The AcqKnowledge System

The federal acquisition process requires acquisition professionals to investigate and correlate information on companies manually. To determine which companies meet the criteria for solicitations, they must blend metrics such as CMMI, company certifications, and a wide range of other criteria. This proposal describes a system to transform this labor-intensive process into an automated system for maintaining queries for various organizations according to a wide variety of criteria. Sources of data may range from structured databases to unstructured websites. VSTI answers the need for this system with the AcqKnowledge System. Since the sources of data vary in structure and quality, the system will incorporate a flexible automated reasoner framework along with data fusion technology. This reasoning framework allows developers to provide a range of reasoners that can harvest information from different data sources. Furthermore, to manage the wide range of potential queries, and information necessary to answer them, the system incorporates a flexible storage system that does not require a static schema. This design will enable the system to adapt to unforeseen queries that a new solicitation may require. Finally, the system will incorporate a persistence component to execute queries repeatedly, and alert acquisition specialists when a company''s information changes. BENEFIT: The AcqKnowledge System (AKS) offers several commercial and technical benefits. The AKS can easily be applied to other scenarios and application domains in both the military and civilian sectors. Within the military, the system could easily benefit supply chain management by enabling military supply officers in a forward-deployed unit to quickly identify potential sources of munitions and other goods. The AKS could also apply to intelligence analysis. By modifying the queries and sources of information, the system could monitor the organizational status of other types of organizations, including foreign governments or terrorist organizations. In the commercial sector, the AKS could naturally apply to financial institutions. The Federal Reserve could use the system to monitor the financial status of companies, receiving alerts or information about suspicious or fraudulent activity. Financial institutions could also use the system to monitor the financial health of companies for their investors. Finally, various companies could use the AKS to monitor their competitors, or identify potential partners.