“Very soon we will have the world’s leading AI models on every unclassified and classified network throughout our department,” Hegseth said in a speech at Musk’s space flight company, SpaceX, in South Texas.

The announcement comes just days after Grok — which is embedded into X, the social media network owned by Musk — drew global outcry and scrutiny for generating highly sexualized deepfake images of people without their consent.

Malaysia and Indonesia have blocked Grok, while the U.K.’s independent online safety watchdog announced an investigation Monday. Grok has limited image generation and editing to paying users.

Hegseth said Grok will go live inside the Defense Department later this month and announced that he would “make all appropriate data” from the military’s IT systems available for “AI exploitation.” He also said data from intelligence databases would be fed into AI systems.

Hegseth’s aggressive push to embrace the still-developing technology stands in contrast to the Biden administration, which, while pushing federal agencies to come up with policies and uses for AI, was also wary of misuse.

Officials said rules were needed to ensure that the technology, which could be harnessed for mass surveillance, cyberattacks or even lethal autonomous devices, was being used responsibly.

The Biden administration enacted a framework in late 2024 that directed national security agencies to expand their use of the most advanced AI systems but prohibited certain uses, such as applications that would violate constitutionally protected civil rights or any system that would automate the deployment of nuclear weapons. It is unclear if those prohibitions are still in place under the Trump administration.

During his speech, Hegseth spoke of the need to streamline and speed up technological innovations within the military, saying, “We need innovation to come from anywhere and evolve with speed and purpose.”

He noted that the Pentagon possesses “combat-proven operational data from two decades of military and intelligence operations.”

“AI is only as good as the data that it receives, and we’re going to make sure that it’s there,” Hegseth said.

The defense secretary said he wants AI systems within the Pentagon to be responsible, though he went on to say he was shrugging off any AI models “that won’t allow you to fight wars.”

Hegseth said his vision for military AI systems means that they operate “without ideological constraints that limit lawful military applications,” before adding that the Pentagon’s “AI will not be woke.”

Musk developed and pitched Grok as an alternative to what he called “woke AI” interactions from rival chatbots like Google’s Gemini or OpenAI’s ChatGPT. In July, Grok also caused controversy after it appeared to make antisemitic comments that praised Adolf Hitler and shared several antisemitic posts.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to questions about the issues with Grok.

In a memo dated March 6 and released publicly Friday, Hegseth directs all DOD components to use the Pentagon’s Software Acquisition Pathway, as well as other authorities created to leverage commercial capabilities — all in an effort to speed up the process for fielding software-heavy systems.

“The Department of Defense has been slow to recognize that software-defined warfare is not a future construct, but the reality we find ourselves operating in today,” Hegseth said in the memo, which is addressed to all senior Pentagon leaders, combatant commanders and field activity directors. “When it comes to software acquisition, we are overdue in pivoting to a performance-based outcome and, as such, it is the warfighter who pays the price.”

Senior defense officials told reporters Friday the memo is the first of what will likely be a series of steps from Hegseth, who has said on several occasions he wants to change the way the military buys and builds both software and hardware. The officials requested anonymity to speak freely about the secretary’s guidance.

The Defense Department created the Software Acquisition Pathway in 2020 as the recommended approach for buying software. The pathway offers a tailored acquisition mechanism, recognizing that software can’t, and shouldn’t, be procured under the same process as an aircraft or ship.

DOD program offices adopted the approach fairly broadly, and today 82 programs representing each of the military services are using the pathway to buy a range of capabilities — from command-and-control systems to cyber. The problem, according to one official, is that the pathway hasn’t been combined with other authorities designed to attract and take advantage of commercial capabilities.

Those authorities include an approach championed by the Defense Innovation Unit called a Commercial Solutions Opening, a type of solicitation that allows startups and non-traditional defense companies to sell products and services to DOD. DIU also leverages a contracting tool called Other Transaction awards, which isn’t subject to the same regulations as a standard contract and allows the government to award contracts on faster timelines.

