Missions within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are complex and combine systems, data, organizations, and activities. However, analysis supporting these investment and operational decisions tends to focus on individual systems without addressing their role in the larger mission architecture. Combining cross-functional, operational data and analytic tools in a “system of systems” approach provides analysts and decision makers—from program managers to senior leadership—insights to make smarter operational and investment decisions across the diverse Homeland Security Enterprise.
In October 2017, the DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) launched System of Systems Operational Analytics (SoSOA), an agile development program. SoSOA offers a virtual environment for collaborative operational analyses that enables complex, timely, mission-focused decisions across DHS. SoSOA supports decision makers by combining the right data, tools, and training to enhance DHS-wide analytic capabilities.
SoSOA was carefully developed to respond to identified DHS Component and Headquarters (HQ) requirements. By partnering with DHS clients, SoSOA was built in an enterprise cloud environment to efficiently meet user demand. Starting with Tableau and Jupyter Notebooks, and with more applications in the pipeline, SoSOA provides robust analysis and visualization tools to DHS analysts and decision makers, enabling them to shorten analysis cycle time and reduce demand on resources and personnel. SoSOA analytic tools and methodologies, used with organization-specific data and problem sets, trim costs and save time.
SoSOA is ideal for DHS decision makers and analysts who seek enhanced analytical capabilities. To date, SoSOA has supported 25 projects across six Components and multiple HQ functional areas. Recently, the SoSOA Team engaged with DHS Ops Reporting and the National Operations Center (NOC) to visualize COVID-19 data points in the USA and border countries. Decision makers can easily see and understand the impacts of social distancing and population density on susceptible and exposed populations, case counts, hospitalizations, and deaths.
Components or Offices that are interested in using SoSOA can coordinate with the SoSOA team to onboard a new project into the environment. SoSOA administrators will define and document the data used for the project in question, and will work with S&T privacy and security personnel to define data scopes, transmission methods, security requirements, and privacy implications. This culminates in a project definition that enables flexible analysis while protecting critical information and individual privacy.
DHS staff can access SoSOA tools, including Tableau, through a quick onboarding process that validates the user’s PIV and grants access via a web browser. For more information, contact us at: ORATasking@hq.dhs.gov