ASMC Washington Chapter, P.O. BOX 16237, Arlington, VA 22215-1237 ASMC - Washington Chapter A Five Star Chapter July 2011 DATE: 11 JULY 2011, MEETING TIME: 11:30AM PLACE: HOLIDAY INN EISENHOWER SPONSORED BY: ARMY Presidents Message New Year for our Chapter! Hot and humid; birds chirping; fireworks cracking in the air; and, the smell of freshly mowed grass seem to contradict our sense of a New Year. Nevertheless, July marks the beginning of our Chapter’s new year and signals the end of another successful year. My deepest thanks to the outgoing leaders who did a terrific job providing thought-provoking guest speakers, hosting monthly luncheons, sponsoring another hugely successful PDI in the National Capital Region, and leaving us with a fiscally sound chapter. The June luncheon, where we welcomed new chapter officials, said farewell to outgoing leaders and recognized the work of outstanding members/scholarship winners, set a high bar for the next year. By any measure, the Chapter was well-led and superbly managed. Well-done and many thanks to each of you! The year ahead will be exciting and will provide us with many opportunities to do good things in our professional environment. The fiscal pressures on the federal government will affect us, especially as government servants and those who provide services to the federal government. My intent is that our luncheons will give us ideas on how to best take advantage of the current state of government affairs to improve our operations. The luncheons are also designed to foster camaraderie, provoke professional discourse and offer a venue for addressing other issues. Given the fiscal issues and the impact on those issues to us, our luncheons this year promise to be exciting. We will need your support to get the word out and increase the attendance at our monthly meetings. The greater the number of fellow professionals at our luncheons, the greater the opportunity for idea-sharing and discourse. I look forward to seeing you at our luncheon and the opportunity to serve you in the next year. Regards, Jim Today’s Speaker: Mr. James Watkins, Director of Accountability and Audit Readiness, Assistant Secretary of the Army Financial Management & Comptroller The ASMC Washington Chapter extends a hearty to Mr. James Watkins, our chapter President, who will also serve as our guest speaker today. Mr Watkins is a member of the Senior Executive Service (SES), and serves as the Director of Accountability and Audit
Transcript
ASMC Washington Chapter, P.O. BOX 16237, Arlington, VA 22215-1237
ASMC - Washington Chapter
A Five Star Chapter
July 2011
DATE: 11 JULY 2011, MEETING TIME: 11:30AM PLACE: HOLIDAY INN EISENHOWER
SPONSORED BY: ARMY
Presidents Message
New Year for our Chapter!
Hot and humid; birds chirping; fireworks cracking in the air; and, the smell of freshly mowed grass seem to contradict our sense of a New Year. Nevertheless, July marks the beginning of our Chapter’s new year and signals the end of another successful year. My deepest thanks to the outgoing leaders who did a terrific job providing thought-provoking guest speakers, hosting monthly luncheons, sponsoring another hugely successful PDI in the National Capital Region, and leaving us with a fiscally sound chapter. The June luncheon, where we welcomed new chapter officials, said farewell to outgoing leaders and recognized the work of outstanding members/scholarship winners, set a high bar for the next year. By any measure, the Chapter was well-led and superbly managed. Well-done and many thanks to each of you!
The year ahead will be exciting and will provide us with many opportunities to do good things in our professional environment. The fiscal pressures on the federal government will affect us, especially as government servants and those who provide services to the federal government. My intent is that our luncheons will give us ideas on how to best take advantage of the current state of government affairs to improve our operations. The luncheons are also designed to foster camaraderie, provoke professional discourse and offer a venue for addressing other issues. Given the fiscal issues and the impact on those issues to us, our luncheons this year promise to be exciting.
We will need your support to get the word out and increase the attendance at our monthly meetings. The greater the number of fellow professionals at our luncheons, the greater the opportunity for idea-sharing and discourse.
I look forward to seeing you at our luncheon and the opportunity to serve you in the next year.
