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August 19, 2020 By cs

Georgia Tech to lead technology coalition to advance inclusive innovation across the state

Announced by Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan on Aug. 17, Georgia Tech will take a lead role in the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation, a public-private partnership created to foster technology access, growth, entrepreneurship, and evolution across the state of Georgia. The organization is the first of its kind — a statewide, public-private partnership built from the ground up entirely in a virtual environment.

The new organization follows the foundational work of the Georgia Innovates Task Force, established by Lt. Gov. Duncan in January 2020. The task force, under the chairmanship of G.P. “Bud” Peterson, president emeritus of Georgia Tech, and former U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson, made recommendations last month to formalize efforts that will establish the state as a national leader in technology research, development, and implementation.  Peterson will continue as board chair.  Debra Lam, current managing director of Smart Cities and Inclusive Innovation at Georgia Tech, has been named executive director of the new organization.

“Through collaboration between industry and education, the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation has the potential to transform our entire state and the lives of its citizens,” said Ángel Cabrera, president, Georgia Tech. “ We are very grateful to Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan for creating the Georgia Innovates Task Force earlier this year, and for the thousands of volunteer hours that my predecessor, co-chair G.P. “Bud” Peterson, and other civic and community leaders and supporting organizations invested in creating this exciting vision.  We at Georgia Tech are honored to help Georgia maximize inclusive innovation throughout our state.”

Following the recommendations of the task force and building on the state’s existing infrastructure and leadership, the organization’s focus will center on “foundational, transformational, and sustaining” work throughout the state of Georgia that is guided by principles of connectedness, talent, diversity, sustainability, and identity.  Pilot programs will focus on providing access to digital resources and education; advancing agriculture, food system innovation, venture capital growth, and lab-to-market tech transfer; and ensuring resources, access, and opportunities are sustained via public-private partnerships.

Advancement efforts will include a series of high-impact, low-cost pilot programs, including K-12 Digital Readiness, Advanced Food Supply Innovation, and Regional Industry/Education Collaboratives. The first set of pilots, including Civic Data Science for Equitable Development in Savannah and a Traffic Monitoring and Communication System in Valdosta, were recently announced by the Georgia Smart Communities Challenge.

Georgia Tech research across a broad range of disciplines, including optical technology, will help define Georgia’s identity as a national leader in technology research, development and implementation. (Credit: Christa Ernst, Georgia Tech)

“Georgia Tech’s leadership role in the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation is an ongoing testament to its strategic mission of advancing technology to improve the human condition,” said Lam. “The Partnership for Inclusive Innovation’s establishment also reflects the level and depth of statewide commitment to improve access and opportunities for all Georgians.  It was an honor to work with the full Georgia Innovates Task Force, and I look forward to working with the esteemed board of advisors and the greater innovation ecosystem to deliver real impact.”

Additional pilots are planned, with the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation working closely with local governments, startups, nonprofits, and other collaborators, increasing access to educational, entrepreneurial, and technological opportunities for Georgians as well as attracting new talent to the state’s workforce. Program funding will be provided through a combination of state, industry, and philanthropic support.

Joining Peterson and Lam, the board for the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation will include members representing government, industry, and higher education organizations.

Source: http://news.gatech.edu/2020/08/17/georgia-tech-lead-technology-coalition-advance-inclusive-innovation-across-state

Filed Under: Georgia Tech News Tagged With: diversity, entrepreneurship, Georgia Innovates Task Force, Georgia Tech, innovation, optical technology, Partnership for Inclusive Innovation, pilot, research, Smart Cities, sustainability, technology

August 21, 2015 By AMK

NSF funds $12 million research network to build healthy, sustainable, livable cities of the future

How will we build the cities of the future in a sustainable way?

A new National Science Foundation-funded research network will connect scientists at nine universities with infrastructure groups, public policy experts, and industry partners to reimagine cities. Georgia Tech will be an anchor of the $12 million network, which will be led by the University of Minnesota, and School of Civil and Environmental Engineering professor Ted Russell will serve as a co-director.

“We’re bringing some very different communities together more than past projects have done,” Russell said. “We are getting the engineering community, the health community, the atmospheric sciences community, the economics communities, the policy communities in the same virtual room to look to the future.”

“We’re looking at real-life cities and figuring out how to make these cities work better and how to help cities [in general] evolve.”

The idea is to reimagine infrastructure — energy grids, road networks, green spaces, and food and water systems — to create cities that are highly functional, that promote the health of residents and the environment, and that have that intangible “vibe” that makes them desirable places to live and work.

“We have to think in new ways about a city’s physical infrastructure to develop sustainable solutions,” said Anu Ramaswami, the project’s director and a professor in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. “Understanding that these physical systems are interconnected serves as a foundation for this work. For example, urban farms wouldn’t work very well without thinking about water, energy and transportation infrastructure as well as people, markets and policies.”

The network will use cities across the United States and in India as “test beds” for its work, a unique approach that Russell said means the outcome of the network’s studies will have significant impact. Atlanta is one of those cities.

“One of the points we made with this proposal is that it’s action-oriented, with the idea that the output of this project is not papers, it’s actually actions,” he said. “[We will] not only specify what actions might be taken but actually help realize those actions.”

The project, called a Sustainability Research Network in NSF parlance, runs for four years.

Skyline view of Atlanta and Georgia Tech taken from the roof of the campus library. Historic chimney, Bobby Dodd stadium, Tech Tower, and the North Ave. apartments can be seen.
Skyline view of Atlanta and Georgia Tech taken from the roof of the campus library. Historic chimney, Bobby Dodd stadium, Tech Tower, and the North Ave. apartments can be seen.

“Real success at the end of those four years would be one or more cities — having worked with us from the beginning — take actions that will lead to improving the livability of their city,” Russell said. “That could come in multiple ways: improved transit options, improved plans for water usage, effective urban farming, or strategies to improve air quality that they’ve actually implemented and to inform their citizenry of how to reduce their exposures to harmful chemicals and lead more healthy lives.”

The network stretches beyond civil and environmental engineering at Tech: Nisha Botchwey, an associate professor in the School of City and Regional Planning, and Peter Webster, a professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, will have significant roles, as will Tech’s Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics and Computing (better known as CEISMC).

In fact, Botchwey will lead the education component of the project, which includes outreach to K-12 students, college graduate students and Native American communities. Those efforts will include an innovative interdisciplinary summer school at the network’s nine partner schools.

Russell said Tech’s wide-ranging involvement in the project fits in perfectly with the Institute-wide focus in the coming decade on sustainability and community. Officials announced the Serve•Learn•Sustain initiative earlier this year as part of the Institute’s reaccreditation process.

“This fits in extremely well with that, because we are hitting all of those pieces in [the project],” Russell said.

Learn more about the project in the University of Minnesota news release and on the project’s website.

Source: http://www.news.gatech.edu/2015/08/12/nsf-funds-12m-research-network-build-healthy-sustainable-livable-cities-future

Filed Under: Georgia Tech News Tagged With: CEISMC, Georgia Tech, NSF, sustainability, Sustainability Research Network

May 1, 2015 By AMK

AF acquisition: Investing now to win the high-end fight of the future

How does Dr. William LaPlante, the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, apply his 29 years of defense technology experience to improve a $32 billion research, development and acquisition portfolio? That is the question he sought to answer.

LaPlante had recently completed a meeting focused on shaping an experimentation campaign strategy for the service, which would be the first topic of discussion.

“Our experimentation strategy is critical to our service investment strategy and efforts to prepare for what our Chief of Staff (of the Air Force) Gen. (Mark A.) Welsh (III), refers to as the ‘high end fight of the future,” LaPlante said.

“I have had the good fortune of working with some exceptionally talented visionary leaders in my role as the Service Acquisition Executive,” he said. “I don’t exaggerate when I say our Secretary of the Air Force (Deborah Lee James) and chief of staff are truly acting as the architects of our future. In their Air Force strategy document ‘A Call to the Future,’ they lay the foundation for what we must do to continue to be the world’s greatest Air Force into the 2040s and beyond.”

