Global Transportation Network--a success story for USTRANSCOM.

In August 1996, USTRANSCOM made the Global Transportation Network (GTN) available to DOD users worldwide to provide deployment information support during the Bosnia crisis. This was done prior to the initial operating capability date because the emerging capability of GTN was already proving to be a significant leap forward for providing in-transit visibility (ITV).

Fast forward to 2007 as USTRANSCOM celebrates its 20th anniversary, and there have been many significant changes and great accomplishments in the arena of distribution, deployment, and mobility that we owe to the vision, tenacity, and dedication of many great leaders in USTRANSCOM and its transportation component commands.

Improving Effectiveness by Managing Information

Throughout the history of USTRANSCOM, there has been a consistent acknowledgement that information is the key to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the Defense Transportation System (DTS) to support the warfighter. The complexity of the mission to deploy and sustain forces anywhere in the world on a moment's notice amplifies the importance of capturing and integrating information from a wide variety of organizations, systems, and operating activities. GTN has played a crucial role in the last 10 years of the evolution of USTRANSCOM, maturing from being the single manager of the DTS to its current role as DOD's Distribution Process Owner.

Today, GTN receives data from 28 DOD transportation and distribution information systems. More than 235 commercial transportation and vendor activities provide commercial services to USTRANSCOM, providing GTN with nearly 4.5 million daily transactions. These transactions chronicle transportation and deployment requirements, record shipper and port operations events, enable Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and satellite tracking of shipments, and support troop and equipment deployments.

As the DOD continuously fields improvements for operational information systems and source data capture capabilities, more data have been integrated into GTN and the gaps in ITV have been gradually eliminated. Since its inception 11 years ago, GTN has processed more than nine billion data transactions. During that time, GTN has evolved from a system originally designed to receive three million transactions per day to its current capability, which has proven to be more than five million transactions daily.

The system has matured from its initial client-server configuration to become one of the first DOD systems of record to implement Web-based technology. GTN received the Federal CIO Council Center of Excellence for Information Technology award in 2001 for a web technology implementation that achieved savings in excess of $2.3 billion in cost avoidance and benefits.

With more than 4500 Web users worldwide and numerous customer systems that generate more than 20,000 queries daily, GTN has become an indispensable system to support the warfighter.

Solving New Challenges

Lockheed Martin continues to upgrade GTN in response to critical customer challenges. Recently, USTRANSCOM, in partnership with the DLA, completed the first of three planned product improvement releases for the GTN. These upgrades are designed to fulfill a longstanding requirement for a DOD-wide distribution data warehouse, which will be a full spectrum repository of DOD distribution-related historical data. The Motor Carrier Compliance (MCC) capability, released June 29, 2007, provides this data warehousing capability. The enhancement improves tracking of contract carrier performance against contractual standards.

The MCC capability allows US-TRANSCOM's Army component, the SDDC, and other users of the GTN to determine exactly which Tailored Transportation Contract II (TTC II) commercial truck carriers are complying with contract requirements to submit electronic status of movements. TTC II contracts are for the movement of high volume, repetitive shipments of all kinds of freight from the 19 stateside DLA depots and some of the major military service shipping activities.

This new capability enables the government to take corrective action with noncompliant carriers, leading to improved surface distribution results, better data quality, and elimination of serious gaps in the end-to-end distribution common operating picture for warfighters.

USTRANSCOM, together with its technology and industry partners, continues to seek ways to improve information systems that support deployment, distribution, and DTS operations, with the objective of providing responsive and predictably reliable support to the warfighter. As Lockheed Martin joins the nation in celebrating 20 years of USTRANSCOM, it is worthwhile to reflect on how far the organization and mission have evolved and the great strides that have been made in improving support to the warfighter. For the last 11 years, GTN, as the DOD system of record for ITV, has been a significant part of that journey and has provided the basis for many more improvements in the future.

By Vic Wald, GTN Program Mgr., Lockheed Martin