As part of Hegseth’s memo requiring use of the Software Acquisition Pathway, he calls for acquisition organizations to make Commercial Solutions Openings and Other Transaction contracting approaches “the default” for buying capabilities.

“Department components are prohibited from implementing further guidance on this point that would set out restrictive measures, guidelines, frameworks, directives or policies other than required by statute,” he said.

The under secretary of acquisition and sustainment, as well as DIU — because of its experience with these tools — will craft an implementation plan over the next month.

DIU expects to see an uptick in the number of program offices wanting to work with the organization to procure software using these methods, one official said. As part of the implementation plan, the department will identify what resources DIU will need to support the increased workload and help train acquisition officials on how to use these authorities.

“The combination of DIU innovation with acquisition modernization is creating a streamlined mechanic to both deliver capability fast and simultaneously open up the industry base to a broader audience,” one official said.

Outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced the contract Tuesday at a Chamber of Commerce industry day focused on increasing NATO member countries’ defense manufacturing capabilities to deter future attacks.

“There is no way to provide strong defense without a strong defense industry,” Stoltenberg said.

The Stinger is a portable surface-to-air defense system that can be carried and fired by troops or mounted onto a vehicle and used as short-range defense against aircraft.

The Raytheon-produced system was one of the first weapons the U.S. shipped to Ukraine following Russia’s 2022 invasion. It is now among hundreds of types of systems, and tens of millions of rounds of ammunition, artillery and missiles, that countries have pulled from their stockpiles to help Ukraine. But the rapid push over the past two years exposed that defense firms both in the U.S. and in Europe were not set to produce at the levels needed in a major conventional war.

The NATO summit is also occurring against a backdrop of uncertainty: U.S. political divisions delayed weapons for Ukraine for months and the upcoming presidential election is raising concern that U.S. backing — with weapons and troops — in case of threats against member countries may not always be guaranteed.

Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has boasted during campaign speeches that he’d encourage Russia to do as it wished with NATO members that do not meet their commitment to spend 2% of their gross domestic product on defense.

In some cases, defense production lines were stagnant at the time of the 2022 invasion and are only now getting production numbers up. The buildup has been dependent on getting new, longer-term contracts signed to support more capital investment in the needed infrastructure.

“This is not about shifts or a bottleneck. It’s building new factories,” said Morten Brandtzaeg, the chief executive officer of Nammo, a Norway-based ammunition firm.

The war also spurred those NATO members to increase the amount they spend on defense.

Out of 32 NATO members, 23 are expected to meet the 2% commitment this year, up from just six before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That’s seen as still not enough, as Russia has leveraged the sheer size of its workforce to rapidly replace weapons lost in the war.

“If you want to fight a war for a long time, you need to have an industry behind you, that has the capacity for a long time,” Brandtzaeg said.

Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur told the Chamber of Commerce that Russia is now spending an estimated 7% to 9% of its GDP on defense. Estonia is spending more than 3% of its GDP on defense, but needs to do more to refill its stockpiles, Pevkur said.

Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, who also serves as a deputy prime minister, said his country will commit at least 4% of its GDP to defense this year.

The war in Ukraine “exposed major weaknesses of Poland, of region and of the world at large,” Kosiniak-Kamysz said.

Since the invasion, the U.S. has provided more than $53.6 billion in weapons and security assistance to Ukraine. This support, at a time when the U.S. also is sending weapons to Israel and Taiwan, has strained the U.S. stockpile. The rest of the NATO members and other international partners have provided about $50 billion altogether in weapons and security assistance, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, an independent research organization based in Germany.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan told Tuesday’s gathering that for the first time ever, the NATO countries will each pledge to make plans to strengthen their own industrial defense capacity. He said this would help the alliance “prioritize production of the most vital defense equipment we would need in the event of a conflict.”

The 32 members have widely varying defense industry sizes and capabilities, so each country’s plan could vary widely, from partnering with industry to partnering with other countries.

