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Award for Technical Excellence Highlights Client Results
Seven CSC teams have received the 2007 CSC Award for Technical Excellence, CSC’s highest technical honor. The award is highly competitive, narrowed from a field of 68 entries across CSC. Projects are evaluated not only on technical innovation, but also on value delivered to clients, reflecting CSC’s emphasis on measurable business results. This year’s recipients also reflect the global nature of CSC’s business, spanning Europe and the United States, and representing both government and commercial clients.
"CSC’s Technical Excellence Awards are a great example of the innovations that the company creates in collaboration with its clients," says Bill Koff, vice president and chief technology officer for CSC’s Office of Innovation. "These collaborative innovations lead to CSC’s next practices, which are leveraged by our clients worldwide."
The following projects received the 2007 CSC Award for Technical Excellence:
Defending the borders
CSC engineers created a border information system that verifies a traveler and his or her identity documents in 10 seconds, enabling authorities to concentrate on the person and his behavior, not the documents. This replaces the manual process currently being used by many countries, greatly reducing the time required for inspections and back-office work. The system employs cutting edge technologies, such as biometrics and electronic document imaging, and real-time information feeds from news channels that alert operators of attempts to pass border posts using counterfeit identity documents.
Should a suspect arise during the verification and identification process, all the personal data, document images and fingerprints are temporarily transferred to the back office where electronic workflow is set up to deal with exceptions. This greatly reduces paper flow in the back office and enables border security officials to produce detailed statistics on national border activity and immigration flows. The team included Gianrico Bernabei, Luca Bovenzi, Alberto Buonocore Caccialupi and Giuseppe Ingoglia.
Read a case study about this project.
German airspace now more secure
In order to improve Germany’s airspace security in a post-September 11 world, the German government set up the National Air Security Center (NASC). CSC created the core software application for the NASC to support the protection of German airspace. This application, QBOP (Quarterback Operations Portal), has already tracked and managed several airspace incidents. QBOP made its debut during the FIFA World Cup in Germany in June 2006, and gained attention again during the July 2006 visit by U.S. President George W. Bush.
QBOP, developed by Oliver Charles Burghardt, Christina Noelle, Stephan Krause and Jan Engel, is an event-driven application that responds to airspace incidents as they unfold. It is a platform for collaborative information and knowledge management across three government institutions. Because operators tracking aircraft must evaluate and correctly assess a live situation in 20 to 30 minutes, having dynamic information at their fingertips is paramount.
Learn more about CSC’s aviation work.
Making naval aviation safer
In May 2003, the U.S. Secretary of Defense issued a challenge to the armed services to reduce mishaps and accidents by at least 50 percent within two years. This prompted the Department of the Navy to launch the Military Flight Operations Quality Assurance (MFOQA) program, with the goal of reducing accidents and improving operational readiness across all levels of naval aviation, from squadron to central command. CSC designed and implemented the technical foundations and analysis infrastructure for the Navy’s MFOQA demonstration project. This pilot project demonstrated the capabilities needed in order to achieve enhanced situational awareness, which is key to shifting from a reactive to proactive stance.
Award recipients Miguel Morales, David Dennison, Darren Braynard and Debasish Ray had to develop robust automated procedures for data analysis with the ability to migrate to different aircraft platforms, as well as generate portable versions of some of these procedures for direct implementation into simulation software used for pilot debriefing. The technology developed for the MFOQA pilot project was successfully demonstrated to the Secretary of the Navy in September 2006. The Navy has now set forth a comprehensive MFOQA acquisition program to serve all naval aircraft fleets, including fighters, transports and reconnaissance aircraft.
Read a case study on the project; view a brief video.
Server transformations
A CSC team created an innovative process for improving server transformation for new and existing accounts. This process has now become CSC’s global standard server transformation process. It consists of more than 100 tools and templates, used from bid through execution, that ensure server transformation projects will be completed on time and within budget.
The team used Six Sigma methodology to identify all of the root causes affecting server transformations throughout the bid, discovery and execution phases. The team, which included Michele Boone, Michael Paxson, Billy Rollin and David Sanchez, developed an end-to-end process that addressed these issues while streamlining the process. The result: a repeatable approach for consistent delivery that reduces overall server transformation costs by 34 percent.
Learn more about Lean/Six Sigma. View a brief video about the project.
Streamlining the IRS
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) collects trillions of dollars in revenue annually by processing millions of tax returns from individuals and businesses. A CSC team implemented a complex SAP ERP system for the IRS to handle the budget, procurement and operations of the agency’s $12 million enterprise. The Integrated Financial System (IFS) was the first federal ERP system to receive a clean audit in the first year of production, and is the most complex SAP system in production for a U.S. civil agency.
IFS supports the administrative, financial, procurement and work management functions of the IRS. It enables the IRS to adapt to regulatory and statutory changes while conducting daily operations and providing accurate, timely reporting. The system handles new funding programs, such as a new procurement card program, in one to three months, down from over 12 months. It automates quarterly and other “end” reports, shaving 50 percent off the time it takes for a year-end close. The IFS team included Alexander Flom, Mary Pollard and Charlotte Retief.
Read about CSC’s government expertise.
Utility field workers go mobile
A CSC team developed a real-time customer service management system for a utility company that mobile-enables manual and paper-intensive business processes. For utility engineers handling millions of service calls per year, this system saves time and enhances productivity by equipping them with Pocket PCs to manage service calls and connect to their company’s proprietary planning and management systems.
A pilot project for this system showed that the field engineers could save 45 minutes per day, leaving time for one additional service call per engineer per day – a significant productivity enhancement given there are thousands of field engineers involved. Minimal training is required for the engineers (just one day, which is key when training thousands of employees), and the system is compatible with existing business processes and support capabilities. The CSC team included Bernard Chartier, Jérémy Goldschmidt, Florent Lothon and David Massou.
Learn more about CSC’s work for utility clients.
See what’s happening on your network
FlowViewer is an open source network management toolset that lets you see who is doing what on your network. Designed and developed by CSC’s Joe Loiacono for NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, the tool provides deep visibility into the actual usage and performance of the network, not just overall traffic flow. The open source, Web-based network management toolset helps to analyze the usage and performance of NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) Backbone network (EBnet).
The FlowViewer toolset breaks new ground, giving organizations the ability to manage complex networks by providing a deeper and more confident understanding of what is traversing the network. As a testament to its innovation and usefulness, FlowViewer is now being used by hundreds of network enterprises around the world.
Read more about FlowViewer; view a brief video.
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