TESTIMONY
OF
MR. JOHN M. GILLIGAN
CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER
UNITED STATES AIR FORCE
BEFORE THE
HOUSE
ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
TERRORISM,
UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS AND CAPABILITIES
UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
REGARDING BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION EFFORTS
March 31, 2004
Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the Subcommittee, I thank you for this opportunity to discuss the Air Force efforts and plans in the vitally important area of business modernization and transformation.
Overview
Over the last four years the Air Force has been actively transforming our business operations to enhance support to our warfighting operations. We are leveraging the power of information technology to increase the effectiveness of our operational capabilities, in many cases permitting us to use our legacy systems in ways that were never intended. Critical to the Air and Space Expeditionary Force construct, our method of supporting overseas commitments by rotating operational forces from fixed bases, is the ability to rapidly deploy combat forces and equipment worldwide, while leaving support functions at home base. We link forward combat personnel to home bases through robust, global information systems. Likewise, many personnel remain at their home station and support the overseas operation, in effect, permitting them to "telecommute" to the battle. Moving information rather than people reduces the airlift and logistics required as well as the forward footprint and cost of operations. It also improves decision-making timelines associated with expeditionary missions to rapidly leverage our best experts in a cooperative manner. That global capability can only be achieved by employing a net-centric environment both at home and at forward bases.
As an example of this transformation, the Air Force has effectively used information technology to permit Air Combat Command, Air Mobility Command, United States Air Forces in Europe, and Pacific Air Forces to consolidate their supply functions into consolidated Regional Supply Squadrons. In the past, supply functions had to be done at each base. Today, a single web interface is giving us access to worldwide supply information 24/7 making this process location independent even though we continue to rely on the legacy Standard Base Supply System. This centralization of common supply processes has proven to be effective in cost and performance providing greatly enhanced analytical tools and yielding a savings of 570 people.
The Air Force has also implemented processes for managing information technology investments. Our approach ensures that our investments align with our highest priority requirements, and meets the requirements of the DoD and the Office of Management and Budget.
In my testimony today, I will highlight how we are leveraging information technology to improve our combat and business support operations in support of our Air Force, joint, and coalition warfighters.
Transform our Business Support Processes and Systems to Support the Warfighhter
The Air Force has been conservative in moving to adopt modern commercial systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems. In part, our reluctance has been from failures in the late 1990s to successfully deploy commercial systems. As a result, I have directed that we will closely monitor commercial and government ERP efforts, learn from the lessons of other organizations, and follow the lead of others in adopting ERP. As such we are monitoring the Army, Navy, and Defense Logistics Agency efforts, as well as similar efforts, in NASA and the commercial sector.
Despite our conservative approach to ERP adoption, we have aggressively moved forward to leverage modern web and Internet technologies to dramatically improve our business processes -- in most cases relying on the data in our legacy systems. To posture ourselves for transformation to future DoD and Air Force Enterprise Resource Planning tools, we have web-enabled our legacy applications and positioned our data in a robust Enterprise Data Warehouse.
The Air Force has also developed a common technical framework for providing warfighters and supporting activities with timely, accurate, and trusted combat support and business information. The technical framework has been developed under our Air Force portion of the DoD Global Combat Support System (GCSS) program. Within GCSS, the Air Force Portal is the standard user interface to all Air Force support data and functions. The Air Force Portal includes personalized, role-based access and single sign-on to information and capabilities within combat support and business areas.
Today through the Air Force Portal, users can access data and capabilities tailored to their mission/job. There are over 70 logistics services and tools, 100 self-service applications within personnel, finance, base services, and health systems that Airmen may access with a single login, and more than 300 information links to other organizational and quality of life content. Examples of these items include access to aircraft maintenance status--allowing the commander to have ready access to aircraft availability; transportation/vehicle management; military and civilian personnel records--Airmen assigned or deployed anywhere in the world have online access to their personnel records which reduces time spent away from the job waiting in line at their local personnel flight; the military assignment system; Air Expeditionary Forces (AEF) information--up-to-date information about your deployment status and rotation information; and personnel pay statements. Collaboration and communication across geographic locations in-garrison and deployed are provided by an online communities of interest and an instant messaging capability.