___

Cook reported from Brussels.

Airmen and guardians will soon be able to take advantage of the Hypori Halo Workspace Anywhere program that grants access to government apps, email, NIPRNet, sensitive data, and CAC-enabled websites via personal devices, including a phone or tablet, whether they’re in the office or not.

A spokesperson for Hypori did not give an exact date for enrollment, but told C4ISRNET it’s still on track to begin this summer.

“The Air Force and Space Force are actually already using our platform,” said Jared Shepard, CEO and president of Hypori, at the TechNet Cyber conference presented by the Armed Forces Communications & Electronics Association International late last month in Baltimore. “Now, they’re going to scale.”

Capitalizing on the need for integrated communications and the pandemic-fueled remote work environment, the Army, including its Reserve and Guard components, already began transitioning service members toward Halo, which as of June 11 became the only way Army.mil users can access Army 365 services from a personal device. Shepard said at the conference that 50,000 Army enrollees are using the service since that BYOD effort began as a pilot in 2022. Hypori was also awarded a contract by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency on June 6 to give a third of its workforce remote access to secure networks.

“[BYOD] is a top priority for us, and it is a game changer because when our soldiers and airmen are not at the armory, they have to be connected in a secure way,” said Kenneth McNeill, chief information officer of the National Guard Bureau, in a statement February.

Reservists and part-time members of the services especially have limited access to base networks, so giving them the flexibility to complete work from wherever they are will be a boon to the organization, leaders have said.

“In our dynamic environment, the Department of the Air Force is committed to providing user-friendly enterprise solutions which empower the force to work securely in a wide range of operational contexts,” said Air Force Chief Information Officer Venice Goodwine in a statement in March.

The technology also eliminates the need to carry two devices while ensuring their government and personal data are kept separate to minimize liability. The idea of “no data at rest” means there is no risk of compromise if the enrolled devices are stolen or lost, and it ensures that personal information stored on that device is not accessible by the government.

The technology, which also vets users, is also compliant with White House orders that ban TikTok on government devices due to concerns that the social media platform’s Chinese-based parent company, ByteDance, would get access to sensitive data.

“Industry has a responsibility that if it’s doing work for the Department of Defense, that it protects that data,” Shepard said.

While pending budgetary and political outcomes are still many months from resolution, carefully planned and justified digital transformation offers a safe harbor for investment decisions being made today. By finding opportunities to improve government efficiency and productivity while reducing costs, agencies can both gain needed advancements and mitigate risks from current unknowns. The key is readiness to make constructive moves quickly to be well-positioned for momentum and success on Oct. 1.

Starting off strong in FY25

Agency IT leaders may be giving some serious thought as to what to do in the first 100 days of the new budget year. One area ripe with potential is removing systems duplication across agencies with adjacent purposes. Consider one real example: a department within Agency A identifies and certifies individual claimants as legitimate victims of a particular type of crime. Department personnel had traditionally used spreadsheets to collect, track and analyze claimant data to decision benefits entitlement. Automating data collection and tracking allowed on-demand access for the entire program team, but also enabled a dozen other Agency A components to more easily coordinate with Agency B, an integral part of the justice system. Agency A’s productivity skyrocketed, with twice as many victims served in the year after implementation vs. the year before, without increasing budget or staffing; time to victim certification was reduced by half. Their IT investment also eliminated the need for a duplicate system at Agency B, which was now willing to accept Agency A’s certification decision – a win-win for everyone.

Digital transformation can also make a significant improvement in mission outcomes where poor or inconsistent system quality is leading to customer dissatisfaction. The biggest impacts will be found when new technology enables customer self-service, reducing time to benefit and concurrently reducing government employees’ burden of performing lower-value work like filling in forms. Effective planning will also help replace cumbersome, expensive aging technologies to make room for more cost-effective options and processes. Routine, manually-intensive activities could be made significantly better and faster using advanced technologies like artificial intelligence. The resulting talent enablement will empower staff to prioritize activities that are more important, and also likely more fulfilling, supporting workforce retention.

