US-based software provider Oracle Corporation has announced that all required antitrust approvals have been obtained for its proposed acquisition of American health ICT company Cerner, including European Commission clearance. Oracle is expected to acquire Cerner for $28.3-billion, according to Gulf Business.
Cerner is a leading provider of digital information systems used within hospitals and health systems to enable medical professionals to deliver better healthcare to individual patients and communities.
Oracle expects to complete the tender offer promptly following the expiration of that offer at midnight Eastern time on June 6, 2022. Completion of the tender offer remains subject to the conditions described in the tender offer statement on Schedule TO filed by Oracle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on January 19, 2022, as amended.
Oracle Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison will discuss the Cerner acquisition and Oracle’s new suite of cloud-based health management applications at an online event on June 9, 2022.
“Working together, Cerner and Oracle have the capability to transform healthcare delivery by providing medical professionals with a new generation of healthcare information systems,” said Ellison about the acquisition.
“Better information enables better treatment decisions resulting in better patient outcomes. Our new, easy-to-use systems are designed to lower the administrative workload burdening our medical professionals while improving patient privacy and lowering overall healthcare costs.”
“We expect this acquisition to be substantially accretive to Oracle’s earnings on a non-GAAP basis in fiscal year 2023,” said Safra Catz, CEO, Oracle.
“Healthcare is the world’s largest and most important vertical market—$3.8 trillion last year in the United States alone. We expect Cerner to be a huge growth engine for years to come.”
“Cerner has been a leader in helping digitize medical care, and now it’s time to realize the real promise of that work with the care delivery tools that get information to the right caregivers at the right time,” said David Feinberg, CEO and President, Cerner.
“Joining Oracle as a dedicated Industry Business Unit provides an unprecedented opportunity to accelerate our work modernizing electronic health records, improving the caregiver experience, and enabling more connected, high-quality and efficient patient care.”
The request specifically calls out “dangers” in multiple federal agencies operating Clearview AI’s facial recognition technology.
A bicameral cadre of lawmakers Wednesday called on the departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Defense, Interior and Health and Human Services to cease their use of facial recognition technology—specifically calling concern to their use of Clearview AI’s tools.
“Facial recognition tools pose a serious threat to the public’s civil liberties and privacy rights, and Clearview AI’s product is particularly dangerous,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to agency secretaries. “We urge you to immediately stop the Department’s use of facial recognition technology, including Clearview AI’s tools.”
The letter follows the IRS’ decision to move away from forcing Americans to verify their identities by taking selfies through the ID.me service in order to file tax returns, aftersignificant public backlash.
However, the IRS is only one of several large federal agencies that employ facial recognition tools, according to a 92-page report the Government Accountability Office published last June. According to GAO—Congress’ investigative arm—10 federal agencies deployed systems made by Clearview AI, whose controversial software allows users to match photos of unknown people to their online images. Among the agencies using Clearview AI’s software were the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; FBI; Capitol Police; Marshals Service; Park Police; Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol; and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Agencies reported using various public- and private-sector biometrics tools for a variety of purposes, including surveillance, traveler verification, COVID-19 response and research, and development projects.
Critics have contended facial recognition tools violate Americans’ privacy rights, particularly among minorities.
“Use of increasingly powerful technologies like Clearview AI’s have the concerning potential to violate Americans’ privacy rights and exacerbate existing injustices,” the lawmakers wrote. “Facial recognition technology like Clearview’s poses unique threats to marginalized communities in ways that extend beyond the tools’ inaccuracy issues. Communities of color are systematically subjected to over-policing, and the proliferation of biometric surveillance tools is, therefore, likely to disproportionately infringe upon the privacy of individuals in Black, Brown and immigrant communities.”
The letter was authored by Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Reps. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass. Over the summer, Pressley introduced legislation that would ban the use of facial recognition in public housing due to privacy concerns.
LONDON ― The U.S. military may need to reorganize to fight future wars, which will be profoundly changed by artificial intelligence, robotics and other advanced technologies, according to Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The nation’s top military officer said during a trip to Europe this week that he’s working on recommendations that could lead to a high-level reorganization. After launching Army Futures Command in 2018 to drive modernization when he was that service’s chief of staff, Milley said he’s mulling a similar effort for the joint force.
