Since 2009, DB has helped the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) Office of Acquisition and Assistance (OAA) in Washington, D.C. close nearly 3,000 unclassified contracts and assistance instruments (grants and cooperative agreements) and deobligate more than $175 million.

Each year, millions of dollars are left sitting in the accounts of government contracts that have ended. If this money is not found and repurposed, it may simply remain in the inactive account doing no good to anyone. Unused money also may be returned to the U.S. Treasury, and future budgets will be adjusted based on this unspent money. It is during the closeout process that contract specialists discover this money and enable agencies to repurpose it. Contract closeout also assures conformance to contractual commitments and protects the interest of the government.

For USAID, DB operates and maintains an automated database system capable of storing detailed status information on each award, generates letters and memoranda of inquiry to various organizations within the public and private sectors, reconciles financial accounts, reviews audits, prepares closeout documentation, and advises USAID on pertinent closeout matters.

Specific services, which are provided primarily under the management of Johnson’s Information Resources Directorate with participation by the Office of External Relations, include:

To perform the work, DB assembled a premier team that includes MEI Technologies; Wyle; Booz Allen Hamilton; and JESTech.

In October 2010, DB teamed with Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies (SGT), Inc. to provide NASA’s LaRC with computing support services for complex information technology (IT) systems and applications. The five-year maximum value of the LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES) task order contract is $183 million.

For the LITES contract, DB provides a variety of support and services for the LaRC Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO). Specifically, DB’s LITES team:

Home page photo courtesy of NASA.

- For CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention (NCHHSTP) Global AIDS Program (GAP), DB helped to establish technical and financial infrastructure systems for GAP’s missions to Ethiopia and Malawi. For the project, DB developed protocols to establish and maintain relationships with local organizations from the Ministry of Health to the military and local schools and hospitals and with U.S. entities. DB established and implemented monitoring and evaluation systems, including appropriate training programs, to support effective public health programs for HIV/AIDS, TB and STI in Ethiopia, and facilitated linkages to other in-country programs and organizations for sharing of monitoring and evaluation data.

- DB worked closely with Haiti’s Ministry of Health and Population and CDC to provide public health support services aimed at helping communities recover from the powerful January 2010 earthquake. DB helped strengthen the cross-cutting public health system through health information systems, public health surveillance activities, and diagnostic laboratory testing. DB collaborated with other agencies within HHS, as well as with various branches of the U.S. military and other federal and international agencies.

For NASA’s Glenn Research Center, DB provides:

- Information technology (IT) security, including IT security policy, planning, execution, and training, as well as IT security engineering and operations.
- Enterprise services, including providing mainframe, operations, and production control and support for the business and database applications; providing directory services and account management and support for NASA and Glenn Research Center systems; improving service delivery efficiency through the use of server virtualization; providing engineering design, integration, analysis, administration, and operation of the Glenn Research Center local and wide area networks; capacity planning; responding to threats; increasing capacity; and mitigating risk.
- Enterprise applications, including application programming and database support for all Glenn Research Center applications, including mainframe, client/server and web.
- Knowledge management and collaborative tools for NASA and the Glenn Research Center.
- Support and foresight into emerging and developing technologies, system design methodologies, and service delivery strategies to ensure that NASA remains aligned with industry trends and best practices.
- IT administrative services, including documentation and business case development, including organization, processing, tracking, and updating.
- Technical writing support to assist with all facets of documentation production.
- Mission support, including communications systems engineering, software development, high end computing, and computer graphics required for mission support for NASA and the Glenn Research Center.
- Test facility support, including installation, maintenance, calibration, operation and specialized administration and development of data acquisition systems.
- Web services, including support, development, training, tracking, and maintenance of Glenn Research Center central web and interface to the NASA portal. This includes review of portal web pages to ensure compliance with Federal and NASA standards and accessibility requirements.

For HUD, DB Consulting Group provided comprehensive program management support that helped the initiative blossom into a nationwide network of approximately 1,700 multiservice centers. Each year, DB was responsible for more than 150 deliverables that generated nearly 1,000 documents, products, and services.