An additional option is to focus on known appropriations priorities (such as infrastructure, the Chips Act or supply chain sustainability, in the recent past). Understanding where the government will be willing to spend can help direct the alignment of an IT organization’s own investment strategy.

Maximizing year-end ‘bonus’ dollars

Agencies that may find themselves with the luxury of obligated but unused FY24 funds can apply that money toward sound end-of-year digital modernization investments that will deliver a big impact. Again, look for where automation can address system duplication or independently recognized poor quality or poor customer satisfaction. This is also a good opportunity to modernize a system that has been either unreliable, compromised, or otherwise proven to have significant shortfalls.

The key is to pursue technology opportunities that will produce a measurable business return. That requires innovative thinking for IT-minded people who often consider new technology only as a means to reducing operations and maintenance (O&M) costs – i.e., moving to the cloud for cheaper data storage or using low code software to reduce development costs. While any savings is helpful, these kinds of reductions have minimal impact, since IT O&M typically represents only a small part of an organization’s total budget.

Instead, approaching IT investment as a means to benefit business productivity (i.e., repurposing labor to higher-value needs or increasing customer transaction capacity with the same number of staff) can produce dramatically higher returns. And, because budgeted O&M expenses will have already been met, any extra end-of-year funds can be applied toward development, modernization and enhancement (DM&E) initiatives that might otherwise not get done, amplifying the payback of this ‘bonus’ money.

If IT leaders need some guidance on this journey, the discipline of Technology Business Management offers a valuable framework and tools that provide a consistent way to measure technology investments so that they can be translated to business value.

Solving a perennial problem

While government fiscal cycles will always impose some annual uncertainty, one thing is certain – the ongoing requirement for digital transformation is sure to continue as long as technology evolves. By focusing investments on business outcomes, agency IT leaders can not only appropriately justify their budgets but also advance their agencies’ mission fulfillment – no matter which direction the political winds may blow.

Jeff Myers is Senior Director of Government Contracts at REI Systems.

Jurors convicted Trump on all 34 counts after deliberating for 9.5 hours.

The verdict is a stunning legal reckoning for Trump and exposes him to potential prison time in the city where his manipulations of the tabloid press helped catapult him from a real estate tycoon to reality television star and ultimately president. As he seeks a return to the White House in this year’s election, the judgment presents voters with another test of their willingness to accept Trump’s boundary-breaking behavior.

Trump is expected to quickly appeal the verdict and will face an awkward dynamic as he seeks to return to the campaign trail as a convicted felon. There are no campaign rallies on the calendar for now, though he’s expected to hold fundraisers next week. It will likely take several months for Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the case, to decide whether to sentence Trump to prison.

The falsifying business records charges carry up to four years behind bars, though prosecutors have not said whether they intend to seek imprisonment, and it is not clear whether the judge — who earlier in the trial warned of jail time for gag order violations — would impose that punishment even if asked. The conviction, and even imprisonment, will not bar Trump from continuing his pursuit of the White House.

Trump faces three other felony indictments, but the New York case may be the only one to reach a conclusion before the November election, adding to the significance of the outcome. Though the legal and historical implications of the verdict are readily apparent, the political consequences are less so given its potential to reinforce rather than reshape already-hardened opinions about Trump.

For another candidate in another time, a criminal conviction might doom a presidential run, but Trump’s political career has endured through two impeachments, allegations of sexual abuse, investigations into everything from potential ties to Russia to plotting to overturn an election, and personally salacious storylines including the emergence of a recording in which he boasted about grabbing women’s genitals.

In addition, the general allegations of the case have been known to voters for years and, while tawdry, are widely seen as less grievous than the allegations he faces in three other cases that charge him with subverting American democracy and mishandling national security secrets.

Fitness for office

Even so, the verdict is likely to give President Joe Biden and fellow Democrats space to sharpen arguments that Trump is unfit for office, even as it provides fodder for the presumptive Republican nominee to advance his unsupported claims that he is victimized by a criminal justice system he insists is politically motivated against him.

