Improving Homeland Security Logistics

Challenge

The U.S. Coast Guard is a military, multimission, maritime service assigned (since March 2003) to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. As one of the five U.S. armed services, its core roles are to protect the public, the environment, and U.S. economic and security interests in any maritime region in which those interests may be at risk, including international waters and U.S. coasts, ports, and inland waterways.

In the 1990s, the Coast Guard embarked on a supply management system (Fleet Logistic System) for its maintenance and logistics commands (see Federal Computer Weekly for more background). FLS was designed to aggregate all resources, equipment, costs and labor associated with supporting Coast Guard ships so that the agency could make informed decisions on future acquisitions, reduce inventory and manage its resources better. The Coast Guard had spent more than $40 million since the project with little tangible progress.

Solution

PaulsonIT was selected (along with several other contractors) to lead two critical initiatives to improve the FLS system. We created on online web service to address the absence of critical contracting and procurement workflow from FLS. To standardize maintenance policy for the entire Coast Guard, we provided data management and consultation solutions for implementation of over 18000 maintenance standards. Our work with the FLS system contributed to a GSA Award for IT excellence.