Critical Infrastructure R&D

Enhancing Security and Facilitating Commerce

In the coming year, 20 million cargo containers will be shipped between ports around the world, and any of them could contain hidden threats or other contraband. To identify these containers, government agencies and the shipping industry have set an ambitious goal: screen every container without slowing the flow of commerce.

SAIC's cargo security solutions support this goal through a trio of powerful technologies:

• High-energy x-ray imaging to reveal weapons and other contraband
• Spectroscopic scanning to detect and identify radioactive sources
• High-speed integration and delivery of scanning images and data

Critically, these technologies are designed to operate in the normal flow of terminal traffic for 100 percent screening at the speed of commerce.

Practical, Cost-Effective Products

Over the past decade, SAIC has developed innovative technologies for scanning vehicles and containers, and we turned those technologies into practical, cost-effective products for cargo security.

• VACIS® imaging systems — High-energy x-ray systems that can reveal weapons and other contraband through more than a foot of steel and economical gamma ray systems for medium-density cargo, all in a variety of mobile and fixed configurations.
• Exploranium® ST-20 Radiation Portal Monitor (RPM) — A highly sensitive scanning system that can identify a wide variety of radioactive isotopes. The ST-20 can help streamline operations by identifying special nuclear material at primary inspection.
• Integrated Container Information System (ICIS) — A powerful hardware and software system that integrates data and images from VACIS imaging systems, RPMs, automatic container identification, and other sources.

SAIC's VACIS IP6500 system brings these technologies together, delivering high-energy imaging, radiation scanning, automatic equipment identification, and data integration in one compact portal.

Connecting the Public to its Diverse Historical Records

Providing access to the vast amount of publicly available electronic information is a major concern for all federal agencies. SAIC develops, operates, and maintains U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) systems that help the public connect to their electronic history, including a comprehensive solution for federated search and retrieval covering a wide range of topics from genealogical records to declassified State Department artifacts.

Using SAIC-pioneered translation layers, our solution encompasses information from over 80 million records in over 40 disparate databases from more than 30 federal agencies. Our solutions are widely applicable to the rapidly growing electronic records management (ERM) space.

Preserving the electronic history of the United States and providing public access to electronic records is a major concern for all federal agencies. As electronic records are growing more complex, searching and retrieving them is becoming increasingly difficult. To meet these challenges, SAIC developed, operates, and maintains a system that gives the public efficient, automated, self-service access to search a vast array of diverse records, and connects disparate data formats so that users can retrieve information from a single source through the Internet. Our solution is widely applicable to electronic records management, which is a rapidly growing market across the federal government.

XML-based translation and global search

We pioneered a novel XML-wrapping and translation mechanism to make archival electronic records searchable and retrievable for the first time, in a user-friendly manner. Our solution accesses information from more than 80 million records in more than 40 disparate databases from more than 30 federal agencies.

Although various commercial companies provide the ability to search and retrieve genealogical records, under this application SAIC enables the public to access a deep and broad range of records covering the activities of all federal agencies. Our experience in XML wrapping to make legacy electronic records easily searchable and retrievable is unique and a clear discriminator in providing for a global, federated search and retrieval capability.

Proven solutions for growing markets

SAIC has implemented this solution, the Access to Archival Databases (AAD) project, for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), where it is currently in place (http://www.archives.gov/aad). Daily, AAD receives an average of 220,000–380,000 virtual visitors and executes an average of 5,100–6,400 queries, providing results within minutes. Due to recent SAIC developments, the public can now access FEMA disaster photographs, the World War II Army Serial File, and declassified U.S. Department of State cable messages. Other records available through AAD include insider trading in securities, labor unions in the U.S., and grants and contracts awarded by the federal government.

SAIC has been continuously supporting NARA on the AAD project since its inception in 1999, and we have subsequently obtained and executed new work related to the underlying technologies. Our solution could be applied in any government or commercial organization with a vital electronic records management component or a need for federated search and retrieval of legacy records such as health, insurance, and financial services.

Safeguarding the Nation's Food Supply

We developed an integrated system that manages electronic documents and permit records for the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), entitled APHIS Comprehensive Electronic Permitting System (ePermits). Employing the vanguard of web technologies including XML based business process management; SAIC has increased the accuracy and timeliness of information vital to plant protection and quarantine, veterinary services, and biotechnology regulatory services.

SAIC's solution includes a broad expanse of enterprise solutions ranging from ERP, CRM, BI and BAM, BPM and simulation, and enterprise content management. With our technology, importers, brokers as well as certification authorities and researchers can access the information they need to make informed decisions about permitting and make electronic payments, all online.

In April 2006, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) launched ePermits, an eGovernment electronic permitting system, developed by SAIC to streamline the food and farm animal import process.

ePermits currently supports over 80,000 customers. It has transformed a paper-intensive organization to a paperless enterprise that facilitates trade policy decisions for USDA APHIS. ePermits also enables regulatory offi cials to rapidly issue, track, and verify the validity of import permits. It safeguards our borders by providing inspectors with real-time information on plant and animal imports including better information on potential threats.

Importers, researchers, and import brokers use ePermits to apply for a permit, make a payment, check the status, and view the issued permit — all online. The entire process of submitting the application, making payment, and viewing the issued permit can be accomplished online in a matter of hours not days, weeks, or months compared with the previous paper-based process. In addition to saving APHIS customers time, ePermits saves the USDA money. SAIC developed ePermits using best practices to lower the cost and to speed implementation leadtimes. SAIC reengineered major business functions to save APHIS more than $1.2 million in the first year of operation.

Improving America's competitive position in global trade by making imports safer and quicker

ePermits enforces regulatory compliance, provides paperless, easy-to-use, self-service for customers, incorporates online collaboration between the customer and APHIS, and delivers improved response time so that imports are accepted or stopped quickly. Currently, ePermits customers can apply for permits online for Plant Protection and Quarantine (PPQ), Veterinary Services (VS), and Biotechnology and Regulatory Services (BRS). As part of the evolution of ePermits, APHIS expects to add additional services and functions for users.

SAIC's proven capabilities in conducting stakeholder outreach, business process analysis and rapid application development are reflected in ePermits receiving national recognition through the Intergovernmental Solutions Award and the Government Computing New Gala Award. Learn more about ePermits on the USDA APHIS web site.

Transferable technology to solve workflow challenges

The technology underlying ePermits can be used in a wide variety of applications for document submission, workflow, payment, and document generation. In particular, the ePermits solution has been used to deploy a grants management system at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). As a regulatory workflow management solution, the benefits of ePermits are immediate and transferable to other government agencies and commercial entities. Benefits and features of ePermits include:

• No licensing costs
• Built-in workflow tool
• Workflow specialist not required
• Identifies bottlenecks and reallocates resources to speed decisions
• Simplifies change management
• Employs industry standard Extensible Process Definition Language (XPDL)
• Rapid prototyping with easy-to-use, drag and drop, graphical workflow process designer
• Directly transportable to other government regulatory processes
• Uses the eAuthentication system to identify and validate USDA customers before they can use participating USDA Web-based business applications
• Provides a unique user-identification code that a USDA Web user can present to participating USDA Web sites
• Reduces the burden on customers to register for and maintain separate identities for every online system.

Gathering Intelligence from Data Faster and Easier

With the proliferation of digital information data stores within an enterprise and across the Internet, the need to filter content, extract meaning, provide actionable intelligence, and manage the real-time flow of information from open sources. Leveraging experiences gained from our development of biosurveillance solutions, new R&D efforts will yield an end-to-end composable framework that highlights sophisticated functions including semiautomated harvesting and analytic tools which will be applied to burgeoning requirements in the federal civilian security, commercial, and health markets.

If the threat of avian flu outbreak were discovered in the U.S., wouldn't you want news to spread to decisionmakers faster than to the public? Wouldn't you want health and homeland security leaders to have access to information sooner rather than later so that they could notify first responders and other emergency personnel?

SAIC's Open Source Intelligence Framework (OSIF) is a software architecture that facilitates the discovery, recording, investigating, collaborating and distributing of events that are critical to an organization's mission. While originally developed to solve a critical infrastructure problem for biosurvelliance in the U.S., OSIF has broad applicability to federal and civilian organization leaders who need to be rapidly informed of information as soon as it is available on the open source Internet. With OSIF, leaders can find out about business-critical events as fast as if not faster than bloggers do.

Providing a critical data loop exchange for the well-being of the nation

SAIC made the investment that led to the design architecture and the creation of a targeted ontology of events to enable analysts to discover, record, track, approve, and distribute events critical to a government agency's mission of biosurvelliance. SAIC developed an open source-based systems architecture including a special end-to-end modular framework, a semi-automatic data harvesting and analytical tool set, a semantic web basis for events to facilitate collaboration with partners and stakeholders, and distribution to mobile devices (electronic readers, cell phones, PDAs) to empower a mobile workforce so that information could be accessed away from the office.

OSIF helps find and aggregate events that may be related and then creates alerts to possible threats. It distributes this information quickly to designated analysts for situational awareness. OSIF's mobile access allows these analysts to be untethered to a computer and yet stay fully informed of breaking events. Receivers of this information can then act on the information feeds they have received through OSIF and distribute action items or directives to decisionmakers, first responders, or others who take action on critical information that endangers the well-being of Americans.

Discovering, tracking, and distributing actionable business intelligence

Open Source Intelligence Framework lets government agency or commercial analysts manage the flood of breaking information on the Internet from news, web sites, and blogs. OSIF lets analysts collaboratively discover and record the critical and potential real-time events and distribute these events to managers or stakeholders for decision-making. SAIC's solution developed for the biosurvelliance community provides a lower cost to build, deploy, and adapt a similar solution for other organizations (e.g., federal, state, municipal, and commercial). Our OSIF structure allows easy upgrades and reuse of tools that a customer already has in house. SAIC uses best-of-class software and is vendor neutral — allowing us to customize the best product for a customer and not be locked into dead end proprietary products.

The advantage of SAIC's OSIF offering is a low barrier to customer entry due to reduced cost and time to deployment, through the use of open source tools, and leveraged cloud computing and storage services. This á la carte approach allows customers to use or upgrade only the functionality critically needed for their applications. As a general framework, SAIC's approach can inherently be applied in any domain and across public and private sectors where timely and actionable open source business intelligence is critically needed.

Custom solutions available now

SAIC excels at custom solutions for open source intelligence. Within SAIC, OSIF is currently helping our own business development analysts monitor open source intelligence on new opportunities, the marketplace, and the competition. OSIF helps our customers to provide situational awareness reports to their stakeholders through deployed or SAIC hosted solutions.