GovConJudicata Weekly Debrief (1/15–19)
This week's Weekly Debrief covers facial recognition, small business manufacturing contracts, NASA's Mars mission for rock samples, and issues with DOD's moving contract.
DHS
"Federal laws and regulations haven’t kept pace with advancements in facial recognition technology, a fact that merits executive action and more responsibility for agencies including the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a new report sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation recommends."
Small Business
"All right. So, the government has been scrambling to find small businesses for a lot of the needs that it has. I mean IT and services companies dime a dozen if you will. But the supplier base is shrinking for small businesses, even though more dollars are going there. So, what is the basic requirement here? Let’s set the scene."
Space
"NASA is seemingly caught between a Mars rock and a hard place. The space agency’s best-laid plan to robotically retrieve prized samples of the Red Planet for scrutiny back on Earth has been decades in the making and is seen as a "must-do" by many planetary scientists. Now it has gone awry, imperiled by a wildly unrealistic budget and schedule. Although a programmatic overhaul is now underway, no one can yet say just how — or when — the Mars Sample Return (MSR) initiative will succeed, and lawmakers have threatened the project with outright cancellation."
Defense
"For the moment, the Pentagon’s transition to a new multibillion dollar contract for household goods moves is being held up by IT integration issues between Defense Department systems and those of its prime contractor. But the long-planned overhaul faces a much more dire challenge: the possibility that almost no one in the current moving industry will take part in the new arrangement."
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