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Cost Estimating NewsBrief: August 29, 2025
Army expands ICAM capabilities to the tactical edge
(Federal News Network) As the Army continues to expand identity, credential and access management (ICAM) capabilities across the force, it is preparing to deploy modernized automated account provisioning (AAP) and privileged access management (PAM) later this year. The service has already fielded PAM capabilities for some systems, but officials said onboarding additional systems is an ongoing process. “We need to make sure we can automate account provisioning … make sure there are no orphaned accounts, and enforce segregation of duties across the financial systems. Read More
OPM Launches Internal “Awards for Savings” Program
(FedWeek) OPM has announced an internal cost-savings incentive program that encourages employees to identify and propose efficiency improvements, to “set the tone for the rest of the federal agencies in this category,” according to new agency head Scott Kupor. Employees who submit new, actionable cost-saving proposals by October 31 will be eligible for awards equal to 5% of the annual savings generated, up to $10,000 per award. Suggested areas for savings include reducing unnecessary contracts, paying only for software licenses that are actually used, shifting certain work to in-house staff, selling unused assets, and expanding the use of technology. Read More
College student’s “time travel” AI experiment accidentally outputs real 1834 history
(Ars Technica) A hobbyist developer building AI language models that speak Victorian-era English “just for fun” got an unexpected history lesson this week when his latest creation mentioned real protests from 1834 London—events the developer didn’t know had actually happened until he Googled them. “I was interested to see if a protest had actually occurred in 1834 London and it really did happen,” wrote Reddit user Hayk Grigorian, who is a computer science student at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania. Read More
Meet Surya, the 1st-of-its-kind AI model NASA and IBM built to predict solar storms
(Space.com) A first-of-its kind AI-powered model attempts to better predict space weather and its impacts. The model — called Surya, for the Sanskrit word for “sun,” was put together by NASA and IBM and trained on nine years’ worth of sun imagery captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft. SDO, which orbits Earth at an altitude of 22,200 miles (35,800 kilometers), has been a workhorse of solar activity monitoring for more than 15 years. The new AI model will make the most of its views by finding hidden patterns in them that could help predict solar flares, the speed of the solar wind and the emergence of active regions that give rise to solar eruptions. Read More
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