commonly the Boeing 777 and 767 jets collectively dubbed the “Patriot Express.” The test estimated you’d need to be sitting on the same airplane with a COVID-infected passenger for 54 straight hours before you inhaled enough viral particles to become infected.

That’s almost entirely because there’s a whole lot more fresh air on a modern commercial jet than many people assume. According to the study, their air handlers exchange more air from the outside — and recirculate it through HEPA filters — than most hospitals and biosafety-level 3 laboratories. Researchers say it takes about six minutes to remove a single airborne particle from an airplane, compared to 104 minutes in an average American home. And aside from the volume of air movement, the ventilation systems are designed in such a way that cabin air is continually pressed downward, making it very difficult for an infected droplet to float around and settle on a surface like an armrest.

To calculate the risks, researchers seated a mannequin in more than 40 different locations on the airplanes and outfitted it to “exhale” traceable fluorescent and DNA-tagged particles that mimic the airborne droplets that carry the virus. At the same time, they set up sensors in 40 different seating zones to determine how many of those infected particles could reach another passenger.

They found the risks of infection are noticeably higher if you’re seated in the same row as an infected passenger – or the rows ahead of or behind them. But even for simulated passengers sitting right next to a simulated infected one, researchers couldn’t come up with an instance where a traveler would have inhaled the 1,000 virons assumed to be necessary to contract COVID-19.

Nonetheless, Defense researchers acknowledge the study has its limitations.

“Specifically, it only considered a single infected passenger and did not attempt to gather data reflecting passenger movement about the cabin,” said Cmdr. Joe Pope, a TRANSCOM liason for the research project. Still, he said, the results are “encouraging.” —JS

Lawmakers ask whether DoD’s plan for its own 5G network is legal

On the heels of $600 million in contracts the Defense Department awarded for 5G networks on bases, two top lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are questioning agreements’ legal underpinnings.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) are asking the Government Accountability Office to look into the legality of DoD’s 5G operations.

In September, DoD unveiled a plan to create its own 5G network, which Pallone and Doyle think steps on the toes of other agencies.

In a letter to GAO, the two legislators are wondering whether the Pentagon “has the legal authority to construct, operate, or maintain a commercial communications network or lease its assigned electromagnetic spectrum to private entities to provide commercial communications service.”

The representatives state they do not think DoD has the authority.

“We are concerned that DoD’s recent activities ignore the National Telecommunications and Information Administration statutory role and undermine the NTIA’s ability to effectively represent the interests of other federal agencies and further national spectrum policy,” they wrote to NTIA in a separate letter. “To date, the Trump Administration’s spectrum management practices have been incoherent and erratic, which puts the nation’s 5G future at risk.”

The Pentagon and White House are moving quickly on 5G.

DoD also announced that it will help the Federal Communications Commission sell of some spectrum at the end of 2021.

The Pentagon is already building experimental networking on its bases. There are 12 bases working on 5G networks or building them. The $600 million contract will add Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington, Hill Air Force Base in Utah, Naval Base San Diego, Marine Corps Logistics Base in Georgia and Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada to that list.

GAO recently put out a report stating the Trump administration’s 5G strategy is lacking and the National Security Council and the National Economic Council convene to remediate some of the issues.

GAO enumerated six desirable characteristics that the 5G strategy should have and found the White House only partially addressed each of them.

The characteristics include things like defining problems, goals and objectives, risk management and implementation.

GAO officials stated that the strategy does not properly manage the risk facing 5G in the United States.

“Strategy does not include a risk assessment or complete information on 5G risks and does not include information on the quality (constraints or deficiencies) of the data,” the authors wrote. “The strategy narrowly focuses on cybersecurity and supply chain risks to 5G infrastructure and does not include the full breadth of 5G risks.” — SM

Army says it’s worked through backlog of military moves caused by COVID-19

Despite numerous and widespread restrictions on travel this year because of COVID-19, the Army said it’s successfully moved tens of thousands of soldiers and their families from one installation to another, and is now at a point where it no longer has a backlog of permanent change of station (PCS) moves.

As of now, the Army has done 72,000 moves in 2020. Thousands of those were delayed when, in March, Defense Secretary Mark Esper imposed a near-total ban on travel. The Pentagon did not begin to ease restrictions until May. More than three dozen bases are still restricted, and soldiers can only move to or from there via exceptions to policy.