Dr. LaPlante added, “I take very seriously my role, and that of the acquisition enterprise, to ensure our legacy capabilities maximize our warfighting performance in the near term, and that critical game changing technologies will be mature and available for our warfighters to win that high end fight of the future. That means we have to be the best at sustaining aging systems that are still relevant and effectively giving us an edge over our adversaries today.

“We must also be expert at planning and initiating highly successful modernization programs that are in the pipeline presently,” LaPlante continued. “Without question, we must be the best in the world at working with our warfighting partners to explore how highly advanced and cutting edge technologies can be used in concert with new warfighting tactics, techniques and procedures developed in order to enable measurably increased warfighting capabilities in the future. This is the essence of experimentation.”

LaPlante explained experimentation, along with efforts he is championing to return to the service’s roots in developmental planning, is very important to modernization and technology investment strategies and feature prominently in his acquisition priorities.

He explained, “As the senior Air Force acquisition executive, I have established a framework of priorities for the enterprise to underpin these necessities. I am attempting to improve the performance of the acquisition portfolio with five simple priorities: getting high priority programs right, improving stakeholder relationships, owning the technical baseline, ‘Better Buying Power’ and strategic agility.”

In a world driven by instant gratification, much of LaPlante’s vision will unfold over the next 20 years. He knows enduring and emerging powers have the potential to become destabilizing forces and to meet those challenges, his acquisition agenda must continue modernizing the nation’s capabilities to sustain its operational and technological edge.

Getting it right

“Fundamentally, I believe we have a solemn responsibility in the acquisition enterprise to get all programs started right,” LaPlante said. “We want to ensure we deliver products on schedule, on cost and have them delivered within the specified timeframe because these are the programs we are going to be living with for the next 50 or so years.”

Specifically, he’s talking about the Air Force’s three highest priority systems which are in various stages of development: The F-35 (Lightning II), with initial operating capability anticipated for August 2016; first flight of the KC-46A (Pegasus) this summer; and the Long-Range Strike bomber, currently in source selection with contract award also anticipated this summer.

“I realize people instinctively understand these are the huge dollar programs we’re investing in,” he said. “The future of the Air Force and its ability to be effective in the high-end fight of the future depends on the successful and timely fielding of these capabilities.”

Improve stakeholder relationships

Coming from a federally-funded research and development center background, LaPlante knows the power of working together on common issues. To that end, when a difficult challenge comes up, it’s important the customer and supplier partners know each other and that they know how to work together to solve problems.

One of those problems is the ever increasing cost of weapon systems. LaPlante has taken on this issue for the Air Force. Working with key industry leaders, LaPlante and his acquisition team are committed to working with industries to “bend the cost curve” (BTCC) to identify areas of increasing costs and work to drive those costs down.

Teams have been formed to exploit a set of best practices where internal processes are improved, industry interactions throughout the acquisition lifecycle are enhanced, and competition between traditional and non-traditional industry partners are expanded.

One of the things LaPlante noticed when he arrived at the Pentagon two years ago, was a disparate view of ground truth regarding how well the Air Force executes its major programs. There was a marked disparity about this between Pentagon insiders and the external perceptions of outsiders who monitor these programs. One example is the perception about contract award performance.

LaPlante said he was pleasantly surprised at the progress the acquisition enterprise made in reducing the number of sustained contract award protests in recent history.

“All too often people judge us today on very public past failures with programs like KC-X and CSAR-X contract award protests,” he said. ”Those challenges occurred nearly a decade ago and the Air Force has worked hard to improve its contract award performance since then.”

In order to ensure the enterprise meets the warfighter’s needs, acquisition leaders have implemented extensive source selection process improvements. Improvements like enhanced source selection training, the use of multifunctional independent review teams to “red-team” source selection work, and extensive peer reviews of source selection results. These measures have served to minimize protests against contract awards.

