U.S. trade deficit jumps to 10-year high in 2018

Reuters | March 06, 2019

The U.S. trade deficit surged to a 10-year high in 2018, with the politically sensitive shortfall with China hitting a record peak, despite the Trump administration slapping tariffs on a range of imported goods in an effort to shrink the gap. The Commerce Department said on Wednesday that an 18.8 percent jump in the trade deficit in December had contributed to the $621.0 billion shortfall last year. The 2018 deficit was the largest since 2008 and followed a $552.3 billion gap in 2017.

Spotlight

Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2024 contains the Budget Message of the President, information on the President’s priorities, and summary tables. Analytical Perspectives, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2024 contains analyses that are designed to highlight specified subject areas or provide other significant presentations of budget data that place the budget in perspective. This volume includes economic and accounting analyses, information on Federal receipts and collections, analyses of Federal spending, information on Federal borrowing and debt, baseline or current services estimates, and other technical presentations.

Spotlight

Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2024 contains the Budget Message of the President, information on the President’s priorities, and summary tables. Analytical Perspectives, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2024 contains analyses that are designed to highlight specified subject areas or provide other significant presentations of budget data that place the budget in perspective. This volume includes economic and accounting analyses, information on Federal receipts and collections, analyses of Federal spending, information on Federal borrowing and debt, baseline or current services estimates, and other technical presentations.

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GOVERNMENT BUSINESS

Steampunk Achieves Multi-year FedRAMP Contract Award

Steampunk | February 14, 2023

Steampunk, an IT services and consulting company, has recently announced that it achieved the FedRAMP Technical Review and Analysis Support Services contract award. It has been providing support to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for the FedRAMP programs, with the tasks of cybersecurity, information assurance, and risk-based reviews for FedRAMP cloud service candidates of Joint Authorization Board's Provisional Authorization to Operate (JAB P-ATO) issue. It also undertakes independent cybersecurity risk assessments of cloud service for cloud service provider (CSP) candidates, collaborating with multiple discipline IT teams and resolving security or risk detection conflicts. With the support of FedRAMP, it has worked with the largest CSPs worldwide, like Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google, along with the monitorization of more than 30 CSPs. For the task order on the DHS EAGLE II contract, it started working with FedRAMP in August 2016. It continued coordination with the FedRAMP programs for more than five years, expecting to review additional offerings over the next three years for an increase in demand for FedRAMP programs. It is also expected to partner with the General Services Administration (GSA), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Department of Defense (DoD) of the United States government, securing cloud platforms for federal agencies. Chief Growth Officer of Steampunk, Brad Cole said, "Steampunk's information security work at DHS has been part of the foundation of our company. We are thrilled to continue partnering with DHS to enable secure cloud modernization across the federal government and to bring our focus on service design to help drive improvements in the FedRAMP review process." (Source – Cision PR Newswire) About Steampunk Headquartered in McLean, Virginia, Steampunk, a federal contracting company, brings innovation to clients from the Homeland, Health, Federal Civilian, and DOD sectors. With its start-up culture and human-centered delivery approach, it is assisting federal agencies from design to development, enhancing their mission impacts and user experience. Being an employee-owned company, it invests in its employees to encourage and reward them for contributing to its growth. It offers services in IT solutions, modernization, disruption, machine learning, artificial intelligence, agile, design thinking, Human Centered Design (HCD), cybersecurity, data exploitation, cloud capabilities, cloud services, big data, digital platforms, development, security, and operations, government, and federal contractor services.