“You’re going to have to do really fundamental changes to our military in order to take advantage of this change in the character of war. In order to do that, you need organizations to drive that,” he told reporters. “You look at what the Army did with Army Futures Command, for example. Can that be done at the joint level, at the DoD level?”
How Army Futures Command could be adapted across the services, which have innovationefforts of their own, is unclear, and Milley wasn’t ready to say whether he’d be proposing an umbrella “Joint Futures Command.” Army civilian leaders have movedsome of the service’s command’s powers back to its senior civilian acquisitions office, though it shepherded 24 modernization programs since its inception.
The comments follow a warning he gave graduating cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point last week that the military’s technological edge is in danger. No longer the unchallenged global power, America is being tested in Europe by Russian aggression and in Asia by China’s dramatic economic and military growth.
“We’re going to have to really think hard about fundamental shifts to our military,” Milley said in London. “The country that maximizes development of these technologies with their doctrines and organizations, in the time we have available, could be decisive in the next conflict … I would suggest, in 10 to 15 years, you have to do these fundamental changes.”
The Pentagon has been trumpeting its stepped up investments in emerging technologies and last week made its latest tech-focused organizational move. An Emerging Capabilities Policy Office will help integrate autonomous systems, hypersonic tech, directed-energy weapons, and other innovations into the department strategy, planning guidance and budget processes.
The principal military advisor to the president and the secretary of defense, Milley said he is also thinking through the implications of emerging technologies, following the lead of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. The military is examining options for operational design and structure of the force ― its brigades, divisions and fleets ― but also its institutions.
“The institutions we have today may or may not be optimally designed to leverage these technologies,” he said.
Drawing a parallel with the horse bit and stirrups that allowed for mounted warfare some 3,000 years ago, Milley said that the existing technology behind Fitbits and iPhones allow soldiers to sense their environment like never before while accurate, long-range precision munitions let them destroy targets like never before.
Coupled with AI’s potential to speed battlefield decision-making and the robotics and the autonomous technologies that are transforming the character of labor, militaries and warfare could be entirely transformed. Trucking, which is already adapting to driverless vehicles, and other industries that lend themselves to robotics will fundamentally change, Milley said.
“With respect to the military, that’s no less true. We have a wide variety of tasks that can be and probably will be conducted by some form of robot,” he said. “The unmanned aerial vehicle is an example, but you could see in the future, pilotless air forces ― manned/unmanned teaming where you have one aircraft that’s got a human in it and the rest of the squadron are robots.
“You could see tank formations where maybe one armored vehicle is manned and the rest are robotic,” Milley said. “You could see a sailor-less Navy where one or two ships are command-type ships and the rest are all robotic ships.”
With the potential to reduce casualties and manpower costs, and revamp logistics, the implications are “almost infinite,” he said, adding that the Pentagon should be investing in those technologies, and changing the concepts of how it fights, its doctrine, organizations, leadership development.
“I believe we that we are in a fundamental change in the character of war, and by that I mean how you fight, where you fight, the doctrine, the equipment, the tactics, techniques and procedures, and so on,” Milley said. “We’re in the middle of a real, unbelievable fundamental change, which is probably the biggest fundamental change in the history of warfare.”
The U.S. federal government is ahead of other industries in the adoption of multicloud, which is imperative to mission success.
To say the U.S. federal government has made significant digital strides in recent years would be an understatement. As one of the few industries responsible for managing an overabundance of sensitive data and mission-critical applications that hundreds of millions of constituents depend on—all while using and modernizing decades-old legacy IT infrastructure to do so—the U.S. federal government’s rapid acceleration of its digital transformations is quite phenomenal.
