BIG DATA = BETTER DECISIONS T
CASSANDRA K. SIMMONS-BROWN
COMMAND/ORGANIZATION: Business Analytics and Audit Management, Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense
TITLE: Director
YEARS OF SERVICE IN WORKFORCE: 15 (9 with the Army; 6 with Defense Threat Reduction Agency)
CERTIFICATIONS: DAWIA Level III in program management, financial manage- ment and business – cost estimating; Level III in financial management; SAP Certified Associate in Business Process Integration with Enhancement Package 6; Certified Defense Financial Manager – Acquisition; member, American Society of Military Comptrollers
EDUCATION: M.A. in public administra- tion, University of Maryland University College and Bowie State University; B.A. in political science, Marymount University
AWARDS: Defense Acquisition Workforce Individual Achievement Award for Financial Management; Army Achievement Medal for Civilian Service (2); Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller) Financial Manage- ment Award for Individual Achievement in Improving Financial Management Systems
he phrase “big data” means lots of things to lots of people, but for Cassandra Simmons-Brown, it’s an important tool for reducing redun- dant business activities, cutting overhead costs and improving fiscal accountability—all of which lead to making better-informed decisions
that ultimately benefit warfighters and taxpayers.
Simmons-Brown is director of Business Analytics and Audit Management at the Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense (JPEO-CBRND). She oversees the execution of a diverse portfolio of CBRN defense projects valued at approximately $1.7 billion a year, across four funding sources: the military services, the Chemical Biological Defense Program, foreign military sales and Nuclear Matters, a program within the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defense Programs, which coordinates modernization and sustainment of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile and handles nuclear counterterrorism and counterproliferation issues.
Tose funding sources cover multiple appropriations—research and development, procurement, and operations and maintenance, for example—across multiple accounting systems, including the Army’s General Fund Enterprise Business System (GFEBS), the Defense Enterprise Accounting and Management System and Navy Enterprise Resource Planning, the Navy’s financial system of record.
Tose systems are more than just acronyms: Harnessing new tools in analytics, they put data from a lot of disciplines—finance, budget, program management, contracts and logistics—into one place. “Previously, those datasets were stovepiped and not congruent, making it difficult to make an informed decision,” Simmons- Brown said. “But with the new tools we have, we can see so much information in one place: contracts, invoices, which congressional districts received funding, for example, and leverage that to make better decisions. For example, maybe there’s a radiological device that we could provide to every warfighter. But do we need to purchase that many? With the systems that are now in place, we can determine the number of forces working on missions that would require it. Or, when we’re considering vaccine production, we can determine more precisely how many doses we would need and when, and how much it would cost to store it.”
Simmons-Brown has been in acquisition since 1991, first as a contractor supporting several organizations, and then with the Defense Treat Reduction Agency (DTRA). She joined the Army Acquisition Workforce in 2010 as the business finance manager at JPEO-CBRND’s Joint Project Manager for Information Systems, then joined headquarters to lead the implementation of GFEBS. “What appealed to me was being a part of a team that helps maximize the Army and DOD’s buying power to provide products and capabilities to our fighting forces,” she said.
Simmons-Brown has received several awards over the course of her career, including the Defense Acquisition Workforce Individual Achievement Award for Financial
42 Army AL&T Magazine Summer 2019
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