Category: Uncategorized

NIH SharePoint Modernization

Posted on by Alix Ganga

Congratulations to LCG’s team at NIH’s Office of Strategic Coordination (OSC), who diligently worked over three years to modernize and upgrade 35 SharePoint sites from the legacy on-premises SharePoint 2019 platform to SharePoint Online. Our team developed custom interactive and responsive components using SharePoint Framework (SPFx), React, and TypeScript, allowing seamless integration with SharePoint data and services for a personalized and modern user experience.

When modernizing legacy tech, the act of translating old functionality to new frameworks remains essential to delivering on customer needs. The team attempted to make the custom SharePoint Online site more functional, while easing the end-user transition by retaining familiar SharePoint 2019 elements.

The team integrated features such as breadcrumb navigation, created reusable component libraries to modularize and design site architecture, developed User Acceptance Testing (UAT) cases, and addressed challenges such as custom actions not being able to translate 1:1 from SharePoint 2019 to SharePoint Online.

The following team members worked directly on this migration project and received high satisfaction marks from NIH’s OSC:

  • Sreepallavi Thota
  • Raja Ganapathi
  • Rupinder Kaur
  • Sumitra Sampath
  • Fern Wildesen

Ensuring Success in NIDCD’s Return to Physical Workspace Effort

Posted on by Alix Ganga

Many workplaces faced new challenges transitioning to virtual workspaces during the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID control methods have changed throughout the past three years, meaning that organizations may now find themselves evolving their workspaces to meet critical goals. LCG teammates played important roles on the Return to Work team at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), receiving the coveted NIDCD Director’s Recognition award. 

The Return to Work team at the National institutes of Health (NIH) is a program to support the transition back to a physical workspace. Many departments needed to create flexible workspaces to welcome employees back to a hybrid work environment, while also being mindful of the needs of employees. 

LCG’s Return to Work team at NIDCD coordinated and established hoteling spaces, refit client offices for in-person use, and acclimated users to the new hybrid workplace. The following LCG teammates on the Return to Work team received the NIDCD Director’s Recognition:

  • Dan Berger
  • Christopher Adams
  • Brandon Gomez
  • Hemalben Harkhani
  • Naveen Lanke
  • Dagmawi Jiru

Back It Up – The Importance of Redundancy

Posted on by Alix Ganga

World Backup Day is March 31st, 2023. It’s a great day to remind ourselves of the importance of backing up personal and professional data. From family photos to important presentations, you’ve likely felt the pain of forgetting to do backups.

“Failure is Always an Option” – Adam Savage

Whether you are a MythBuster or a software developer, there is no shortage of issues that can result in data loss. Software bugs, malware, environmental factors, accidental deletion. Without a robust backup solution, your data is constantly at risk. There are several types of backup options that can mitigate this risk. Let’s take a look at a few of these that can help maintain access to your important files no matter what gets thrown your way. 

3-2-1… Countdown for Successful Data Protection

Having one backup copy of your critical work data is sometimes not enough. Let’s assume you back up your files or your application data to an external drive, and keep this drive in your home office or work desk. If your laptop fails, you have a backup copy for immediate recovery. If a water pipe bursts in your home, or there’s an issue at your desk onsite, then your computer and the external drive backup will likely be destroyed. This is a good reason to keep at least two copies of your critical data with one copy residing in an offsite location. Examples of offsite locations include simply saving to the cloud or even using an infrastructure datacenter whose specialty is housing backup data. 

OneDrive – One terrific offsite solution is Microsoft’s OneDrive. If you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, you may have access to 1 TB or terabyte of OneDrive cloud storage. OneDrive can be used to backup specific data but can also be set up to backup all your local folders such as documents, downloads, and desktop automatically. This “set it and forget it” configuration means your data is stored in the cloud in the event something happens to your PC. This approach has the added benefit of giving you access to your files anytime and anywhere. For more information, simply access Microsoft’s OneDrive backup instructions online.

Even with the redundancy offered by a large company such as Microsoft, it’s a good idea to backup your cloud data and email to a third-party provider for even more offsite availability. Whether you are a web developer at a federal agency or a systems administrator at a business like LCG, our data easily climbs into multiple terabytes of cloud data. Having a robust strategy is critical to personal and business success. 

