Teaming with Clients to Achieve Technological Breakthroughs
Nearly every business and government uses some form of technology to run its operations and serve its customers. But it is how an organization employs technology that creates competitive advantages and leads to mission success. With specific and deep expertise in strategy, management, and engineering, as well as technology, Booz Allen is able to bring its clients to the point of breakthrough.
Smart Cards
In Australia, Booz Allen is using technology to transform the way government serves its citizens in its work with the country’s Department of Human Services as lead advisor in the implementation of a nationwide smart card program, which is to be rolled out to more than 20 million people between 2008 and 2010. Used to access social services entitlements, the smart cards will include a microchip to store information including an individual’s name, address, biometric photo, digitized signature, and gender, as well as details about dependents, social service concession status, and emergency information.
“The Department of Human Services wants to use smart cards to achieve broad objectives, like improving government efficiency, serving people better, mitigating social service fraud, and helping protect people from identity theft and fraud,” says Vanessa Wallace, a Booz Allen vice president in Sydney. “Leading with technology for this kind of assignment would be a recipe for disaster. Many other dimensions must be considered up front.”
That’s why Booz Allen’s approach is to examine the challenge from the point of view of customers and the numerous stakeholders, using technology as an enabler to achieve the client’s broader objectives. The project’s complexity requires Booz Allen’s expertise in security, biometrics, financial services, customer experience, project management, operations, organizational change, and, of course, technology.
In July 2006, Australian Minister for Human Services the Hon. Joe Hockey MP announced Booz Allen’s selection, saying, “The tender for lead advisor attracted a very strong response from around the globe. Booz Allen Hamilton was judged to be the optimum choice, being both a global player with a strong local presence, and having overseen the implementation of 25 smart card programs, including completed projects in Europe and the United States.”
Next Generation 9-1-1
In the United States, a technological breakthrough every citizen will value is the Next Generation 9-1-1 system for reporting emergencies (9-1-1 is the number in the U.S. to call nationwide to reach emergency dispatch centers). The current 9-1-1 system was designed in the 1970s and cannot communicate well with today’s multimedia, wireless, and mobile devices that operate outside traditional wire-line technology. Next Generation 9-1-1 will be able to handle voice, text, and video calling from any communications device via Internetlike networks.
Working with the U.S. Department of Transportation and in collaboration with a diverse set of stakeholders including telecommunications companies, first responders, and local, state, and federal agencies, Booz Allen is providing systems engineering expertise to help design the architecture on which Next Generation 9-1-1 will rely.
Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (VII)
Booz Allen is also working with the U.S. Department of Transportation on an initiative called Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (VII), which will have an impact on the future safety and quality of the nation’s roadways. Using advanced wireless communication among vehicles and between vehicles and roadside devices, VII’s primary goals are to save lives through accident prevention and to relieve traffic congestion by allowing agencies to improve flow by, for example, providing highly accurate and up-to-date information about congestion to drivers and transportation managers. Booz Allen’s contributions include architecture design, systems integration, and proof-of-concept testing.
“VII is a far-reaching project that could revolutionize our transportation system,” says Joyce Wenger, a Booz Allen principal in McLean, Virginia. “For instance, if my car sensed an icy patch, it could broadcast that information to the cars behind me so that they could slow down.”
Also in the area of technological breakthroughs in the transportation sector, the firm is helping to modernize air traffic control in the United States and Europe.
Digital Evidence
Federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies need access to the latest technology as well. Booz Allen has been working with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to help it and law enforcement agencies on the state and local levels deal more effectively with increasing amounts of evidence in digital form collected in criminal and terrorism-related investigations. The law enforcement community needed a way to dramatically scale its capacity to process digital evidence and to push technical capabilities closer to the source to effectively recognize and preserve digital evidence in the field.
To address this problem, Booz Allen helped conceive of and implement the FBI’s Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory program, which established cutting-edge laboratories around the country, thereby making state-of–the-art forensics capabilities available to more than 4,000 law enforcement agencies and improving the efficiency of evidence collection and processing.
“We worked with the FBI at every step, from developing a new business strategy and building stakeholder advocacy to developing specialized technologies and standing up the regional laboratories,” says Robert Sogegian, a Booz Allen vice president in Herndon, Virginia. The first Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory was established in San Diego in 1999, and the 14th one opened in October 2006 in Louisville, Kentucky.
The Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory initiative was chosen as one of the “Top 50” programs in the 2005 Innovations in American Government Awards competition, which is administered by the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, in partnership with the Council for Excellence in Government.
story posted August 2007