A part of the technical framework is a common Air Force-wide Enterprise Data Warehouse. Incrementally, we are moving our data that was in or legacy systems to the Enterprise Data Warehouse. The Data Warehouse provides an integrated platform for storing, processing, and managing enterprise data. With the data warehouse, Airmen and commanders can more rapidly access authoritative information and perform ad hoc queries. Additionally, our Instant Messenging capability provided on the Air Force Portal proved a critical link back to home stations to check on the status of parts, forces and other critical information in a limited communications environment. As a real life example from Operation Iraqi Freedom, a sergeant deployed to Southwest Asia experienced difficulty contacting the Air Combat Command Regional Supply Squadron to obtain updated status on a critical supply order. The Air Force Portal Instant Messenger capability provided him another option for linking to the Regional Supply Squadron. This capability allowed him to communicate online directly with the Air Combat Command Regional Supply Squadron to check on the status of fighter assets and provide them to his commander. In addition, his role as a Supply Specialist on the Air Force Portal provided him access to Logistics and Supply Command and control information and access to reports, Fleet Asset Status, and Integrated Logistics System-Supply. Instant Messenger also became a crucial morale tool during Operation Iraqi Freedom, allowing Airmen unable to get to the morale tent during duty hours to communicate with their families from forward locations, as well as with other Airmen across the globe. The Air Force Instant Messenger provides additional communications options for work and morale purposes.
The Portal is increasingly being used across the Air Force. The number of registered Portal users has grown to over 300,000 with an average of over 1,500,000 pages served up daily.
Several years ago, with the objective of leveraging commercial sector economies and redeploying our critical IT skills against the warfighting mission, we began consolidating the operations and support of our Air Force base networks and computers. This consolidation addressed email systems, web sites, file storage and print servers, base networks, and desktop support. Prior to the consolidation, we would have up to a dozen different networks and email systems at each base. Today, our consolidation of servers and networks at our fixed bases is over 90 percent complete and consolidation of functional applications is 75 percent complete. We have one integrated network and single email, web and file service for the base. Our infrastructure consolidation efforts over the past two years have eliminated over 4,000 servers and produced man-hour savings along with $200+million/year cost avoidance. The cost savings have permitted us to keep our operations and support cost flat. The productivity improvements resulting from network server consolidation have freed up the equivalent of 1,000 military personnel to augment stressed military career fields. We have achieved enhanced reliability and security due to this consolidation.
Leveraging these gains and seeking to maintain the momentum, in December 2003 the Air Force Secretary and Chief laid out the next set of infrastructure consolidation initiatives that focus on regional and Air Force-wide consolidation. The continued pursuit of these goals will move the Air Force closer towards an integrated, consistently managed Air Force enterprise structure, which will allow trusted, accurate information to be provided to the warfighter in a more timely fashion. Moreover, it will permit cost efficiencies that will allow us to deliver additional capability at the same or less cost.
Governance and Efficiencies
The Air Force is working hard to provide rigorous oversight for our IT investments.
To accomplish this oversight, the Air Force has implemented a comprehensive information technology portfolio management process. The portfolio management process provides visibility into information technology expenditures and enables control and prioritization of IT resource requests. In addition, the process provides the necessary budget details to build and clearly articulate the Air Force information technology budget requests to OSD, OMB, and Congress.
CIOs in our major commands and functional areas are responsible for implementing the IT Portfolio Management processes to manage their resources. Integrated assessments of the major command and functional portfolios are accomplished at the Air Force CIO level. Each program must also produce a detailed business case, which is graded by my office. Programs receiving low scores results in placement on a "watch list" and funding is at risk until improvements are made. During the FY04 President's Budget cycle, we reduced funding for 34 Air Force programs due to low scores on their business cases. We are also providing these business cases to the Congressional committee staffs for their use in understanding our IT programs.
One of our success stories in our portfolio management efforts is that we've been able to hold the line on spending in the Combat Support/Business areas of the portfolio. For the past four years, our spending on Combat and Business Support has remained at approximately $600 million, which in the FY05 President's Budget represents only 9 percent of our total spending on information technology. This is down from about 11 percent in FY04. We also note that our spending on business and combat support IT is significantly less, almost half, of similar organizations within DoD. We believe that our robust portfolio management is a significant contributing factor. In addition, Air Force Portfolio management is linked and will feed into DoD's new Portfolio management process.
