Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology Community Must Review Information Sharing
Your article titled “When One Software Language Doesn’t Fit All, Translator Tech- nology Provides a Solution” (April-June 2011 Army AL&T Magazine) raises an important issue for the acquisition com- munity. Tools provided from the top are desperately needed to enable open col- laboration of complete program goals throughout all phases of an acquisition program—tools that are secure but have a short learning curve, maintain auditable records, and track communication, cru- cial information, goals, assignments, and accomplishments of all stakeholders, but specifically the Integrated Product Team.
The solution described in the article, Semantic Mediation for Army Reason- ing and Teamwork (SMART), allows systems to share more information faster and reduces the cost compared with custom translation. Product Director Common Software, assigned to Project Manager Battle Command in the Army’s Program Executive Office Command, Control, and Communications-Tactical, has adopted the SMART architecture as its software mediation and interoperabil- ity infrastructure.
The Army AL&T community is pledged to “work with our partners to develop, acquire, deliver, and sustain weapons sys- tems and capabilities to our Soldiers. We must collaborate to ensure the Soldier is equipped quickly with the right product.
Strategy, planning, execution, and report- ing of each consists of overwhelming responsibilities of many people in many places. Libraries could be filled with docu- mentation, assignments, deliverables, and accomplishments even if everything went according to the initial plan. (It never does.)
We must work closely with our partners to continually improve Army capabili- ties and to ensure their interoperability,” as stated in the credo of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for AL&T at
https://www.alt.army.mil/ portal/page/portal/oasaalt.
It seems like a very good idea for all stake- holders to be able to go to one place and get the whole story about a program—sort of a road map of the original program and all the different paths it took to get where we are. That would remain the source of where we are headed, how that trip will be implemented, who are the stakehold- ers, what they have to do, and what they did or delivered. This would apply to any materiel solutions to an identified Army requirement, Operational Needs State- ment, or Urgent Materiel Release.
The project manager is responsible for life- cycle management, in which programs go through several phases, primarily research and development, procurement, produc- tion, sustainment, reset, and demil.
Currently most of the management and oversight is done through email or telephone contacts. Volumes of infor- mation are duplicated and stored in disparate systems. I normally read the same information three or four times as the information is shared. It is very hard to find critical information in a timely manner after it has been stored.
I see a top-down system like MilBook being recognized as a whiteboard that all stakeholders can use to access, update, and input valuable information one time to all, instead of the few. That information would then be redistributed within the email system. Some standards could be input, and individuality could be fostered where needed. This system would then be a repository for recording auditable records and required deliverable documentation.
THOMAS J. PERKINS, CDFM Program Analyst Project Manager Soldier Weapons Program Executive Office Soldier Picatinny Arsenal, NJ
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COMMENTARY / LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
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