The General Services Administration (GSA) has worked with the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) to launch the FAR Data Collection Payroll Pilot application, which was designed by NuAxis Innovations using an Agile and human-centered approach to software development. The pilot was launched in accordance with Section 5 of the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA), which aims to make federal spending information easily accessible to the public. Section 5 of the DATA Act requires the federal government to establish a pilot program that will help determine final recommendations for standardized reporting, the elimination of unnecessary duplication in reporting and the reduction of costs.
The FAR pilot program was implemented by NuAxis Innovations, an Agile software development contractor for the federal government. NuAxis developed the pilot using Agile best practices and open source technologies to help ensure that what is delivered meets the needs of end-users and is built in a way that maximizes learning and minimizes the risk of investment. The pilot was launched in the GSA’s cloud infrastructure, Business Services Platform.
“We are thrilled to have launched another major Agile project for the federal government,” said Raza Latif, president of NuAxis. “This project is a huge step toward modernizing federal IT programs and increasing efficiency of reporting within the government.”
The pilot aims to increase efficiency for a required, time consuming certified payroll process for government contractors. The new software is hosted online on GSA’s Business Services Platform. It is expected to substantially cut down the time to complete the entire payroll reporting process.
“This application will have a positive impact on the outdated, cumbersome certified payroll reporting processes,” said Latif. “We are excited to show how Agile development can successfully work within the federal IT environment.”
The application was built by Area330, an Agile software development unit within NuAxis. The Area330 team extended user research and interaction design initially done by 18F to create the software. They also worked through the GSA’s Lightweight Authority to Operate (L-ATO) and Section 508 compliance certifications, which are required before releasing the applications in the GSA’s cloud infrastructure. The application is built using NodeJS, Express and Angular JavaScript frameworks.
The pilot is now in the data collection and maintenance phase. As required by Section 5 of the DATA Act, the pilot must gather data from users of a centralized reporting tool over a period of 12 months. The data collected will inform OMB guidance to government agencies in regards to how financial reporting can be made more efficient.
About Area330
Area330, an Agile software development division of NuAxis Innovations, developed the FAR Data Collection Payroll Pilot application. Area330 is aligned with the Digital Services Playbook to provide solutions to the federal government that are Agile, user centric, cloud-ready, modern and open source. Area330 has a long history of Agile software development, including automated testing, automated code analysis and coverage, automated accessibility and security testing, issue tracking, CI/CD (continuous integration, continuous deployment) and shared knowledgebase. Area330’s software development expertise includes open source and modern technologies, automation servers, configuration management, security and cloud/hardware infrastructure. Their toolset includes Node, Express, AngularJS, React, Jenkins, Puppet, Cloud Foundry, Cloud.gov, Amazon Web Services (AWS), MySQL, Postgres, MsSQL, Oracle, Microsoft .Net, GitHub, Code Climate, OWASP ZAP, Pa11y, JIRA, Confluence and many others. Area330’s team members actively contribute toward open source projects with a focus on federal clients. Recent projects include:
• Opendj rest wrapper (https://www.npmjs.com/package/opendj-rest-wrapper), which was developed out of a need to help our federal clients to access directory resources on Opendj.
• fpds-atom (https://www.npmjs.com/package/fpds-atom), a library developed to help federal clients search through the FPDS.GOV ATOM feed.
• samwisejs API wrapper (https://www.npmjs.com/package/samwisejs), which provides easier access to sam.gov resources for JavaScript applications.
About NuAxis Innovations
NuAxis Innovations is a solution-driven IT infrastructure support contractor for the federal government. As a leading IT partner with proven success in large agencies – including the Department of the Interior (DOI) and the Department of Labor (DOL) – NuAxis delivers value and expertise. The company was founded in 2002 by a team of passionate technologists and now has more than 375 employees across 22 states. With 99 percent of revenue coming from prime contract work, NuAxis is an established prime contractor adept at providing continuity of operations and robust risk management and allocates resources for each contract that align with the agency’s specific requirements instead of imposing a one-size-fits-all mindset. NuAxis Innovations is composed of the highest-caliber employees and is continually expanding its portfolio of IT infrastructure support services. For more information, visit www.NuAxis.com.
