Northrop Grumman White Paper

Business Analytics for Better Government

Authors: Patrick Elder and Thomas Naphor

April 18, 2012

Northrop Grumman Corporation

Information Systems Sector
7575 Colshire Drive
McLean, VA 22102
703.556.1000
www.northropgrumman.com

Introduction
Business analytics (BA) is a subset of Business intelligence (BI) and is defined differently by
different organizations. For many organizations, BA is simply an enterprise reporting system.
Other organizations incorporate scorecards and performance metrics to help meet strategic
goals. Still others use complex data models and predictive analytics to make proactive
business decisions to give the organization a competitive advantage. Northrop Grumman sees
business analytics as all of these things and as a cornerstone of our customers efforts to
achieve the goals set forth in their strategic plans.
Analytics adoption within the private sector began over a decade ago. Findings reflecting the
potential benefits of a successful implementation across a variety of industries are undeniable.
According to Gartner research, BI has become a necessity rather than a competitive edge.
Northrop Grumman sees business analytics as necessary table stakes and recognizes that in
order for our federal customers to operate successfully under ever-increasing budget
constraints, they must leverage BA to efficiently use funds and increase transparency of
spending to the public, while maintaining progressive quality of citizen services. For example,
for many skilled technical and professional positions, federal agencies need to hire from the
same pool of talent as private industries, if not one smaller. In addition, business analytics can
give organizations the ability to mobilize its workforce in the event of disaster or need for surge
support. Through business analytics for talent management, data mining and predictive
analysis can and should be used by federal agencies to make better decisions around
acquisition, retention, development, and succession. With the data most customers already
collect, our Northrop Grumman Analytics Team creates data models that give our customers a
higher probability of making the best possible decisions about talent, workforce and logistical
planning.

Business Intelligence in the Federal Market

Today, use of Analytics within the federal marketplace to advance service delivery in areas like
human resources, recruitment and competency training is almost non-existent. Several
agencies have enterprise reporting solutions at varying levels of deployment, but few use
enterprise reporting or have fully matured data warehouses that ensure data integrity offering a
true, single authoritative source for advanced information management. To handle
administrative activities across the enterprise, very few agencies make use of actionable,
automated scorecards, performance metrics, or predictive analysis. This is not surprising since
federal organizations are often cautious adopters of new technology and for good reason.
The Federal Government is often best suited to make use of an established product and well
defined industry best practices. Federal customers do not need to take risks that private
companies do to gain competitive advantage. Instead, government agencies mitigate risks
associated with breakthrough technology by waiting to adopt proven best practices. However,
Northrop Grumman recommends that the Federal Government be proactive in the
implementation of business analytics. Given the current economic environment and proven
maturity of BA in the private sector, federal organizations will increasingly need to leverage
business analytics. Doing so will help drive operating excellence by maximizing cost efficiency
and market positioning for attracting and retaining top talent.

Business Analytics for Better Government

Business Transformation through Business Analytics

Northrop Grumman is well positioned to help its federal customers complete a business
transformation, moving toward data driven decision making. By developing analytics that give
insight into the data that is currently being collected, federal customers can make better
informed business decisions. Those well informed decisions can lead to greater cost savings
and tighter policy compliance. Analytics give our customers the ability to use their data in ways
they never thought possible. By developing data models for various retention, attraction and
training scenarios, we leverage our customers data to help them plan for similar scenarios in
the future. We use non-relational data tools, such as our Open Source Intelligence Exploration
toolset. We provide customers the ability to view events that are likely to occur in the near
future and plan accordingly. Our customers can leverage our Analytics offerings in mobile
applications for access to their data anywhere, making Analytics a powerful on-the-go tool for
recruiters, event planners and committee members.

Figure 1: Northrop Grumman's Building Blocks for Business Transformation

Northrop Grummans Analytics Solutions

Northrop Grumman works with federal customers to develop robust analytics, metrics, reports
and dashboards that provide actionable insight for building operating advantage. Our
Information Systems Sector specializes in providing a wide variety of big data analytics
solutions that support many federal market customer needs. In addition to our experience in
federal enterprise and decision support solutions, our Health Solutions division has developed
robust data mining and predictive analysis solutions that help improve mission support needs
for Federal customers, including Health and Human Services (HHS), Centers for Medicare &
Medicaid Services (CMS), and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The
following are a few success stories from Northrop Grummans Business Analytics solutions
portfolio.

