FCW Insider: Aug 21

CISA infrastructure chief Brian Harrell resigns

The assistant director, charged with helping to protect critical infrastructure from physical and cyber threats, will be returning to the private sector, the agency confirmed.

Pentagon advances domestic drone plan

The Defense Department names five U.S. vendors for domestic sourcing of small drone aircraft.

DOD details China-tech waiver

Nearly three-fourths of what the Defense Department buys will be temporarily exempt from the government-wide Huawei ban.

Energy Dept. looks for AI impact

Two recently-announced artificial intelligence collaborations show how the technology can affect real world problems, according to the head of the Energy Department's AI office.

Quick Hits

*** The U.S. Digital Service is collaborating with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to build a national data system to track COVID-19 cases and testing, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The system will be under The move comes as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Trump administration have come in for criticism for supplanting the CDC hospital reporting and disease surveillance system in the midst of the pandemic and replacing it with a new system that sent data straight to HHS. As has been reported by ProPublica and elsewhere, hospitals and health organizations were given little time to adjust to the new system and HHS had been making less frequent updates of COVID-19 data than when the data was managed by CDC.

*** The Defense Information Systems Agency made major other transaction authority award in its program to develop a cloud-based internet isolation for network defense. The award to By Light Professional IT Services has a $198.9 million ceiling and covers one year with four option years. In a release DISA announced this was its first ever OTA production award.