Mobile Edition
Print
Get the Mag
Weekly UpdatesThe Fall 2005 edition of the Armed Forces Comptroller provided an in-depth look at the Defense Enterprise Accounting and Management System (DEAMS) in an article titled "The Road Ahead for DEAMS." The path traveled in the year since has been not just a road but a broad expressway on which DEAMS has made tremendous progress toward its initial deployment in May 2007.
DEAMS was established in August 2003 as a joint initiative of the United States Air Force, U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM), and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service. The official DEAMS mission is to support the warfighter with timely, accurate financial information, enabling efficient and effective decision making by Department of Defense (DoD) managers. But to financial managers at every level, it's much more. DEAMS represents transformation in very real terms and will have wide-ranging impact on the financial management community.
The program passed its first critical milestone in 2005 when Oracle Federal Financials was selected as the commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software at the heart of the system. Variations of that software already are in use at 88 different federal government organizations. The second milestone came in February 2006 when Accenture LLP was chosen as the system integrator (SI). Under the SI's guidance, 10 highly specialized and dedicated integrated product teams worked through a six-month "blueprinting process," a building-block approach that defined key elements of the DEAMS global design, including functional process reengineering.
The blueprinting process was capped by a series of workshops held in May 2006 to gather information from subject matter experts (SMEs) in order to refine DEAMS requirements. That information was needed in order to begin mapping DEAMS processes to commercial best practices. Process workshops took center stage in July. Throughout a month of intense meetings, members of the end-user community and DEAMS team experts reviewed proposed process flows to ensure that they will function correctly and reflect established best practices from the business world and other enterprise resource planning implementations.
The teams next performed gap analysis, the detailed evaluation of the requirements and "to-be" processes compared to the COTS capabilities. Team members identified disconnects, or gaps, between COTS software functions and operational process requirements to see whether an Oracle function could be matched to the process or whether the existing process could be revised to achieve the desired outcome. If not, solutions included either software extensions to bridge the gap or a custom bolt-on application to address a critical function that the Oracle software did not address.
The last crucial step in DEAMS development, prior to entering the design phase, has been the Conference Room Pilot (CRP) that began in mid-October. Conducted at the functional management office in Fairview Heights, Ohio, the CRP was a five-week, facilitated show-and-tell session. During the first four weeks, DEAMS team experts and a small, hand-selected group of SMEs examined some 127 scenarios to see what happens when the adapted Oracle software is applied to those situations. At the same time, a select group was trained on the basic functionality of the software to prepare for actual hands-on experimentation that marked the fifth and final week of the CRP.
The CRP was not designed to exercise any of the 52 DEAMS interfaces with external legacy applications, but it did simulate some of them using staged data. Interface development and testing began in late November and will extend throughout the design and build phases for DEAMS Spiral 1 and Spiral 2.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
According to John Senn, DEAMS functional manager, "The CRP was our first chance to apply the Oracle software to realistic business processes. It's taken a lot of hard work to get to this point in the program, and we were excited about the opportunity to try out the software, even in a simulated environment."
The CRP was the final gate leading to the design phase, scheduled to get underway in December with the beginning of the functional and technical design effort for Spiral 1. The functional design expresses the business requirements and the proposed solutions in nontechnical terms. The technical design process translates the functional design into technical terms for developers who will configure the COTS software and build the required extensions.
Beginning in May 2007, DEAMS will be implemented in the first of several spirals and versions. Version 1.1 includes two spirals and is a technology demonstration at HQ USTRANSCOM, HQ Air Mobility Command (AMC), and Air Force tenant organizations at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, including HQ Air Force Communications Agency. In fiscal year 2010, Version 1.2 of DEAMS will be applied to USTRANSCOM's components, the Surface Deployment and Distribution Command and Military Sealift Command, and all remaining AMC bases. Not long after, Version 2.1 will include the rest of the Air Force's 84 major installations.
A talented and dedicated team, working hand-in hand with SMEs from the operational environment, has guided DEAMS from the starting gate to the head of the home stretch, and the finish line is in sight. The team is confident of success, a feeling shared by senior leadership.
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Financial Management and Comptroller John G. Vonglis expects DEAMS to demonstrate true transformation in the business of defense. "With the advent of DEAMS, Air Force financial management is poised on the brink of an exciting new era," he said. "DEAMS will establish us as the gold standard for effective and efficient stewardship of our nation's financial resources."
(Further information about DEAMS is available at http://deams.transcom.mil.)
Richard P. Gustafson, CDFM, and David Thurston
FEED