Business Analytics for Better Government

Intelligence Community (IC) Agency

Northrop Grumman has worked and continues to work as one IC agencys Human Capital
Management System implementation team. In 2005, the agency decided it needed to get more
from its data. The successful implementation and deployment of the Human Capital
Management solution portfolio produced a significant increase in queries and data requests,
revealing the need for an enterprise reporting capability. The agency selected Business
Objects as the enterprise analytics tool, and Northrop Grumman took the lead in the
developing universes, web services and the first integrated talent management dashboard
solution to feature human capital data from a variety of business applications at the agency.
These included some deployment pipeline staffing reports, workforce demographics, training,
foreign language competencies, and recruitment dashboards that have greatly improved the
business process. In addition, the initiative to develop Recruitment Analytics assisted the
development and measured the progress of an improved talent acquisition process. To date,
Northrop Grumman has engineered their human capital data warehouse to better meet data
requests for end users and outside systems alike to continuously improve service delivery.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

The cabinet-level DHS has undertaken a massive business transformation effort to implement
enterprise solutions, where possible, for common Human Capital systems, operations and data
across over 22 Legacy Agency components. Northrop Grumman has been intimately involved
in this effort, providing expert technical and business guidance for the Human Capital Business
Systems division.
Business analytics relies on a sound, highly scalable infrastructure, including, and especially,
data quality management. Northrop Grumman is guiding DHS to provide an end-to-end,
integrated Human Capital portfolio solution that builds upon an enterprise segment architecture
that will include data warehousing, data management, governance, and business intelligence
technologies to drive better Human Capital results. Northrop Grumman supported the DHS HR
Analytics Proof of Concept effort and is continuing to work with DHS to form a long term target
strategy for implementing an enterprise product Business Analytics strategy. DHS has an
existing investment in market leading COTS Human Resource Analytics products and
Northrop Grumman is assisting in tailoring this solution to align to DHS specific Human Capital
mission goals and objectives.

Health IT Solutions
Northrop Grummans Health IT Solutions has developed and continues to enhance a Health
Analytics Center of Excellence that includes a suite of tools that perform data mining and
predictive analysis for the CDC and the CMS. The Improving Health Outcomes initiative
analyzes outcomes and costs of chronic disease for providers, populations and communities.
This has been a useful tool for customers in shaping health policies. Our Health Analytics
portfolio has enabled our customers to increase rapid response of health services for at risk
populations based on disease threat indicators. The Health Analytics Predictive Models
allowed health care providers to customize a childs immunization or medications based on
predictive health analytics using family medical history and risk/exposure assessments.

Business Analytics for Better Government

Northrop Grumman IT Solutions

Northrop Grumman currently uses analytics internally to improve its business processes.
Gartner recently conducted a maturity assessment of our internal Business Analytics system.
Gartner found that Northrop Grumman faced many of the same challenges internally that its
customers do in implementing analytics, such as user acceptance and creating an analytic
culture. We used a hybrid implementation of two analytics tools to meet the large variety of
needs of our information consumers. Through deployment of tools and technologies that can
reach a larger population of users, Northrop Grumman is in a better position to mature its
analytics to predictive analysis and automated business processes.

Our Vision for Better Government through Business

Analytics
Today, many companies and most federal agencies view Analytics tools primarily as reporting
tools. They see the tools as nothing more than a powerful and flexible way to visualize and
distribute data through their organization or to their partners, suppliers, employees, and
customers. That view is but a starting point for business analytics, as the ability within the
technology is much more powerful; market trends and analyst views point to these areas as
becoming a critical operation of business very soon. Just two decades ago, enterprise
resource planning (ERP) systems were considered cutting edge technology for companies to
build into their operational structure. In todays business climate, if an organization does not
have an ERP to help monitor and forecast business health and track business results, they are
at an extreme disadvantage and are likely to falter against the competition. Analysis, and not
just reports, is fast approaching the ubiquity that will make it a necessity in order to maintain a
market presence. Leading analysts envision the future of business analytics as building,

