Projects Overview
Key initiatives in the Federal Government's electronic government (E-Gov) program sought to reengineer the Federal government's business processes. ISC solutions have been key to the success of many E-Gov initiatives. In the procurement area, ISC solutions power systems that E-Gov's Integrated Acquisition Environment (IAE) initiative sought to streamline federal acquisition, by creating common, integrated business processes for buyers and sellers in the Federal marketplace. In the government-to-government arena, ISC solutions are being leveraged to reengineer and streamline the process for awarding Federal grants and other financial assistance. As described in more detail on the specific project pages of this site, ISC solutions have been key to making the competitive procurement and grant making processes more efficient and effective.

ISC's work on the government's E-Gov initiatives demonstrates how ISC's excellence in system integration and web-enabled computer engineering can be applied to enable successful transformation of government processes. ISC specializes in delivering web-based solutions that are highly reliable and scalable and designed to be able to evolve continuously into the future. Hallmarks of ISC's solutions include --

Ubiquitous interoperability. The systems use open standards to meet the government's need to interoperate across the full range of agency and personal computer hardware and software platforms. Such ubiquitous interoperability is necessary to enable integration of databases in legacy systems maintained by agencies across the government as well as to enable members of the public to gain easy access to the information in those databases.

A fully web-based, platform-independent technical solution that is capable of taking maximum advantage of web-enabled functionality (e.g., establish single point of entry for accessing information from geographically dispersed sources, web-enabled data input via browsers, email notification).

An information-centric strategy that allows data to flow across and be processed by the different platforms and technologies now in use, as well as those deployed in the future. For example, the systems are designed to operate through XML format, facilitating transfer, processing and analysis.

A highly secure and reliable system. ISC's systems are certifiably secure, continuously monitored to ensure high levels of reliability. All of ISC's solutions are subject to the GSA and National Institute of Science and Technology security certification requirements applicable to Federal IT systems. ISC incorporates extensive monitoring procedures for all its processes and subsystems and performs preventative maintenance to address problems before they become visible to users and can impact their work. ISC's network operations are gauged against Mean-Time-Between-Failures and Mean-Time-To-Repair metrics. ISC's systems have the capability to establish varying levels of security and access depending on the identity of the user who wants access to the database and on the function that the user wants to use. For example, agency officials are able to access the systems to modify databases while members of the public can access the data base only to search, view and download information. Entering, editing, and deleting contract information is only available to agency users with a login name and password.

Superior user support. ISC values effective help desk support as key to user satisfaction and attributes much of the company’s success in that regard to the contributions of its knowledgeable help desk staff and to ISC’s online system for facilitating collaboration among users to identify and solve problems.

An evolvable architecture. ISC's E-Gov solutions reflect its engineering staff's dedication to designing-in the flexibility to facilitate expansion of system capacity and enhancement of functionality; to reflect changes in agency programs, business practices and market conditions; and to take advantage of technological advances. They do this by using flexible database structures that can be easily modified and open-standards that will not be easily supplanted (e.g., HTML, XML), by working to take full advantage of commercial off-the-shelf components and open source software whenever appropriate, and by staying on top of future trends.

Each of ISC's E-Gov projects benefits from the ISC staff's dedication to continuous improvement and collaboration to leverage the work they do on other projects -- fully exploit lessons learned and continuously working to enhance system performance. In addition, all of ISC projects benefit from ISC's program to develop technology products that improve performance and expand functionality.