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Air Force Achieves Mission Success with Enterprise Low-Code

Scott Dulman
August 26, 2019

Robins Air Force Base Agile Software Factory

The United States Air Force's senior leadership has set a goal to shave a collective 100 years from schedules in its acquisition programs. The Air Force has achieved significant early success, especially in low-code software development. Some application development projects that formerly took years are now deployed in weeks or months.

Robins Air Force Base (AFB) has embraced market-leading low-code development tools and industry best practices to quickly and cost-effectively design, develop, and deploy applications that help them accomplish their mission. The 402nd Software Maintenance Group (SMXG) is a digital transformation leader with its rapid adoption of low-code development, Agile, and DevOps technologies. The 402nd SMXG has demonstrated the scalability, speed, and security of low-code apps through:

    • Supporting 25,000 users on a modern digital platform

    • Developing more than 40 low-code applications

Software Scalability, Simplicity, and Speed

Robins AFB built its first low-code application, the Hazard Reporting Tool (HRT), on the Appian platform. Staff developed the solution within the 402nd SMXG in collaboration with the Safety Office, the Environmental Safety and Occupational Hazard team, the American Federation of Government Employees, and the Voluntary Protection Program. The SMXG deployed the HRT app to 20,000 users in a single day.

The HRT app resides on every employee desktop on the Base. The application unifies data across legacy systems to give a complete dossier on each case for better decision-making. The system captures every action and document, providing a comprehensive audit trail. The HRT gives Air Force leadership visibility across the Base about potential hazards, case status, and staff response.

Robins AFB recognized the endless possibilities of the low-code platform and SMXG organized a Center of Excellence. So far, the Center has advised, developed, and deployed more than 40applications, including those for project management, peer reviews, quality assurance, auditing, squadron dashboards, purchase approvals, and talent management.

Appian's Commitment to Cloud Security, Availability, and Scalability

The Air Force trusts Appian for its mission critical applications because we hold more certifications than any low-code or BPM platform vendor. The secure and scalable architecture of Appian's platform complies with industry standards and certifications including FedRAMP, FISMA, IL4, HIPAA, SOC 2, and SOC 3. The architecture provides key reliability features including data redundancy, high availability, and disaster recovery.

Appian is the software platform for the U.S. Air Force Contracting-Information Technology (CON-IT) program, a mission-critical system hosted in an Impact Level 4 (IL4) cloud. The low-code solution replaces seven legacy contract writing systems and standardizes acquisition contract writing across the Air Force, driving efficiency and reducing costs. Learn more about Appian as a managed service in an IL4 secure cloud and our partnership with Smartronix, Inc. in this federal cloud security solution brief.

Customers trust Appian because the platform is the most scalable low-code solution. Recently Appian tested the platform on several different sized server architectures. The performance tests demonstrated the scalability of applications with high volumes of processes and rules. Download The Next Summit: Process and Rule Scalability with Appian white paper and learn about the key performance tests and metrics.

Learn More About Low-Code Development in the U.S. Air Force

Join Bryant Stevens from the 402nd Software Maintenance Group and Derek Kissos from Appian for an upcoming webinar. Bryant and Derek will discuss how Robins AFB selected an enterprise low-code platform to rapidly modernize its operations and highlight some of the applications developed with the platform.

Register for this webinar hosted by Government Executive to learn how the 402nd Software Maintenance Group is deploying secure and scalable applications in the Air Force infrastructure. The panel will explain why an enterprise low-code platform is essential for DevOps and Agile projects.