FCW Insider: Oct. 14

Army tests out augmented reality with training

As social distancing becomes the norm, the Army increasingly looks to virtual training.

CISA confident on election cybersecurity

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's efforts to help state and local governments secure their election critical infrastructure are in an intense home stretch for 2020, according to the agency's top risk manager.

CBP extends cargo system disaster recovery contract

Customs and Border Protection adds five years to its cloud-based disaster recovery infrastructure-as-a-service contract with IBM.

Voting in Georgia: good news for democracy, bad news about govtech

The lines for early voting in Georgia are a sign of citizen engagement, Steve Kelman writes. But they're at least partly due to a new digital voting system.

Quick Hits

*** Federal retirees will see a 1.3% cost-of-living increase in annuity payments beginning in January 2021, the same adjustment being given to Social Security recipients. Ken Thomas, national president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees, called the increase, which is the lowest since 2017, "an affront to the millions of federal retirees who devoted their working lives to serving the public."

*** The Defense Department has awarded $600 million for 5G experimentation and testing across five military sites. The award, announced Oct. 8, will fuel projects for smart warehouses for shipments between shores and naval units at Naval Base San Diego in California, augmented and virtual reality for training and mission planning at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington, and how 5G can be used for command and control at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. The announcement comes after DOD hinted that it was interested in building its own 5G network via a request for proposal released in September. The Pentagon announced it was expanding testing in June.

*** The Federal Electronic Health Record Modernization program announced an expansion of the reach of the joint health information exchange with private sector health networks, hospitals and care providers. The Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs along with the U.S. Coast Guard connected health data with CommonWell Health Alliance, a national network encompassing 15,000 care sites.