In FY03, the Air Force also stood up the Air Force IT Commodity Council (ITCC) to leverage the bulk purchasing power of the Air Force. The Council is co-chaired by the Air Force CIO and the Air Force Procurement Executive. The ITCC developed and implemented an Air Force enterprise strategy for desktops and laptops in 2003 that combined requirements from multiple organizations to allow the Air Force to fully leverage the Air Force's buying power. By combining their PC buys, we saved over $4 million and increased our buying power by 22 percent. In FY 04, the Air Force is applying this commodity buying approach to our annual desktop and laptop purchases (over $200+ million/year). Now that we've proven this industry best practice as a viable approach for the Air Force, the ITCC is developing enterprise-wide strategies for other commodities such as network devices, computer peripherals, and commercial software to help achieve efficiencies in the areas of IT acquisition, installation, maintenance and disposal.
Future
The Air Force is leveraging enterprise architecture to analyze and guide our transformation efforts. Enterprise architectures are aligned with the DoD Business Enterprise Architecture (BEA) and the Global Information Grid Architecture. The Air Force has also adopted the Federal Enterprise Architecture framework, reflecting the DoD standards and extended the Government-wide and DoD architectures details to reflect integration with Air Force unique structures and processes.
The Air Force Business Enterprise Architecture (BEA) is the overarching business architecture that addresses both combat support and business activities. The Air Force BEA is linked to the DoD BEA and focuses on the activities and processes that provide business support to the Air Force warfighters. The Air Force BEA also gives the Air Force the ability to define, evaluate, and improve these processes in a cross-functional environment. Programs being developed under the DoD Business Management Modernization Program (BMMP) such as the Defense Enterprise Accounting and Management System (DEAMS) and the new Defense Integrated Military Human Resource System (DIMHRS) have been reflected in our Air Force BEA. We are using our architecture efforts to ensure that business processes and information will comply with DoD business standards as well as meet warfighter needs.
In January, the Secretary and Chief of Staff of the Air Force chartered a new governance structure, the Commanders' Integrated Product Team (IPT) to oversee the Air Force business modernization efforts. The Commander's IPT consists of our Air Force Functional leads (Assistant Secretary and Deputy Chiefs of Staff) as well as Vice Commanders from the field. To ensure that the business modernization focuses on warfighter needs, the Commander's IPT is led by our Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Warfighting Integration. As CIO, I am the vice chair of this effort. All of our business modernization funding and efforts will be overseen by this governance structure. The Commanders' IPT will guide and integrate the transformation of processes and systems supporting Air Force business and combat support areas in order to meet OSD BMMP objectives, as well as to provide Joint and Air Force Commanders and Airmen with effective business support products, services, and information.
The Air Force is also lead for a DoD financial modernization effort called the Defense Enterprise Accounting and Management System (DEAMS). The current USAF accounting system is circa 1960 and needs immediate replacement because of obsolete technology, non-compliance with the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Act and its excessive operations and maintenance costs. OSD has approved the piloting of a modern Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) financial management package at US Transportation Command and the Air Force Mobility Command as part of the Business Management Modernization Program. The goals of DEAMS include providing reliable, accurate and timely financial data for decision-makers and meeting the requirements of the Business Management Modernization Program architecture, consistent with DoD Business Enterprise Architecture (BEA). DEAMS will provide one system to process and record all budgetary, accounting, and vendor pay transactions. This effort will replace eight legacy systems including Airlift Services Industrial Fund Computer System and Air Force General Accounting and Finance System. We plan to have the pilot up and running in a year. In subsequent years, and not later than FY07, we will roll out the DEAMS program to other Air Force sites in support of the CFO Compliance Act.
Summary
In summary, our investments are planned and focused on providing warfighting capability to our Commanders and Airmen. Air Force investments in information technology, including those in Combat and Business Systems, are made to satisfy materiel shortfalls in capability and any reduction in funding will severely impact delivering operational capabilities to the warfighter. Our transformation efforts are sound and rely on architectures, portfolio management processes, and oversight structures like the Commanders' Integrated Product Team and technological initiatives like our integrated Global Combat Support System framework and Air Force Portal. This foundation and these efforts help poise the Air Force to move forward with modernized processes and systems like DEAMS to be processed under the auspices of the BMMP program. To date, we have made considerable and measurable achievements; however, we also recognize the challenges that lay ahead of us. We appreciate the support we received from Congress to date with respect to these programs, and we request your continued support.
I appreciate the opportunity to address this Subcommittee. This concludes my testimony.
2120 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
