Military Installation Command 

Our client is the command, technical authority, and single process owner for shore installation management for a branch of the military. Its mission is to enable and sustain fleet, fighter and family readiness through consistent, standardized, and reliable shore support and to direct the ashore battle space in support of homeland defense and disaster relief operations.

The Challenge

The client engaged Ironworks Government Solutions to support and enhance its existing family of websites for military installations around the world. The website addresses multiple audiences, including active duty and retired military and their families, Department of Defense (DoD) employees, the general public, congress, and the media. It serves as the primary source of public information regarding the installations for this specific branch of the military. It also contains “controlled access” content only available to eligible persons, which provides information relevant to sailors and their families, including housing, deployment, and Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR).

The overall family of websites includes approximately 90 websites that represent the regions and installations. Each site has several contributors, including the Public Affairs Officer (PAO) as well as other content contributors. Overall, there are close to 500 contributors for these websites.

The Solution

Ironworks Government Solutions has been responsible for all ongoing maintenance, improvements, and new development for the website. Major activities have included the following:

• Enhancing application performance: Prior to our involvement, the client’s existing implementation of Oracle Universal Content Management (OUCM) was extremely slow and sometimes required more than a minute for a page to launch. One of our primary objectives once engaged was to identify the performance issues and recommend a solution. Our approach was to re-code the application and re-architect the solution.  In parallel with this process, Ironworks Government Solutions migrated the application from a one of the client’s hosting centers to another, while making other performance-related enhancements.
  
• Conducting “Continual Improvement” of the User Experience: One of the overall, ongoing objectives of the project is to continually enhance the user experience. We have undertaken several initiatives in this area:
• Launched a new “skin” for the site, designed by the client, to enhance the visual design as a temporary measure until a full site redesign could be completed
• Currently in the process of a full redesign of Information Architecture and Visual Design
• Conducted focus groups with service members and family members to understand their needs for the  website
• Completely overhauled the Information Architecture for the site to be more user-focused which included development of an extensive site map and new set of wireframes
• Conducted usability testing for the new wireframes at two bases with service members and family members
• Developed Creative Designs based on the new wireframes and conducted 3 sets of focus groups with service members and family member
• Currently refining wireframes and creative designs based on focus group and key stakeholder feedback
• Beginning technical implementation of new design, scheduled for launch during summer of 2009
• Developing event management functionality that allows online event bookings and payments for eligible users
• Conducted detailed requirements gathering sessions with key stakeholders to understand functional requirements
• Conducted a vendor analysis process to identify potential vendors that could provide off-the-shelf functionality
• Currently working with selected vendor to create a customized solution to meet the client’s needs
• Working with a third party payment processor to integrate for credit card processing
• Continually pursuing additional functionality to meet the needs of contributors and end users and seeking ways to make small, incremental improvements to the site
• Providing Tier 2 and Tier 3 Application Support: The client has a 24 x 7 Support Center that is responsible for Tier 1 website support. The Support Center representatives have a basic knowledge of OUCM, but when they are unable to resolve issues reported by contributors, they escalate the issues to Ironworks Government Solutions. We track the issues, work with the Support Center and the contributors to resolve them, and offers ongoing training and feedback to the Support Center to assist them with future issue resolution.
  
• Implementing Additional Technical Enhancements: We are also in the process of implementing additional technical improvements for the site:  
• Implemented web analytics to provide better analysis of site traffic; future enhancements planned
• Developed enhancements to workflow functionality; additional future enhancements planned
• Developing functionality so that contributors can be authorized via their Common Access Card (CAC); future enhancement will allow CAC access to Controlled Access (non-public) content
• Currently adding a Disaster Recovery environment to the existing implementation housed in the Hosting Center
• Working with a third party video and content caching provider (Limelight) to implement more robust video capabilities on the site
• Working on numerous additional enhancement requests received from users
• Providing Website Training Documentation: Ironworks Government Solutions is responsible for developing website training documentation used by the contributors and the Support Center. When we were first engaged by the client, we overhauled the existing training documentation and have since developed additional module-based training to address frequently asked questions and other items that are often performed incorrectly. 
  

The Results

In addition to significantly improved functionality to meet the needs of contributors and end users, our initial re-architecture of the website resulted in 85% improvement in performance.