Maj. Gen. Michel Russell, the director for operations in the office of the Army’s deputy chief of staff for logistics, said the restrictions had the effect of delaying the military’s traditional peak moving season from the May-to-August timeframe to between June and November, but that demand for moves this year appears to have already crested.

“We had no issues specifically in the Army,” he told reporters as part of last week’s annual AUSA conference, held virtually this year. “And now on the back end of that surge, we’ve actually gone back down to normal numbers of people having to move. But the moving community was able to meet our requirements, and we were surprised.”

Lt. Gen. Douglas Gabram, the commander of Army Installation Management Command said the smoothness of the moving season – all things considered – was due in part to policy flexibilities the Army instituted near the beginning of the pandemic. Among them, soldiers were given more flexible 50-day windows to actually report to their new units. And new orders were drafted 120 days ahead of time to give soldiers and their families more time to plan.

But there were some challenges that were outside of the Army’s control.

“Visas and passports initially held us up. We had to get involved with the State Department and shake some things loose, because those folks were not at work – the whole country was not at work, was teleworking,” he said. “But we had some lessons learned virtually, including town halls we conducted weekly to update family members and soldiers. Microsoft Teams has been a big player in our success because I can reach more people than I could pack in a theater. So our communication, in many ways has been more accurate in this COVID environment.” —JS

DoD, NSA bolstering cybersecurity education in minority schools

The Defense Department and National Security Agency are teaming up to bring cybersecurity education to diversity serving institutions and historically black colleges and universities.

The Cybersecurity Education Diversity Initiative (CEDI) helps educational facilities that do not have cybersecurity programs to obtain consultation and educational resources from designated national centers of academic excellence in cybersecurity.

“CEDI creates an avenue to rapidly close the nation’s cybersecurity talent gaps,” Akhirah Padilla, an NSA spokesperson, said. “It does this by creating a method that every cybersecurity student attending schools participating in the study will enter the workforce equipped with the knowledge skills and training necessary to fill critical cybersecurity jobs.”

Fordham University’s Center for Cybersecurity is leading the charge to help build the cybersecurity programs. It was given a $3 million grant. Half of the grant will go to institutions with established programs to come up with innovative solutions to help minority institutions. The other half will go directly to minority institutions to build or bolster a cybersecurity program.

“We will provide them with whatever they need in terms of curriculum and we will allow other universities to share their curriculum,” Thaier Hayajneh, director of Fordham’s Center for Cybersecurity, said. “We will share faculty online or as guest lecturers. We’ll hire faculty from National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education institutions that are located, geographically at least, close to the universities.”

NSA has been investing in cybersecurity for decades. There are currently half a million cybersecurity jobs that are unfilled.

“We need all hands on deck,” said Diane Janosek, chief learning officer at NSA. “The National Security Agency was working with very mature, rigorous, well credentialed academic institutions. They were helping some of the smaller schools or maybe large schools that didn’t have a program that wanted to get into the cybersecurity education field, but they didn’t have the teachers, they may not have had the resources, the curriculum, the access to internships and the access to mentorship.” — SM

Groups call on Congress to stop military hunger

More than a hundred groups are calling on Congress to keep a provision to help low income military members with funds for basic living needs.

A provision in the House version of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act would give a basic needs allowance for service members who are not eligible for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits.

More than one third of children at Defense Department schools are eligible for free or reduced lunch during the 2018-2019 school year.

“It has also been hard to determine the extent of this problem,” Rep. Susan Davis (D-Calif.), who sponsored the provision, said. “Despite pushing for years to get data the Department of Defense has not shared what we need, which suggests they see no problem at all … We see military families lining up in food banks on bases across the country. This is something we have the power to change. We have already enacted many programs during COVID that have helped prevent Americans from going hungry.”

The letter, signed by the National Military Family Association and MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, urges the leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services Committee to keep the provision in the bill as lawmakers discuss it in conference.

“While [her husband] would have to deploy to places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Horn of Africa repeatedly, we were unsure truly how we were going to make ends meet, pay our bills and feed our family on a continuous basis,” said Bianca Strzalkowski, a former military spouse, said. “We then moved to our next duty station in North Carolina. We could not get out of this cycle of financial hardship. We leaned on payday advance loans that sometimes had interest rates of 40%.”

Under the bill, military families would have to appeal to the Defense Finance and Accounting Service for aid.

Davis stated that the provision is even more important now that COVID-19 is keeping some spouses from finding employment and some children are not going to school and receiving free lunch. — SM