| SUMMARY The
Navy Department Awards Web Service (NDAWS) serves as a shining example
of RGS's unparalleled agility in the face of demanding, frequently
changing requirements. Faced with an urgent need to secure data on a
fragile, antiquated system, RGS quickly identified organizational
requirements and engaged in rapid system development. The resulting
high-performance solution not only replaced the Navy's legacy awards
system but also allowed the convergence of many local Navy awards
applications, resulting in further cost savings to the Navy. After
seeing the first NDAWS demonstration, DNS said, "This is the first real
product to come out of OPNAV. This is GREAT!"
THE BUSINESS CHALLENGE
NDAWS provides a repository and a processing of awards for the
entire Naval fleet. The challenge was to provide a Web-based system to
replace the antiquated Award Information Management System (AIMS),
which was at risk of loss of data. Due to the high potential of data
loss, the first phase of the NDAWS project was to provide the same
functionality of AIMS in a Web-based application in minimal time, with
future phases rolling out Navy-wide.
HOW RGS HELPED
NDAWS is an effort to replace the antiquated AIMS to reduce the time
and effort required to submit and process personnel awards
applications. The project will be implemented in several phases. The
first successfully replicated the current AIMS functionality in a
Web-enabled environment. Subsequent phases will focus on process
re-engineering and optimization. Understanding the Navy's efforts
toward enterprise-wide solutions, NDAWS will allow future migrations of
local awards applications, further generating cost savings to the Navy.
The required objectives include plans to:
SEARCH
Other desired outcomes include:
- Reduce processing time for awards
- Reduce call drivers
- Reduce awards processing steps
- Significantly reduced awards data entry tasks performed by CNO Awards team
- Utilize Extensible Markup Language (XML)
- Provide Web services
- Create and Utilize Portals
BENEFITS DELIVERED
Due to the risk of potential data loss with AIMS, the initial
development phase was extremely fast paced and efficient. NDAWS 1A has
been rolled out to 17 commands, with the target date for Navy-wide
implementation being the end of this year. The initial response from
users who have migrated to the application has been one of widespread,
enthusiastic acceptance. When reviewing NDAWS 1A, VADM Tracy referred
to the system as "fantastic and super" and acknowledged that, "finally,
OPNAV produces something of value."
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