Trump maintained throughout the trial that he had done nothing wrong and that the case should never have been brought, railing against the proceedings from inside the courthouse — where he was joined by a parade of high-profile Republican allies — and racking up fines for violating a gag order with inflammatory out-of-court comments about witnesses.

The first criminal trial of a former American president always presented a unique test of the court system, not only because of Trump’s prominence but also because of his relentless verbal attacks on the foundation of the case and its participants. But the verdict from the 12-person jury marked a repudiation of Trump’s efforts to undermine confidence in the proceedings or to potentially impress the panel with a show of GOP support.

The trial involved charges that Trump falsified business records to cover up hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, the porn actor who said she had sex with the married Trump in 2006.

The $130,000 payment was made by Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer Michael Cohen to buy Daniels’ silence during the final weeks of the 2016 race in what prosecutors allege was an effort to interfere in the election. When Cohen was reimbursed, the payments were recorded as legal expenses, which prosecutors said was an unlawful attempt to mask the true purpose of the transaction. Trump’s lawyers contend they were legitimate payments for legal services.

Trump has denied the sexual encounter, and his lawyers argued during the trial that his celebrity status, particularly during the 2016 campaign, made him a target for extortion. They’ve said hush money deals to bury negative stories about Trump were motivated by personal considerations such as the impact on his family and brand as a businessman, not political ones. They also sought to undermine the credibility of Cohen, the star prosecution witness who pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges related to the payments, as driven by personal animus toward Trump as well as fame and money.

The trial featured more than four weeks of occasionally riveting testimony that revisited an already well-documented chapter from Trump’s past, when his 2016 campaign was threatened by the disclosure of an “Access Hollywood” recording that captured him talking about grabbing women sexually without their permission and the prospect of other stories about Trump and sex surfacing that would be harmful to his candidacy.

Trump’s voice

Trump himself did not testify, but jurors heard his voice through a secret recording of a conversation with Cohen in which he and the lawyer discussed a $150,000 hush money deal involving a Playboy model, Karen McDougal, who has said she had an affair with Trump: “What do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?” Trump was heard saying on the recording made by Cohen.

Daniels herself testified, offering at times a graphic recounting of the sexual encounter she says they had in a hotel suite during a Lake Tahoe golf tournament. The former publisher of the National Enquirer, David Pecker, testified about how he worked to keep stories harmful to the Trump campaign from becoming public at all, including by having his company buy McDougal’s story.

Jurors also heard from Keith Davidson, the lawyer who negotiated the hush money payments on behalf of Daniels and McDougal.

He detailed the tense negotiations to get both women compensated for their silence but also faced an aggressive round of questioning from a Trump attorney who noted that Davidson had helped broker similar hush money deals in cases involving other prominent figures.

But the most pivotal witness, by far, was Cohen, who spent days on the stand and gave jurors an insider’s view of the hush money scheme and what he said was Trump’s detailed knowledge of it.

“Just take care of it,” he quoted Trump as saying at one point.

He offered jurors the most direct link between Trump and the heart of the charges, recounting a meeting in which they and the then-chief financial officer of Trump Organization described a plan to have Cohen reimbursed in monthly installments for legal services.

And he emotionally described his dramatic break with Trump in 2018, when he decided to cooperate with prosecutors after a decade-long career as the then-president’s personal fixer.

“To keep the loyalty and to do the things that he had asked me to do, I violated my moral compass, and I suffered the penalty, as has my family,” Cohen told the jury.

The outcome provides a degree of vindication for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who had characterized the case as being about election interference rather than hush money and defended it against criticism from legal experts who called it the weakest of the four prosecutions against Trump.

But it took on added importance not only because it proceeded to trial first but also because it could be the only one of the cases to reach a jury before the election.