Regards,
Jim
Today’s Speaker: Mr. James Watkins, Director of Accountability and Audit Readiness,
Assistant Secretary of the Army Financial Management & Comptroller
The ASMC Washington Chapter extends a hearty to Mr. James Watkins, our chapter President, who will also serve as our guest speaker today. Mr
Watkins is a member of the Senior Executive Service (SES), and serves as the Director of Accountability and Audit Readiness, Assistant Secretary
of the Army Financial Management & Comptroller. Mr. Watkins is the key management official responsible for Army policies, programs, systems and procedures designed to implement and maintain the Army’s accountability and audit readiness, management evaluation, internal review and internal management control programs. Prior to his current duties, Mr. Watkins had extensive resource management experience and leadership skills. He served on active duty in the U.S. Army from 1970 to 1997. He led Soldiers as an Infantry Platoon Leader and Company Commander and was a Finance Commander at the Battalion and Brigade Level. He was the V Corps Resource Manager prior to his assignment as the Commandant, U.S. Army Finance School. After leaving active duty, Mr. Watkins was Chief Operating Officer for a private sector firm in Charlotte, NC and served six years as the Chief Financial Officer in the private sector in Columbus, Ohio. Mr. Watkins holds a BS Degree in Business Administration with a major in Accounting from The Ohio State University and an MBA from Syracuse University. He is also a graduate of the South Carolina Executive Institute, the Industrial College of the Armed Forces and the Army Command and General Staff College. He has been a CPA since 1980. He is also holds a CDFM. Mr. Watkins’ honors and awards include the Legion of Merit, Meritorious Service Medal and Civilian Meritorious Service Awards. Mr. Watkins is married to the former Kimberly Ann Bailey of El Paso, Texas. They have three children, Shannon, Andrew and Jackson.
ASMC & AGA Washington Chapter’s Golf Tournament 20 July 2011
We are pleased to announce that our ASMC & AGA Washington Chapter’s Golf Tournament is completely sold out. However volunteers (non-players) are requested to
assist and administer the tournament.
The event will be held Wednesday, July 20th, again at Ft. Belvoir's Woodlawn Course. Tournament details can be found on our website at: http://www.washington-asmc.org/golf/Golf2011/2011Golf_Tournament.htm
This year we are supporting the Koinonia Foundation Clothing and Food Drive.
The Koinonia Foundation provides relief services for the Alexandria community
PLEASE CONSIDER DONATING: Clothing and pantry items
The winner of the free lunch is Bonita Edwards, who serves as a Senior Financial Analyst for OASA-FM&C.
All luncheon attendees are entered in a raffle to win 2 certificates good for a future free luncheon admission. One certificate is for the winner's own use, and the other is for the winner to give to a potential new member. Good Luck!
Did You Know?
Individuals attending the ASMC Washington Chapter Luncheon
receive .5 CPEs.
Want to stay current on Chapter events? Sign-up for Chapter e-mail notifications. Send the following:
Next ASMC Luncheon – 17 Aug 2011 Sponsor: Navy - Topic: TBD
Upcoming Events
Checkout our Web Site for the latest updates: http://www.washington-asmc.orgExec Board meeting – 3 AugSept Luncheon - 21 Sept 2011Holiday Social – Dec 2011Regional PDI – 22 Mar 2012
The Certified Defense Financial Manager’s Corner
New Washington Chapter CDFMsJosh Coover
Quintin FulghamMelinda Graves, CDFM-A
Elizabeth GreenElizabeth Hegarty, CDFM-A
Jason JamesTerri James
Roderick LewisKevin Lopes
David Lyon, CDFM-AJohn Masters
Courtney Morris, CDFM-AMartin NossettSusan Taylor
New CDFMs - are you aware that you are entitled to a free lunch during our ASMC Washington Chapter meeting the month you earn your CDFM certification?
ASMC Washington Chapter members that pass the Acquisition Specialty module may receive reimbursement from the chapter for the cost of their new CDFM certificate. Save your receipt and contact your service representative for reimbursement procedures for the $40 expense.
Members interested in earning the CDFM with Acquisition Specialty and preparing before taking the Module 4 - Acquisition course offered by ASMC, may purchase the addendum to the CDFM textbook. To purchase a copy of the addendum, which cost $15, send a letter with your personal check to ASMC, ATTN: EDFMTC Textbook Sales, 415 North Alfred St. Suite 3, Alexandria, VA 22314. Include your full mailing address for shipment. If using a credit card you may fax your request to ASMC at (703)549-3181. Be sure to include your credit card number, expiration date, the billing address Postal Zip Code, and your full mailing address for shipment. For more information on the Acquisition Specialty to the CDFM visit the CDFM Web Page at http://www.asmconline.org/certification/cdfm-modules/module-4/.