Remember – your backup strategy is only successful when implemented, so save your work today. 

Hold on let me go save this…

Daniel Trencher is the Systems Administrator in IT and Network Support at LCG

LCG Passes ISO 9001:2015 Surveillance Audit, Recognizing the Quality of its Performance

Posted on by Alix Ganga

LCG has successfully passed its ISO 9001:2015 Surveillance Audit of the Quality Management System (QMS) validating a commitment to standardize and maintain the highest level of quality service to customers and verifying its continuous improvement of processes.

In 2022, LCG formalized its continued commitment to quality by forming a Quality Control department which also includes Client Relationship Management (CRM). Before the creation of the Quality Control department, LCG was a small company that was attaining and maintaining quality certifications by organically applying the vision of leadership and maintaining high standards of employees.

Following best practices, the Quality Control department works closely with the Service Delivery team and the Project Management Office (PMO) to ensure customer service quality remains high. At the same time, they work across the company to implement processes on an ongoing process to document and improve service delivery and operations.

Achieving ISO 9001 certification is intensive with annual audits to show the company has practices in place which demonstrate the company’s level of quality. The International Organization of Standards (ISO) provides a library of standards to fulfill which the company then fits to its goals and vision.

The current certification was awarded in 2020 and is maintained every year through a “surveillance audit” during which specific areas of the company are selected for audit. The following year, a different area of the company is audited. A member of the executive leadership team is present throughout the audit.

LCG will undergo a full audit of its 2023 quality performance in 2024.

In the words of Carlene Carter, LCG’s Vice President of Quality & CRM, “We work from the inside out, maintaining a solid internal infrastructure, reducing waste, and increasing productivity. Our Service Delivery teams work on improving our customers’ experiences every day. We monitor our success through customer surveys and CPARs. We also socialize the importance of maintaining high standards, have a company-wide Process Improvement Committee, and even run mock audits with heads of departments.”

The company performed exceptionally well with LCG passing the Surveillance Audit with zero non-conformities at any level.

Engineering at All Stages of the Health IT Lifecycle 

Posted on by Alix Ganga

This Engineering Week, LCG recognizes the contributions engineering has made to Health IT and biomedical research support.

LCG helps accelerate digital government strategy and programs so that agencies and their critical systems can stay ahead of the curve in a rapidly shifting digital landscape. From initial project conception to finished product, the process of development would be nothing without the expertise that many engineers employ. Innovation is crafted by decisions that shape the pathway from idea to reality. Through the work of LCG’s many engineers, we enable more efficient, productive, and speedier customer transformations. 

For instance, in the design and development of Health IT solutions, engineers at LCG are there at every phase from design and development, to creating interfaces, developing algorithms, and designing databases. Adding on top the existing complexity, the engineering team then integrates systems to be sure that all components are working together seamlessly. 

With many Health IT products outputting large amounts of data, there is also a need for analysis and insight. Through the phases of development, engineers working alongside healthcare professionals can ensure that designs of databases, algorithms, and management of key records allow for robust data analysis. This enables healthcare professionals to make informed decisions about diagnosis, treatment, and care management.

As with any sensitive data, cybersecurity is of utmost importance. All products must be secured to protect patient data from theft in any form. Cybersecurity engineers are responsible for safeguarding vulnerable data and to increase the security profile of the organization. 

Finally, to ensure regulatory compliance and that the solution created in development is viable, engineers must perform rigorous testing, including designing and executing test plans, system verification and validation, and conducting risk assessments.  

At every step, engineers work closely with healthcare professionals following the Federal government’s standards.  By working together to design, develop, and test, engineers are involved at each stage so solutions are guaranteed safe, effective, and fulfill the ever-changing needs of Health IT and biomedical research. With the advent of advanced machine learning and generative artificial intelligence models LCG is testing and incorporating emerging technologies to modernize, integrate, and create whatever our clients need to embrace innovation’s future.

Srinivas Kothuri is Vice President, Innovation and Digital Engineering Services at LCG.

