Anticipating Needs – Before Even You’ve Realized Them

In 2004, then Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz signed Directive 8570 requiring all DoD personnel, DoD Civilians, and DoD Contractors working on Government systems to become certified in their respective technological areas of responsibility. This new directive presented many challenges for the DoD. However, participation in DANTES’ Microsoft Pilot Program gave our Research and Development (R&D) team insight into how to meet the Government’s yet to be defined future needs.

We knew that no Commercial or Government organization has used technology in this way, to train and certify its workforce before and there was currently no single software solution, with a workflow and business rule module, to meet the Government and DoD Contractor’s needs under Directive 8570. While the Government was busy writing its rulebook (8570.1-M) our R&D team began a tabletop exercise. The challenge that we presented the team was to assume that it was given the task of implementing Directive (Dir) 8570 using technology how would we do it? Later after 8570.1-M (DRAFT) was released we developed a technology solution to completely automate the credentialing process while still allowing organizations to decide the level of automation it desired, and to customize how it used our software to implement Dir. 8570 in its own organization. The software was developed to be used by a single organization. We named the software package the Personnel Certification Support System (PCSSÓ 1.0). The PCSS web-enabled application handles the credentialing program for a single organization.

After the DoD’s pilot program used PCSS 1.0 it realized that it was able to meet its goals under Dir. 8570 ahead of schedule. In a 2008 article for Crosstalk – The Journal for Defense Software Engineering, Mr. George Bieber, DoD CIO wrote that PCSS was an integral part of the DoD’s 8570 success. After meeting its 8570 goals DIAP needed to move beyond a solution that only supported a single organization, and transition to an Enterprise solution that would handle 35+ DoD agencies, with room to expand the program in the future.

Ahead of the Government’s solicitation for an Enterprise solution, we anticipated its future needs yet again. JASZ’s R&D team released an Enterprise software package, PCSS 2.0©. one year ahead of the DoD’s need.

In April 2008 DIAP and DANTES adopted PCSS 2.0© as the Enterprise solution for implementing Dir 8570’s Information Assurance (IA) Workforce-Improvement Voucher-Program. The Personnel Certification Support System (PCSS 2.0©) is a web-enabled application that allows your organization to put its training, testing, certification, licensing, and applicant tracking processes online for 24x7x365 access and operations.

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