The Enterprise Services Center (ESC) has been seeking a cross-agency collaboration tool to support the collaborative authorship, review, update, and approvals of system interconnection agreements (MOUs). At present, MOUs are communicated via email, updated via Microsoft Word, and tracked via spreadsheets. While intelligent business processes have been devised to make these relatively manual processes fairly efficient, ESC is seeking to streamline current processes to eliminate manual steps, leverage more intelligent collaboration tools, and give tracking additional stakeholder visibility.
Management Information Systems Capstone students at the University of Oklahoma worked to collect project requirements and used these requirements to evaluate multiple industry products and services on ESC’s behalf. After discussing multiple possible solutions, the students concluded that an established Software as a Service (SaaS) solution called Box would be best to help organizations collaborate on and automate MOUs.
Students engaged in real-world "consultant-like" conversations with the Federal team at ESC to include requirement refinements, solution pros and cons, security policy limitations, and federal systems integrations. Beyond the experience gained by the students, ESC was presented with a viable solution that is currently being discussed as a possible real-world deployment.
Simon Moore, Manager of Cybersecurity Support Services (AMK-231) was a sponsor for this Capstone project, and he mentioned that his team is constantly looking for ways to improve services. He said, "Being able to do so while partnering with the local educators and students was a no brainer." Many years ago, he actually had his own experience as a Capstone student, and he remembers how great it was to finally get a chance to put his education to the test in a real-world scenario. "I was excited to give my time and energy back to a program that was so beneficial to me," he said.
The student team completed requirements gathering, project planning, and generating a final proposal in approximately 3 months (within one semester). At the beginning of the project, the student team gathered requirements just like a consultant would. These requirements - formalized and signed by all parties &dnash were used as the criteria for success at the end of the project.
"The student team and their professor were able to meet and collaborate with my team seamlessly using the FAA’s Zoom environment. While face-to-face discussions are great for communicating complex information, gathering requirements, follow-up discussions, and final presentation were very smooth and effective using the collaboration tools that are currently available."
When asked whether he would recommend Capstone projects to other FAA/MMAC Organizations, Simon exclaimed, "I would absolutely recommend other FAA/MMAC organizations partner with the Capstone teams around us." Capstone projects are a great way for the FAA to give students who are about to embark on their careers a taste of what professional life is like. They also help the Universities nearby to tailor their programs to meet the expectations of the surrounding community.
While not all Oklahoma City metro students will end up in the local workforce, there are plenty who will. Having a positive impact on those programs is an investment in our future workforce. Moore said, "With federal budgets always being tight, partnering with Capstone teams is a great way to obtain fresh ideas that would otherwise be very difficult to pay for. It is truly a win-win!"
