The hearing came after public sector unions sued over three executive orders issued in May under the auspices of improving government efficiency but seen by many to be anti-union. Unions claimed the effort to reform the use of official time, or time spent during the workday by federal employees on union duties and activities such as filing grievances, was “to shut down labor organizations.”

At the heart of the case lay a debate over executive authority: Did the president’s orders overstep boundaries and conflict with a decades-old congressional statute?

Union legal counsel argued that the orders were specifically contrary to congressional statute on negotiating in good faith with public employees, amounting to an attempt to unfairly “limit the scope of collective bargaining.”

The government responded by offering a broad interpretation of the law, insisting that “the president is acting inside the framework of the statute.” The defense also pointed to orders on labor force made by Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as precedent.

“Unions can still negotiate over so many things,” said the lead defense counsel, “so we don’t read these EOs as gutting a union’s ability to operate.”

Judge Ketanji Jackson kept her line of questioning largely focused on the question of executive authority and not on an alleged attack on rights of organized labor. “Your argument has a flavor of ‘we all know what’s really going on,’” she told a union lawyer, “but that’s not how this court works.”

Judge Jackson also closely interrogated the administration’s claims, including when the government began with an argument that the issue was not ripe for legal review and that the District Court did not have the jurisdiction to rule on the orders at all.

With the conclusion of oral arguments, both sides will now await a decision as the judge has promised a decision relatively soon.

The House bill repeals a previous statutory requirement that the Department of Defense name an executive agent (EA) for printed circuit board technology. That role is to oversee the supply chain and “facilitate access to reliable, trusted, and affordable print circuit board fabrication” to meet future military requirements, according to a DoD description.

The Senate version does not remove the requirement for an EA, and instead directs the EA to conduct a report for the secretary of defense on the “health of the defense electronics industrial base,” according to the bill language. The Senate legislation also includes a call for “a plan to formalize long-term resourcing for the executive agent.”

Circuit boards act as “road maps” for defense items ranging from F−35 planes to missile guidance systems and in the wrong hands would allow enemies to “understand, replicate, even sabotage” American technologies, said Chris Mitchell, vice president of global government relations at the Association Connecting Electronics Industries.

Mitchell worries that the potential elimination of the position will shake the confidence of domestic circuit board producers and will hurt private research and development spending. He calls the language “a symbolic punch in the gut to the industry.”

In a letter, Reps. Trey Hollingsworth, R-Ind., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif., urged House and Senate defense leaders to oppose the proposal in the must-pass bill, writing that “for the EA to be stripped of its statutory authority … would send a dispiriting signal to the U.S. printed circuit board industry by calling into question the government’s commitment to a robust domestic defense electronic industry to serve DoD requirements.”

The number of American circuit board producers has dropped from 500 in 2005 to fewer than 200 today due to global competition, with the risk of reliance on foreign producers for sensitive tech motivating lawmakers to take notice of the issue, explained a staffer for Hollingsworth.

The idea to eliminate the requirement of an executive agent arose from a Section 809 recommendation, a committee dedicated to streamlining acquisition regulations. Dropping the mandate for the position of EA for circuit boards will “facilitate freedom of action” during reorganization of the department, a January 2018 committee report said.

“Designating a senior official to serve as executive agent limits the secretary’s flexibility and is overly prescriptive” wrote the committee, noting that the “effectiveness” of the EA role “in action has not yet been determined.”

Mitchell and Lentz said the EA has had little time to provide results, as the DoD did not move to officially incorporate the EA position until 2016, even though it was first called for in the 2009 National Defense Authorization Act.

The two chambers are meeting in conference to resolve differences between their versions of the defense policy bill.

The $49 million Other Transaction Agreement, inked June 22 and announced July 9, will provide a model for the National Background Investigation Services (NBIS). The governmentwide IT service is used to “conduct suitability, security, and credentialing investigations for all federal civilians, military members, and government contractors” according to an agency description.

The National Background Investigations Bureau that currently conducts security clearance background investigations has more than 710,000 applications waiting to be processed.

The new system promises to “expedite the time to process investigations by automating and optimizing key processes from request initiation through investigation completion,” said Raju Shah, the NBIS program manager.

A July 9 DISA press release also noted that the new system will be “deployed into a scalable, cloud-based architecture.”

The Enterprise prototype will face the challenge of implementing a streamlined system across the federal government while retaining key capabilities such as fingerprint and biometric processing.

