Presidential Transition Keys to Success
IT experts develop a flexible infrastructure that’s unfazed by changing requirements—and ushers the Executive branch into the IT-centric age.
Every four or eight years, the peaceful transfer of power from one Presidential administration to another underscores the stability of the United States government. An orderly, efficient transition is critical to ensure continuity between the outgoing and incoming leadership.
As part of that continuity, the President-elect, Vice President-elect, and their President-elect Transition Team (PTT) must be provided with the facilities and services—such as office space, telecommunications, and IT—that they need to assume their official responsibilities.
The Presidential Transition Acts of 1963 and 2000 authorize the Administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA) to provide this support. It’s a tall order with consistently changing requirements and tight deadlines mandated by Congress. In 2008, during the 77 days between the President’s election and inauguration, GSA leadership considered the PTT project to be the most important activity within the agency.
President George W. Bush and President-elect Barack Obama meet in the Oval Office of the White House Monday, Nov. 10, 2008.
Photo Credit: White House photo by Eric Draper
Booz Allen Hamilton’s IT team supported the GSA Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) Office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) in designing the IT infrastructure and providing project management support for the implementation and operation of IT services used to support the incoming PTT.
“Booz Allen developed the network design for the IT infrastructure and provided project management support throughout the PTT lifecycle, from requirements collection to design, implementation, operations, transition to the new government, and disposition of the infrastructure,” says vice president Dave Mader. “In the period between the election and the inauguration, if you saw the President-elect or his staff using an IT resource, we were probably supporting it.”
In fact, “Booz Allen successfully supported the most IT-centric Presidential transition in history,” says senior associate and project manager Chuck Kendall.
But this Presidential transition was unlike any other. “We’d typically collect user requirements first and then develop the system design,” says senior associate Nick Ipiotis. “But we didn’t have a defined end user until election day. We had to design the PTT infrastructure based on feedback that we collected from the two competing campaigns and lessons learned from the 2000 and 2004 transitions.”
In 2000, however, Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) were virtually unknown and the President didn’t use a computer. In 2004, no transition took place because the administration remained the same.
On November 5, 2008—the day after the Presidential election—the GSA had to have a secure facility approved by the Secret Service and move-in-ready for the PTT, with all its IT and telecom needs in place. In addition, the PTT network design had to support remote continuity of operations (COOP) sites; remote access support for all users; phone, fax, e-mail, and office automation services; cable TV; and—of course—a variety of personal communication devices.
But requirements were consistently changing. The network was designed to support initial requirements of 500 users, but ended up supporting almost 1,400 local and remote staff. It also had to support the standup of several unexpected sites on extremely short notice, including then President-elect Obama’s transition office and his residences in Chicago, the Hay-Adams Hotel, and Blair House.
In addition, no President had ever owned a Blackberry before, so Booz Allen helped GSA revise the device configurations to meet more stringent operational security requirements. The team also helped guide the implementation of a new service desk and oversaw the installation of new circuits.
Despite these complex challenges and many, many more, the Booz Allen team’s flexible network design ultimately met all the requirements brought forth by the Obama campaign—and within the constitutionally mandated election day deadline.
But to truly appreciate the extent of this project, you’d have to start months before November 4.
The Need for Visionary Thinking
By April 2008, the Democratic campaign had already lasted weeks longer than expected. There were three potential President-elects, not just two, and each of their technical needs was different and largely unknown to those who would be responsible for implementing them.
Protocol demands that GSA wait until after candidates are nominated before they ask the campaigns about their technology needs. “When the project started in April, we couldn’t ask any candidate for his or her requirements and file them away for later use,” Kendall says. “We had to reach back into firm and its wide spectrum of services to ensure we had the capacity to cover any possible requirements with specific expertise. We had migrated other government organizations and understood the complexities, so we could provide foresight and flexibility to adjust as needed.”
Ipiotis adds, “We’d seen unprecedented use of technology throughout the campaign, including websites, Facebook, and wikis. So our clients, FAS CIO Ed O’Hare and project manager Debbie Hawkes, were already anticipating a much more sophisticated set of technical requirements than previous transitions.”
Still, visionary thinking was needed to develop a design that could support anything the PTT might require. “After the Democratic nominee was named, we had to then reconcile the requirements from two campaigns that were significantly different in terms of IT infrastructure usage,” says Ipiotis.
Initial meetings between GSA and the respective campaigns were not held at the IT level. When Ipiotis was allowed to attend subsequent meetings leading to the election, however, he quickly became a key resource for developing solutions to meet each campaign’s IT requirements. Prior to the election, he worked with GSA and a variety of agencies on a daily basis and provided technical guidance for implementation of all telecom and cable plant requirements, including the build-out of the server room and last-minute expansion of secure data services.
In fact, says Kendall, Booz Allen support services essentially became a key component of the GSA team. Four of the firm’s PTT team members—Kendall, Ipiotis, senior consultant Eric Abella, and consultant John Schleser—received letters of thanks signed by President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden, and the onsite staff sat for a group photo with the President-elect.
“We worked closely with GSA leadership and the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to plan and anticipate requirements,” Kendall says. “With GSA’s support and professionalism, we helped enable the transition of the Executive branch of government at a historic and critical point, into a new, sophisticated IT environment.”
story posted March 23, 2009