Especially impressive are the federal government’s strides in public cloud and multicloud IT infrastructures. Findings from the fourth annual Public Sector Enterprise Cloud Index from Nutanix show that the federal government and public education sub-sectors lead the charge in the adoption of public cloud services—which deliver IT services to organizations directly over the internet—as well as the deployment of multicloud—an IT environment that embodies two or more different clouds, private and/or public. With federal agencies now racing ahead of other industries in cloud-smart agility, they have the opportunity to meet soaring increases in demand, new mandates and new missions, as well as collaborate with global mission partners to protect and serve the public. However, there are two key challenges posing a threat to their cloud-smart progress that agencies should tackle in the year ahead:
Manageability
The ECI revealed that the federal government has unusually high multicloud usage with a penetration level of 47%—11% higher than the global average. This is a promising sign as multicloud promotes agility, performance, cost savings and time savings to ultimately allow agencies to be responsible stewards of resources.
However, management across cloud borders is complex and remains a major challenge for public sector organizations, with 85% agreeing that to succeed, their organizations need to simplify the management of multiple clouds. To address this challenge, 75% agree that a hybrid multicloud model, an IT operating model with multiple clouds both private and public with interoperability between, is ideal. In the year ahead, federal government organizations should look to hybrid multicloud solutions.
Application mobility
Moving an application to a different IT infrastructure, or application mobility, is a critical multicloud and cloud-smart optimization enabler. At the same time, application mobility is also cited by nearly two-thirds (63%) of federal government ECI respondents as a multicloud challenge. With the majority of ECI respondents saying that moving apps can be time-consuming and costly, it’s expected that the adoption of containers and other AI-driven, hybrid multicloud tools will rise alongside multicloud deployments to enable apps to run and move nearly anywhere. Looking ahead, by the time most federal government ECI respondents are ready for these tools on a large scale, they’ll likely have more options available than are on the market today.
As federal government and other public sector organizations continue their cloud journeys, it’s clear that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to the cloud, making hybrid multicloud the ideal IT environment according to 75% of ECI respondents. This model will help address some of the key challenges of multicloud deployments by providing a unified cloud environment on which security and data governance policies can be applied uniformly.
Chip George is the vice president of Public Sector at Nutanix. He has more than 20 years’ experience working in government markets for various technology companies and started his career in the United States Navy as a Nuclear Submarine Officer on the USS Philadelphia (SSN 690).
The latest in a series of efforts, ID advocates ask congressional appropriations committees to end the ban on government support for a national ID standard.
May 16 22
Dozens of healthcare organizations are yet again urging Congress to not impede efforts to create a national unique patient identifier.
In a letter sent to the House and Senate appropriations committees, some 119 organizations ask legislators to not include language in any legislative proposal that would prohibit the Department of Health and Human Services from spending federal money “to promulgate or adopt a national unique patient health identifier standard.”
HIPAA, enacted in 1996, called for creation of a national patient identifier. Since 1999, however, Congress has prevented federal agencies from pursuing an identifier, citing concern about patient privacy risks. But a growing phalanx of healthcare organizations says an ID would lead to far better healthcare coordination, which was lacking in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. John Lee, CMIO, Allegheny Health Network
“If you have dozens of different ways of identifying patients, you don’t have a system.”
The lack of a uniform patient ID also results in expensive and unnecessary records duplication that puts patient safety at risk, according to the Patient ID Now Coalition, which includes the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, and others that signed the letter.
Earlier efforts fall short
Last fall, the latest in a long series of efforts to eliminate roadblocks to federal involvement in the creation of a national patient ID approach fell short. A draft funding bill by the Senate Appropriations Committee sought to remove the ban, but final language was amended to contain the ban. The House Appropriations Committee has removed the ban from its bill the last three fiscal years.
The healthcare organizations’ letter, addressed to heads of both the House and Senate appropriations panels, calls the ban “archaic” and urges that it be removed from FY 2023 budgets for the departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, Education and related agencies.
“We urge the (committees) to continue the bipartisan support of repeal in Congress and ensure that Section 510, the archaic funding ban on a national unique health identifier, is NOT included in the FY2023 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill,” the letter states.
Removing the language in Section 510 will enable HHS to evaluate patient identification solutions and collaborate with the private sector to identify a national strategy for patient identification that both protects privacy and is cost-effective and secure, the organizations contend.
Negative effects
The letter – as well as a May 11 presentation hosted by CHIME and the Patient ID Now Coalition – describe the challenges caused by the lack of a unified system for identifying patients and matching them to all their electronic records from various sources.
