Weekly Roundup: April 10-14, 2023

DHA preps for MHS Genesis follow-on contract. The Defense Health Agency is conducting market research on a sustainment contract for the military’s $5.5 billion electronic health records program. The contract, which spans 10-years and includes a team of contractors charged with delivering and integrating the Cerner electronic health record into the work of more than 200,000 care providers and 9.6 million beneficiaries. 

Stakeholders wonder how to sustain CX momentum long-term. The Agriculture Department is reaching out to farmers to figure out why some of its programs are underutilized. That focus on customer experience, or CX, is a continuation and iteration of goals shared by the previous two administrations, but some stakeholders say that more needs to be done to ensure that momentum continues

DoD Onboards First-Ever Chief Talent Management Officer. The Department of Defense (DoD) has appointed Brynt Parmeter as the agency’s first-ever chief talent management officer (CTMO), marking another step to address the department’s recruiting challenges. As the CTMO,  Parmeter will oversee updates and reforms for remote and hybrid work, the use of enabling technology, practices for developing and tracking talent, and encouraging movement of talent across components, agencies, and non-governmental entities, in order to help promote flexible career pathways and increase retention.

DoD CIO Greenlights Software Modernization Implementation Plan. The Department of Defense (DoD) has released a plan to implement the goals of the agency’s Software Modernization Strategy and develop capabilities to streamline software delivery efforts.

CISA’s plan to bake security into software development. New international guidance calls back to the National Cyber Strategy’s recommendation that software developers take more responsibility for the security of their products. New guidance from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the FBI, National Security Agency and a handful of allied countries urges software manufacturers to “prioritize the integration of product security as a critical prerequisite to features and speed to market.”

CISA releases updated guidance for zero trust security architectures. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is encouraging increased automation and enhanced security for access controls in its latest roadmap for agencies and organizations working to achieve zero trust. The maturity model is meant to serve as one of several roadmaps agencies can use to shift towards a data-centric security approach and to prevent unauthorized access to systems and services. It includes five pillars of trust – identity, network, data and applications and workloads – and provides specific examples of zero trust architectures, from traditional and initial to advanced and optimal. 

IARPA’s plan to hack the brains of hackers. The intelligence research agency released a broad agency announcement for a program that looks to leverage psychological biases among hackers for cyber defense. The Intelligence Community’s leading research agency is moving forward with a plan to create new cybersecurity defenses by using the decision-making biases and cognitive vulnerabilities of would-be hackers to its advantage. The solicitation describes a 45-month, three-phase program that aims to identify cognitive vulnerabilities relevant to cyber attackers, cognitive models to predict attacker behavior, and ultimately produces Adaptive Psychology-informed Defenses that deploy specific defenses based on attacker behavior. 

NSA Cyber Director Focused on Enhancing Industry Partnerships. The National Security Agency (NSA) is focused on enhancing its partnerships with industry to take down cyber adversaries says NSA Cybersecurity Director Rob Joyce. Joyce explained how the majority of the digital landscape belongs to industry, making collaboration with those stakeholders a top priority for his agency. He explained a concept called “active defense” with a soccer analogy, saying that it comes down to making sure the adversary doesn’t get to take countless shots on goal “unimpeded.”

Good decisions involve emotional, moral intelligence. Savvy leaders have a process for making decisions based on emotional and moral intelligence rather than just logic, write Doug Lennick and Chuck Wachendorfer of leadership development company think2perform and co-authors of “Don’t Wait for Someone Else to Fix It.” The pair detail their four R’s of good decisions: recognize, reflect, reframe and respond. It’s OK if some of the 4 R’s overlap, or you circle back to one — such as reflection. “[T]he sooner you can get into a calm, reflective state, the less likely you are to make a premature, ill-considered decision,” they note. SmartBrief/Leadership 

Improve your leadership through curiosity and novelty. Seek diverse opinions, learn new skills and experiment with different approaches to disrupt how you’ve always done things as a leader and create new possibilities, write Jefferson Yu-Jen Chen and Anne Duggan, co-authors of “Courageous Invitations.” “By embracing a mindset of curiosity and exploration, you can uncover new insights and opportunities that you might have otherwise missed,” they write. CEOWorld Magazine