L'Acquisition continue et le soutien du cycle de vie (CALS) est une stratégie d'affaires qui gagne rapidement de la proéminence comme stratégie-clé permettant de maintenir la compétitivité en réduisant les coûts associés à divers processus d'affaires. La capacité de prolonger l'entreprise de sorte que les processus d'affaires sont vraiment bout à bout exige l'utilisation de normes ouvertes, de systèmes ouverts et une concentration évidente sur le cheminement de l'information que soutiennent ces processus. Le Projet de gestion des ressources en information (GRI) est une discipline émergente qui appuie CALS du point de vue de la mise en application. Les aspects externes et de collaboration de CALS présentent le groupement des exigences de gestion de l'information d'une entreprise qui dépend des ressources externes. Cet article examinera la stratégie CALS et son rapport avec GRI; certains exemples de réalisations GRI du gouvernement sont décrits dans un effort d'examiner les complexités associées aux nouveaux modèles d'affaires qui se concentrent sur l'information en tant que ressource.

Introduction

Strategies regarding information management and information technology (IM/IT) are critical components of an overall business strategy. The business world has been experimenting for some time, searching for an optimal mix of rightsizing, outsourcing, process re-engineering and the focused application of IM/IT that would ensure the company's survival in an uncertain future. Increased competition, economic downturns, rising deficits, and other externalities continue to pressure business and government to seek efficiencies in their administrative processes, either through automation or outsourcing, in order to devote more of their increasingly scarce resources to "core competencies" and mission critical processes.

Since Hammer and Champy first espoused their vision of the new, lean, ITenabled corporation, both public and private sector enterprises have embraced re-engineering. The "silver bullet" of re-engineering was offered as a systematic approach to solving the problems of sluggish corporate performance, declining sales, rising deficits (government), overhead costs out of line with operations, etc. Having established quality and cost parameters as key indicators for the competitiveness of the corporation, the solution was to introduce new automated systems to support the reinvented core processes. The typical business case would show how this investment in automation would save time, increase personal productivity, and enhance corporate competitiveness. Efforts to follow through on this strategy have not always met with success, and in some cases have led to spectacular failures. What seems to have been missing is an overarching information management strategy to control the migration from the stovepipe systems that litter the IM/IT landscape today to the truly integrated information environment of tomorrow: the CALS strategy.

CALS

The CALS Strategy

For the last 15 years or so, the computer industry has been claiming that automated systems will save costs, reduce time to market for new products, increase individual productivity, and the list goes on. But after having spent over US $800 billion on office automation, and having increased the amount of information available to individuals by an order of magnitude, the expected productivity increases have not been realized. For the most part, these IT investments were made without a clear vision of the integrated enterprise, or an integrated information environment (IIE) that would enable and optimize mission critical processes. More importantly, without a clearly articulated set of information standards, no enterprise could hope to integrate easily with another to achieve the so-called extended enterprise. In order to address these concerns, government and business collaborated in the development of a strategy that became known as CALS.

CALS, which stands for Continuous Acquisition and Lifecycle Support, is described by the US CALS Industry Steering Group (CISG) as "a global strategy to further enterprise integration through the streamlining of business processes and application of standards and technologies for the development, management, exchange, and use of business and technical information."

The CISG is a business group of industrialists committed to furthering electronic commerce and enterprise integration. Established in 1986, the group supports data sharing in an open systems environment, the adoption of commercial standards, international coordination of standards for data exchange and the sharing of "best business" practices.

With respect to standards, by far the most important standards for CALS are the digital information standards. This refers to those standards that permit the exchange of digital information between diverse enterprises that have come together for some express purpose. Key to this notion is that the standards must be internationally accepted and commercially viable. Thus, the adoption of commercial standards and recognition of these standards by an international standards body has played a significant role in the phenomenon known as CALS.

History of CALS

In the past ten years, the very concept and definition of CALS has evolved significantly. CALS began in the mid-1980s as Computer Aided Logistic Support, and was an initiative by the US Department of Defense (DOD) to promote the exchange of technical data directly between government and industry in electronic format rather than paper. The DOD had recognized that logistics support processes were costly and ineffective, and it was believed that digitizing the information that supported these processes would both reduce costs and increase operational effectiveness.

As the CALS strategy evolved, the name was changed to Computer-aided Acquisition and Logistic Support in order to emphasize the acquisition phase in addition to the operational logistics (in service support) phase. Supportability and lifecycle considerations for both equipment and its supporting information are chiefly determined during the design phase, and it became evident that CALS strategies brought the largest return on investment when applied to the whole lifecycle, rather than concentrating on fixing the problem after deployment. CALS strategies have since proven to be very effective in reducing weapon system development and production lead times and achieving lower overall acquisition costs. This was a turning point for CALS, since savings up front could be shown, thus the business case for CALS was no longer tied to projected lifecycle support cost savings many years downstream.

In 1993, the term Computer-aided was replaced with Continuous to de-emphasize the IT aspect as well as to highlight the continuous use of CALS strategies throughout the full life cycle of a weapon system or product. The term Logistic was dropped in favour of Lifecycle to downplay the military aspect of CALS in hopes of encouraging greater acceptance of CALS principles and strategies in non-military industry sectors, and to promote CALS to small/medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular.

Although not generally accepted in international CALS circles, the US Department of Commerce has proposed another definition for the CALS acronym, that being "Commerce at Light Speed." This is an attempt to bring industry's attention to the potential for competitive advantage through CALS-based extended enterprises in an electronic environment.

A significant proportion of CALS strategies and best practices are devoted to improving the information resource management (IRM) infrastructures of complex organizations, especially in regard to their ability to interact with external partners in a seamless, IT-enabled fashion. IRM, then, is a persistent theme in the implementation of CALS, along with enterprise integration and the extended enterprise model, all operating within a shared data environment.

Integrated Information Environment

CALS (from the government perspective, at least) could be considered a systematic approach to resolving IRM problems in the materiel acquisition and support (MA&S) domain. The problems associated with inefficient IRM practices are aggravated by the staggering amount of technical information, the variety of holdings and formats, the longevity of the information, and the fact that MA&S depends heavily on industry for spare parts, repairs, and engineering services. Moreover, each new acquisition brings with it a system-specific approach to data management. The IRM predicament in the MA&S domain grows with each new acquisition, and for this reason CALS is being targeted at the new acquisition programmes to keep from adding to the legacy data management problem.

In striving to achieve an IIE, it is important to emphasize what CALS is not:

• CALS is not a technology, although technology is recognized as a key enabler to achieving the integrated and shared data environment.
• CALS is not a standard; however, CALS recognizes and embraces international and commercial standards that are non-proprietary and essential to sharing and/or exchanging information (text, graphics, photographs, video, audio) between trading partners.
• CALS is not a tool that can be used to fix informatics problems or inefficient processes.
• CALS is not a single product or commercial software package that can be overlaid on an enterprise as a pre-packaged solution.

Notionally, CALS can be considered a collection of best practices and business strategies that have been assembled under an international banner called CALS. CALS Offices exist in virtually all NATO nations, and CALS is rapidly gaining prominence in Japan and other Pacific Rim countries as a viable business strategy to improve competitiveness in a globalized economy.

The goal of CALS is for small, medium and large businesses and governments to be able to work in a digital environment from shared data repositories. Within an IIE, sometimes referred to as the CALS Environment, information is created once and reused many times throughout the lifecycle of the product. All participants in an enterprise, whether customers or suppliers, need to be able to work within a shared data environment, in real time, on the design, development, manufacturing, delivery and servicing of products. This shared data environment could be a virtual entity distributed throughout the various supporting industries and government offices. Each process relating to a product's life cycle uses this common, shared set of information in a number of different ways. With an integrated database, there are no hand-off points between stovepipe systems. Engineering, manufacturing and logistics data can be made instantly available to users in industry and government, greatly improving decision making through the use of shared and up-to-date information. The cost of transferring data is reduced and the speed of data interchange and user access is dramatically increased with the elimination of inefficient interfaces. The reduced redundancy of information in a shared data environment allows more cost-effective life cycle management of the data set.

Information Resource Management

Managing Information

For the most part, managing business, including government business, is undertaken with a particular approach to information management. Usually, this approach has been a cost trade-off of sorts, where perfect information management might be desirable but unaffordable. However, more and more attention is being given to finding a solution that meets the stated objectives of the Canadian Federal Government's Management of Government Information Holdings (MGIH) policy issued in 1989. According to Michael Nelson in "Federal Information Policy: An Introduction," Government Information in Canada/Information gouvernementale au Canada, Vol. 1, No. 3.1. (1995):

… MGIH … represented the merging of a number of policy instruments that had been developing within the federal government for many years-some linking back as far as the Glassco Commission in 1963, and the Public Records Order of 1966. These policies included records management, information collection and public opinion research, micrographics, EDP records management and forms management.

Nelson goes on to explain the policy, where it becomes clear that MGIH emanated from the records management discipline. He states that MGIH must coexist with other policies, notably the Government Communications Policy, the Federal Identity Program, the Access to Information Policy, the Privacy and Data Protection Policy and the Security Policy.

The MGIH policy offers the following definition of the information life cycle:

• planning;
• collection or creation;
• organization, transmission, use and retrieval;
• storage, protection and retention;
• disposition through transfer to the archives or destruction.

While there are many different views as to what a Government information holding is (or is not), there should be at least a common understanding of what information is. One view is that information is "the meaningful representation of data" and, if we assume that communication (for some express purpose) is the desired outcome in most instances, then this would include presenting the information in a way that is suitable for human consumption. Aesthetics aside, it is important to note that data presented (on paper or on a video screen) without context can result in miscommunication: the medium should not be the message.

To some, information is a public good and therefore all information should be made freely available to everyone. This approach, unfortunately, is not very practical, and probably impossible to implement from an IT systems perspective (no one would be foolhardy enough to claim that he or she could document the needs of such a large and diverse user community). To others, information is a resource: it can be owned (intellectual property and copyright concerns), it has value (and therefore should be managed accordingly), must be protected (security and privacy issues). Leaving these philosophical differences aside for the moment, it may be helpful to distinguish data from information, and information from knowledge.

Data can exist in many forms, in many places, and in increasingly significant quantities. But without context, data is mostly meaningless. Consider the number 10, or the date 10 April 1994. Without a reference or context, these are meaningless bits of data. Similarly, a database of several thousand data types with millions of entries against each might achieve data management, but without tools to assemble and present "digestible" views of this database, humans would be hard pressed to present a query, let alone interpret the output correctly. But one thing remains clear: for knowledge to be communicated there must be a means to share information across non-homogeneous IM/IT domains. There is no single database design or data architecture for the world; neither is there a single data dictionary that would enable disparate databases to be easily reconciled.

In the past, assembled information (e.g. a catalogue) was distributed using paper or other hard copy material like microfiche or aperture cards. But as the pace of business accelerates, predominantly paper based exchanges can be impediments to the accurate, timely and efficient sharing of information, whatever the purpose of that exchange. What is needed is a simple, robust model for the sharing of information. This is where the scientists at CERN were heading when they developed the Hypertext Transport Protocol, or HTTP. The next step in IRM should take us beyond, to an information architecture that transcends merely viewing web documents, to integrating information across domains as part of an IRM posture that responds to the needs of the enterprise's core processes.

Principles of IRM

Several definitions of IRM can be found in articles and Internet sources, and for the most part all address the IT issues adequately. There are, however, some interesting differences in approach when it comes to the information itself. One organization (a university) chose to address its IRM policy solely to its structured database holdings. Other IRM departments tend to leave the term "information" loosely defined. For example, the State of Montana's Information Policy Office states that the principles underlying IRM are as follows:

• Data Principle - Data is a valuable resource that is to be managed and shared across organizational boundaries. Data must be secure and privacy protected while making it available to those who need it to do their job or function in our democracy.
• Management Principle - Management of information is a fundamental responsibility of managers that cannot be delegated. Executive leadership and involvement is fundamental to the success of information management.
• Standards Principle - Standards for information technology bring agencies together to allow cooperation and more effective and efficient work.
• People Principle - Information empowers people. Government workers can do their jobs better and citizens can participate in our democracy more effectively with good information.

With respect to the "Data Principle", data should be taken to include the contents of structured databases as well as other unstructured data objects stored on floppy disks, optical media, magnetic tapes (e.g. monthly backup tapes), paper records/documents, photographs, engineering drawings, film, video, and audio. The challenge for IRM is not just the creation/storage, etc., but the version control of dynamic documents and the evolving relationships of objects to other objects. In other words, the integration of an enterprise's information is much more than a warehousing or library effort, and must accommodate the sharing/exchange of information with external partners.

As for the standards principle, this should incorporate information standards as well as technology standards. CALS standards are primarily open international standards for the neutral representation of structured text, graphics, and audio/video, etc. See http://www.acq.osd.mil/cals/specstds.html for a current list of CALS standards. The use of non-proprietary formats (i.e. hardware and software independent) is critical to the longevity of information, especially information that must persist beyond the life of the IT systems used to create it.

Managing Government Business

It is not uncommon for governments to apply accepted business solutions to problems common to both the public and private sectors: financial management, strategic planning, human resource management, materiel management, etc. In the same vein, governments have often adopted (or adapted) IT solutions developed in the private sector. IRM, however, continues to pose a significant problem for large bureaucracies as well as big business because of the explosive growth of information holdings and the diversity (and incompatibility) of systems used to support them.

Established records management procedures have not adapted well to the era of automated workflow, electronic files, email and hybrid documents consisting of text, graphics, and audio/video, and have never tried to encompass the automated systems that use or create information objects. Nonetheless, the discipline of IRM (if it is indeed a discipline) continues to draw on the past, deploying traditional management methods in hopes of resolving the problem of too much information with too little control. Investigation of IRM initiatives has shown that established lifecycle management techniques normally reserved for materiel are being applied to information as simply another resource that adds value to the enterprise and should be managed accordingly. However, it is one thing to call "information" a valuable strategic resource, and quite another thing to manage it in traditional ways. What is the value of information in dollar terms? Does it appreciate/depreciate? How much should be spent to manage the information holdings? What are the metrics that would support a business case return on investment (for amassing a database, or to build a new system)? What are the cost implications of not managing information assets, or managing them poorly? How much should be spent on security and access, given that these are opposing forces?

Government Examples

As IRM gains prominence as a strategic thrust, various government entities have taken it upon themselves to both define their IRM strategy, and in some cases, publish it as well. The US Department of the Interior ( http://www.ios.doi.gov/oirm/oirm/oirmvisn.html ), in describing its IRM strategy, offers as its objective an axiom from the materiel management domain: "the delivery of relevant information to the right people at the right time at the lowest possible cost." DOI goes on to state that this will be accomplished by using IT to streamline or re-engineer business processes to improve service to the customer. "Customer" would seem to be the average citizen seeking something (service, information) from the government.

Using a somewhat different approach, the State of Oregon has developed an interesting model tracing a history that should seem familiar to most users of IT in the public and private sector (see http://www.state.or.us/IRMD/irmplan/integrate.gif). The appeal of this view is the integration of IRM planning into the program planning cycle. For many years, an ADP Services department that tended to focus on technology issues likely handled the strategic planning of IRM. Functional line managers were essentially left to their own devices to figure out how their business activities could be improved by deploying IT. Even today, with all the attention being devoted to business planning, process-driven business plans that identify budgets for computers seldom explain how this investment will fit into the corporate IRM strategy of "create once and share across organizational boundaries" (assuming that there is an established IRM strategy to that effect). The danger here is that different organizational units will fill in the gaps themselves, duplicating information that resides in another system that is "unreachable" (e.g. a financial information system) in an attempt to achieve a complete corporate view from one narrow perspective (e.g. human resources). Top-down direction has yet to achieve the vision of the integrated information environment (IIE), but relying on bottom-up solutions is unlikely to work without determined orchestration of efforts and development of systems focused on common and understood corporate objectives. Thus, the role of IRM for an enterprise should be to manage the "white spaces" between the various functional domains as they develop and implement their IM/IT solutions.

Transition

The ability of most enterprises to keep pace with technological change is limited chiefly by cost constraints and downsizing. There is, however, also some hesitancy to jump into the new world of Intranets and enterprise-wide client/server architectures, given the dismal track record of large scale IM/IT projects to deliver as promised. What will likely occur in the next 5-10 years may not be the "paperless office" but rather, a hybrid of paper and other physical media with the corporate electronic holdings. However, it is only through the use of open standards and flexible/extensible data architectures and IT architectures that an enterprise can ensure that its valuable information assets will persist into the future.

Database technologies have helped address structured information, but best estimates put structured enterprise information holdings at 20%, and the remaining 80% in unstructured formats such as documents (paper and electronic), letters, email, photographs, drawings, etc. These same estimates suggest that 80% of IT expenditures have traditionally been devoted to the structured information holdings. If IRM is to succeed in its primary objective, it will need to resolve the problem of managing the many-to-many relationships that typify complex documents (hybrid documents especially). This requires powerful object-oriented tools, at a time when object-oriented technology is admittedly in its infancy, but gaining prominence is the key component of IRM for the future. Commitment to CALS strategies by major manufacturing sectors and government is key to ensuring that systems developed in the future accommodate technology changes without compromising information integrity or operational readiness.

Notes

Randy Platt, "CALS: Integrating the Enterprise," Government Information in Canada/Information gouvernementale au Canada 3, no. 3 (1996-7). [http://www.usask.ca/library/gic/v3n3/platt/platt.html]
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