The letter contends: “Without the ability of clinicians to correctly connect a patient with their medical record, lives have been lost and medical errors have needlessly occurred. These are situations that could have been avoided had patients been able to be accurately identified and matched with their records.”
The ECRI Institute has listed patient misidentification among its top 10 threats to patient safety, the letter notes.
ECRI Report – Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns for Healthcare Organizations
In addition to the safety concerns, the current hodge-podge approach to patient identification places an unnecessary burden and significant costs on all players in the healthcare industry, the letter states.
“The expense of repeated medical care due to duplicate records costs an average of $1,950 per patient inpatient stay, and over $1,700 per emergency department visit,” the letter-writers contend. “Some 35 percent of all denied claims result from inaccurate patient identification, costing the average hospital $2.5 million and the U.S. healthcare system over $6.7 billion annually.”
Healthcare organizations shoulder the burden of trying to match patients to records and unravel confusion from duplicate records, says Rachel Podczervinski, vice president for professional services at Just Associates, a consultancy. The increase in the number of mergers and acquisitions among providers, as well as increased use of portals, telehealth and patient self-scheduling, has exacerbated patient matching challenges.
Mistakes in merging records “are a major risk to patient safety,” she adds. “If you pull up someone else’s record who has similar (demographic) information and attach them to someone’s records, that person will be treated based on information in that other record. You have the potential to kill a patient because, for example, you have the wrong blood type and you may give them the wrong blood product.”
Patient self-registration has resulted in more record duplication she adds, noting that one system with which she works recorded one patient with 24 different identities linked to separate registrations. Such instances have increased because of the pandemic and the increase in virtual care.
Clinicians and reform face problems
Clinicians are already facing more data from electronic records systems, and confusion about matching patients to all those records is complicating their efforts to effectively use the information that systems contain, says John Lee, MD, chief medical information officer of Allegheny Health Network.
“There are a lot of changes that are occurring in the healthcare system,” Lee explains. “The biggest thing is the volume of data that we’re being exposed to. It’s a fallacy to think that if you just know the patient in front of you, then you can take care of that patient.
“What we’re limited by now is that we have too much information. The only way to parse and organize that information is by having a better patient ID system. That’s where it starts.”
Organizations use algorithms to match patients to all the right records, but that’s not always an effective approach.
The transition to value-based care also will be impeded by the lack of a national patient ID because identity verification is a necessary component for achieving population health efforts, Lee says. “If we want to get off of fee-for-service, we need to develop a much more accurate patient identification system. Right now, (identification is) wholly inadequate,” he says. Precision medicine requires precise patient identification, he contends.
Some patients are more affected by the lack of a patient identifier than others. For example, pediatric patients, especially those with complex care needs who are seeing a variety of specialists, are particularly at risk of misidentification, Karen Wilding, vice president and chief value officer at Nemours Children’s Health, points out.
Organizations use algorithms to match patients to all the right records, but that’s not always an effective approach. For example, migrant workers often don’t have Social Security numbers or permanent addresses, and certain populations from other countries often don’t know their birthdates and are assigned Jan. 1 as the date, with an estimate for which year they were born, Podczervinski says.
Government needs to be at the table
The healthcare organizations prodding Congress say the government doesn’t necessarily have to be the developer of a unified patient ID system. But because the government is a major healthcare payer and provider, it needs to be at the table and provide the broad strokes that will unify divergent and conflicting patient ID approaches.
“The government has a role in maybe not being the arbiter, but setting a foundation and structure upon which other things can reside,” Lee contends. “This way, it’s not a free-for-all for everyone trying to identify someone – we need standard ‘rules of the road.’ Based on the current interpretation of Section 510, the government cannot even come up with the rules of the road, because that involves money. We need it to say that this is the framework; these are the guardrails.
“If you have dozens of different ways (of identifying patients), you don’t have a system then. The opportunity to fix this is sitting in front of our face.”
Federal agencies planning to adopt 5G technologies now have a new tool to vet the security of the technology: go.usa.gov/xJrDf
With our partners at the Department of Defense Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research & Engineering and the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate, we released a five-step “5G Security Evaluation Process” agencies can use to evaluate the security of their 5G technologies. It is a flexible, adaptive and repeatable approach to evaluating the security and resiliency of 5G and next-generation network deployments.