CDFM Upcoming Events
Enhanced Defense Financial Management Training Course (EDFMTC) - Hosted by USAF18 Jul 2011 Tinker AFB, OK
Module 4 - Acquisition Business Management20 Jul 2011 Washington, DC (Holiday Inn Rosslyn, VA)
Enhanced Defense Financial Management Training Course (EDFMTC) - Hosted by DFAS25 Jul 2011 Indianapolis, IN
Module 4 - Acquisition Business Management10 Aug 2011 San Diego, CA (The Bristol Hotel)
Enhanced Defense Financial Management Training Course (EDFMTC) - Hosted by USAF15 Aug 2011 Edwards AFB, CA
EXCITING OPPORTUNITY ! ASMC ADVERTISING
ASMC Washington Chapter will now permit up to four corporate advertisements to be included in our monthly newsletter, which is distributed at our monthly meetings as well as posted on our chapter website. It is a terrific opportunity for corporations to "extend their reach" and gain visibility within the Defense Financial/Resource Management community at large - and do so very economically.
A full-page color ad is only $100 a month!!! If you commit to advertise for the entire year upfront, the cost is only $1000!!!
There is only room for up to four corporate advertisements per newsletter - so act now to be included in this timely and effective communications channel to your targeted audience!
Please contact Deb Del Mar, ASMC Corporate VP for further information: [email protected] or 703-593-6667 cell
Please submit ASMC Washington Chapter news items or articles of interest
for the monthly newsletter to Nick Abate, Publicity Chairman at [email protected]. Nick may also be reached at (703)448-6081 extension 274.
Future PDIs
Check it out!
2012 - Anaheim, California2013 - Denver, Colorado2014 - Seattle, Washington2015 - New Orleans, Louisiana2016 - Orlando, Florida2017 - San Diego, California
Careers in Financial Management?
At ASMC’s National website, you will find Career Central. Career Central specializes in providing services, resources, and a networking community for DoD FMers. In the online job board, you’ll find a large bank of job postings and resumes, career resources, career coaching and advice services, and so much more! Plus, Career Central offers anonymous resume posting for job seekers and a pay-per resume program for employers! Check us out at www.asmconline.org under the Career Central tab, and please pass along the site to other chapter members.
ASMC Membership - Apply OnlineProspective members of ASMC may apply for membership online at the ASMC website. This method decreases the processing time by up to a week, so please encourage anyone you may be recruiting to apply online. In addition, current members may renew online and update member information (new e-mail, address, job title, etc). Please read the instructions at ASMC Online Renewal http://www.asmconline.org/membership/renewal.shtml on how to determine your default username and password.
Cloud Computing is Already Here!The Question is How Do You Make Good Use of It?
While we might not understand or like everything we hear about it (we know there is a healthy dose of “Hype” involved), but we can intuitively understand the general value and flexibility it promises. When you add the Federal CIO’s “Cloud First” policy, we know we are not going to be able to avoid it; however, we
still must be thinking strategically as we move forward. One way to “channel” your transition, while reducing the risk you face in moving mission critical functions to cloud services is to utilize a Service Oriented Architecture approach.
When Should My Enterprise Start To Move to SOA? Is SOA Really Ready?
“ Service-oriented architecture (SOA) adoption continues to be strong, especially for the largest enterprises. Satisfaction with SOA runs very high: As early as 2006, nearly 70% of SOA users said they would increase their use of SOA, and 46% of large enterprise users of SOA were using it for strategic business transformation.” (April 14, 2006, Survey Data Says: The Time for SOA Is Now: Dispense With Excuses And Begin Your Move To SOA by Randy Heffner with Carl Zetie, Lindsey Hogan.) And, this was
over 5 years ago; … a full lifetime in the world of technology! As real “Cloud” based services continue to grow in acceptance, the idea of encapsulated, independent application modules with a data focus will grow as a means to allow developers and application owners to make their products more ‘available” for others to use them. Of course, there is more to the technology surrounding Cloud implementation, but having independent applications with access to shared resources is a primary enabler.
What makes SOA more reliable than all the other systems and ‘methodologies’ for integrating my enterprise systems?
SOA is not a new methodology for integrating disparate systems capabilities. It is already allowing companies to provide a completely new level of flexibility as they transition into new technologies and/or implement standards across the enterprise.
Several years ago, Jack Richman at IBM said: “Rather than trying the impossible task of anticipating every conceivable collection of services and hand-tailoring each combination for interoperability, applications in a SOA are ‘loosely coupled;’ that is linked not to one another specifically, but through standard protocols (like XML, HTTP, SOAP, WSDL and UDDI). This type of integration allows systems to communicate to each other in an open-systems fashion, so when the relationship between the systems
change, the systems themselves do not need to be reprogrammed to incorporate those changes. You can change service providers without having to reprogram internally as long as the new provider can send and receive the same data. Alternatively, if a new algorithm is developed; an internal program can be completely re-written without affecting the systems that use that program as long as the interfaces remain consistent. SOA includes the idea of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) in an architecture style that works to tightly integrate capabilities while it decouples the details of applications from each other, as well as the system presentation tools (user interfaces) they exchange data with to perform their functions. Make no mistake; SOA implementation initially adds some overhead, because the service bus and the
"IBM has a very broad software and services portfolio that few companies can match up with.”
It’s the biggest SOA announcement we’ve seen yet from IBM, spanning multiple product lines at the company. And many of the new products are being developed in the field with customers, lending them greater legitimacy.”
“With this announcement, IBM further cements its lead as the industry's leading provider of full-service solutions required to design, build, implement and manage SOA.”
The latest announcements from IBM continue to solidify the company’s leadership position in SOA, BPM and process-driven integration and information consumption...The up-leveling of its SOA message to the business level is another strong point of this IBM announcement.
"IBM is 'doubling down' on their SOA bet with an improved, comprehensive software and services story around SOA. … We applaud IBM for bringing together so many parts of their organization into a coherent story and offering based on SOA
"In this latest announcement, IBM is taking an integrated approach to Service Oriented Architecture… it is the maximizing of the people, process and information elements that are truly core to the SOA process."
interfaces have to be purchased/ developed and made to work; it isn’t just magic. However, this overhead is being mitigated by ever-increasing communication and
system performance capabilities and the benefits far outweigh other impacts.
What is SOA?
As mentioned by numerous marketers in the past; the guy who “invented” sliced bread didn’t invent the bread or the knife, he just created a new way to apply them; and it worked better than anyone could have expected; with eventual impact on people all around the world. The idea of decoupling applications and encapsulating them as autonomous functions, that are not dependent or inadvertently affected by changes in other applications, has been a staple for quality in software development for about 30 years now. In the early 1980s, the DoD’s Ada Language was developed to specifically formalize the concept which was then called “Object Oriented Design” (OOD). Within a software program, functions and procedures were developed in a way to make them visible to each other only as ‘objects’ invoked by their “calling” parameters. The calling program did not need to know how a procedure or function worked, only what variables it needed ‘passed’ to it and which variables would be ‘passed back’ after it completed its task.
Although Ada was mostly used for embedded weapons systems and lacked the user interface tools required in the wider commercial market, it fully validated the OOD approach to software development and its principles. For example, “a decade after NASA’s Flight Dynamics Division (FDD) at Goddard Space Flight Center began investigating the use of Ada; the language influences every software development project at the FDD.
OOD techniques were introduced at FDD simultaneously with Ada, which combined into software engineering principals of portability, legibility, and the wide-spread use of generics. Adhering to those principals increased the FDD’s reuse of software by 300 percent. It has reduced the costs of all systems, independent of their language, by 40 percent; shortened their cycle time by 25 percent; and slashed error rates by 62 percent. This took the idea from concept to proven capability.
Those Ada principles have evolved, along with the DoD created NIPRNET, into software design and implementation methodologies that allow programs to execute processes with totally different logic and data requirements to operate the same customer presentation space. Today, the global Internet and Web tools rely on the concept of standardized
syntaxes and interfaces to make applications work together on any computer and with any operating system that is “Web enabled.” So with all of this great software with highly integrated capability in loosely coupled modules and standard Web presentation for customers, you are probably asking yourself “what’s the problem?”
Why does it all seem so complicated?
Well, as software development capabilities have improved and evolved hardware platforms to run them, the need to communicate better and faster across functional areas and between these great software systems has increased. Computers have helped tie point of sales systems to inventory, inventory to acquisition, acquisition to demand forecasting and so on. In efforts to quickly interface these existing systems together and make them operate as fast as possible for evolving business reasons, systems have been built with complex data exchanges and dependencies. Issues with network delays, latency problems, and “hard
coded” ports and interface protocols have created special circuit connections with direct data exchanges and special proprietary solutions to cause our business applications to not only rely on each other functionally, but electronically as well. Technology and network capabilities no longer require these specialized interfaces to work, but legacy implementations still do, so modernizing one system typically means you really need to change all of the adjoined systems; ergo the complexity, much greater cost, and increased business risk, every time you need an upgrade.
Is there a simpler way to make your enterprise modernization efforts actually work?
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) technologies and SOA methodology actually provide a simpler solution in the long run, because of the methodology for integrating services to provide new capability without each functional system having to build their own versions of already developed, tested, and available services. It takes the concepts of Object Oriented Design from the Application Program level and raises them up to the Enterprise Systems implementation Level and new Enterprise Architecture Frameworks have been developed to support this concept. For instance, the DoD Architecture Framework (DoDAF V2.0) has added a concept of Services to its Ontology.4
The first step is not to change applications (with their aggregate impacts) but to develop an interface bus to allow for communications between systems. As you are ready, you decouple the interfaces to current or new application/capabilities by providing a services buffer as the means to access them.