DB’s program management support of Neighborhood Networks included:

- Program Development. DB helped center staff and property owners/manager develop strategic business plans that guided center opening and sustainability. DB’s program development efforts, which included staffing a toll-free information line and resource center, led to the opening of hundreds of new Neighborhood Networks centers.
- Technical Assistance. DB encouraged the establishment of new centers and increased the sustainability and growth of existing centers. DB conducted on-site and remote technical assistance to HUD and center staff and other stakeholders in the areas of organizational development, budgeting and fund development, strategic planning and business plan development, program development and evaluation, resident and community outreach, and marketing.
- Communications Support. DB increased awareness of the initiative by creating a variety of electronic and print materials for Neighborhood Networks, such as fact sheets, technical assistance guides, training manuals, marketing brochures, exhibits, and newsletters. DB won the distinguished 2009 Gold Hermes Creative Award for the initiative’s brochure and the 2009 Silver Communicator Award for its exhibit.
- Partnership and Consortia Development and Support. DB worked with centers to develop strategic and mutually beneficial partnerships with national, regional, and local organizations and institutions that could offer much-needed resources, and ban together to form consortia that could pool resources to have a greater impact.
- Special Projects. DB organized and implemented special events, such as national conferences and workshops and Neighborhood Networks Week, that increased awareness of the initiative, provided training and resources to center and HUD staff and stakeholders, and strengthened the network.
- Information Technology Support. DB provided customer support services; operational support and maintenance of the Neighborhood Networks website and database; and corrective and adaptive maintenance for the Neighborhood Networks system. DB also assisted HUD with enterprise architecture planning and helped upgrade its applications to a more robust and flexible environment using the latest Oracle database and Java technologies.

DB’s past performance on CLASS has been exceptional, exceeding client expectations as measured by a 100 percent award fee for the first contract year for the major system development portion of our contract. Our staff supports the development and operation of an ever-evolving system that is and will continue to experience a dramatic 60-fold growth in data holdings and users. CLASS is projected to reach 20 Pedabytes of holdings by 2018.

What makes our approach fairly unique is our enterprise information systems approach using a model that accommodates diverse data sets and scales for growth by eliminating large-scale changes and associated disruptions of daily operations. Our approach allows our team to support this growth through a carefully planned transition that introduces incremental changes that can be easily assimilated into operations and by our user community.

DB is meeting the challenging through expert management; processes that ensure repeatable high quality, availability, and performance; and the evolution of an organization that requires the blending of the many skill areas required. For CLASS, DB provides:

- Program Management. Proactive management of CLASS activities and development of processes with an emphasis on continuous improvement and defining opportunities that reduce risk. Schedule and cost performance is managed using ANSI 748 compliant Earned Value Management System. Our development processes have achieved CMMI Level 3 maturity, and we are well on our way toward CMMI for services rating to further improve our operations support capability.
- Systems Engineering. This includes all phases of enterprise information lifecycle support from the development of “to be” architectures, to requirements development and analysis, to supporting hardware and software design, system integration, and system validation activities.
- Leading Edge Software Development. Our software engineers are well versed in the latest design and development techniques and software frameworks. Our software releases are iterative and moving toward an accelerated development process.
- Database Administration. DB supports the sustaining engineering and maintenance of the database that maintains a catalogue that allows the archival and access to millions of files in a secure way that ensures a high level of data integrity.
- Customer Support. Users are supported by our operations team that understands their data access issues and particular science application needs.
- Large-Scale Data Storage and Retrieval Services. DB provides data storage and retrieval services in support of CLASS. DB maintains operational availability of 99.9 percent defined as any operational site being able to ingest all available data streams, archive, and deliver data requests.
- Security Support for All Phases of Security Engineering. Our team maintains a continuous monitoring program with a high degree of automation that has consistently received high praise. We also provide engineering support that ensures system modifications are compliant with our security architecture and requirements. We work collaboratively with the NOAA OCIO to assess risks, execute certification and accreditation, and to keep all plans and procedures (e.g. System Security Plan, Contingency Plans) up to date.
- 24X7 Operations Support. Our team ensures that we meet the high availability objectives while delivering data to thousands of customers worldwide in a timely manner. Our system administrators offer a wide range of skills that are needed to support a Hierarchical Storage Management System with over 100 servers and a high capacity three site 10Gbps network.