19 November 2010

Review of Fleet Admin Tools – Follow-up

Team,
I told you here a few weeks ago I would update you when I was briefed on the Fleet Functional Area Manager (FAM) effort and the list of tools they were reviewing. RADM Meek and his team came over yesterday and presented a list of ~50 applications along with a recommendation to kill/fix/keep/sunset for each one. I attached the brief here so that you can review the list and decisions that are being made. You’ll see that the total list of applications has grown to almost 900 already (and getting bigger).
I believe we’ve made great progress the past seven weeks. We have the right people involved now and ADM Walsh and I are fully aligned on what needs to be done.  I want our Sailors to know that we are going to keep at this until we review every application in the Fleet.
I’ll be on travel next week spending Thanksgiving with our Sailors underway in the Arabian Gulf and serving as IAs in the CENTCOM AOR. I look forward to your feedback on the update above when I return.
All the best, JCHjr

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sir,
It concerns me that this was presented to you as progress. As a guy with a programming background and several years of sea duty, most of the brief was chaff and little had to do with anything used by regular sailors. Several of the "apps" were tools used by an incredibly small number of Sailors, and others are websites that Sailors used ashore that were never intended to be used aboard ship. The term "application" was so widely used it masked true problems that exist not in the software, but rather in the implementation strategy or in the data transport layer.
Slide 9, Issue 1: Ship to shore data replication could solve many of these issues. SharePoint 2010 has built in solutions as I understand.

COGNOS - You can't kill an afloat app if it is NOT an afloat app.
JMINI - never heard of, niche market only.
OPINS - Invalid kill, not used afloat.
PowerTrack - web based query for HHG shipments and freight status, not intended to be used by ships
ReMAD - Was never used afloat
RHS v1.0 - Was never used afloat
WinATOS - "kill" is chaff - 01.00.01 to 01.00.02 is nothing more than deployment of an update
ISOVIEW - a browser plug-in is NOT an "afloat app" and are they seriously going to kill the tool used to view IETMs? What is the replacement? Implication is NO tech manuals.
NAVFIT 98A - the "fix" is a bold faced lie. "All reported issues resolved in v28" is not true. Not even close. Embarrassed someone would say that to you.
NKO Afloat - AILE problems are a red herring no one wants to talk about, much less fund.
NCTSS - The user interface and report formats are horrible, that is what the Sailors are complaining about and that is NOT what is being fixed. Client/server architecture is the latest of 1985 technology.
MICRO Sanp - Niche market only.

In short - I was excited to hear about your interest in fixing the frustration the average Sailor has with the tools he has to use. The effort so far? You should ask the boys in the 6 shop if they had the NCEA to expend all that Mk 216 they just fired in powerpoint format ... distraction chaff.

:(

ADM J. C. Harvey, Jr USN said...

Anonymous,
Thanks for taking the time to look through the brief and comment. Your response is precisely the type of feedback (from the deckplate) that I’m looking for on this forum. I’ll make sure your feedback gets forwarded to the right people on the team, but I want to emphasize that we’ve only reviewed 5% of the total applications listed in the portal. Our initial pass captured some of the “low-hanging fruit”…but we still have a lot of work to do. As I mentioned in my post, we are going to keep at this until we review every application in the Fleet. I’ll be sure to keep you updated; I’ll need your help to fight through the chaff rounds and get to the heart of the issue!
All the best, JCHjr