“Protests of an awarded contract can impact the Air Force mission, delaying systems fielding and is often a lengthy process,” said Theodora Hancock, the senior Air Force procurement analyst deputy assistant secretary for contracting.

In fiscal year 2007 the Air Force had a protest sustainment rate of 7 percent. With the new processes in place the protest sustainment rate has been reduced in 2014 to 1 percent. The overall sustained contract protest rate for the federal government as a whole by comparison, is 13 percent.

“This is an amazing improvement,” LaPlante said. “One you just don’t hear people talking about enough. The fact that this performance improvement isn’t known by external stakeholders and partners emphasizes the need for increasing transparency and improving stakeholder relationships.”

One of the new activities designed to improve stakeholder relations is the BTCC initiative. In 2014, Air Force leaders initiated BTCC to address the escalation in weapon system costs and development times.

To accomplish this BTCC amplifies Frank Kendall, the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics’ (AT&L), Better Buying Power (BBP) principles by encouraging innovation through active engagements with industry and the acquisition workforce to identify, evaluate, and implement transformational reforms.

Unlike BBP, which is a broader set of practices and techniques for the workforce to employ, BTCC is a targeted initiative to encourage innovation and active industry partnerships to improve the way we procure our systems and to drive down costs. What began as a series of discussions with industry has evolved into an ever growing set of targeted actions aimed at addressing the most critical challenges within the acquisition process.

Owning the technical baseline

According to LaPlante, during the 1990s, the acquisition workforce was significantly reduced with the Air Force losing much of its organic engineering and technical skills. It was forced to abdicate part of the “Holy Grail of technical systems knowledge,” to defense contractors who began serving as lead systems integrators and the keepers of systems knowledge and technical expertise.

As a result, the Air Force grew dependent on its contractors for help in solving problems, performing systems modeling, and making key decisions regarding the modification of legacy systems.

“The difficulty with this, is that as a result, the vendors developed a relative monopoly on sustainment, parts, etc. which ultimately led to relative price increases in the services and products the government needed to modify or sustain its systems,” LaPlante said.

“We in essence lost a generation of technical expertise and experience, and now we want to take back ‘ownership’ of the technical baseline for our systems,” he continued. “If we own it, we have the ability to control our own destiny. “

As a result, LaPlante is championing measures to increase technical skills and capabilities within the programs offices, and is challenging his program leaders to ensure they procure the appropriate systems data rights at the outset of programs to facilitate government efforts to own the technical baseline.

The initiative is formally referred to as Owning the Technical Baseline. LaPlante has commissioned a national academies study on the subject that should be reporting out very soon. OSD AT&L has also adopted the initiative as part of the new BBP 3.0 activity.

Better Buying Power

The Air Force acquisition enterprise is benefiting from OSD’s Better Buying Power set of techniques and practices. As far as the Air Force is concerned, it is ‘all in’ with respect to using BBP principals. LaPlante noted one they are using to considerable effect is Should Cost.

Should Cost is a management tool designed to proactively target cost reduction and drive productivity improvements into programs.

“I am very happy with the Air Force’s (fiscal year 2014) Should Cost performance, which has identified realized savings of $1.4 billion,” LaPlante said. ”While this is a tremendous start, I continue to challenge all program executive offices (PEO) and program managers to seek out additional Should Cost opportunities, reaping as much as possible from our current portfolio investments. This is one initiative where we can see tangible evidence of our efforts to increase warfighting capabilities within available funding, and to obtain the best business deals possible for the American taxpayer.”

Strategic agility

LaPlante is aware the basic acquisition environment involves dealing with constant change and the challenges that come with prediction failures.

“The threat is going to change, technology is going to change and warfighters will discover different ways to use their equipment,” he said. “In order for us to ensure our weapon systems, which we have historically taken 15 to 20 years to develop, can accommodate these uncertainties, we must design systems from the outset that are adaptable.