The process allows agencies to conduct the Prepare step of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Risk Management Framework for system authorization and to identify gaps in existing security assessment guidance and standards that arise from the new features and services in 5G technologies.
Additionally, it identifies important threat frameworks, 5G system security considerations, industry security specifications, federal security guidance documents and relevant methodologies for cyber assessment of 5G systems.
Read our blog for more information: go.usa.gov/xJrDf
Original release date: May 26, 2022
By Eric Goldstein, Executive Assistant Director for Cybersecurity
Federal agencies, along with many other organizations across the public and private sectors, are expected to adopt 5G technology that will provide new features, capabilities and services to transform their mission and business operations. These new benefits will be achieved from the numerous 5G usage scenarios delivered through the technology’s low-, mid- and high-band radio spectrum, network slicing and edge computing. However, a security assessment is required before any agency 5G technology adoptions can be granted authorization to operate.
Today, CISA – along with its partners from the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate and the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD R&E) – is excited to introduce a proposed five-step 5G Security Evaluation Process that is derived from research and security analyses. This process allows agencies to conduct the Prepare step of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Risk Management Framework (RMF) for system authorization.
Figure 1. Proposed 5G Security Evaluation Process
The jointly proposed process, “5G Security Evaluation Process Investigation,” was developed to address gaps in existing security assessment guidance and standards that arise from the new features and services in 5G technologies. It identifies important threat frameworks, 5G system security considerations, industry security specifications, federal security guidance documents, and relevant methodologies to conduct cybersecurity assessments of 5G systems.
In addition, the proposed process calls for flexibility in the federal government’s 5G cybersecurity assessment approach to account for the continual introduction of new 5G standards, deployment features and policies, and the constant identification of new threat vectors.
The intent of this joint security evaluation process is to provide a uniform and flexible approach that federal agencies can use to evaluate, understand, and address security and resilience assessment gaps with their technology assessment standards and policies. As the nation’s cyber defense agency, CISA views a repeatable process agencies can use during the RMF Prepare step as an essential tool for new federal 5G implementations. Such a process will provide assurance that the government enterprise system is protected and cybercriminals cannot gain backdoor entry into agency networks through 5G technology.
Agencies and organizations are encouraged to review and provide comment on the “5G Security Evaluation Process Investigation.” This feedback will be used to assess need for additional security recommendations and guidance publications for federal agency adoptions of 5G technologies.
The deadline for providing comment is June 27, 2022, and comments should be submitted to: QSMO@CISA.dhs.gov. We look forward to receiving and reviewing your feedback on this important 5G security effort.
“We want to make sure, of course, that the directive still reflects the views of the department and the way the department should be thinking about [autonomous] weapon systems,” Michael Horowitz told Breaking Defense in an exclusive interview.
WASHINGTON: The Defense Department is updating its guidance on autonomous weapons to consider advances in artificial intelligence, with a revised directive slated for release later this year, the head of the Pentagon’s emerging capabilities policy office told Breaking Defense in an exclusive interview.
DoD directive 3000.09 [PDF], signed by then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Ash Carter on Nov. 21, 2012, established policy, responsibilities and review processes for the “design, development, acquisition, testing, fielding, and employment of autonomous and semi-autonomous weapon systems, including guided munitions that can independently select and discriminate targets.”
But in the decade since its release, artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies have made a massive leap forward, and it’s “entirely plausible” there may need to be revisions that reflect the Pentagon’s “responsible AI” initiative and other ethical principles adopted by the department, said Michael Horowitz, DoD director of emerging capabilities policy.
“Autonomy and AI are not the exact same thing,” Horowitz told Breaking Defense on May 24. “But given the growing importance that AI plays, and thinking about the future of war and the way the department has been thinking about AI, I think ensuring that’s reflected in the directive seems to make sense.”
It’s important to note that, based on the definition inscribed in DoD directive 3000.09, the military currently does not operate any weapon systems that qualify as an autonomous weapon — and at least publicly is not currently developing such a weapon. The department characterizes an “autonomous weapon” as an autonomous or semi-autonomous system that can choose its own targets and apply lethal or nonlethal force without a human in the loop.