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GOVERNMENT BUSINESS

U.S. Department of Defense Selects Intermap to Showcase Advanced AI/ML

Intermap Technologies, Inc. | February 13, 2023

Intermap Technologies (Intermap), a leading 3D geospatial products and intelligence solutions provider, recently announced that it has been chosen by the United States Department of Defense to advance to the next stage of a competitive process to showcase advanced technology for Geospatial Temporal Incident Data. Intermap was invited to showcase its newest artificial intelligence processing technology and illustrate how it can help the U.S. government with actionable, geo-precise data for planning processes and situational awareness after its prior proposal was vetted and assessed. Human-caused events (population disturbances, crime, riots and protests, and cybersecurity advancements) and natural hazard occurrences are included in Geospatial Temporal Incident Data. At the Thunderstorm 23-1 event in April 2023, Intermap will exhibit its capabilities and demonstrate its advanced technology to the Department of Defense. Intermap's digital tool combines machine learning, artificial intelligence algorithms, natural language processing, proprietary, multi-sensor-derived terrain, global-scale, object, and feature catalogs, and open-source global data to track, identify, display, and notify interested parties of current international events, threats, and natural disasters. Its technology using ML/AI/NLP processing, analyses and precisely geolocates the danger level, categorizes each occurrence, calculates its footprint, and marks it on a map to enable actionable visualization for possible threats in a given region of interest. The generated information improves situational awareness and aids planning procedures by fusing, analyzing, and visualizing events and trends to present the U.S. Army with an enhanced common operation picture (COP). About Intermap Technologies, Inc. Intermap Technologies, founded in 1997, is a global pioneer in geospatial intelligence solutions, specializing in the generation and analysis of 3D terrain data to create high-resolution thematic models. The Company provides broad, complementary, multi-source datasets to clients through scientific analysis of geospatial information, processing technologies and proprietary sensors, allowing them to incorporate geospatial intelligence into their workflows effortlessly. Through machine learning and artificial intelligence, Intermap's 3D elevation data and software analytic capabilities enable worldwide geospatial analysis, providing companies with crucial information to understand their terrain environment.

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EMERGING TECHNOLOGY, GOVERNMENT BUSINESS

Bluescape Offers FedRAMP-Authorized Virtual Workspace

Bluescape | February 23, 2023

Bluescape, a visual collaboration and online whiteboard software platform, has recently announced an agreement with Arrow Electronics' public sector practice, immixGroup, to offer Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) authorized virtual workspace for intelligence, defense, and federal civilian customers. It would deploy the network of immixGroup's contract vehicles and partners for this offering. With the sponsorship of the Air Force of the U.S., it was recently awarded FecRAMP Authorization at the Moderate Impact Level and DISA IL-4+ authorization for Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI). A visual collaboration, receiving both authorizations, is unique. A value-added distributor in the public sector, immixGroup, connects technology companies with government agencies and helps in their businesses. Through its collaboration, federal, defense, intelligence, and civilians enable access to many IT solutions through selected business partners and contracts. The government customers like GSA, Army ITES, and SEWP can use Bluescape services on immixGroup contract vehicles. Vice President at Public Sector Channels and Partners of Bluescape, Norm Litterini, said, "Bluescape is a simple, yet powerful tool that remains the only truly secure visual collaboration solution to meet both FedRAMP and DISA IL-5 requirements." In addition, he added, "immixGroup's network of resellers and contract vehicles, combined with Bluescape's FedRAMP certification, will provide a smoother path for customers to be compliant with the Executive Order on Improving the Nation's Cybersecurity and the Office of Management and Budget's zero trust strategy." (Source – Cision PR Newswire) About Bluescape Headquartered in Silicon Valley, California, Bluescape, a software development company, has offered solutions for the visual workplace since 2012. It fulfills security needs for the public sector with FedRAMP-authorized cloud solution and air-gapped software. It empowers distributed teams with easy-to-use tools for agility in complex processes, eliminating missed deadlines, miscommunications and wasted time. It offers solutions for collaboration software, project management, online whiteboard, creative design, product design, idea management, remote work, hybrid work, team communication, media and entertainment, virtual story room, creative software, content management, file sharing and web conferencing. It partners with various government agencies and Fortune 100 companies. About immixGroup Headquartered in McLean, Virginia, immixGroup, an IT consulting and services company, has provided solutions for information technology, marketing, training, federal channel, federal IT, public sector, government sales, federal government services, state and local sales, federal budget, contracts, and federal sales and aggregator. Arrow Electronics acquired it in 2015. It helps software and hardware manufacturers and their channel partners for business growth and sales cycle, in public sector. It provides support and expert resources for business growth in public sector, products and services for government businesses and IT products from more than 350 suppliers and about 1,200 solution providers.

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