Data Blueprint awarded Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Broad Agency Annoucement
July 11, 2007
Data Blueprint, a globally-experienced, professional services company focused on improving organizational data and data management practices, was awarded a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) research project by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Defense Logistics Information Research (DLIR) organization, the research arm of the Defense Logistics Information Service (DLIS), the maintainer and distributor of the Federal Catalog System (FCS). The FCS is one of the primary logistics systems for DoD and is designed to manage over 600 classes of supply and over 6 million products referenced by each military service and DoD agency. Thus, the quality of data in and procurement of items stored in the FCS is critical to our nation's warfighters. One of the challenges that DLA faces with the FCS is that a sizable amount of data relevant to an item is contained in technical documents, military standards or technical drawings and thus is not easily referenceable. During the procurement process, contracting officers require access to data that is stored as unstructured text in these documents. Since this data is not readily available, it slows down or impacts the quality of the procurement process.
Data Blueprint will conduct research to improve the availability and quality of the data stored within the FCS. Data Blueprint's research will focus on identifying sources and methods for pulling out and validating structured information from unstructured sources; developing heuristics for indexing the data; and developing recommendations for standards that will impact how future documents are stored within the FCS. "Our goal is the same as DLA's goal: Right Item, Right Time, Right Place, Every Time" commented Susan Carter, Data Blueprint's Chief Operating Officer and Managing Partner. "We have a longstanding relationship with DLA helping to improve the process portion of the Business Systems Modernization effort, and this is another area where we feel that our data expertise can have a significant impact", Carter adds.
