Bringing Rigor to Enterprise Data Collection

Challenge: The US Census Bureau is faced with measuring an ever-changing, diverse American society and economy.  As a result, the Census Enterprise Data Collection and Processing system (CEDCaP) program has been established to enable shared services for the bureau to realize the benefits of enterprise-wide solutions.  Managing programmatic data for a program of this size requires a robust tool to track objectives, tasks, and progress.

Solution: The Portmanteau tool has been developed leveraging CorasWorks, a cloud SaaS tool that sits atop Microsoft Azure.  This product has enabled detailed tracking of resource time against tasks, in addition to tracking of lessons learned, risks, and dashboard reporting.  Robust reporting has been put in place to communicate with Census on resource management, schedule management, risk management, and cost management.  Reporting also informs quality assurance and performance monitoring.

Portmanteau also provides automation of the detailed COTS analysis process for USCB, providing the same capabilities that large vendors do, such as IBM with their Rational Unified Process (based on EPIC process).

Value Added Outcomes: 

• Enables comprehensive tracking and visibility across portfolios, down to project level
• Portfolio Management – tracks requirements, budget, risks, provides portfolio dashboards, stakeholder dashboards, test management dashboards
• Change Management – tracks change management requests, criticality
• Ability to track by resource, task, timeframe
• Provides report-ready dashboards in varied displays, e.g., pie charts, bar charts
• Interfaces built for specific activities, such as test management, task management, incident reporting
• Test management – test suites, test cases, test reports
• Customer Relationship Management interface
• Enables tracking and weighting, e.g., may be leveraged for Alternatives of Analysis
• Provides comprehensive tracking of artifacts, with ability to sort by area and relevance