Business Analytics for Better Government

measuring and improving business processes around the results of comprehensive data
analysis.1
Unfortunately, creating, integrating and effectively deploying a business analytics solution for
an organization is not like flipping a switch. Data models, however, are a form of analysis that
can produce noticeable results in a relatively short period of time. In some cases, a data
warehouse can jump start an analytics solution, but it is not required. A successful
implementation requires (like any Analytics effort) collective support from the entire
organization. Functional experts and the business owners must be engaged in order to ensure
that performance metrics are properly defined and that factors that may impact it are identified.
Technical experts must be involved in developing the data models for information that will
ultimately be used to impact improved performance metrics. Leadership must be vested and
actively participate in analytics to ensure there is a cultural buy in for the use of business
analytics and that the results of the data models are applied to gain results.
Northrop Grumman also assists customers in completing an Analytics maturity assessment.
The assessment looks at things like user adoption, centralized data sources, and support in
comparison to Northrop
Grummans and industry
leaders best practices to
determine the maturity of
an organizations
Analytics solution. The
maturity assessment can
also be a tool for
organizations to develop
a roadmap to reach
robust, powerful
business analytics. As a
leading federal systems
integrator, Northrop
Grumman can help
customers find a balance
Figure 2: Our Business Analytics Maturity Model
in maximizing best
practices from private industry while tailoring the solution to meet the unique needs of
government.
Predictive data models are a key component to the Northrop Grumman Business Analytics
package and allow our team to isolate high impact populations for a particular performance
metric and maximize or minimize their impact on that metric, depending on whether their
impact is positive or negative. For example, Northrop Grumman, in partnership with tier one
technology providers, integrated a system that improves the detection and prevention of fraud
and waste. Without leveraging such technology, the amount of claims data is far too large to
have a human investigate each case. To examine a use case, set a control group by selecting
a set of claims randomly and find about a 2 percent fraudulent claim rate. Using our predictive
data modeling techniques, you identify claims that have a high probability of being fraudulent
1

Deep, Streaming Analytics: Premises, Promises & Perils. Marc Demarest, TDWI Solution Summit, September
2011.
Business Analytics for Better Government

(based on fraudulent claim data from the past), and those that are most likely not fraudulent
(statistically speaking). By focusing on the claims that have a high fraudulent probability, you
increase the amount of fraudulent claims discovered prior to payout. By eliminating claims that
have a very low probability of fraudulence, you decrease manpower costs by lowering the
number of claims that need to be reviewed, thus increasing operational efficiencies. Market
research has shown this method using data models can result in a five-fold increase in cost
savings.

Our approach: Robust Solutions, Incremental Dividends,

Rapid Results
Northrop Grumman recognizes that federal market customers have more complex,
operational, and collaborative challenges than most private sector organizations. Our expertise
in delivering human capital management systems combined with our experience in complying
with federal operating requirements, policies and standards provides Northrop Grumman with
unique insight into solving key operational challenges that are not typically factored within the
private sector. As the government continues to increase its focus on controlling and reducing
costs while maintaining quality citizen services for its taxpayers, leveraging investments in
existing IT portfolio investments is and will remain a high priority for federal market customers.
With our experience, knowledge and understanding of federal customer technology portfolios
and cross-government operational initiatives, Northrop Grumman is well positioned to help the
government maximize the
benefits of existing
technologies while
blending innovative,
standards-based
technology to achieve
greater efficiencies and
drive operational
Figure 3: Our Approach to Business Analytics
improvement.
Northrop Grumman not only assists federal customers in analyzing their current processes and
systems, and stewards much of this legacy knowledge, but leads the way to realizing their
vision by crafting a solid end-to-end technology solution that can address all areas of the
business analytics technology framework. Business analytics is only as good as its input data,
so we consult to consider available infrastructure and delivery options that can best meet
customer business goals and objectives. In the analytics space, we subscribe to incremental,
multi-threaded, Agile implementation methods that facilitate ongoing, immediate value, and
maximize user collaboration and participation. Some of the key themes in our methods include:
Concurrent rather than linear development. We have teams delivering value on all
aspects of the complete solution. Using critical path and a variety of collaboration
techniques to enhance overall communication, our data warehouse team builds the
warehouse at the same time the data management team prepares the data
management structures, while the business analytics developers prototype dashboards
and reports to facilitate end-user adoption and requirements compliance. This enables
our team to develop tangible artifacts for rapid user consumption while also improving
Business Analytics for Better Government

