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Citizant Launches Solutions Suite to Help Government Agencies Comply With the Recovery Act

Posted on: Friday, 20 March 2009, 10:28 CDT

Citizant Leverages Successes in Enterprise Architecture, Data Management, and Web Application Development

CHANTILLY, Va., March 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Citizant, one of the Washington region's leading providers of government professional technical solutions, today introduced a suite of solutions to allow government agencies to immediately meet the aggressive requirements of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

Leveraging the company's proven success in Enterprise Architecture, Data Management, and Web application development, Citizant's solution set specifically addresses: Recovery.gov Reporting, Grants.gov, and Data.gov.

"As the nation focuses on restoring our economy, government agencies are faced with unprecedented challenges to respond to aggressive deadlines and usher in a new level of government transparency and accountability," said Citizant CEO and co-founder, Raymond Roberts. "This signifies a big, new job for agencies and a significant change in the way they operate."

"Requirements are emerging quickly and agencies must introduce a new level of technical nimbleness and citizen responsiveness. This demands a contractor with a broad, integrated view and expertise in EA, data management, and Web 2.0/SOA development - agencies need to be confident that their industry partner will quickly and cost-effectively develop the right solution the first time," concluded Roberts.

Agencies must quickly deploy solutions to address the new ARRA requirements and mitigate the risks of failure with timing, functionality, or inadvertent data disclosure. Citizant's Solutions Directors in Enterprise Architecture, Information Assurance (IA), and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) have collaborated with the company's customer-facing Division Directors to craft a set of solutions that immediately meets the ARRA needs and reduce risks for federal agencies. The solution set includes:

Recovery.gov Reporting

Challenge: ARRA mandates that the 27 federal grant-making agencies report how grant money is distributed by state. The Act includes a series of aggressive reporting deadlines and requires agencies to send data automatically to Recovery.gov, the Web site that allows citizens to see how stimulus funds are being spent.

Citizant's Solution: Leveraging Web 2.0 and mapping technologies, Citizant has created a grants data reporting system that graphically depicts grant data by state. The system consists of a United States map interface that allows users to view data such as grant types, recipient information, and usage for each state. The solution also consists of an RSS feed that will transmit the required spending and performance data to Recovery.gov. For long-term tracking and reporting needs, Citizant's customizable, Web-enabled financial system allows financial managers to quickly track and report funding sources and disbursements. This system is already deployed within a federal agency.

Grants.gov:

Challenge: The ARRA legislation is expected to increase the use of Grants.gov, the online application portal for federal grants, by 60 percent. With information on more than 1,000 competitive grant programs and access to approximately $500 billion in annual awards, Grants.gov is already overburdened. After a review of the system's capacity, U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) officials warned of a "significant risk of failure." OMB director Peter Orszag notified federal agencies that they should plan for a possible meltdown of Grants.gov and ordered the agencies to make alternative plans.

Citizant's Solution: Using a phased approach, Citizant's SOA and IA solutions teams are quickly implementing a grants intake solution to relieve the surge pressure on Grants.gov. The solution uses existing grants forms, deployed infrastructure, and a simple Web service to rapidly stand up a grants data collection portal. Planning continues for the integration of best-of-breed forms processing COTS solutions in the next release.

Data.gov:

Challenge: Data.gov will make all federal information that is not private or restricted for national security reasons available to the public. In addition to facilitating great public access, the site's goal is to enable information sharing and collaboration so that citizens can provide input on federal initiatives and programs. The first step for the migration to Data.gov will likely be for agencies to post their publicly accessible data sets to the site. This type of data exchange and information sharing represents a significant departure for the federal government and a massive transformation on the backend.

Citizant's Solution: Citizant's integrated Data Management approach - implemented at several federal agencies - employs repeatable processes based on best practices to ensure federal customers deliver accurate, adequately protected information on-demand to their information sharing community partners. These repeatable processes include:

• Authoritative Data Sources (ADS) Framework
• Data Quality Management
• Data Acquisition and Provisioning
• Data Governance, Stewardship and Tools

Citizant's Data Management support initiatives with top-rated federal agencies - such as the Departments of the Interior (DOI) and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) - have been widely recognized by industry and academia.

Citizant received its ISO 8000:110 Master Data Quality Manager certification in 2008 from the Electronic Commerce Code Management Association (ECCMA). This data quality standard embodies accepted best practices for exchange of master data between organizations.

About Citizant

Citizant partners with government organizations to develop forward-thinking business and technology solutions that create a better future for all citizens. Citizant specializes in enterprise architecture, custom application development and program management support. Citizant is ISO 9001:2000 certified and has been independently appraised at SEI CMMI Maturity Level 3. Citizant is a fast-growing, woman-owned 8(a) business headquartered in Chantilly, Va., with an office in Washington, D.C. More information about the company is available at www.citizant.com.

SOURCE Citizant

Source: PR Newswire

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