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 What makes the GeoBase effort different from the many previous CADD/GIS "initiatives"? Ask any senior member of the AF Civil Engineer community about their experience with CADD and GIS over the past twenty years and they will undoubtedly have one or more 'war stories' to share. You'll likely be told the particular CADD/GIS investment resulted from a single, visionary 'champion' who saw the potential for the technology in their workplace. Thanks to the efforts of this enthusiastic individual, the unit mission probably benefited from new mapping capabilities in the near term. Unfortunately, most of the 'war stories' end with the 'champion' moving on to another assignment. Shortly thereafter, with no formal process in place to sustain the technology's use, the investment was usually abandoned. This situation exists only until the next CADD/GIS 'champion' appears on the unit's doorstep. With this background, two key differences can be noted between previous CADD/GIS efforts and the USAF GeoBase Initiative; 1) the scope of the intended solution; and 2) the role of the Air Force command echelon. These two issues highlight how the USAF bureaucracy can both facilitate as well as hinder information resource management initiatives. The Department of Defense is the epitome of a classic bureaucracy; clear lines of authority and responsibility, operations guided by explicit regulations and instructions, each individual with a clear and concise position description. While the theoretical bureaucracy optimizes operational efficiencies, a quick scan of the USAF enterprise landscape reveals an abundance of industrial-era 'stovepipes'. These bureaucratic artifacts naturally evolve in response to the need to manage their assigned portion of the mission. Their vertical orientation, though, is perpendicular to the cross-functional information-era networked-based solutions available today. Consider that the SC has been responsible for the combined functions of information resource management and communications infrastructure only since 1996. In the twenty years prior to this, the CE had no alternative other than to try to devise their own stovepiped processes for better managing their information needs. Today, virtually all installations have some form of a cross-functional base network steering committee that was recently charged with the responsibility of ensuring all mission elements receive adequate quality of service. This committee can serve as an ideal forum for bringing geospatial information resource needs to the attention of the wing leaders. Furthermore, the CADD/GIS initiatives of yesterday were largely defined as CE tools of little value to any other mission element. Meanwhile, the wing mission continued on with multiple organizations relying on multiple maps to render decisions about the local geographic mission space. These decisions frequently resulted in huge hidden costs to the wing in the form of operational inefficiencies and redundant mapping investments. Unfortunately, such 'war stories' continue to occur; 1) a brand new parking lot has just been installed by the wing CE unit and is ready for striping. Less than 48 hours after the asphalt has cooled, the wing SC's contractor is trenching into the new asphalt to lay fiber optic cable as part of the local Combat Information Transport System (CITS) initiative; 2) a CE backhoe operator coordinates with SC prior to digging up an abandoned underground storage tank only to sever a relatively new fiber optic cable that was supposedly buried on the other side of the street; 3) a visit to an USAF installation reveals three separate and costly mapping efforts for the same installation are being conducted to satisfy the needs of three separate GIS efforts from the Environmental Management, Weapons Safety, and Civil Engineer organizations. The scope of the desired GeoBase effort at the unit level has naturally evolved to encompass all those mission elements who would benefit from access to a single, common georeferenced operational picture of the local installation mission space. Likewise, the host wing commander carries ultimate responsibility for the mission space under the "one base, one wing, one boss" concept. Therefore, with the understanding that the GeoBase 'map' would be compiled by accessing various georeferenced mission-specific databases across the wing, this slogan could be modified to read "one base, one boss, one map". « Return to FAQ List недвижимость в Тайланде на окене . усыпление животных |
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