System Support and IT Services Case Study:
Executive Summary/Introduction
The customer monitors the program administration and operation of 15 food and nutritional programs across all states, US territories, and tribal organizations via extensive reviews. The programs are responsible for expenditures totaling more than $110 billion annually.
The customer recognized the need to streamline, standardize, and expand the review process. The next generation application would allow the customer to align the business requirements for all 15 assistance programs, establish a central repository of functions, data, and content currently residing in multiple Management Evaluation (ME) applications and enable trend analysis via reporting functionality. QSMI sought to assist the customer by describing the technical assessment tasks required for the implementation of the next generation system.
QSMI was subsequently awarded an additional contract to design the next generation system, based on the recommendations previously presented.
Challenges
The customer is responsible for monitoring the activities of food assistance programs encompassing hundreds of state and local governments, municipalities, Indian tribes, and other groups. The broad scope of their responsibilities required more than 800 Management Evaluation (ME) reviews yearly to identify trends, noteworthy practices, and inherent weaknesses in program design and operational implementation across all programs. In addition, between the respective programs were three different systems, supplemented by an assortment of Microsoft Word and Excel documents.
This project required QSMI to support communications and stakeholder engagement and requirements analysis; analyze the system architecture based on functional and non-functional requirements; security requirements and documentation using FNS-approved SDLC templates; data modeling and data mapping from the existing ME tracking tool and applications; data collection and importing from archived ME reports; and baseline analysis for each food assistance program.
QSMI was required to analyze the existing legacy systems and develop recommendations for a new system to be put in place. This included conducting data modeling, data mapping from existing tracking tools and applications, and designing a system architecture design necessary to establish all development, testing and production environments. The Technical Team revised the data elements and the database schemas for the legacy systems, and assessed and recommended a methodology to clean up and transform the data.
In the subsequent contract to implement the chosen system, five different contractor teams were to support interdependent aspects of the Program.
How Our Services Helped
At the end of the technical, functional and technical assessment, QSMI drafted, submitted and presented recommendations to the customer’s leadership team. The recommendations contained a full cost benefit and gap analysis with Pros and Cons, as well as areas for improvements for every recommendation. QSMI also made recommendations for three potential replacement systems. The result was an in-person briefing and an accompanying 135-page report that detailed findings and recommendations. The details are as follows:
• Identified information gaps in the respective legacy systems and in the documentation supporting the programs.
• The legacy systems’ search capabilities were identified as a particular weak point, so QSMI recommended global search and data analytics platforms to optimize searches.
• Recommended how the eGuide will interface with the new system for all Stakeholders in all programs.
• Our Technical Team revised the data elements and the database schemas for the legacy systems, and assessed and recommended a methodology to clean up and transform the data.
• Redesigned the replacement system with full justification of the recommendation. Also, recommended which part/module/structure of the current system will need to be modified, improved upon and suggest options on the methodology for the redesign.
• Utilized our System Architecture team to submit the System Design, Migration Plan and the replacement system configuration management plan.
QSMI was later awarded an additional contract to design the system architecture and data model for the proposed replacement system. The team drafted the information security compliance documentation, set up the pre-production and production IT environments, performed data extraction, translation and migration from the legacy systems, spreadsheets and work papers. Following that, QSMI performed an Independent Verification and Validation (V&V) role and lead for the team of four other contractor companies on separate contracts that are working in close coordination with the customer. The details are as follows:
• Improved and enhanced the current system and leveraged the customer’s current IT investments.
• Created an ETL tool that facilitated migration of ten years of data from the legacy systems.
• Migrated all the data from legacy systems to the new system, including mapping, verifying, validating and testing all data before migration.
• Set up Integration, User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and Training environments at the customer’s national center in Kansas City.
Benefits /Results
The QSMI Team supported the customer in assessing the task requirements of the next generation system in order to realize their goals of a consolidated, streamlined review program for all assistance programs. In setting up and implementing the replacement system, QSMI enabled a greater integration of data between the respective agencies and programs. QSMI’s Technical Team and associated contractors accomplished the following:
• Provided a complete assessment of the existing systems and tools.
• Reviewed and identified the data structure, fields and mapped the legacy database systems (SQL 2008) to the current “To-Be” (My SQL DB).
• Identified gaps, defined the project vision, business needs, goals and objectives to determine the technical constraints of the existing systems and tools.
• Based on the identified constraints, gaps, and redundancies, QSMI team recommended technical enhancements and new functionality to be used for the proposed system.
• Proposed multiple IT solutions to assist in analyzing trends in program deficiencies across the country to assist the customer with the decision-making process for the “to-be” system.
• Enabled more effective MEs that addressed and re-enforced program objectives and FNS’ strategic performance objectives and priorities.
• Successfully designed and implemented a next generation system serving a vast and varied user community.