Past Performance
The projects below highlight some of our work of the past near thirty years.
These projects represent years of innovation and technology advancement from
ISSi and multiple small and large business teammates to address the business
needs of our clients. The first two (DOJ and DOE) are active contracts that have been in
place for over twelve years. The third is a recent project solving a long-standing problem for the EPA.
From February 2, 1996 to Present
8(a) ID/IQ Contract (awarded Feb 1996)
Business Need
- The Antitrust Division not only sought to refresh (redesign, develop and implement) their website with plans for use as a litigation support component to post Case Filings and response to F.O.I.A.; but, information security was another reason for this effort
- Design and develop software tools for posting large volumes of Antitrust case documents to the Internet
- Ensure document quality control (QC) for Section 508 compliance of documents submitted for FOIA and response to Discovery of high profile Antitrust cases
- Evaluate workflow and document management solutions, implement new document management solution to phase out SoftSolutions for iManage
- Image (scan and index) criminal case documents
- Prepare and present Help Desk strategy whitepaper
- Assist with graphics strategy and design for Antitrust intranet website
- Initiated evaluation of web Content management products, continue to develop custom web document posting solutions
Business Solution
ISSi, as part of the Antitrust ISSG Team, worked closely with the Government Team to conduct the needed user analysis to define the project tasks, understand the vision and to establish guidelines. From this initial joint effort, we continued our joint efforts to gather data and provide analysis to define the existing data structure with a goal of recommending several graphics and navigation strategies (e.g., nine [9] approaches were recommended), as well as the architecture of the massive data store planned. Following a User vote, three set of graphic and navigation strategies were selected. Following discussions with the Users, we produced three Prototypes for ATR staff to evaluate usability by testing all three for a few weeks. The result, a final graphics and navigation strategy was selected, and following ISSi review and analysis, changes to content management, and site architecture were recommended. The site information architecture was documented and a web-site was developed.
An ISSi Content Management (“CM”) Team became an ongoing support and consultation Group. This CM Team not only ensured that the design, layout, organization and intuitiveness of the site remained current, but developed tools to manage thousands of Case Filings and F.O.I.A. in support of the ATR Division Legal Team. On-going improvements included response to the Congressional mandate to meet Section 508 requirements of the Disabilities Act by a critical date (this was a major task since thousands posted documents weekly required being Section 508 compliant). The ISSi Team continues to support the ATR family with support that includes the following; training; installing, configuring and supporting iManage; evaluation of new products; installed, configure and support eRoom; prepared a help desk strategy whitepaper; and conducted system reviews, risk assessment (RA), threat analysis and Security Certification and Accreditation (C&A) documentation.
Results
The website usage increased, customer (public) satisfaction resulted in considerable accolades leading to a measurable savings in cost of Discovery and FOIA response where the web was an appropriate vehicle. Visual design and usability have had ongoing reviews and updates but the architecture of the site has remained, has grown massively, and parallel work on the DOJ Intranet [and Extranet where appropriate] has taken place with ISSi involvement.
Blanket Purchase Agreement (“BPA” - Negotiated T&M, Task Orders)
GSA based BPA October 1, 2007 to Sept 30, 2012 (re-compete awarded to Sept 2016)
Blanket Purchase Agreement (“BPA” - Negotiated T&M, Task Orders)
GSA based BPA April 1, 2002 to Sept 30, 2007
- Provide custom application development project management. (SQL, Oracle, Java)
- Provide custom eRoom programming, integration and support
- Provide functional revision of tools required to support posting case documents to Antitrust Internet website
- - Work closely with division attorneys and legal teams to meet various case deadlines
- - Provide custom programming as needed to meet ongoing legal team needs and special web postings
- - Participate in ongoing operations and focus group meetings regarding web postings
- - Provide quality control and assurance of Antitrust Division's web pages to ensure compliance with Section 508
- Upgrade, install, and configure existing e.Power product at Criminal Division
- Oversee new Case Management product (Law Manager) implementation at Office of Inspector General
- - Work with the vendor to define web interface needs while testing the results
- - Oversight of Law Manager installation and conversion and provide DBA assistance for OIG in workflow solution implementation
- - Provide ongoing testing of vendor functionality claims to flag false claims and suggest correction approach
- Install and configure iManage and prepare test bed for client staff
- - Provide on-going support of iManage (now Interwoven W/eCopy)training, configuration and support of Field Offices
- Infrastructure Support: security for Internet/Intranet application expansion; up-grades, patches and monitoring networks, firewalls, switches, routers; assess network and related applications for risk assessment, threat analysis and response; administrators for ArcSight, Cisco IDS, servers and apps support; evaluate I/A compliance and compile materials for C&A documentation
- Evaluate new products and work with government staff to design and develop stop-gap custom solutions where needed
Sept 1995 to Present (18+ years)
8(a) sole-source: ID/IQ negotiated T&M, 8(a) converted to GSA (September 6, 1995 to February 11, 2001)
Contract has been shifted to various ITSS ID/IQ Vehicles (Feb 12,2001 to Present)
Currently under ActioNet, LLC ITSIS “ID/IQ” Vehicle.