Modernizing Legacy Data: AudBase

Posted on by Alix Ganga

Building customer-focused solutions aren’t just buzz words at successful companies – it’s part of the corporate DNA. It starts at the top with strong leadership vision and it multiplies across departments with employees breaking down silos to serve the company and customer missions.

A recent example comes from our client, the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) – one of 27 Institutes and Centers at NIH – where Ravi Kosuri of LCG recently received the Director’s Award for his work on NIDCD’s Audiology project.

NIDCD’s Audiology project was a small part of a very large project the LCG team was working on in 2022.

The larger project had an extensive project management plan with timelines, tasks, and deliverables identified upfront with the customer. An immediate need was identified to provide NIDCD Audiology staff with a way to read and process data from the AudBase system.

The team’s approach was quickly shifted to progressive elaboration by LCG’s project manager, Ashley Stanton. Progressive elaboration is an iterative Agile project management technique that allows for a project plan to evolve as information is gathered. This approach, as well as its short turnaround time, made the AudBase project very unusual from the start.

Even when the pressure was on to rapidly turn the new project, time had to be spent in the early days determining the foundational nature of the challenge. Since the service delivery team was deeply embedded in the project, they worked with customer stakeholders to understand their needs. Multiple technical options and their impact were researched with cost and risk analyses so the team could recommend the path forward. Ravi worked collaboratively with the developer, third-party vendors, and government employees to implement a cloud-based database solution that met NIDCD’s needs on time and under budget.

By conceptualizing the best solution and accomplishing the client’s goals and objectives on the tight timeline, Ravi’s team successfully delivered a:

  • Web service interface (Azure-hosted API interface with AudBase)
  • Data transformation engine (JSON parser)
  • Cloud-based relational database
  • Accessible interface for third-party applications (such as RedCap, QlikSense, or Power BI)

Not only did Ravi receive the NIH Director’s award but the entire LCG team was recognized by the Center for Information Technology (CIT) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as one of the pioneers in using the NIH Azure Science and Technology Research Infrastructure for Discovery, Experimentation, and Sustainability (STRIDES) Initiative.

The end result is a new concept and technique for conducting and supporting biomedical and behavioral research and research training in the normal and disordered processes of hearing, balance, smell, taste, voice, speech, and language.

Ravi Kosuri is LCG’s principal architect supporting the life science advancements in biomedical research at NIDCD.

Enhance User Experience with Focused Self-Service Metrics

Posted on by Alix Ganga

IT service management (ITSM) maturity and adoption of best practices varies across Federal IT organizations. Over the years, visionary Federal leaders with insight into the value and benefits along with the ability to influence acquisition strategies have enabled the adoption of ITSM tools and practices in many agencies. Industry partners assist in advising, implementing, and advancing ITSM capabilities for greater efficiency, effectiveness, productivity, and improved user satisfaction. 

Self-service (Tier 0, Level 0) capabilities enable users to solve issues without contacting a Service Desk. Portals implementing self service capabilities contain features such as:   

  • Service Catalog with Service Request functions 
  • Incident Ticket creation 
  • Knowledge Base with reference documents, tutorials,  
  • Collaboration Forums 
  • Chat functions with live or virtual agents 

Incorporating self-service capabilities as part of the Service Desk creates a significant enabler of improved user satisfaction and productivity. Traditional Service Desk metrics fail to measure the value and benefits of self-service contact channels. Traditional Service Desk metrics primarily focus on call volume and agent productivity.   Introducing self service capabilities requires new metrics for monitoring adoption and informing decisions. 

Careful definition, collection, monitoring, and reporting of self-service specific metrics have shown: 

  • Increased availability and efficiency 
  • Faster incident resolution 
  • Faster request fulfillment 
  • Productivity improvements 
  • Reduced costs 
  • Happier users 

Insight

Traditional Service Desk metrics fail to measure the value and benefits of self-service contact channels. 

Impact

Assess your organization’s self-service critical success factors to identify the appropriate measures for continual evaluation and monitoring. 

A Deep Dive 

Awareness and usability influence the realization of these benefits. Metrics provide evidence for recognizing the benefits of self service capabilities, while also providing the insight necessary to know when an organization can make improvements. An organization need to measure the Self Service capabilities to understand it’s true effect on the overall Service Desk experience. Exhibit 1 suggests a few new metrics to consider when adopting self-service capabilities. 