The other three cases — local and federal charges in Atlanta and Washington that he conspired to undo the 2020 election, as well as a federal indictment in Florida charging him with illegally hoarding top-secret records — are bogged down by delays or appeals.

The dismissals came at the request of the government — not the defense — citing prosecutorial errors.

Retired U.S. Navy officers Donald Hornbeck, Robert Gorsuch and Jose Luis Sanchez, and U.S. Marine Corps Col. Enrico DeGuzman had all admitted to accepting bribes from defense contractor Leonard Francis, nicknamed “Fat Leonard.”

The enigmatic figure — who was six feet, 3 inches tall and weighed 350 pounds at one time — is at the center of the Navy’s most extensive corruption cases in recent history.

The three pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disclosing information on Tuesday. The judge also dismissed the entire case against U.S. Navy officer Stephen Shedd. Their defense lawyers could not be immediately reached for comment.

It marked the latest setback to the government’s yearslong efforts in going after dozens of military officials tied to Francis, who pleaded guilty to offering more than $500,000 in cash bribes, along with other gifts and wild sex parties in Southeast Asia, to Navy officials, defense contractors and others. The scheme allowed him to bilk the maritime service out of at least $35 million by getting commanders to redirect ships to ports he controlled and overcharging for services, according to the prosecution.

Francis owned and operated Singapore-based Glenn Defense Marine Asia Ltd., which supplied food, water and fuel to U.S. Navy vessels. He was arrested in 2013 in a sting operation in San Diego.

Prosecutors said in legal filings outlining their request for Tuesday’s dismissals that the action does not mean the defendants did not commit the charged crimes but because information was withheld from the defense and other mistakes were made, they wanted to ensure justice was served fairly.

In 2022, Judge Janis Sammartino had ruled the former lead federal prosecutor committed “flagrant misconduct” by withholding information from defense lawyers. In September, the felony convictions of four former Navy officers were also vacated. The four men pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and agreed to pay a $100 fine each.

The dismissals come weeks before Francis is due back in court to set a date for his sentencing.

Francis returned to the U.S. late last year after a daring escape from his house arrest in San Diego in 2022. He fled to South America weeks before he was scheduled to be sentenced last year, and was later captured in Venezuela, which extradited him to the U.S. as part of a prisoner exchange.

The escape was also seen by some as a misstep by the prosecution for allowing him to not be held behind bars.

In a sample of the more than 340 operations and maintenance contracts awarded by the Public Buildings Service, the General Services Administration’s inspector general found nearly 70% of open work orders have not been filled, and of those that were, 43% took longer than they should have.

This risks federal buildings becoming “more vulnerable to excessive wear and tear,” leading to “higher repair and replacement costs” and potentially unsafe working conditions, according to the audit, which investigated GSA-owned buildings in Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon and Texas.

At the Jacob Javits building in New York, for example, 44% of the schedule preventative maintenance had not been done on time. That building primarily houses the Department of Homeland Security, Social Security Administration, FBI and Court of International Trade.

The federal government’s real estate situation has been thrust in the spotlight post pandemic. Higher rates of employees teleworking have made some office space obsolete, while other buildings have seen the shift as an opportunity to remodel or rethink space to be more flexible to accommodate the hybrid nature of work.

In a recent hearing before lawmakers, Jason Miller, a top official from the Office of Management and Budget, said agencies are about 80% compliant with orders to have their workforces onsite half of the time. And about 50% of all workers is not eligible to telework in the first place, he said. However, “extra” space that is either underutilized or outdated has become a complicated topic, as reducing, repurposing and repopulating federal offices all cost money and resources, which the audit shows are thin even just for existing work.

Officials interviewed in the report said at five of six sampled sites, there was not enough contract staff to meet the level of work, especially for larger buildings. There appears to be a discrepancy between personnel needs because staff at the actual place where maintenance will be done don’t get to weigh in on whether a contractor’s proposed staff levels is sufficient before an award is made.

Frequent turnover and lack of skills also contribute to hired staff being ill-equipped to meet the work, the report found.

