Charting the Future of Defense

The National Defense Strategy (NDS) sets the strategic direction for our military to meet the security threats of tomorrow. Overall, the Defense Strategy focuses on China and Russia as the primary adversaries, but it also emphasizes the importance of global cooperation among allies as well as adversaries to meet threats that are bigger than any one country including climate change, food insecurity, and pandemics. The defense strategy lays out three primary tactics for advancing U.S. and global security.

Integrated Deterrence

The practice of integrated deterrence involves working closely across all branches of the military, warfighting domains, and even across other federal entities to ensure national security. It expands responsibility for deterring adversaries beyond the Department of Defense (DoD), involving the intelligence community, health agencies, environmental agencies, and more. Continue reading

State and Local Grant Management Opportunities and Challenges

With the CARES Act, the American Rescue Plan, and now infrastructure funding, state and local governments have a large pipeline of grant options to help further citizen support. In fact, White House initiatives aimed at providing relief to citizens total nearly $6 trillion.

However, applying for and later managing those grants can be an incredibly burdensome, and often manual process. With a wide variety of variables that need to be carried out and measured, the management of these grants involves a large number of people from multiple constituencies both within a state agency and outside it including grant applicants and recipients, various levels of government and agencies, and affiliated nonprofits. Multiple surveys and studies have shown that grantee organizations spend more than 40% of their grant resources on administration activities alone. Continue reading