Melissa Harris

The Defense Innovation Unit is incorporating commercial artificial intelligence at agencies across the Defense Department to improve military health, business processes, humanitarian aid and a variety of other areas across DOD.

• Artificial Intelligence

The Defense Department’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) is heavily focusing on advancing its AI development environment, the Joint Common Foundation (JCF), to help the center create repeatable, advanced AI for customers across the military.

The Defense Department is in the midst of its second tranche of 5G testing and experimentation and is hoping to begin the wave of prototyping in 2021, as several of the tranche’s solicitation deadlines near on Nov. 15 and in December. 

The Defense Department will begin rolling out its Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) framework for all military contractors to undergo assessments starting Dec. 1, DOD Chief Information Security Officer for Acquisition and Sustainment Katie Arrington confirmed.

The Army’s Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) has applied operational telemedicine to battlefields long before COVID-19 became a national issue.

As the military begins to act upon its digital modernization project and recently released data strategy, Defense Department Deputy Chief Data Officer James Cully stressed the importance of humility, open-mindedness and differing perspectives in the process.

The Defense Health Agency is working to integrate and consolidate a variety of networks and systems across military treatment facilities (MTFs) as it continues to absorb the various military hospitals and clinics across the defense health space.

During the initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in March, the U.S. was heavily reliant on providers in Asia for things like personal protective equipment as it had little to no manufacturing capability for these items.

The Defense Department has released its data strategy, which aims to make data a critical strategic asset across the military to achieve improved operational capabilities. 

Federal IT leaders stressed the importance of making IT modernization and investment an integral part of agencies’ missions and called for increases to the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) in order to meet new demands in telework and delivery of government services.

Lawmakers and public health experts are pushing for greater standardization of health data to improve public health response efforts and research outcomes.

COVID-19 has caused shutdowns and isolation, increasing mental health distress for many Americans and making it difficult to access in-person treatment for mental health disorders.