Exhibit 1. Potential CSFs and KPIs for Assessing Self-service Results 

CSF KPI Desired Trend 
Reduces Costs Cost per Contact Downward 
Users Find Solutions Self-Service Success Rate 
Self-Service Failure Rate		Upward 
Downward
Faster Than Phone or Email Fulfillment Time Downward or Stable 
Meets Needs Satisfaction Upward or Stable 

CSF: Reduces Costs 

Tracking ‘cost per call’ provides valuable information for a primarily telephone-based Service Desk. The introduction of self-service capabilities creates an omnichannel Service Desk and triggers the need to track costs associated with each contact method.  

Insightful reports show cost trends for each channel, like that shown in Exhibit 2. 

Implementing tracking for Self Service gives the accurate cost breakdown between all aspects of the Service Desk. An organization might see a reduction of cost across the average cost per contact.  

Exhibit 2. Example Cost per Contact Trend Report 

CSF: Users Find Solutions 

KPI: Success RateKPI: Failure Rate

Measuring the success rate for users leveraging self service capabilities to track incidents and requests provides valuable, but only partial, insight. Consider the situation where only a small portion of users achieve success in finding solutions using self-service, but a sizable portion of users with the same issue call the Service Desk instead.  

Intuitively, one might assume a directly inverse relationship between self-service support channel success and failure rates. However, the scope of each metric is significantly different and requires careful attention to the details.

CSF: Faster Than Phone or Email

Users naturally and consistently return to effective, efficient, and successful methods of accomplishing tasks. When users perceive self-service as faster and easier than calling or emailing the Service Desk, adoption increases and improves benefit realization. 

KPI: Fulfillment Time
KPI: Fulfillment Time

CSF: Meets Needs 

KPI: Satisfaction

In addition to satisfying the needs of users, a self-service implementation must also satisfy the sponsor’s need for realizing a return on the investment. For this reason, Service Managers must monitor both the user’s and the sponsor’s perception of value delivered by the self-service channels  

User experience metrics provide information about these perceptions and require capture across all support channels. Monitoring trends assist in identifying pain points for further investigation as well as raising awareness of needed course adjustments. 

Continual assessment of sponsor perception assists in proactively responding to concerns to making necessary adjustments.

Looking Forward 

Establishing a baseline set of self-service metrics enables continual monitoring as the service organization explores and implements customer experience (CX) advancements such as chatbots, Virtual Assistants, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Artificial Intelligence (AI). 

The implementation of self-service capabilities significantly influences traditional Service Desk metrics causing a need to adjust expectations and targets. A future article will dive into how self-service should affect trends in Service Desk metrics like lowering First Call Resolution Rates (FCRR) and why that should be the desired affect.

LCG Receives ISO 9001:2015 Accreditation

Posted on by Daniel Trencher

LCG’s commitment to quality, customer satisfaction, process adherence, and continual process improvement was validated recently by our organization receiving the ISO 9001:2015 Certification. This certification further reinforces LCG Quality Management and Assurance priorities, demonstrating conformity to quality management requirements. 

LCG CEO Conrad Kenley states, “The ISO 9001:2015 accreditation is a big deal.  It positions LCG as not only a high value IT solutions provider to our customers, but also assures them of our commitment to high quality standards.  This is an important step in our growth and will be a plus for our competitiveness in the marketplace.” 

LCG has brought precision Information & Technology (I&T) Services to achieve mission capability for Federal Organizations since the early 1990s.  The ISO 9001:2015 Certification optimizes LCG’s ability to bring performance success by applying quality management principles to enhance customer satisfaction consistently, allowing our customers to achieve predictable and evidence-based results. 

Presented below is the Formal Press Release from the Performance Review Institute Registrar: 

PRI Registrar recognizes LCG, Inc. for its commitment to continual improvement in their management system 

LCG, Inc. received accreditation for demonstrating their ongoing commitment to quality by satisfying customer requirements and industry specifications.  

