We are pleased to report that Avue has been chosen as one of the “selected offerors” to become a Shared Service Center (SSC) for the government’s Human Resources Line of Business (HR LOB)  Initiative. The selection means that Avue has met all fitness requirements and will now be considered in the final phase of the HR LOB process. We are confident that Avue’s shared service platform excels at meeting the government’s HR LOB requirements. The next round of the selection process involves several days of functional and technical demonstrations of the Avue platform to confirm its capabilities and will be held at the end of November (this week, in fact). We appreciate your continuing support of Avue and look forward to serving you soon as an “officially designated SSC” ~ as you know, this will positively impact your PMA scorecard results and requirements by OPM to migrate to an SSC. For your ease of reference, we’ve also included a copy of our news release on this topic.

As you know, the great thing about the Avue fixed price “all you can eat” subscription model is that all of our clients are always on the most current version of Avue, and we are able to constantly increase the scope and depth of the offering to our clients at no additional charge. While new feature-functionality is loaded literally every week, we do like to call to your attention those instances in which we believe something is being added that will be of particular value to you.

Avue’s new “Entry on Duty” functionality is just such a case in point. While we had planned for some time to add EOD to the Avue offering, several of our current clients expressed a more pressing need for this functionality so we have moved it up in the development priorities for near-term release. In addition, we are pleased to advise you that we are including EOD in the Recruitment, Retention, and Staffing Module (RRS) at no additional charge. Please contact your Avue representative to arrange a demonstration and discuss with you the optimal deployment strategy and timing for your organization.

To deliver enterprise-class human capital solutions to the most sophisticated customers in government means you must start with a solid foundation. Our data centers are essential to achieving highly available subscribed services and ensuring the highest levels of security. Avue’s new data centers were engineered from the ground up for mass scale hosting on an ultra reliable foundation ~ engineered for maximum reliability, efficiency, and speed. With infrastructure to spare, Avue’s new data centers will enable stable and long-term growth. With the goal of continued 99 +% service availability, the new data centers are designed to deliver highly reliable and scalable services combined with ongoing attention to physical, data, and personnel security, in a world-class, high-density IT environment that supports mission-critical human capital services.

Upgrades in the new data center include doubled capacity with completely new hardware in the web server, application server, and database layers. Using the Solaris 10 operating system on UltraSPARC systems we will see a 47 to 73 percent increase in web server performance. Additionally, new features in Solaris 10 have been optimized for this UltraSPARC IIIi-based system to further increase system speed, efficiency, and overall throughput.

In addition to improved performance and speed, benefits include:

• Fully Mirrored Staging Site ~ (San Jose Data Center) ~ We are increasing the frequency with which the production site is copied to the staging site (now every 15 minutes) and this enables us to provide you with a more comprehensive test site when you want to try out new feature/functionality and new implementations of your agency’s policies and practices.

• New Archiving Capability ~ With this data center upgrade, we are adding new Macromedia/Adobe functionality that substantially improves the quality, usability, and, notably, the security for archive files. Previews of the new archive with clients has been met with resounding approval.

• New Report Security ~ As with the new archiving process, the online reports functionality now includes a two-factor authentication process when downloads or report generation involves personal identify information. The new process, which includes RSA tokens, will be an added layer of security for those authorized officials in the agency that need to download PII data. Online reports for other users, without authorization to access PII data, will be also be back online.

• Google Search Appliance ~ New PD and applicant information search capability will also be released with this data center upgrade. We’ve added the Google Search Appliance to the data center. Using standard Google searches, you can identify and view PDs across all your agency’s files and find, view, copy, and use PDs that you have already established and classified. Applicant submittals, including the attachments as well as the application content, can also be searched using a standard Google process. There are many features associated with this functionality and we’re happy to demonstrate it for you so that you can become more familiar with how it works. One added benefit is that the search becomes ‘smarter’ the more you use it and it ‘learns’ the agency-specific terms you use and adds them to the content indexing system automatically.

• Poly-SCI Cleared DBAs and Systems Administrators ~ Our database administrators and system administrators in the new data center all have lifestyle polygraph SCI clearances. This upgrade in personnel security is especially significant for our high-security client base and provides additional capabilities in our service delivery to customers.

We’re very proud to announce our new partnership with the Council for excellence in Government. The two organizations share a common mission to strengthen public sector leadership and management. The Council is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization providing creativity and leadership in its mission to improve the performance of government and the connections between government and citizens. The Council focuses on four strategic priorities – to attract and develop the best and brightest for public service; encourage innovation and results-oriented government performance; engage citizens in government; and promote electronic government as a resource to achieve all of these goals. Its 700 members, or Principals, are business, education, and nonprofit leaders who have served in government and includes former Presidents Ford, Carter, Bush, and Clinton as honorary co-chairs.

Avue will use its workforce and technology expertise to help the Council enhance its online presence and a number of joint projects, among them, online seminars, blogs, and webcasts, social networking sites for Council leadership development programs, and online access to the Plum and Prune books for political appointees in the next administration.