House and Senate lawmakers both advanced their respective versions of the fiscal year 2018 intelligence authorization bill July 28.
The full House passed its bill (H.R. 3180) by a 380-35 vote, while the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) announced that it approved its version by a 14-1 vote. The latter measure now heads to the full Senate for its consideration. 
Both bills, much of which are classified, seek to improve intelligence-gathering satellites. Rep. Denny Heck (D-Wash.), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), said the House bill would support “some truly cutting-edge space technologies” to increase the resiliency of intelligence-gathering satellites.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the SSCI’s vice chairman, said the Senate bill “continues the initiatives this committee has undertaken over the last several years to push the intelligence community to be more innovative in its approach to overhead satellite systems.”
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the HPSCI’s chairman, said the House bill would implement the first stage of a committee initiative to ”streamline and optimize” defense intelligence, starting with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). According to a committee summary, the bill would eliminate several DIA components and functions or realign them to other intelligence community elements.
The House bill also encourages the intelligence community to speed up the development of automation technology to help it process the growing amount of data it collects.
“For example, wide-area motion imagery collection capabilities have evolved with technology and are producing extremely valuable [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] data, but processing and integration of this data is labor-intensive,” the HPSCI wrote in a report explaining its bill. The Defense Department “continues to struggle to apply commercially available data analysis and machine-learning capabilities.”
The House bill also aims to bolster intelligence oversight by ensuring that intelligence community contractors can meet freely with lawmakers.
Warner said the Senate bill “contains important reforms to security-clearance procedures,” but his statement did not elaborate. The SSCI has not yet publicly released its legislation.