In other instances of lapsed repairs or foregone maintenance, contractors and federal officials overseeing the work have different understandings of what a contract requires, and the Public Building Service, an office within GSA, has not enforced its own contract terms.

“One contractor did not inspect any completed work orders even though its contract required quality control inspections to be submitted monthly,” according to the audit.

Inspection checks were sometimes marked as a “pass” even without the work having been done, and sometimes they didn’t occur at all, without any repercussions.

In another example cited in the report, the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt building in Oregon had a backup water tank for fire sprinklers that had not been cleaned, as required, “in a long time.” Yet the contractor marked the inspection as “complete,” even though a subsequent visit revealed murky, green water so opaque a subcontractor couldn’t see through it when it sent a submersible down to look for cracks.

In its response to the audit, PBS said it would agree to enforce technical evaluations of bids pre-award and would issue clarifying guidance to ensure the expectations of a contract are adhered to.

NOTE: Is your office space well maintained? Do you have safety or hazard concerns at your federal building? Let us know so we can look into it by sending us a tip to tips@federaltimes.com

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The AbilityOne program is the largest source of employment for people who are blind or have other disabilities. From M16 magazines to baking mix, it supplies $4 billion in products and services to the government each year and employs more than 40,000 workers through partnering non-profit agencies.

The program’s overarching regulatory framework has been largely preserved since it was established in the 1930s, but calls to modernize the program have been voiced for years in order to grow it. As an answer, a new rule finalized in March allows price to be an evaluation factor in contract selection. Because of the program’s unique structure, price is something the program has been able to deemphasize in awards, unlike the rest of the $600 billion contracting sphere.

“The rule is designed to increase transparency, incentivize performance, and ensure that the program remains a trusted source of supply and services for federal agencies, thereby creating and maintaining jobs for people who are blind or have significant disabilities,” said AbilityOne Commission Chairperson Jeffrey Koses in a statement.

Before the rule, a federal agency would bring a contract opportunity to central nonprofit agencies. Then, they would respond with their bids based on past performance and technical capabilities; price was not a factor at that point. Then the central nonprofits would designate a supplier, and the nonprofit and the government would negotiate a fair price that the AbilityOne Commission then confirms.

Now, for new and existing defense contracts over $50 million and civilian contracts over $10 million, competition inclusive of price can be requested. Competition can only be requested by a senior official or, in the services, a flag or general officer. And again, the commission has final authority.

“The rule is written in a way such that factors and subfactors, including technical capability, past performance, training, and placements, are part of the trade-offs that are weighed along with the proposed price,” a commission spokesman told Federal Times. “This was to ensure that the price does not have a disproportionate role in the overall competitive process.”

However, introducing price to the bid selection process is a huge departure from going procedure, nonprofits said in interviews with Federal Times.

“One of the benefits of this program is, once a contract is on the procurement list, you’re not recompeting,” said Dwight Davis, president of Global Connections to Employment. “You’re just repricing it every five years. There’s a whole difference when you’re talking about running a competition.”

Impasse-related competitions are limited to service requirements exceeding $1 million in total value, which the commission estimates would represent a fraction of all contracts.

And though some nonprofits raised concerns about the commission lacking the resources and funding to take on any potential surges in impasse requests, a spokesman for the commission said officials don’t expect the them to increase given agencies still have to exhaust all existing remedies before competition is considered.

Further guidance is forthcoming on implementation of the final rule, the spokesman added, but nonprofit business owners said until they see the regulation fully baked, they are unsure how exactly price will be weighed.

The rule also acknowledges that the award process will consider nonprofits’ investments in training and development of their workforces, though the rule declined to adopt the term “social impact” in its language.

Though these efforts are incentivized in the competitive process, they’re still an unallowable cost.

“When you want people to succeed, you have to have the tools available for them to succeed,” said Jewelyn Cosgrove, vice president of government and public relations, at Melwood, another AbilityOne nonprofit. “But in a price-centric in a world where price has heavier weight, we are going to have to look really closely to ‘how?’ And how far do we go in terms of workforce development?”

