Federal Agency Automates Travel and Onboarding for Scalable Growth and Hidden Savings

The Challenge

In 2024, a major U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) agency’s intelligence and security directorate grappled with severe inefficiencies in its personnel intelligence operations. The department was inundated with over 4,500 PDF forms with nearly 1,500 related to unofficial foreign travel from civilians and more than 3,000 contractor onboarding submissions from contracting officer representatives (CORs). These forms arrived via email and required manual re-entry into internal systems, resulting in hundreds of hours lost to repetitive data entry. The error-prone process led to frequent inaccuracies, triggering a cascade of corrective emails and delays. These inefficiencies strained resources, introduced compliance risks, and slowed mission-critical onboarding workflows.

To address the agency’s urgent need for efficiency and accuracy, Phoenix Cyber conducted a comprehensive analysis of the existing process. They reviewed and documented all fields and data types from the PDF forms, mapped business workflows, and identified the licensing requirements for a scalable web-based solution. By integrating the new forms directly with the agency’s electronic personnel records, Phoenix Cyber eliminated manual data entry and reduced error rates. They implemented a robust permissions model which enabled traveling civilians to securely access the foreign travel form and allowed multiple COR groups to manage their contractor records independently. This targeted approach directly supported the agency’s goals of reducing operational overhead, improving data integrity, and accelerating onboarding timelines.

The solution developed by Phoenix Cyber included creating 36 separate CAC authenticated COR permission roles for all departments within the agency, automatically creating user accounts from the agency’s Active Directory via LDAP, and developing new web-based forms using rapid agile development on a low-code platform. They implemented multiple automations for creating and matching personnel security records, offboarding contractors, and notifying counterintelligence about traveler destinations listed on the Department of State’s watch list. Additionally, the team developed reports and dashboards for CORs and intelligence personnel and multiple email notifications for instant and scheduled contractor reports.

Phoenix Cyber delivered comprehensive project management and engineering support services to drive rapid implementation and long-term sustainability. The team defined and analyzed requirements, navigated the agency’s change control processes, developed new web-based forms within Archer IRM to replace the manual PDF workflows. They engineered complex automations, completed the extraction, transformation, and loading of historical travel data, and ensured system integrity through rigorous testing and production deployment. Phoenix Cyber facilitates the ongoing monitoring, sustainment, and tier 3 support for the system to ensure the solution remains secure, scalable and mission-ready.

To support compliance and risk management, the team updated documentation and maintained the agency’s Enterprise Mission Assurance Support Service (eMASS) records in alignment with risk management framework (RMF) standards.

The personnel security manager has continuously praised the new system, noting that the specialists working on contractor onboarding “love it and never wanted to see a hard copy PDF again.” The Chief of Staff praised the new foreign reporting tool during an all-hands meeting, and other project managers have expressed interest in having Phoenix Cyber assist in automating their current processes.

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