The SMART story

In 2001, Air Force senior managers charged with acquiring weapon systems for the war fighters were frustrated by the time it took to accumulate data to answer questions, the credibility of the data once received, lack of an standard measurement of program health, and access to information that would accurately portray healthy and unhealthy programs.  Our President & CEO, Steve Dempsey, was asked to research a means of mitigating these challenges as a first step toward transparency.  He was assigned a team of government and contractor personnel and the team proceeded to rapidly build and demo a model that made substantial progress in standardization and assessment as well as availability of source data.  This model subsequently became known as SMART and was taken on by the Under Secretary of the Air Force as a core acquisition tool. 

SMART is a web-based management tool initially designed for the Air Force Acquisition community to streamline data reporting methods and provide a universal way of assessing program health and performance.

SMART is deployed across the Air Force acquisition and logistics enterprises and has approximately 6,000 users. Customers, besides program offices, using SMART include senior AF and OSD management.

SMART allows non-intrusive transparency into the official Air Force Programs and reliable, immediate information for senior management decision making. Management will normally view the program health and address major issues related to an acquisition effort. Furthermore filtering tools allow managers to view all relevant data on a particular issue and format the presentation to meet their personal needs. The concentration is on life cycle management with focus on cost, schedule, performance, funding and sustainment.

SMART FAQ’s

What is SMART used for?

SMART serves two main purposes:

Program manager’s tool for documenting, managing and reporting their program execution

Senior executive tool for near-real time, non-intrusive access to programmatic information.

Provides a common frame of reference for decision-making .

Provides access to near-real time AF acquisition program information.

How do users access SMART?

• Web-based application riding on the GCSS-AF Integration Framework
• Solely accessed through the Air Force Portal.
• Written using Microsoft technologies

What are some ways the Air Force uses SMART?

• Standard health metrics used to rate and assess a program’s health. Program Office personnel input data for their respective programs and information can be seen
• Information management journal (issue/impacts, accomplishments, contracts, etc)
• Automated Air Force MAR (Monthly Acquisition Report) MAR serves as an Executive Summary of the data in SMART.
• Provide access only to programs a user has authorization for

Manage an overarching AF Acquisition Program Master List

Manage Multiple Portfolios of Programs

PEO, Capability Director, Space/non-Space, Custom Portfolios

Automated data feed for authoritative financial data (CCaRS)

Standardized program review reports with full drill down capability

Standardized method of sharing data with other applications (web services)

Risk impact assessments

Is SMART’s functionality ever updated?

Yes. It is a spiral developed tool

New capabilities are added to SMART on both a recurring and as needed basis