Though Cosgrove and Davis said the final rule sought to be responsive to concerns raised by the nonprofit community, implementation guidance will be crucial to ensuring minimum disruption to the AbilityOne workforce, which includes more than 2,500 veterans.

“This is a program that is unique in the contracting space,” said Cosgrove. “And it is unique in the disability space. The next two, three years … is going to tell us far more than what we know today.”

Federal agencies should look past the marketing hype created by companies trying to sell to the U.S. government and understand the current state of the technology and how it can be leveraged.

Here are some ways to identify fact from fiction:

Broad Claims vs. Specific Applications: Companies often tout their AI solutions as revolutionary, capable of solving a wide array of problems. However, real AI technology tends to have specific applications. For example, a company might claim their AI can “transform customer service across all industries,” but genuine AI solutions are usually designed for specific tasks, like an AI chatbot trained to handle banking inquiries, not universally applicable across sectors.

Transparency and Peer Review: Genuine AI advancements are typically accompanied by research papers or documentation that details the technology’s workings, often peer-reviewed or presented at reputable conferences. If a company’s claims about an AI technology are not backed by publicly accessible research or technical details, it may be a sign of hype. Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo, for instance, was validated through peer-reviewed research and publicized matches against human Go champions, establishing its legitimacy.

Realistic Limitations: Authentic AI research acknowledges limitations. AI technologies, whether Large Language Models or AI vision systems, have constraints based on current technological capabilities. Companies that claim their AI solutions have no limitations or fail to discuss potential challenges are likely overselling. For example, while LLMs like Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) are powerful, researchers openly discuss their limitations in understanding context or generating accurate information beyond their training data.

Evidence of Practical Deployment: Look for evidence of the AI technology being deployed in real-world scenarios. Companies might claim their AI can automate complex tasks, but real success is demonstrated through case studies or testimonials from credible organizations. For example, IBM Watson’s deployment in healthcare is a mixed example; while it promised to revolutionize cancer treatment, actual outcomes have shown the challenges and limitations of applying AI in such a complex field, illustrating the gap between hype and practical application.

Scalability and Performance Claims: Be wary of claims that an AI solution can effortlessly scale to meet any demand. Scalability is a significant challenge in AI, and genuine solutions will discuss how they address this issue. Overhyped AI products might promise unlimited scalability without discussing the technological infrastructure required to support such claims.

How to identify hype vs reality around LLMs

One example is the hype surrounding Large Language Models (LLMs), which often paints them as near-magical tools capable of understanding and generating human-like text with little to no limitations. This overenthusiasm can lead to unrealistic expectations about the capabilities of LLMs, especially among those not familiar with the nuances of AI technology. Some claim that LLMs can replace human roles entirely in complex domains like journalism, creative writing, or legal advice, suggesting these models can understand context and nuance at a human level across any subject matter i.e. an LLM can autonomously write an entire novel that is indistinguishable from one written by a human author, complete with complex characters, intricate plots, and deep emotional insights.

However, once you understand the stochastic nature of LLMs—their probabilistic, rather than deterministic, way of generating text, it becomes clear that while LLMs are powerful tools for generating human-like text, they do not possess a true understanding of content or context the way humans do. They generate responses based on patterns in data they were trained on, rather than any real understanding or reasoning.

This understanding helps temper expectations, highlighting that while LLMs are revolutionary tools for assisting with creative tasks, augmenting content creation, and automating certain writing tasks, they are not replacements for human creativity, insight, and expertise.

The government has vast amounts of data in different locations and AI has many advantages which save agencies valuable time, money and resources, but federal agencies must know their data – doing AI requires a deep understanding of what data is available and the context of the data.

John Mark Suhy is CTO of Greystones Group. He brings more than 20 years of enterprise architecture and software development experience with agencies including FBI, Sandia Labs, Department of State, U.S. Treasury and the intel community.