Lockheed Martin

The Agency Wide Support Services Contract (AWSSC) is a $525 million, seven-year vehicle to provide information technology support to the Social Security Administration (SSA). AboutWeb’s role as part of the Lockheed Martin / AWSSC Team is to provide staffing support to any and all services within the contract’s scope. Services provided by the Lockheed Martin/AWSCC Team include application design, development, testing, and maintenance; database administration, imaging and document management; data administration, programmatic repository and enterprise architecture; software engineering, technology; emerging technology applications; and software engineering management.

AboutWeb is assisting with SSA’s effort to migrate current applications to modern technologies. AboutWeb provides legacy technology and modern technology developers, analysts, and data conversion experts to assist in a project to optimize the modernization of systems in a uniform manner, with seamless impacts to the end users.

AboutWeb currently provides support to the Legacy Modernization task for SSA’s Office of Retirement and Survivors Insurance System (ORSIS). Our Enterprise SOA Architect is currently preparing Architecture Driven Modeling for the ORSIS segment of the SSA EA Architecture. Our system and application discovery work evolved into a proof of concept and right-sized methodology for ADM that has captured senior management’s attention and led to an assignment for the 2010 budget using the proof of concept methods.

The ORSIS Strategic Plan will identify ORSIS key change-drivers, guide the changes needed to allow ORSIS application systems to effectively respond to the changes, and provide a transition plan for moving from the legacy state to what is proposed. The strategic plan looks 1-5 years into the future.

AboutWeb is also supporting SSA’s SSNAP and SSNAP-MI projects. SSNAP is a modification of the current CIS mainframe system in accumulating information pertaining to acquiring a Social Security Number and storing the data in VSAM files. An Access database and front end VB program are used to obtain and store evidence not included in CIS. The new system combines the above using front-end Web based Java screens to gather information and store it in DB2 tables.

SSNAP-MI is a replacement reporting system for the current paper reports. Java-based screens will be used to display user chosen information. Summary information will be calculated after business hours and stored in an Oracle database for quick retrieval the next day. AboutWeb reviewed specs, verified programs for accuracy, and performed functional analysis by creating validation tests using HP Quality Center.

MI Central – AboutWeb teamed with Lockheed Martin on the MI Central project for SSA. MI Central is a web application used by SSA to perform analysis of their data in the form of summary and detailed reports and print jobs. In the requirements gathering phase, the team formulated several design alternatives based on meetings with stakeholders and reviews of the current system and code base. Design alternatives ranged from “very traditional” to “very progressive.” After presentations to the SSA client the most progressive solution was chosen for development.

AboutWeb designed and created a content management system (CMS) that featured a rich client GUI to control the sub-application reports and screens. The user interface and sub-application definitions were XML-driven to meet the project’s release process and portability requirements. Our data retrieval solution accessed DB2 and Oracle data sources, massaging and caching the data on a J2EE Application server. AboutWeb devised, implemented and managed an agile approach to development and project management in the SSA development environment.

Part of the project requirements were that all of the end-user content in the CMS had to meet not just Section 508 standards, but SSA’s more rigorous user accessibility requirements. Another requirement stipulated that the user’s screen could not be allowed to flicker or visibly reload during a data refresh. AboutWeb generated all screen output to use CSS for style and position, and used AJAX for page navigation and dynamic behaviors – while meeting strict accessibility requirements.

The new version of MI Central allowed even the most non-technical employees to use its administrative GUI to create and define the screens, business rules, queries, and all other aspects of a reporting sub-application. The CMS solution exponentially reduced the time and expense formerly required to create MI Central sub-applications and reports, radically changing internal SSA business processes as a result. SSA is heralding MI Central as the leading example of “next generation” Social Security applications.