"SOA" refers to a way of designing and running the software portion of an information technology infrastructure so that it supports the various individual and interrelated functions that are needed to enable
capabilities for a particular enterprise. The SOA approach breaks down a company’s business tasks to facilitate making the ones that are needed by multiple functions (such as checking on customer identification data) and the underlying technology or processes into reusable components or “services." These services can be combined and recombined with new functionality, as the clients’ business needs change. What Ada and OOD have done for embedded weapon systems and NASA, SOA is doing for today’s enterprise systems. ”SOA makes it possible to provide a less expensive way for companies to link their business processes to those of their suppliers, vendors and other business partners. This concept also makes it possible for individual customers and employees to buy or interact online with e-merchants and a host of other services, whatever their IT platform.” 1.
More importantly to an enterprise contemplating on how to update their IT environment, a SOA approach allows you to integrate legacy and new systems together across the ESB, which provides the
communications and protocol interface to bridge them.
Each legacy systems can be modernized independently based on current risk level, their priority, and available funding. Investments in older technology can be managed and allowed to depreciate across a longer period, as long their maintenance cost, functionality, and user appreciation levels are acceptable.
With SOA, You can take advantage of web presentations and portals while preserving the legacy systems that are doing the job well. It all comes down to the difference between maintenance cost and modernization needs for business as you move to a common enterprise standard environment.
The SOA methodology is “evolving” system integration and enterprise modernization programs.
DoDAF V2.0 intended to support SOA – Should support the CloudBut it missed the Mark on Services
Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) was originally designed to make enterprise software more reusable; but the principles can also be a tool for capturing data requirements for interfacing with cloud services. SOA and Cloud computing are together providing the first real revolution in software engineering and IT systems design since the transition from Procedural Programing to Object Oriented Design (OOD) back in the early 1980s.
DoDAF V2.0 appears to have been written to take advantage of SOA concepts and allow designers to model the Cloud within their Enterprise and Solutions Architectures. However, it also appears to have missed the mark in several critical ways. This letter advocates for a restructuring of the DoDAF V2.0 approach to Services Viewpoint and Views, and recommends development of a simpler approach to the Meta Data volume, so journeyman DoDAF practitioners can both understand and apply its schema. Some of the required changes are discussed in an article published in the November 2010 Journal of Enterprise Architecture (“Services in DoDAF V2.0; Making Services Modelable and Relevant in DoDAF V2.0”). In this Article, WBB Inc. senior consultants highlight technical deficiencies in the current DoDAF and provides detailed recommendations for changing the DoDAF framework to fully capture the advantages of SOA design concepts and the explosion of services that Cloud computing is now starting to offer.
The article also articulates the differences between a service and a system by introducing “Commoditized
Service” into the DoDAF vernacular. The current DoDAF definition states that a Service requires a Performer [as a Mechanism] to execute; as a result, a Service includes almost exactly the same views as a System. In contrast, while SOA acknowledges that a service has to be implemented somewhere, and requires a system/performer, it also hints that the system/performer is not relevant to the definition of the Service. The authors argue that details about the system/performer of a service should be vague to prevent the programmer or designer who wants to use that service from knowing the particulars of how it is provided. This does not mean one can’t validate and verify how a service works as part of due diligence and security reviews, just that systems developers should not predicate technical decisions about how to implement their system based on how a required service is produced. A designer just needs to understand how to invoke the service and what resources need to be created, exchanged, or consumed. This is OOD at the enterprise level and it allows you to change services/providers without disruption in operations.
DoDAF V2.0 is a dramatic step in the right direction towards realizing the benefits of cloud computing and no doubt other architecture frameworks will follow suit as the popularity of cloud computing continues to grow. Whatever framework or tools you use, you must challenge your providers to capitalize on capturing, modeling, and encapsulating services as you smartly take advantage of opportunities in the cloud.
Washington Chapter Officers for 2011 – 2012Title E-Mail Phone
![ASMC Newsletter Dec 2015.pptx [Read-Only]gulfcoastasmc.org/newsletter/Dec15news.pdfASMC 1 st Holiday 5K Fun Run/Walk 5 ASMC, P.O. Box 1756, Eglin AFB FL 32542 ASMC is hosting its first](https://static.documents.pub/doc/80x56/5f2afa4f4c8ca37587628010/asmc-newsletter-dec-2015pptx-read-only-asmc-1-st-holiday-5k-fun-runwalk-5-asmc.jpg)
