2 April, 95
TO: Senior Executive Awards Board, (BBLC)
FROM: Roy Roebuck, Code UAQ
DATE: 2 April, 95
SUBJECT: Response to Senior Executive Awards Board Request for Information, DISA Suggestion # 93-14
1. Reference:
a. DISA Suggestion # 93-14, "Enterprise Engineering, A Systematic Approach to Quality.
b. DISA BBLC IM, 26 May 1993, Subject: Suggestion # 93-14, "Enterprise Engineering, A Systematic Approach to Quality.
2. Per the 19 May 1994 and subsequent verbal request from Dr. Signori, the attached documents, as described below, are provided.
3. In 1982 I began a project in graduate school to identify the structure, functionality, and operation of an information system that would serve as the single system by which all of the operations of an enterprise, regardless of its size, would be conducted. I used a structured analysis and design technique that is now known as object-oriented analysis and design. As a result of this project effort, I developed a generalized model of how an enterprise operates, whether business, commercial, non-governmental or private, in terms of their information content, flow, and processing. This generalized approach, which I called a general enterprise model (GEM), is now being described as an "information warehouse", or "object warehouse" concept.
4. Over the next several years, I had an opportunity to refine and apply the GEM in my capacity as Management Analysis Officer, Information Resource Manager, Assistant Resource Manager, Information Engineer, and Organization Developer while working in Army Echelon-Above-Corps (1982-89), Army Theater (1989-92) and DoD Agency (1992-94) staffs. See the Gantt chart at attachment 1.
5. In 1988 and 89, I took some of this experience and submitted, to the Army Community headquarters in Darmstadt Germany, a series of five suggestions on how the GEM could be applied to the Federal Government, DoD, Army, and Army Europe. I also made free distribution of the suggestions to USARUER, Army, DoD, Executive Branch, and Legislative personnel. These suggestions were never evaluated, nor were they closed. Darmstadt's higher headquarters could not evaluate them, but would not pass them to the next higher headquarters as was directed by Army regulation. I recommended in the suggestion that the evaluatons would have to come from Dept. of Army level or higher because of their magnitude. They have been in a bureaucratic limbo since that time, despite formal attempts on my part to have the suggestion review process completed. Part of my frustration is that I see large portions of these suggestions now being formally implemented across the Federal government and DoD.
6. In 1989, I was detailed, and later assigned, as the lead Information Engineer in the Architecture Division, Deputy Chief of Staff for Information Management, US Army Europe, to implement many elements of the 1988/89 suggestions, now GEM.
7. As a result of that work, in 1992 the DCSIM submitted a formal requirement to the Army Director for Information and C4 (DISC4) Architecture directorate. The requirement submission for an information system, derived from the GEM, included an operational prototype (in dBase IV) of my design and a DoD7935a Functional Description. The requirement was called TAPES, Total Architecture, Plans, and Analysis System. It was to serve as the single system by which the Theater's Information Architecture was to be analyzed, documented, planned, programmed (POM and OMA), budgeted, allocated, displayed, and updated. It would allow views of the Information Architecture from combinations of location, organization, unit, function, process, resource, and life-cycle stage contexts. All of the TAPES effort was based on my original 1988/89 suggestions, as verified in USAREUR DCSIM correspondence and the Functional Description.
7. In 1992, after the submission of the above requirement, prototype, and Functional Description to DISC4 I submitted another
suggesion encompassing the now approved TAPES to the Army Area Support Group for Heidelberg, Germany. That suggestion was disapproved in August 1992, stating that there was no documented requirement for the capability I suggested. Note: that very capability was exactly what I'd been asked to prototype, and had prototyped, for USAREUR DCSIM.
8. Rather that refute the Heidelberg suggestion evaluator at that time by providing him the requirement statement number and the Army documents accepting TAPES as a MACOM Information Services Module, I felt it best to wait for TAPES to be implemented in USAREUR or Army, and perhaps resubmit the suggestion after my assignment to DISA.
9. In May 1992, I was RIF'd as a result of a major manpower cut in the Army Information Systems Command. As a result, I took a priority placement assignment to DISA as an Organization Development Specialist (GS-343-12, now 13).
10. Within a few weeks of arriving here, I identified several hundred functional uses of the GEM and it's TAPES derivative in DISA to my supervisor, Dr. Drummond. He subsequently encouraged me to pursue it's adoption in DISA. Those functional uses can still be satisfied with a GEM-based "information warehouse" type information system.
12. Over the next two years in DISA, I refined the GEM concept to strengthen its quality management and customer service aspects and identified several ways (DISA CONOPS, DMRD 918, etc.)in which the GEM/TAPES could benefit DISA elements. In December 1992 I submitted suggestion #93-14.
13. In April 1994, I was asked by the DISA Quality Management Office (V21/TQM) to serve as a systems analyst for defining the requirement and then prototyping a DISA Quality Improvement System, a network-based application. The DQIS is based on a GEM/TAPES derived "core" information system (an object warehouse) called Dynamic Enterprise Management IS (DEMIS). The DEMIS is the concept addressed in suggestion #93-14.
14. The DQIS requirement has now been staffed and demonstrated within DISA, and a cost estimate prepared for its implementation within DISA. It is currently waiting DISA ISWG review. The estimated cost of implementing a light-duty version (using the DISANet file server DBMS) is less than $50,000. The initial population of the DQIS with operational data is being done by me, using documents and databases provided by various DISA elements. Note that building the DQIS would result in an about 70% of an operational DEMIS.
15. Since my departure from USAREUR in 1992, the functional manager in DCSIM for whom I built the prototype TAPES, Mr. Jim Bagwell, has implemented a TAPES-derivative information system. It is called ISPPS, Information Systems Planning and Programming System. It has totally replaced the previous USAREUR process for managing its Information Architecture. It is being considered as the standard Army approach for managing its Information Architecture. See attachments 2 through 5. Mr. Bagwell can be reached at DSN 370-8858 and DDN bagwellj@heildelberg-emh2.army.mil.
16. Starting from the work I had done in USAREUR DCSIM, over two and a half years Mr. Bagwell spent another two manyears and less than $50,000 (See Attachment 2, Section 7) to field ISPPS, using the Oracle DBMS. The estimated return on investment for ISPPS is over $40,000,000 based on the unit density of USAREUR at my departure. This would be downgraded due to BRAC. See Attachment 6.
ROY E. ROEBUCK
Organization Development Specialist
Attachments:
1. Timeline of GEM Suggestions
2. Army Europe DCSIM Memo, 2 May 94, Read Ahead...
3. ISPPS Draft Functional Description (Annotated)
4. ISPPS Briefing Charts
5. USAREUR Pamphlet 25-1
6. Analysis of Benefit