The Global Justice Solution Accelerator

The SST Technology

Solution Overview

The Global Justice Solution Accelerator is named for its unique ability to consume the DOJ Global Justice XML Standard in the process of visually authoring an end-to end infrastructure for managing the business of agency operations. No classic software development is required. Yes, this is a new technology for Visual Process Authoring that gives back business control of their own IT processes.

Called "BPKM" the Global Justice Solution Accelerator's master framework is named for its unique ability to transact DOJ compliant workflow, provide agency Business Process compliance, and provide enterprise information visibility through a personalized Knowledge Management portal delivered via Microsoft Outlook. Built as an integration of five major Microsoft platforms, the framework empowers administrators to visually define/improve agency workflow as sequences of e-form communiquйs, without DBA or programmer intervention.

The Framework's Broad Applicability
Leveraging the visual interfaces of the Visual Process Authoring , Framework agencies can now design, manage, deploy and improve complex information systems without the expensive, static work/re-work cycles of conventional software approaches. Simply, the framework re-configures itself in the process of defining what and how each agency has been defined in the DOJ XML. For example, as a federal department describes its agency's processes, an end-to-end solution for process definition, compliance, collaboration, workflow and information visibility becomes available.

Managing the Business of Intelligence Operations

The National Intelligence Sharing Plan has identified three major challenges in providing actionable intelligence to and from the right people, all the time.

1) Information must be captured once at the source and built with an information architecture that rapidly improves and evolves.

2) Establish a real-time database of record built from DOJ compliant workflow must be visible to intelligence operations and first responders over a distributed system of systems.

3) Most importantly, the infrastructure must have the capability to provide raw actionable intelligence to other regional, state and federal agencies by using metadata standards like the Department of Justice's Global Justice XML Standard.

In December of 2003, The Global Justice Solution Accelerator was piloted by the FBI Joint Drug Intelligence Group. Training, testing, demonstrations and production requirements gathering sessions lasted for five days.

The Business of Intelligence Operations - The Value of the SST GJSA

Compared to their use of data, most DOJ related agencies and department are still very primitive in the ways they manage the business of executing work processes. Business processes are inconsistent across applications, locations, functions, and divisions. Few people understand how their work relates to the overall processes in which they participate. Even though process maps, task documentation, and job aids exist in isolated cases, most knowledge about how things are or should be done, is stored in an incompatible and disconnected manner. Usually this knowledge is not even written down at all, but exists only in people's heads.

new end-to-end approach to business process design, deployment and execution has indeed emerged to meet the growing disconnect between business requirements and IT's ability to deliver working systems. This new paradigm is called the third wave of business process management (BPM).
BPM the third wave, Peter Fingar 2002

The BPKM framework is the single most immediate opportunity for a DOJ related agency or department to meet compliance, and turn workflow into a consolidated, audible database of record.

When a DOJ compliant database of record exists, the more critical issue of information sharing becomes technically simple.

Unfortunately, traditional IT approaches, methods and information technologies are incapable of managing current realities. We live in a world of continuous change, where competition is rigorous and financial pressures are unrelenting. Surprisingly, our business models and software development approaches are historically static, inflexible, and diffused with siloed thinking. This marks a critical divide between business and IT's ability to provide timely solutions. The BPKM framework implemented as the GJSA solution is a breakthrough solution technology built with high reuse, Service Oriented Architecture, using five reliable and scalable Microsoft platforms.

There are three important elements to understand about the Global Justice Solution Accelerator:

- Change is "built-in." The GJSA solution enables the continuous visual management and improvement of business processes, both within and across organizations.
- The business and technology of intelligence become united. We align agency processes with the goals and capabilities of the people and systems that are involved in their execution.
- GJSA is not just a strategic infrastructure for compliant intelligence operations. The process repository database is itself a cross case tactical database holding case details, raw intelligence and operational activity never before available to agency analytical or data mining tools.

Four key issues are solved in successful implementations of the SST GJSA:

- GJSA improves organizational agility. Such agility doesn't just come from automating business processes; it comes from a process-oriented approach about work related information and enables clearer divisions of responsibility between IT and business administrators.
- GJSA consolidates and integrates technology stovepipes. More often than not DOJ organizations use a hodgepodge of point solutions unable to handle the end-to-end automation of business processes. The GJSA consolidates these documents, evidence and analytical artifacts from I2, Nexus-Lexus, Memex, and any other tools into consolidated, secure intranet published case summaries.
- GJSA enables interactive change by empowering agency administrators to dynamically implement changes to the operation of IT assets, as business requirements are refined or modified.
- Information Sharing Standards will soon be required by DHS-DOJ. The GJSA is the only known technology of its kind that is fully SOA-XML - DOJ compliant out of the box. Any future secure information sharing standard will require DOJ compliance to middleware or secure web service exchanges. The GJSA architecture is built to support both.