Projects

Title: Production Services / Customer Support Desk

Contracting Activity: Space War Information Technology Center (SITC) Detachment Washington

Description of the Effort: Since 1982, ARIES has provided continuous support to all SPAWAR ITC (SITC) Detachment Washington initiatives affecting Production Services and its users. ARIES’ Production Services team consists of Systems Experts, Systems Design Analysts, Systems Analysts and Project Managers.

Activities include the certification and migration of new applications into production, moving applications to new hardware platforms, moving applications to different sites, consolidating the production workload onto a single domain, maintaining the interfaces between applications on different domains, at different sites and in different operating environments. ARIES Production Services personnel coordinate with the representatives from all NRISO AORs to determine production scheduling needs prior to production certification. Support is supplied to the AORs regarding NRISO production JCL, data set standards and tape retention requirements. The operating systems and hardware platforms have changed frequently in an effort to keep up with advancing mainframe technology. ARIES’ Production Services team has provided support from planning the migrations to performing the required changes to the processes that allow them to execute on the upgraded hardware and software.

ARIES, the one organization that has contact with all production applications and all external users, has designed, developed, and maintains all intra system and intra application interfaces and interdependencies. Included are interfaces between application areas (NES, OPINS, OAIS, EAIS, IMAPMIS, TFMMS, etc.), between domains (PROD2, CLASS1), between sites (NETPMSSA, NPRDC, BUMED, NCTS, NAVMAC, etc.), and between hardware platforms (IBM, AMDAHL, Honeywell, Hewlett Packard, and DEC). These interfaces and interdependencies are a major consideration in the scheduling of the production processes. ARIES Production Services personnel keep track of and ensure that all requirements for these interfaces are met. Only a few cycles are executed on one domain or system and none execute without input from or output to external sources, Production Services must consider these interfaces a priority in all planning and scheduling. As domains are consolidated, interfaces must be replaced or eliminated. For example, consolidation of the M2 and M3 domains eliminated data transfers between these domains and the associated interfaces were changed or deleted. NRISO realized significant savings in DASD storage required to support duplicate data sets and the CPU cycles cost required to process the interface jobs.

Title: NEOPS Web-Enablement

Contracting Activity: Space War Information Technology Center Detachment Washington (SPA WAR ITC Wash-Det)

Description of the Effort: Modernization initiative by the Space and Naval Warfare Information Technology Center Washington Detachment.

The web-enablement of the ARPR (Annual Retirement Point Record) and ASOSH (Annual Statement of Service) provides the Naval Reserve Personnel Center (NAVRESPERSCEN) with a modern and responsive information system to assist members in obtaining Retirement Point information. Customers are able to view and print their participation data 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, resulting in timely customer self-service.

In the past, the ARPR and ASOSH were printed and mailed monthly based on a member’s NEOPS (Navy Enlisted/Officer Participation System) anniversary date. Customers also requested these documents by phone, e-mail, and letter. Information provided was not near real-time. This antiquated method provided dated information to customers, costs approximately $18,000 per year for mailing the documents, and did not provide data to customers in a timely manner. In addition, customer service representatives responding to routine requests for ARPRs and ASOSHs, spent numerous hours fielding these requests.

Technical services were necessary by Systems Experts, System Design Analysts and System Analysts for the planning and implementation of the web-enablement of the ARPR and ASOSH. In support of SPAWAR ITC, the contractor performed:

The identification, analysis, planning, and execution of the tasks required to web-enable the ARPR and ASOSH. All designs had be compatible with the BUPERS On-Line (BOL) Web Architecture with secure access and authentication (minimum of 128 bit encryption Secure Socket Layer).
Provided system documentation and a detailed process flow diagram for the web-enabled system.

Title: Media Reduction

Contracting Activity: Space War Information Technology Center (SITC) Detachment Washington

Description of the Effort: Modernization Initiative by the Space and Naval Warfare Information Technology Center Washington Detachment (SPA War ITC Wash-Det)

This modernization initiative is the conversion of the classified microfiche processing to an online environment. Classified Microfiche from the BUPERS and SPAWAR ITC manpower, personnel, fiscal and distribution processes are currently created using a complex and expensive creation process, involving dedicated telecommunications circuits and outdated microfiche creation equipment requiring special environmental support conditions. The Control-D/V mainframe component and Control-D/PC LAN component of the software suite will be used to replace the current classified microfiche distribution method by distributing microfiche data to a classified web server.

Implementation of the Control-D/Web Server system for distribution of classified microfiche data would provide enhanced capability for the current microfiche user community by providing not only viewing capability at the desktop but also indexing. The conversion to such a system will require extensive research to gather required information to determine the best replacement distribution method. Factors influencing the distribution method used will include: availability of SIPRNET access and resources; size and volume of microfiche; historical data retention requirements; availability of user level Internet web sensitivity or classification of data.

This task is a continuation of media modernization initiatives and converts classified printed media to electronic format. In support of SPAWAR ITC, ARIES personnel consists of Systems Experts, Systems Design Analysts and Systems Analysts are required to:

Perform the identification, analysis, planning, and execution of the tasks required to convert classified mainframe methodologies from microfiche creation to online viewing. The software to be utilized is the Navy-owned CONTROL-D/V and CONTROL D/WEB SERVER from BMC Software.
Design the evaluation and development of the classified CONTROL-D/WEB SERVER directory structure for user distribution.
Coordinate the installation of CONTROL-D/V and CONTROL-D/WEB SERVER for the classified systems and develop the firewall permissions and access schemes.