“We’re building a first-of-its-kind enterprise system that brings together the complex integration of a number of disparate systems on an unprecedented scale,” Shah said.

The Government Accountability Office’s review of the nuclear proliferation-detection plan found it “generally did not address reporting requirements” required by law.

The 2015 (and the 2017) National Defense Authorization Act mandated the president develop and submit an “interagency plan and road map for verification and monitoring” of nuclear weapons. The plan needed to include a research and development program to improve “in-field inspection” capabilities.

Disputes over verification was central to the debate over the Iran deal and is proving a topic of discussion in negotiations with North Korea.

The report noted that “neither the 2015 plan [under the Obama administration] nor the 2017 update included a specific engagement plan for improving inspections and monitoring.”

While the Trump administration was given credit for coming up with recommendations and possible action plans, such as intelligence sharing with partners Israel and Japan, the report was critical of the lack of detail elsewhere.

The exact coordination between relevant agencies, resource sharing and technical capability development, such as “rapid analysis of large data sets” for effective monitoring, were absent from the plan, according to the GAO.

The U.S. State Department indicated to the GOA it did not wish to comment on the unclassified version of the report.

Attendees of the Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit in Washington June 21 heard warnings that obsolete and slow approaches are driving up costs of time and resources for the Navy’s newest technologies that interact with one another in combat.

“It’s really a matter of making System A talk to System B,” said Richard Jack, a lead engineer and project director at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific. “A logistics system that needs to be able to interact with a weapons system.”

Software superiority is an important part of the Navy’s plan for a global competitive edge, from unmanned underwater vehicles to drones operated from ships. Unless the Navy wants to get an error message at a crucial combat moment, they will have to search outside their own technology labs for the solution to the interoperability challenge, Jack said.

“The Navy can’t do this alone, as 99 percent of the brain trust is in the cloud service providers and the industry,” Jack stated. He expressed the need to “take advantage” of lessons learned by cloud industry leaders on big data collection and interpreting results to make predictions .

Jack suggested accelerating operations with increased cloud computing, creating shared infrastructure to make sure data centers are connected, eliminating duplicative investments across some programs, and further expanding AI and machine learning advancements.

The software engineer expressed confidence that learning from cloud service providers will result in the Navy enhancing warfighting abilities, envisioning a cloud to allow instant data sharing “between a weapons system, an airframe, a UAV, and a logistics system” at the same time.

Jack also praised cloud computing as important to the “compile to combat” program, in which the Navy is experimenting with ways to deploy new software capabilities to ships at sea in less than 24 hours.

While the cloud can “be super fast and super efficient” for accessing large amounts of data anywhere, Jack also promised that it also allows the Navy to “really push the boundaries of machine learning,” even though “we are behind the curve” at the moment.

Through “strategic partnerships” with the “Amazons, Googles and IBM Watsons of the world,” Jack promised the Navy could accomplish even more in the areas of AI and machine learning that will dominate warfighting in the era of the cloud.

Devices that can talk to one another through an internet of things and intelligently process data have revolutionized space missions for the JPL. Soderstrom, speaking at the Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit held June 20 in Washington, explained how a self-guiding landing craft on Mars can now deploy smaller rovers, analyzing the terrain for clues to life that humans might miss, and relay data between rovers and mission control.

Artificial intelligence can even analyze satellite images to discover tiny signs of the presence of water, evidence that humans would struggle to catch on such a massive scale of data. Cloud computing allows for a faster and cheaper intake of much more data, enabling artificial intelligence to be useful both in space and on Earth.

Soderstrom also shared ways the agency uses AI and machine learning back on our planet. Chatbots that can converse with humans online and on-demand are used to schedule meeting rooms, while NASA employees save hours of time using digital assistants like Alexa to perform complex tasks. Even parking efficiency in on-site garages is maximized with smart programs.

Soderstrom especially praised AI’s ability to improve design and production abilities. In one example, a NASA program can design 70 percent cheaper parts that can hold 30 percent more weight in designs a human hand couldn’t cut, but could be 3D printed by the computer.

NASA JPL can now expect faster development timelines thanks to AI, said Soderstrom, and broader society should avoid “sensationalist fears” of a technology at this point used in self-driving cars, fleet management of trucks, analysis of cancer tumors, and even as teaching assistants in classrooms. AI has also proven to be a key priority in future defense programs for the Pentagon.

“It’s not going to reduce the need for people, it’s going to make people much more effective so we can do more things,” said Soderstrom.