Success Stories

Unites States Department of Agriculture

Project
Research, Education, and Economic Information System (REEIS) was developed for USDA, National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) in response to the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform (FAIR) Act of 1996. The FAIR Act required the development and implementation of a state-of-the-art comprehensive, integrated system for monitoring and evaluating research, education, and extension activities conducted or supported by the USDA. The project was expanded to include the Leadership Management Dashboard (LMD), which was needed to fill a critical void for interactive management reporting at NIFA. The LMD application provides State Partners, Agency Executives, National Program Leaders, Program Specialists, and Program Assistants at NIFA with actionable business information in a format that is both intuitive and insightful.

Challenge
USDA, NIFA contracted Barquin Solutions to design,develop, implement, and maintain REEIS and LMD.

Result
A highly successful and comprehensive, integrated system for monitoring and evaluating research, education, and extension activities conducted or supported by the USDA and the LMD Application, providing actionable data to the NIFA Leadership Team. Since 2002, Barquin has provide REEIS major enhancements, including implementation of Heat Map functionality, addition of new data marts, and enhanced searching using Google Search Appliance. Additionally, a NIFA Reporting Portal that allows single sign on functionality, allowing users to navigate between different applications seamlessly has also been delivered.

CALIBRE – Army Corps of Engineers

Project
As part of its sustainability strategy, the U.S. Army, through the Army Corps of Engineers, launched an effort to manage their energy consumption at the enterprise level. The ultimate objective of MDMS is to enable the Army to reduce energy consumption and meet its energy security goals. At the heart of MDMS lies a robust data warehouse and business intelligence environment (DW/BIE) to provide the reporting, analytic and predictive capabilities necessary for its users to effectively determine cost savings, monitor consumption and generate tenant billing for each Army installation.

Challenge
Barquin Solutions was contracted by CALIBRE to design, develop, and implement the Army Meter Data Management System (MDMS).

Result
A highly robust MDMS DW/BIE system that provides the “actionable energy intelligence” the Army needs to meet its sustainability goals.

United States Department of Agriculture

Project
Research, Education, and Economics Reporting (REEport) is the USDA, National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) system to be used by U.S. States for the completion and submission of documentation for NIFA funded grants, projects, and activities. The REEport system allows for a single point of data collection on NIFA funded grants. In addition, REEport implements the Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR), a standard progress report format that all Federal research agencies are required to use. REEport also facilitates improved efficiency by using electronic workflow and collection of data in a format that allows better reporting and visibility to project accountability.

Challenge
Barquin Solutions was contracted to build the new system using open source technologies including Ruby on Rails and the Hobo framework extensions for Ruby on Rails.

Result
A new grant reporting application that increases efficiency and facilitates a single, standard method of reporting for all NIFA funded grants, projects, and activities. Throughout the lifecycle of this effort, Barquin Solutions was able to maximize return on government investments while simultaneously supporting USDA-NIFA strategic goals.