The directive does not apply to unarmed drones or armed drones like the MQ-9 Reaper, whose flight path and weapons release is controlled by a human pilot sitting at a remote location. It also doesn’t apply to systems like the Switchblade loitering munitions the US has provided to Ukraine, which are programmed by a human operator to hit specific targets and can be called off when needed.
“It was the first national policy published on autonomous weapons systems, and actually remains one of the only publicly available national policies,” Horowitz said. “It set the standard essentially for the global dialogue that followed and demonstrated America’s responsible approach to the potential incorporation of autonomy into weapon systems.”
In a 2012 interview with Defense News, David Ochmanek, then the deputy assistant secretary for policy force development, described the doctrine as “flexible” and stressed the imposition of a “rigorous review process” that would now be in place before any future autonomous weapon could be approved.
But that promise has done little to assuage opponents, who raise comparisons to Terminators and have organized into efforts, such as the eponymous Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, to preemptively ban the technology. Horowitz — a longtime drone expert who once authored a paper titled “The Ethics & Morality of Robotic Warfare: Assessing the Debate over Autonomous Weapons” — is well aware of the debate around such systems, and while avoiding commenting on those concerns directly, he noted that the department’s increased focus on autonomy and AI in recent years has always been with the idea of a human being involved in the process.
“I would say the one of the things about the approach of the United States to the role of AI and autonomous systems has been imagining these systems as a way to enhance the warfighter,” he said. “It’s why, dating back a couple of administrations, the United States has talked about things like human-machine teaming, because it tends to think about AI and autonomous systems as things that work synergistically with the best trained military in the world to improve its capacity.”
Modernized AI
The update is occurring not because a major technological breakthrough is on the horizon, but because of a department standard that requires directives be updated every 10 years. Right now, it’s unclear exactly how much of the original directive will need to be revised, but Horowitz seemed to downplay massive rewrites.
“Our instinct entering this process is that the fundamental approach in the directive remains sound, that the directive laid out a very responsible approach to the incorporation of autonomy and weapons systems,” Horowitz said.
“But we want to make sure, of course, that the directive still reflects the views of the department and the way the department should be thinking about [autonomous] weapon systems,” he continued. “You know, it has been a decade. And it’s entirely plausible that there are some updates and clarifications that would be helpful.”
Horowitz declined to go into details about where he thinks changes may be needed, but did highlight that the document reflects the Pentagon of 2012, which has morphed over the course of the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations. For instance, the review process laid out in the original directive references the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics — a position that no longer exists, whose responsibilities are now split between the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment and the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.
He also underlined that this directive would be focused on the specific subject of autonomous weapons, and not the broader AI efforts that exist throughout the department.
“When this directive was published in 2012, the notion of the way that algorithms, how algorithms might impact the military seemed pretty futuristic, or seemed further away. And autonomous weapon systems were a specific thing that the department chose to write a directive about,” he continued. “I think it’s important that the department consider the way that should then also influence this directive … given the intersection between AI and autonomous systems, and I say autonomous systems as opposed to autonomous weapon systems deliberately.
“There’s so many AI applications that can or are already influencing the American military and will influence the American military that, you know, that have nothing to do with this.”
While Horowitz’s office — only recently established — will seek out input from the relatively new defense organizations that have been stood up in the past decade, such as the office of the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer (CDAO), other organizations that may be relative to the revamp of DoD Directive 3000.09—the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, Defense Digital Service and Office of Advancing Analytics—are slated to become part of the CDAO office on June 1, Breaking Defense reported earlier this week.
He also expects to get inputs from the services, Joint Staff and other stakeholders — of which, he noted, there are significantly more now than a decade ago.
The Defense Business Board performed a 24-week study of the Department of Defense’s civilian workforce and found that talent management within DOD lags behind the commercial sector and that DOD fills short-term vacancies with little attention to future technology requirements and strategy to upskill or reskill them, Federal Times reported Tuesday.
The board has recommended that the Pentagon increase training opportunities for civilian employees and improve collaboration with military talent managers to keep pace with the private sector when it comes to aligning talent with work function.
