Maxwell AFB-Gunter Annex, AL — A4’s Enhanced Technical Information Management System (ETIMS) iOS app was successfully delivered to CloudOne via the Business and Enterprise Systems Product Innovation (BESPIN) team’s Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline on 25 October 2022. The launch of the app allows Air Force Technicians to do their jobs better, safer, faster, and more efficiently.
The ETIMS app serves as a database for electronic Technical Orders (TOs). TOs are military orders that provide step-by-step instructions Airmen must follow for the operation and maintenance of Air Force systems and equipment. TOs ensure sortie generation rates, weapon system and mission reliability, and the safety of Airmen.
When the ETIMS team was integrated into BESPIN’s ecosystem in April, they brought their own developers aboard to utilize BESPIN’s resources, such as our security team, continuous Authority to Operate (cATO) and our CI/CD pipeline.
BESPIN’s cATO and CI/CD pipeline ensures rapid and secure delivery to a multitude of software environments. The DevSecOps process was designed to leverage pipeline automation and streamline delivery into Cloud One, which reduces the security approval process from the traditional 6-plus months to only a few days.
Throughout the development process, BESPIN’s security team worked with the ETIMS team to evaluate security requirements and complete security checks with the intent to reduce delivery friction while still managing risks.
Historically, large warehouses stored numerous copies of paper TOs that could each be hundreds of pages long. The TO ordering process was error prone and the time to receive TOs was too long, resulting in significant safety and maintenance concerns.
Communicating important changes from maintainers that impacted safety took 209 days on average to process and more than two months to distribute new or updated TOs. Addressing these deficiencies in TO management was essential to shorten distribution timeframes and improve readiness.
“A Windows version of ETIMS was developed and deployed in 2008, but the emergence of iOS devices, like iPads, prompted the need for another version of the application,” said Mr. Greg Zelinski, the Tech Data Requirements Lead for the ETIMS team.
ETIMS proudly supports about 178,000 users at more than 300 sites worldwide. It also supports approximately 60,000 eTOs, 30,000 eTools, 14,000 paper TOs, and more than 13,000 TO libraries across the Air Force Enterprise.
