Beyond productivity: For USIS CIO David Spannare, technology now runs lock step with core service offerings

Not too long ago, if you asked around the Beltway, US Investigation Services, Inc., (USIS) was known for one thing: The company that did investigations.

These days tells if not a different story, than certainly a more expansive one. While investigations generates approximately three-quarters of overall revenue, the Falls Church, Va.-based corporation has made steady inroads into other prime service areas: training solutions, security services, and information management.

That expansion has been accompanied by a shift, internally, in the overall approach to technology: It’s no longer viewed solely as a driver for productivity and lower costs; technology is centered on differentiating core offerings as well. Which is where David Spannare comes in.

Since coming on board as senior vice president and CIO in June 2009, Spannare has helped solidify that refocused vision. Part of that mission has been to keep USIS on track on the R&D front. More than half the company’s IT spend goes toward R&D efforts that further customer solution offerings. This change in focus for IT has been a result of Spannare’s arrival and leadership as well as USIS President and CEO Bill Mixon’s expanded view of how IT not only supports the operational side of the business but can create new growth opportunities for USIS.

Investigative services

The federal government’s security clearance reform initiatives, once a buzz of activity, saw a lull over the past year and a half. Now, the tide is turning.

“There’s now movement in that area again,” says Spannare. “We are well-positioned to engage our government customers, as well as any oversight activities within the government, to have a healthy discussion about how technology can make a huge difference in that process.”

One of the tools at USIS’s disposal is its third-generation case management platform, Orion. The technology was completely reengineered about two years ago as a scalable, web-based architecture that is adaptive and extensible to government systems. “We’re really at a point where we’ve matured in the technology, so it can make a different for the government in areas like security clearance,” says Spannare.

The USIS-developed case management system helps customers access real-time case status information via a secure customer portal, create comprehensive case documents securely, and eliminates the need to upload documents from a word processing system.

The platform is also flexible and configurable to customer requirements. “So, we can quickly bring on unique requirements of each of the agencies where we are using the platform to deliver services,” says Spannare.

Training solutions

Of increasing focus is USIS’s work delivering training in developing nations and, in some cases, post-conflict nations. Again, R&D drives this service area.

“The investments that we’ve made are to make sure the solutions we’re delivering can adapt — and respond — to environments where we don’t necessarily have a stable IT infrastructure,” says Spannare. “We’ve made our technology solutions adaptable to different environments where we’re operating,” he says.

USIS’s training solutions also factor in the call for greater transparency. “Given the government’s desire for enhanced transparency of its programs,” says Spannare, “we’ve made a special effort to deliver solutions for the government to use so we can offer transparency into areas like program status, material, and personnel deployed.” IT solutions created by USIS provide transparency by supplying program-level dashboards for easy reference to performance period reports and at-a-glance visibility to program and item-level data.

Security services

Monitoring and surveillance activities continue to grow in relevance, especially in areas such as construction surveillance, which is the process of providing stringent security practices and monitoring during the preliminary build-out or development of government buildings, structures, and sites. USIS has deployed technology, onsite, that captures observations and issues as they arise. The technology also provides for electronic notification to key personnel as needed.

“This is an industry where paper-based records dominate — and the quantity of records is daunting,” says Spannare. “The old method, and the predominate method, other than the one that we bring to the table, generates lots of file cabinets and data that are difficult to review, search, or analyze … our solutions turn it into electronic capture with search and dashboard capabilities to provide real-time answers and create enhanced performance on construction surveillance programs,” he says.

Information management

“One of the challenges organizations face is how to bring coherent solutions to the table to meet current program requirements while thinking ahead about the challenges they’ll face as programs mature,” says Spannare. “Data starts when programs begin — there’s not much data, but by year three or four, these programs yield an incredible amount of information,” he says.

Information management, which encompasses everything from electronic data discovery and records management, addresses the challenge. “We’ve taken advantage of both our engineering capabilities, plus off-the-shelf technologies, to integrate and create a set of solutions for our customers,” says Spannare.

Concurrently, cybersecurity remains a persistent focus. The key, says Spannare, is to go beyond basic federal compliance requirements. “Even when our customer doesn’t place a requirement on us, we use the highest standards and rigorously apply them,” he says. “In fact, we go through this same kind of processes on our own systems, following the highest government standards even when it is not required by the government customer.”

It’s that vigilance, coupled with the company’s overarching mission, that Spannare is focused on as he settles into his second year as CIO. “It’s all about providing better, faster, more secure solutions to the federal government at a great value,” says Spannare. “Our focus is on doing the best possible work for the government, and a big part of that is providing our services at the best possible cost for the taxpayer.”

Posted by Lisa Singh on Monday, August 23rd, 2010. Filed under Executive Spotlight, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry