RESOURCE CENTER

Army JTNC builds an engagement platform to support B2G interactions.

The Joint Tactical Networking Center (JTNC) is a leader in industry engagement.

August 1, 2024

Time to read: 5 minutes

Government procurement is an art. By the time a team has figured out how to weave together project criteria, compliance requirements, budget limitations, small business requirements, and so on, the final product might be more adequately described as a tapestry than a contract. Which is why the Joint Communications Marketplace (JCM) hosted by the Department of Defense (DoD), Joint Tactical Networking Center (JTNC) is such an innovative example for any Federal or Defense agency to follow:

It allows for customized service and support…
…without sacrificing the team’s ability to deliver at scale
It fosters the kind collaborative, competitive, transparent environment departments and agencies need in order to demonstrate responsible budgetary spending

“It is helping us support as many services as we can. We have to support a vast number of projects because the Army has to meet a vast number of missions. We can’t guarantee that we will always have the budget or bandwidth to spin up a custom solution for each type of mission, and this strategy has helped us reach across boundaries and support different areas of the government from a single platform.”

Joseph Grochowski, JCM Technical Lead

1. Challenge: Collaboration across multiple departments, all from a single platform
2. Solution: Delivering industry innovation to Defense missions
3. Results: Supporting a vast number of projects to meet a vast number of missions

Collaboration across multiple departments, all from a single platform.

The JTNC provides strategic guidance and technical support solutions for tactical communications/IT initiatives sponsored by the Military Departments, giving teams secure, interoperable, and resilient tactical capabilities – work that is often real-time in terms of demand requiring real-time perspective from subject matter experts.

“We were tasked with finding ways to enable industry and government to work more collaboratively in an unprecedented manner, which was a huge challenge,” said Kathy Klinar, JTNC Data Management Lead. “Historically, government and military agencies use legacy systems and the normal lifecycle to initiate and sustain legacy systems is measured in years. Missions are measured in weeks, if not days, and so we needed to move just as fast,” said Tim Batey, JCM Developer.

The Federal IT budget landscape.

67.9% is spent on legacy IT, which (when paired with the $34.6 billion spent on national security and defense) leaves only $17.7 billion available for development, modernization, and enhancement. Only a small portion of the budget is spent on innovation.¹

Legacy Systems Across the Federal IT Landscape

That is 67.9% spent on legacy IT, which (when paired with the $34.6 billion spent on national security and defense) leaves only $17.7 billion available for development, modernization, and enhancement. At best, only 17.7% of budget is spent on innovation.

This is why the JTNC example is so significant. It’s important for teams to take advantage of connecting mission critical innovators to projects. It shows departments and agencies how they might transcend industry wide challenges with modern tools, allowing teams to collaborate in more real-time manners.

Delivering industry innovation to Defense missions.

Grochowski, Batey, Klinar and team launched the Joint Communications Marketplace (JCM) on the FedRAMP and DoD-authorized Salesforce Customer 360 Platform for Public Sector. It is a series of online community portals that give mission owners a platform and interface to work with one another and industry partners as they evaluate product/service offerings and inform procurement decisions based on real-time information from subject matter experts.

Here’s how it works:

Intake and upload: Products available from the industry are uploaded via flow into the Joint Communications Marketplace (JCM). The record is tagged by product type, company, level of JCM engagement, and more. If details change or a new version becomes available, industry providers can update the information accordingly.

Self-service: Mission owners can then log into the portal built on Experience Cloud, which pulls through the backend Service Cloud records and presents them in a retail-like webpage experience. Mission owners can browse products and services, filtering by tagged categories. They can also, based on roles, permissions, and profiles, read reports, explore product specifications, and converse with other community members (both industry and government) on discussion boards, and so on. “We also have a feature where we post announcements to either our public-facing website or some/all of our communities, alerting mission owners of news regarding tactical comms products,” said Klinar.

Learn more about experience cloud

Advanced Analytics: Integrated reports and dashboards on CRM Analytics help the team spot trends like which products or services are used most often, in which scenarios, and more. These reports are then shared with industry providers, helping them determine where research and development dollars might make the most impact, pinpoint communications gaps in the Request for Information (RFI) or Request for Proposal (RFP) process, and provide more targeted customer service.

They are also shared with mission owners, helping them make more informed decisions about the products and services with the biggest impact potential and see where a PO might already exist and thus attach themselves to that work vs. pursuing a new-new procurement.

CRM Analytics extends this data-driven strategy further, which makes predictions and recommendations based on product or service patterns.

Learn more about CRM analytics

Platform-level services: Automated workflow rules (“there are maybe 70 flows and subflows that all work together across this system,” said Batey) triggers emails to go out to industry partners when, say, a new RFP is announced, encouraging more engagement from subject matter experts and helping the government get word out to the industry. Salesforce Shield provides an additional layer of security to the JCM.

Learn more about workflow automation

The value this partnership brings to the larger DoD

Salesforce was issued its first DoD Cybersecurity Impact Level 4 (IL4) provisional authorization for our Government Cloud instance by DISA in 2017. However, DoD policy requires a DoD Mission Owner to grant its own authorization before DISA allows a Cloud Service Provider, like Salesforce, to connect to a DoD Cloud Access Point (CAP), which enables Salesforce to operate as an extension of NIRPNet for DoD customers. JTNC became that Mission Owner and enabled Salesforce to re-code our platform to support DoD IP addresses and .mil domain names in compliance with DoD policy— a significant engineering feat.

Today, JTNC is working with Salesforce and DISA to enable a first-ever CAP connection for Salesforce Government Cloud Plus - Defense at the IL5 Cybersecurity Level (Controlled Unclassified Information/National Security System) and support our path to IL6 (Classified SECRET)– the latest in a ramp strategy that serves as a best practice: JTNC started with low sensitivity use cases at IL2. From there they modernized to IL4 and now are on track to complete IL5 and IL6 cloud service offerings. This strategic roadmap allows JTNC to test, validate, and mature cloud support without sacrificing time-to-market. It also makes the most of industry partnerships, giving everyone the ability to learn from one another’s subject matter expertise and accomplish more, together.

In other words: JTNC’s partnership is an investment in achieving higher levels of compliance for so many DoD missions at higher classification levels to support critical/sensitive mission support.

Supporting a vast number of projects to meet a vast number of missions

“JCM has also helped to level the playing field across the industry. If a smaller company is interested in getting their products in front of people but don’t have the luxury of a marketing budget like bigger brands, they can get a JCM account, upload their product, and start collaborating, Grochowski continued “This not only helps us meet small business mandates, but also drives competition and pushes everyone to be more innovative.”

To date, the JCM:

Supports 762 active industry users
Supports 298 active Government users
Supports 22 active DoD mission owners/user group communities
Showcases 207 unique JCM products
Showcases 14 unique JCM use cases supported

The team has seen...

42 whitepapers submitted in 2023
1059 unique JCM registrations in 2023
2,251 documents uploaded
1,206 documents downloaded

...demonstrating the impact it continues to have on various missions.

They are also able to capture the following new kinds of data sets:

70 flows, helping the team streamline operations and simplify mission complexity
Survey data, incorporating a positive feedback loop into the JCM
Timelines on open or unaddressed questions, helping them decrease backlogs, and establish more realistic and reliable SLAs

“It’s a one-stop shop, collaborative environment for industry and government to work together efficiently. The government can also come in, during the pre-contract phase, and get the best fit products or services to carry out their mission by getting to contract award much faster and cheaper—making for more agile acquisitions, said Klinar.

5 Best Practices from the Army JTNC

The JTNC demonstrated a number of best practices in their work launching the JCM — best practices that make for a great starting point or “to do” list for any digital transformation effort.

Download checklist

¹ https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-23-106414.pdf

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