“LCG, Inc. has demonstrated its commitment to world class quality by implementing and becoming certified to the ISO 9001 standard. They have joined an elite number of organizations worldwide who have achieved certification to this globally recognized quality standard,” said Randy Daugharthy, Director of the Registrar Program at the Performance Review Institute Registrar.  “PRI Registrar is proud to partner with LCG, Inc. in this accomplishment and look forward to continued support of their objective of quality excellence.” 

About PRI Registrar 

Since 1995, Performance Review Institute Registrar, a management systems registrar, has helped a multitude of organizations achieve and realize their true potential through the development of management systems and quality systems certification. As an affiliate of SAE International, PRI Registrar is a not-for-profit organization, uniquely motivated with a mission and commitment to raise the bar in any industry it serves. To learn more information, visit www.priregistrar.org or contact PRI Registrar at priregistrar@p-r-i.org today. 

LCG CEO and Founder Conrad Kenley, Recipient of the 2021 Wilbur Parker Alumni Award

Posted on by Daniel Trencher

LCG Founder and CEO Conrad Kenley is the honorary recipient of the 2021 Wilbur Parker Distinguished Alumni Award from the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. The Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) and Alumni Affairs at the Johnson Graduate School presented the award during its 11th Annual Johnson Diversity Alumni Awards ceremony, held virtually on Feb 18, 2021 

Wilbur Parker was the first African-American MBA to Graduate in 1950 from Cornell and the inaugural recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from Johnson’s Black Graduate Business Association in 2003, subsequently named in his honor. The Wilbur Parker Award recognizes African-American alumni from the Johnson Graduate School of Management who demonstrate outstanding professional achievement and commitment to their community. 

Conrad started his career at Arthur Andersen as an auditor after graduating from the Cornell Johnson Business School in 1975 with an MBA in engineering. Conrad has held several Executive Leadership positions at multiple firms, including American Express, MCI Communications, and Merrill Lynch. Conrad founded LCG in 1990 with the objective of brining innovative & emerging technologies for business operations supporting Federal Missions. In his award acceptance speech, Conrad quotes: 

LCG CEO Conrad Kenley

“I urge you to think about how you will stay agile, innovate, and evolve,” said Kenley. “One thing is for certain: Change is inevitable, and you will need to keep preparing yourself for further change.” 

Conrad also quoted: 

“You will need a work/life balance, you can’t get any more time and have you a lot of living to do.” 

Conrad is deeply involved in multiple charities supporting the Boys & Girls Clubs of Sarasota, FL, the American Heart Association, and the NIH Children’s Inn.  

Conrad has a passion for Jazz Music, history and education. He has been on the DC Jazz Festival (DCJF) board of directors since 2006 and as Chairman since 2016.  DCJF is a non- profit organization bringing affordable Jazz  education and performances to the Washington, DC area for students of all ages.  

Click here to watch a recording of the 11th Annual Diversity Alumni Awards ceremony.

References: 

LCG’s Cybersecurity Program enables customers to focus on their mission rather than on information technology

Posted on by Daniel Trencher

By: Pamela Dillard, CISSP, CAP, PSM1

LCG enables its Federal customers to build FISMA compliant Cybersecurity Programs from the ground up.  Once established, these programs facilitate NIST-compliant security Authorizations and Continuous Monitoring.  Because we maintain insight into the latest Federal guidelines for Cybersecurity we can develop Cybersecurity Programs and Authorization Packages that are FISMA, NIST, and Agency compliant.

Our turnkey approach to Cybersecurity Program development has enabled us to consistently apply protection across customer systems and networks, no matter how diverse or complex, to ensure compliance with an ever-expanding list of Federal Cybersecurity directives. Our approach has enabled our world class health and medical research customers to focus on their mission rather than on information technology.

Our proven method eloquently balances what are seemingly competing objectives—ensuring cybersecurity while employing best practices to reduce costs and level of effort.  Our streamlined methodology is hierarchical, inheriting as much as possible from existing organizational policy and security controls.  The Cybersecurity Programs developed by LCG integrate Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance into an holistic, coordinated program that saves our Federal customers the enormous time and expense of addressing each cybersecurity mandate separately. 

The impact of the LCG method results in an enterprise-wide Cybersecurity Program that consistently protects our customer’s systems and data while keeping them compliant with complex and evolving standards set forth by FISMA and other regulatory directives.

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