SCRUB-A-DUB DATA
WARNING SIGNS
The DQAT report categorizes the data into critical, noncritical and warning flags that show the data’s risk level. Issues that get critical flags will stop the provisioning process and require immediate attention. “You won’t be able to move forward until those issues have been resolved,” Gonzalez-Perez said. (Photo by Regina Baltrusch, AMCOM Public Affairs)
[original equipment manufacturer] about accepting or rejecting the data,” Gonza- lez-Perez said. Reviewing data manually in that amount of time could cause fatigue in the provisioners, which might cause them to miss inconsistencies in the data. And if the government does not respond within the designated contractual timeline, it now owns the data—errors and all.
FILLING AN EMPLOYEE GAP
ALC’s workforce is more than 50 percent retirement-eligible, said Fred Pieper, deputy director. To maintain an expert staff, it’s important to him to pass on knowledge to the next wave of employees. ALC is taking a proactive approach to filling that employee gap with the ALC Intern Program.
Debbie Daniel, director of materiel management at the center, manages the program. The program recruits for GS-5 positions—with GS-11 promo- tion potential—through job announcements online, direct-hire authorities on college campuses or a mix thereof, depending on the authorities avail- able, she said.
The interns receive about nine months of training on soft skills, such as acclimation to Army culture, boardroom etiquette and protocol, and how to brief an audience. “Our plan is to give them a very good foundation in LMP [Logistics Modernization Program] and what is required for them to be successful. Then we will recruit them into our open positions across the directorates within ALC,” Daniel said. Recruiting at the GS-5 level allows the directors more time to give the interns a strong baseline of knowledge and experience before they graduate the program.
Knowledge management is something that the Army has wrestled with, Daniel noted, and she hopes the intern program will help remediate the knowledge gap between the retiring workforce and the future new hires at AMCOM.
“We’ve got to build a bench—we’ve got to go back to the basics to make sure everyone knows how to run this business, because they are not going to have us graybeards to lean on much longer,” Pieper said.
Normally, it would take a provisioner approximately 15 minutes to review one record. One aviation platform has 57,590 records, meaning that it would take nearly 7 ½ years to complete one review of the whole file, at a personnel cost of an esti- mated $1.06 million in salary. But DQAT automates the entire review process, taking it from a 45-day marathon to a two-minute, error-free process costing less than $10. (See Figure 1.)
BUILT-IN ‘ERROR FLAGS’ Te data cleansing process is thorough, despite being only two minutes long. Gonzalez-Perez, with guidance from provisioning experts, developed the tool in increments. Initial work began in 2016, with the first functionality launched in 2017. DQAT officially went live in Decem- ber 2019. DQAT checks provisioning data against business rules built by experts in AMCOM, in accordance with industry standards and DOD regulations, Gonza- lez-Perez said. Once the data is analyzed, DQAT provides a report that categorizes the data into critical, noncritical and warn- ing flags that show the data’s risk level. Te tool generates a report for the provi- sioners specifying where the errors are, a description of the error and the reason it has occurred, in addition to the amount of errors per provisioning element.
Critical flags indicate issues that will stop the provisioning process and require immediate attention. “You won’t be able to
38 Army AL&T Magazine Spring 2020
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104