In addition to developing custom solutions and web enabling legacy solutions, ISSi also provided document management, preparation of materials for Congressional Hearings and GAO reviews and conducted ST&E reviews and corrections in preparation for C&A and eventually issue of ATOs. ISSi also assisted in conducting market sweep of Case-Management Publishers (COTS products) confident they could address defined needs of our client – who remained unknown to all Publishers except five finalists. Initially some 210 Publishers claimed “We can do that!” The Publisher count was reduced in addressing carefully measured metrics from the estimated 210 to five finalists! Our client then sat through five very interactive demos! We believe our efforts were a success; most important, our client deployed the product “they selected” and we were most impressed with their level of skills, involvement and manner in which they selected their product. Some of the assigned Tasks ISSi completed:
- Web enable application for tracking litigation costs of several Government Owned Contractor Operated (“GOCO”) Field Office facilities (e.g., Oak Ridge, Richland, the National Labs, etc., etc.) to allow designated staff in nationwide Field Offices to capture data available to run queries and reports for GAO, Congress of DOE’s General Counsel
- Provide 508 programming to ensure compliance of the General Counsels web applications with Section 508 of the Disabilities Act
- Ongoing web enablement of legacy applications
- Upgrade of applications to meet User internal security requirements
- Provide document management in preparation for litigation, GAO reviews and Congressional hearings
- Design and develop system solutions for litigation support, field auditors, and help desk support for nationwide field offices
- Index and prepare case documents for archive
- Provide IV&V for Y2K certification
- Provide litigation support as needed
IQ negotiated FFP/T&M, 8(a) competitive Award
April 6,1999 and May 5, 2001
EPA Region 02 had discontinued use of SBA 8(a) Program due to bad experiences. In response to on-going request by SBA, the EPA chose ISSi from a list of firms presented to the EPA in an effort to re-open EPA to the 8(a) Program. As a consequence the 8(a) Program was re-instituted into the EPA after what we were told was a 12-year absence.
- Work with EPA attorneys to prepare case material for legal action against Superfund site owners when applicable to recover associated costs.
- Received and indexed new Superfund documents, and filed in compliance with NARA procedures and standards.
- Archive documents and records designated for removal, and retrieved as deemed necessary for related Superfund Case Hearings.
- Retrieve and prepare specific Superfund Cases for hearings and Congressional review.
- Staff "storefront" access for EPA attorney teams, public and defense attorney team to provide documents for review as deemed appropriate by the EPA.
- Designed and developed online timekeeping system to provide accurate tracking of time charged against Superfund sites (in 10-minute increments) for collection of Superfund costs associated with administering the files of those corporations which were responsible for the Superfund sites, review of materials, and manning of “storefront” for access to materials.
- Timekeeping Reporting Systems tracking 8 Task types, 36 Subtask types performed to manage the records of 822 Superfund sites by over 300 Technical Directives by various Cost-Org and DCN’s in 15 minute increments with the accuracy and audit trail to present in litigation for recovery from responsible Superfund site parties. The 20 staff used these millions of options provided error-free invoicing on 25+ page invoices.
- Using online timekeeping solution to present monthly assessment of time broken down by staff member, by Superfund-ID, by task-ID, by 15-minute increments functioned without one error ever reported.
ID/IQ negotiated T&M
June 11, 1992 to May 1997
Considered by all parties involved with this project to be the first mission-critical production solution designed using object-oriented concepts as originally defined by Codd. Solution allowed Pfizer to catalogue, track and retrieve millions of metadata objects with unlimited flexibility in defining cataloging criteria and ad hoc generation of sub-groups related to interrogatories and discovery. Approach supported multilayered security assigned to User Profiles down to a document page area such as redacted fields.
- Provide design and ongoing redesign (to meet changing case strategy) of litigation support tools. In addition to large database design aspects, this task involved converting large volumes of existing data to address many varied formats received from opposing litigants, and the associated interfaces and screen flows to meet case strategy changes. The design and implementation of workflow procedures and systems to index and convert case documents to digital solutions in preparation for trial and response to discovery. Designs included automation of document indexing to reduce the labor intensive effort to code large volumes of documents involved in massive class action litigation.
- Develop a custom set of products to meet the specific needs of Pfizer, including designing, developing, and implementing several unique case-related modules, interfaces, functions, and on-going revisions to support changing business needs of litigation. This effort resulted in a new document imaging product tested and evaluated by the American Bar Association's Software Certification Group as the most innovative and solid document imaging product on the market. Features include:
- - Software modules to address the initial document index in association with document prep for scanning via smart sheets, to assist attorney efforts in the field
- - Software interfaces to scanners to scan documents using these smart sheets to catalog (code or index) using barcodes or optical mark recognition for automated document coding
- - Software to capture the indexes and track all names, topics, dates, numbers, locations as well as title and other parameters of a document that includes automated techniques for extracting these components from a document employing embedded OCR options (an industry first)
- - Database design and software development for searching and retrieving documents by the indexes tracked, by document content, by title or title content, by user annotation content, or by a combination of any of these
- - Software modules to gather documents, by related codes, into ad hoc folders or electronic binders of similar sets, before folders were a common metaphor
- - User-end workflow solution as a means of desktop distribution of related document sets including: e-mail, fax, copy, print, or CD authoring
- - Ability to redact and annotate images (make responsive for discovery)
- - System security at the module, field, and document level
- Tracking user activity including searches, search results, telecom activity, folder additions, image redactions, attempts to perform functions not allowed, and so on