“The Department doesn’t know its employees’ capabilities and requirements for the future, the systems to manage them, the policies to enable the new generation of skilled employees, or the programs to upskill them,” the DBB report reads.
According to the study, DOD lacks the data approach, organization and cultural foundation to “take its place as a bastion of STEM development.”
The report offers three recommendations for the Pentagon to better manage civilian talent and these are transforming civilian culture to prioritize talent management; prioritizing and elevating talent management within the organization; and modernizing DOD’s workforce planning and data.
The world is rapidly moving from human-directed manufacturing using computerized assembly lines to largely automated smart factories that manufacture more efficiently using real-time data. Considered by many to be the fourth industrial revolution, or “Industry 4.0,” this transformation requires a bevy of technologies to deliver on its promise of ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC). From smart devices to machine-learning systems to pervasive communications, the need for ultra-high speeds and reliability requires technologies that can connect in a variety of situations while remaining compliant with regional regulations. Technology and telecommunications providers have created a solution—5G private networks—to address the challenge.
The manufacturing industry is exploring 5G technology at an accelerated pace, largely to enable AI-driven use cases such as closed-loop manufacturing, adaptive manufacturing, predictive analytics for maintenance, and extended reality (XR)-based worker training and safety, says Jagadeesh Dantuluri, general manager for private and dedicated networks at Keysight Technologies. “It’s not about a static assembly line performing the same action time and time again, but one that can change based on their needs,” he says. “Private networks essentially enable new business models in manufacturing.”
Yet, the benefits of 5G private networks extend beyond manufacturing. Because the technology offers more reliable connectivity, faster data rates and lower latency, and greater scalability, security, and network control than previous communications technologies, 5G private networks will drive innovations in many industrial and enterprise sectors.
The benefits of 5G private networks
A private cellular network is built on 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)-defined standards (such as LTE or 5G), but it offers dedicated on-premise coverage. This is important for remote facilities where public networks do not exist, or where indoor coverage is not robust. A private network also makes exclusive use of the available capacity; there is no contention from other network users, as on a public network. Private operators can also deploy their own security policies to authorize users, prioritize traffic, and, most importantly, to ensure that sensitive data does not leave the premises without authorization.
The dedicated nature of 5G private networks coupled with a customized service, intrinsic control, and URLLC capabilities provides more reliable industrial wireless communication for a wide variety of use cases, Dantuluri says “Applications include wireless, real-time, closed-loop control and process automation, and AI-based production and AR/VR-based design for onsite and remote workers,” he explains. “In addition, low-cost connectivity allows sensors to become easily deployed in a wider variety of scenarios, allowing businesses to create innovative applications and collect real-time data.”
The industrial sector is driving toward a massive digital transformation, and the integration of information-technology (IT) systems with operational-technology (OT) systems will speed up this process. Digital technologies will also enable many new use cases, such as automated manufacturing.
A 5G private network enables a facility to synchronize and integrate tracking data into its workflow, allowing production lines to be configured in real time, says Dantuluri. “Since the factory’s assembly lines and infrastructure, such as robotic arms, autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs), and sensors, are wirelessly connected, configuring or moving assembly elements on demand is much easier. This use case demands highly reliable, low-latency wireless connectivity and coverage, and potentially high data rates in both the uplink and downlink, and maybe support for Time Sensitive Networks (TSN) in the future. This use case application can only be achieved with 5G private networks.”
Outside the industrial sector, 5G private networks enable mobile augmented-reality (AR) and virtual-reality (VR) applications, allowing, for example, engineers to view superimposed blueprints, soldiers to have heads-up displays, and businesses to have virtual meetings in the field or working remotely. “If a machine has to be repaired, and a technician or a factory worker has AR goggles, they can have technical information superimposed on the real-world device to see what is wrong,” says Dantuluri. “And the data center can send instructions about how to do the repairs, step by step.”
As enterprises realize the benefits of pervasive, low-latency, high-bandwidth, and secure connectivity, the applications of 5G private networks will expand. By the end of 2024, analysts expect investment in 5G private networks will add up to tens of billions of dollars. A separate analysis by the research arm of investment firm JP Morgan predicts that the global enterprise opportunity for 5G will exceed $700 billion by 2030.
Better security
5G private networks have improved upon previous 4G standalone network security and are better able to address several existing security threats. Like most new technology, 5G private networks will likely have security issues that need to be addressed, but security has become a primary consideration in both developing the standards for 5G and in the implementation approaches. In addition, companies can further augment those security features with novel technologies, such as more robust encryption schemes and zero trust architecture, as private networks afford complete control to its owner—a benefit not possible on public networks.
The focus on improving security will drive new and innovative applications, especially in high-security areas such as seaports and airports, says Dantuluri. “Private networks provide the flexibility of movement that seaports require,” he says. “In airports, after a plane lands, engine data can begin downloading before the plane even docks to the gate, which saves a lot of time and helps airlines stay on schedule.”
Wireless flexibility
Most manufacturing robots are tethered to wired networks, but improved connectivity and better security means that connected devices can more easily move around and stay connected to necessary systems and data. In addition, 5G networks are built to allow devices to remain connected when moving between cells, whereas many Wi-Fi networks require devices to reconnect after moving.
This advantage pays off in scenarios where a large area needs to be covered by a wireless network, Dantuluri says. “Facilities like mines, airports, and seaports require significant geographic coverage in the order of several square kilometers,” he says. “Other wireless technologies have very limited range, making them unsuitable for these use cases.”
In addition, there are benefits for remote applications as well. Today, most offshore oil rigs, for example, rely on separate satellite communications and local networks. Not only are 5G private network connections more secure and interoperable, but they reduce the cost of hybrid communications, combining local area, cellular, and satellite networks.
A revolution in connectivity
Industry has quickly evolved over the past two decades, from steam-powered machines automating manufacturing, to assembly lines simplifying production, to computerized systems creating more precise products. Machine learning and fast, reliable connectivity promise to make the next industrial revolution, Industry 4.0, possible.
Every industry will apply Industry 4.0 advances to help improve their operations. 5G private networks will be crucial to that effort. “Today, automation is significant, but is all done with wires, so systems—industries, robotics, sensors—are difficult to quickly customize,” says Dantuluri. “As 5G private network adoption increases, all systems will be automated and connected with low-latency wireless, which will enable adaptive business models.”
On May 24, the U.S. Army posted an invitation to the upcoming Machine Learning Assessment Event, which will be held August 2 to 5. Responses are due by June 28.
The Cyber Fusion Innovation Center (CFIC), in collaboration with U.S. Army Cyber Command (ARCYBER) Technical Warfare Center (TWC), will host a series of events to identify existing and/or potential capabilities and expertise to reduce cognitive workloads and optimize workflows within its four mission areas (defend, operate, influence, and attack) to further increase operational effectiveness.
Background Machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled systems can effectively reduce Warfighter burden by automating portions of their workflows to increase Warfighter accuracy and throughput. Warfighters with shorter, more accurate workflows will therefore increase operational effectiveness across many various lines of effort. Defensive and offensive cyberspace workflows involve finding a capability or technique to generate an effect somewhere in an environment under certain conditions. Understanding the entire solution space manually is cumbersome, time-consuming, and in most cases infeasible. An AI-based system could reduce this problem to the subset of capabilities/techniques that have the highest probability of success given past experience. This would enable faster and more accurate solution finding, ultimately improving operational effectiveness.
Known Capability Needs
How to proactively and continuously support asset identification and compliance at the network edge via at-scale enterprise network traffic analytics, in support of the Cyber mission. May include but not limited to identification and status of all end-points, current status of patching, and recommendations for patching priorities.
Automatically identify vulnerable surfaces or likely bad-actor avenues of approach to our network. May include but not limited to dynamically identifying adversarial Grey and Red space infrastructure.
How to enable dynamic automation, augmentation, or reconfiguration of network infrastructure for detection of malicious intent and intervention against adversary actions in support of cyber operations at the network edge. May or may not include human intervention.
How to identify malicious (preferred) or anomalous behavior in data related to netflow or PCAP.
While the ideal solution is preferred, capabilities that address individual components will be considered. Partnerships among potential solution providers resulting in complete solutions are highly encouraged.
