Case Studies — INFORMATION and KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Challenge  

Implementation  of the Marine Corps Indo-Pacific posture is a multi-year, multi-phase,  and multi-billion-dollar initiative that will shape the stance of the  Service for the decades to come. Its execution is core to Service-level  planning and has strategic implications for the entire Marine Corps.  Indo-Pacific posture actions require institutional oversight and  direction in the prioritization and timing of execution to ensure  alignment with strategic priorities of concern to the Marine Corps and  multiple external stakeholders, including the Department of the Navy  (DON), Department of War (DoW), Congress, and the Government of Japan (GoJ). The Pacific Posture Program Office needed a way to collect, organize, analyze, and utilize data from all the various stakeholders.  

Solution  

The Commandant of the Marine Corps directed that a decision support tool be created to assist with high level programmatic enterprise decision, so Hartwood developed the Enterprise Decision Support Tool (eDST) an integrated data collection, storage, and visualization platform that covers the entire Pacific region.  

eDST provides geographical specific visualization and reporting capabilities based on the following data types:  

Situational  Data: The data elements that are being changed in response to the  overall situation. Examples include Unit relocation date, location,  facility requirements.  

Collected  Data: The data elements that have been collected from Pacific Posture  stakeholders and/or from official data sources. Examples include unit  personnel, construction costs, facility capacity.  

Calculated Data: The data elements that are generated from the collected data elements based on assumptions and generally accepted algorithms. Examples include: average dependents by rank, amount of admin space required, number of expected enlisted dining hall meals.  

Comparison Data: The utilization of various data elements from External, Calculated, and Situational to  compare against capacity, facility needs, timelines, etc. Examples include: Total number of high school students (Calculated data) expected  compared to the total available High School seats; Total number of BEQ,  BOQ, and/or family housing require across all units compared to the  total available beds/houses.  

Results  

eDST provides the following benefits:  

• Collects data sources and other references to provenance  
• Links the various data elements together to show relationships across data provided by different stakeholders  
• Simplifies the process for finding the impact of changes to data and identifies a subset of data requests for the stakeholders  
• Expands to accommodate more data as it is reported  
• Generates briefing slides in a consistent and rapid manner  
• Creates data visualizations that displays complex information in a clear, intuitive manner, making it easier to identify important trends, patterns and insights that may have otherwise been overlooked.  

The eDST is utilized across the USMC as the system of record in support of the official program of record for the Pacific Posture.  

Services  

To not only sustain but continuously enhance eDST,  Hartwood employs a dedicated, multidisciplinary team responsible for  ensuring the tool’s reliability, scalability, and alignment with  evolving mission needs. This team provides the following services:  

• Data Analytics  
• O365 Tool utilization and optimization  
• Training and User Support  
• Program Management  
• Graphics Design and Strategic Communications  

Conclusion  

Though having been deployed for years, eDST continues to under go modifications and enhancements as we collaborate with many stakeholders  on identification, clarification, quantification, and qualification of  data sources to integrate as we strive to expatiate the identification  of potential issues and provide the data needed to help leadership make  informed decisions. 

Challenge  

A  program office that had been up and running for over 10 years was  facing the problem of an aging civilian staff and a very transitional  military component and needed to be able to identify, categorize, store  and access over 80000 files spread across multiple domains from 100 plus  SharePoint sites, multiple shared drives, and locally stored content on  laptops.  

Solution  

To support the current and future utilization needs, using O365 capabilities, Hartwood created a single access point  called the Command Library where stakeholders can do a dynamic search of  all the content. 

The Command Library also has the following  capabilities:  

• Integrates with the divisions MS TEAMS to allow working products to be  completed within the TEAMS collaboration environment and then have the  final product moved to the command library via drag and drop.  
• Drag and drop enforces the assignment of appropriate meta data so each file is marked and can be utilized in the future.  
• Users can designate a file to be flagged for leadership to view and set the time for which the file is to be flagged.  
• Leadership has a view integrated into their TEAMS channels that show all the files flagged for their awareness.  
• There is a quarterly sweep of all TEAMS channels to bring over files  with a comparison to existing files and allows SMEs to see the new files  and determine if they are to be kept or removed as working files.  

Results  

The Command Library now has over 10000 files all with appropriate metadata elements to include publishing date, organizational section, modified date, and geographical area relevance. Users can search across all  files or within their organizational section just like in a traditional  library via the card catalog or by going to a designated section.  

The infrastructure in set so that soon we will be utilizing AI to integrate the command library in to automated business processes  and suggest files that may be relevant to the task in question and show  the last stored version of any periodic reports generated.  

Services  

Hartwood  employs a dedicated, multidisciplinary team responsible for ensuring  the tool’s reliability, scalability, and alignment with evolving mission  needs. 

This team provides the following services:  

• Knowledge Management  
• Information Management  
• O365 Tool utilization and optimization  
• Training and User Support  
• Program Management  
• Graphics Design and Strategic Communications  

Conclusion  

The Command Library was the first step in a true lasting Knowledge Management system for the division and has laid the ground work for future expansion of the KM system to include process automation, AI  generation of draft documents, and the automated assignment of Records  Management schedules.