WORKFORCE
of work—probably a lot more work—that went in on the back end of it,” Vance said.
“We also wanted to make it more user- intuitive, and easier to manage so that you didn’t need subject matter experts on site for the rest of its life” to manage issues with the software, he said. With the new version, an administrator can take care of the system. “Te goal was just to make it a little more current and make it so it can scale for a growing user base.”
Its ability to scale as its user base expands is a major concern for AcqDemo, which now has more than 40,000 participants.
BACK IN THE DAY
Founded in 1959 as the Ordnance Industrial Data Agency and housed in Radford, Virginia, ALTESS is now in its 60th year of providing IT solu- tions, support and services—across a system’s entire life cycle—to customers in secure environments. (Photo courtesy of ALTESS)
disappear. It also could require a lot of cutting and pasting but if, for example, you put in a bulleted list, pasting didn’t bring formatting along with it.
Te old version is a bit like a forgetful, disheveled colleague who, one day, is replaced by his brother. Te brother is sharper, never forgets anything, and gets the job done with efficiency and a dash of style. He may look like his predecessor in superficial ways, but no one is going to miss the original. Tat’s CAS2Net 2.0.
On the surface, the site appears to have had a top-notch facelift, but it’s much more like a brain transplant. Te Program Executive Office for Enterprise Infor- mation Systems’ Acquisition Logistics
and Technology Enterprise Systems and Services (ALTESS) modernized the soft- ware behind the site for the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Human Capital Initiatives (HCI) program.
A SERIOUS IMPROVEMENT From a user perspective, the new version looks similar to the original but feels better, said Chad Vance, who has managed the sustainment of CAS2Net 1.0 since 2015, as part of his portfolio as Application Services Division chief at ALTESS. But what’s really important is that “some of the stuff that’s going on in the back end [of CAS2Net 2.0] is a lot more robust. Te database was optimized. It’s more effi- cient, it can handle more users, and it’s definitely more reliable. Tere was a lot
According to Vance, one of the most frequently requested improvements to CAS2Net was, “ ‘Can’t you make it more like Word?’ So we found an interface that looked more like [Microsoft] Word.” Te new version also autosaves, another much-requested improvement. But all of the new improvements came close to never happening.
A NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE CAS2Net 1.0 launched alongside AcqDemo (the DOD Civilian Acquisi- tion Workforce Demonstration Project) in 1999. (See related articles, “Contribu- tion!” Army AL&T, July-September 2017, Page 112, and “Celebrating 20 Years of AcqDemo” in Defense Acquisition maga- zine, March-April 2019.) Unlike the General Schedule (GS) system, with its salary steps, AcqDemo is a performance- or contribution-based management system, with “broad band” salary levels that are much wider than the GS steps but corre- spond to GS pay levels. Te AcqDemo system, which was developed in an effort to further professionalize the acquisition workforce, offers more flexibility for move- ment from level to level within pay bands, and the potential for annual awards or bonuses, among many other things.
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