“We must design in the ability for these systems to be modified, perhaps in ways that we may not be able to anticipate now, but will discover in the future,” LaPlante continued. “This fundamentally means we must embrace adaptability, a foundational underpinning of strategic agility, as a basic precept for how we develop, procure, and sustain our weapons systems.”

LaPlante explained, “I have challenged our PEOs and program managers to capitalize on key principles of adaptable systems when they are initiating programs,” he said. “These principles include: open systems architectures, modularity, speed to fielding, and block upgrade strategies.

“In fact,” LaPlante stated. “We have identified two programs that will serve as strategic agility (adaptability) pilots for the Air Force, our new T-X trainer aircraft and Joint Stars Recapitalization program. With the T-X, we intend to take advantage of open systems architecture, a modular software design, and low risk and rapid production. For JSTARS Recap, we intend to capitalize on a modular and open systems architecture design and maximize the use of mature technologies to reduce development cycle time.”

The acquisitions community is focused on investing in an array of programs, platforms and innovative opportunities to ensure the Air Force remains effective, he said.

“This is an exciting time to be engaged in Air Force acquisitions,” said LaPlante. “Our workforce is energized and they are really doing amazing things to make a difference.”

Overall, the leader of the service’s acquisition system is pleased in the efforts to revitalize the Air Force’s acquisition performance.

”Our challenge however, remains striking the proper balance between efforts to ensure world class sustainment performance for legacy systems and investing the right intellectual and resource capital in the capabilities required to win the proverbial high end fight of the future,” LaPlante said.

“We have to use the right tools and disciplines now, to ensure we are developing and fielding the right systems that need to be there for us to win that future fight,” LaPlante said. “Knowing threats are going to change as we are working on these systems, we need to be able to pivot to affect the new threats that we can’t even see today that we know will be out there in the future.

”We’ve got the right vision and strategy and we can’t lose when they are powered by our world class acquisition workforce serving as the engine for positive change.”

Source: http://www.af.mil/News/ArticleDisplay/tabid/223/Article/585578/af-acquisition-investing-now-to-win-the-high-end-fight-of-the-future.aspx

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: acquisition reform, Air Force, performance based acquisition, procurement reform, sustainability

June 14, 2013 By AMK

Army’s green energy contract tops $23 billion

A group of companies, including a unit of the German engineering conglomerate Siemens AG, won the U.S. Defense Department’s biggest contract last month, a potential $7 billion deal for alternative energy.

The Army plans to buy the renewable energy from privately developed power plants, according to the May 7 announcement. The facilities are to be built, operated and maintained by companies under an agreement hailed by service officials as the first of its kind.

“This effort will lead to enhanced energy security and sustainability for our installations,” Col. Robert Ruch, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers center in Huntsville, Ala., which is overseeing the work, said in a statement.

The award topped a list of more than 250 contracts with a combined value of more than $23 billion in May, according to a Military​.com analysis of the Pentagon’s daily contract announcements. That figure is about 22 percent higher than the value from April and doesn’t reflect what is actually spent, or obligated, because many deals are only partially funded at first.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2013/06/04/green-energy-deal-tops-23-billion-in-may-awards/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: alternative energy, Army, DoD, green procurement, multiple award, renewable energy, sustainability

February 20, 2013 By AMK

Agencies coming up short on green gov goals

Many agencies are missing targets for meeting energy efficiency and sustainability mandates, citing tighter budgets.

The Defense Department said in a new report that it will not likely reduce energy use at its facilities by 30 percent from a 2003 baseline by 2015. It said it achieved only a 13 percent reduction in 2011. DoD was one of many agencies that filed updates on their sustainability efforts with the Office of Management and Budget. OMB released those reports Thursday.

DoD said it also will fail to meet a goal to have 15 percent of its buildings meet federal green guidelines. Newly constructed buildings must use 30 percent less energy than a typical building of the same size. Renovated buildings must use 20 percent less energy.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20130207/FACILITIES01/302070008/Agencies-coming-up-short-green-gov-goals?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE.

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: DHS, DoD, green products, HHS, OMB, sustainability

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