With just days until its authority expires, the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) awarded the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) more than $28 million to modernize the technology infrastructure supporting the agency’s nuclear security missions.
The TMF – which is run by the General Services Administration (GSA) – was created in 2017 under the Modernizing Government Technology Act to provide federal civilian agencies with funding to undertake tech modernization projects. However, Congress must act before Dec. 12 to avoid a lapse in TMF authority.
“It’s exciting to have another set of projects funded by the Technology Modernization Fund,” NNSA Chief Information Officer James Wolff said in a Dec. 9 LinkedIn post. “TMF has given us the chance to accelerate mission critical work while also improving the technology infrastructure for the Genesis Mission.”
The Genesis Mission, as outlined in a Nov. 24 executive order, calls for a national effort to accelerate the application of AI for transformative scientific discovery focused on pressing national challenges.
According to the TMF’s website, the new investment will help NNSA modernize systems for emergency response and “to advance the assessment of emergent technologies.”
The funding will support three high-priority workstreams: using machine learning to automatically track wildfire boundaries through the FireGuard program, moving the Turbo FRMAC radiological assessment tool from its legacy desktop software to a cloud?based platform, and improving AI infrastructure to help detect or mitigate nuclear security threats.
The TMF said this investment will provide NNSA’s emergency response teams with “scalable, interoperable technology that can adapt to emerging threats while maintaining the highest standards of nuclear security.”
In another Dec. 9 LinkedIn post, Jessie Posilkin, TMF’s acting executive director, said the TMF team has evolved its processes to better support agencies such as NNSA, “despite having a third as many staff as we did this time last year.”
“The NNSA is using TMF funding to protect our nuclear stockpile from wildfires by sharing data across agencies, build infrastructure to adopt AI tooling, and deprecate legacy software,” Posilkin said. “In doing so, we’ll be able to share how they are saving time and money, and then reuse these funds to invest in projects when we’re reauthorized.”
If the TMF’s authorization expires at the end of this week, GSA can continue to oversee its existing investments, but it will not be able to make any new TMF awards.
The NNSA investment is the TMF’s third of the year. The fund awarded two other modernization projects in June – a $14.6 million award to the Federal Trade Commission and a $6 million award to the Selective Service System.