the quality of the solution and enabling faster realization of operational benefits. Using
shorter, more visible lifecycles, our approach lowers technical risk and saves our
customers from excessive expenses that typically result from more traditional linear
software development lifecycles.
Leverage existing investments. In order to deliver the best value possible to our
customers, we:
o
o
o
o

take inventory of the current infrastructure;

perform fit-gap analyses against requirements;
perform an analysis of alternatives;
research best practices to determine what will be the most cost-effective longterm solution; and
o analyze data that is already being collected in both relational and unstructured
formats.
Thanks to private industry becoming early adopters of
Business Intelligence and Analytics technology, our
federal customers can avoid many of the early
struggles these implementations had encountered
along the way. Northrop Grummans approach is built
on industry best practices, interoperability, and rapidly
evolving open standards which have already
produced significant operational benefits and
competitive advantage for organizations in the fields
of marketing, finance and health. Our approach develops solutions that will meet the unique
needs of our federal customers and delivers a product that places usable analytics in front of
business decision makers using highly collaborative, Agile methods. Northrop Grumman
partners with your organization to develop data marts for analytics and optimizes the model by
using the first wave of analytics to produce more robust data marts. Technical upgrades are
engineered to be transparent and mostly seamless to the user community, vastly eliminating
business disruption, while enabling operational improvement.
Once reporting analytics and data marts are institutionalized and widely adopted, our team will
help your organization implement predictive analysis and data mining techniques to further
advance your portfolio. This allows our customers to make forward-looking, proactive decisions
based on current trends and market drivers. Our predictive analytics provides customers
statistical data to back up strategic decision making and carefully shift away from gut feeling.
Using these types of statistics have proven very successful in making positive operational
impacts in the private industry. Some of the top organizations across the private sector have
cited widespread adoption of business analytics as key to their overall success.
Our products, services and specialized methodology are tailored to meet our federal
customers missions. Leaning on our expertise in human capital management systems and
federal domain knowledge, we provide analytics that make a difference in key areas. First, we
use trends in the federal workforce, population demographics, educational trends, and the
workforce at large to determine what skill sets and competencies may become scarce in the
future. Our customers can use this information to ramp up training and hiring programs to
target shifting needs.

Business Analytics for Better Government

We have several applications of these techniques in the Workforce Planning arena. We can
identify customer employees who have a high probability of either leaving or staying, which is
data customers can use to focus efforts on retaining essential talent. Using data identifying
employees that are likely to leave, our customers can chose
to ramp up efforts to acquire a replacement long before an
employees resignation is received. Since acquiring a
clearance for a new hire is a lengthy and costly process,
this is extremely valuable for customers requiring a cleared
workforce. We also use our techniques to assist customers
in cultivating a balanced high performing workforce by
identifying areas of likely growth or loss in federal resources
over time across a variety of demographics, skills and
competencies.
These techniques serve as a valuable commodity for several areas of operation across the
federal market. For example, since compliance is a major concern for many customers, it is
important to identify potential shortfalls using predictive analysis, which will address risks
before they become problems. Another example is mission analytics. Data mining can be
applied to intelligence collection databases putting collectors in better position to gain better
intelligence from potential threats. Just as in the private sector, predictive analytics can provide
government the ability to manage its budget accurately. This provides stronger analysis of
potential budget cuts and the downstream impact on available resources, and helps to reduce
federal spending. Lastly, on large programs, predictive analysis could help managers identify
potential risks before they become operational challenges, such as the loss of critical
resources, emerging or increasing needs for new skill sets, and a variety of surge support
events. This enables managers to take proactive steps required to mitigate risk, saving the
significant time and effort associated with addressing risks after they become operational
challenges.
Northrop Grummans experience with analytics, data mining, data integration, and federal
customer operations make us uniquely prepared to implement the technologies that can solve
a variety of operational challenges for the Federal Government. Our organization and its
collection of top talent, methods and best practices makes us best positioned to meet specific
challenges our federal customers will continue to face. Our vision is to expand data mining and
predictive analysis into several areas of federal operations to drive significant operational
efficiencies and yield higher quality government services, adhering to our corporate mission of
the value of performance. Over the past 50 years, Northrop Grumman has established itself
as a leader in innovative federal technology implementations and we will continue this trend by
leading business analytics to drive measurable results and better government.

Business Analytics for Better Government