The MITRE Corporation

Center for Enterprise Modernization | FFRDC

The MITRE Corporation’s Center for Enterprise Modernization (CEM) was established to focus on a specific

challenge: how to successfully transform a large government enterprise to better serve the American people.

Currently sponsored by the Department of Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service, and co-sponsored by

the Department of Veterans Affairs, CEM has been a thought leader in this area since 1998. We enrich the

public knowledge and contribute to major advances that have changed—and will continue to transform—tax

administration, government financial management, the conducting of the U.S. Census, and caring for and

providing benefits to our veterans.

Thought Leadership for Modernizing the Federal Sector

Our vision for government enterprise transformation includes helping our sponsoring agencies develop

and institutionalize new capabilities, preparing them to more successfully plan, manage, and make

critical decisions based on analysis and research-based exploration. The result is a greater frequency

of success—with reduced risk and more predictable costs—while overcoming challenges in integration,

scalability, security and privacy, and data sharing. MITRE’s significant investment in research and

innovation allows CEM to readily develop new ideas, evaluate new technologies, and transfer methods

and technical capabilities to both government and industry

A Government-Wide Resource

In addition to our work with our sponsoring agencies, CEM engages with other government

organizations to advise, inform, and partner with them to address a variety of modernization

challenges. With the consent of the IRS, CEM also can work directly with other agencies, helping

these organizations and their stakeholders effectively transform the way they do business with the

American public.

CEM’s work enables government enterprises to more efficiently acquire, integrate, manage,

and operate business and information technology systems that are critical to the services they

provide. We help our customers succeed by identifying opportunities to adopt new strategic and

management capabilities, especially in the areas of information technology. Enabling our sponsoring

agencies to serve as their own integrator has proven to reduce risk and improve the success rate

of technology adoption. It also improves the government-industry relationship by creating greater

shared responsibility in IT programs.

The MITRE Corporation www.mitre.org

© 2015 The MITRE Corporation. All rights reserved. Approved for Public Release. 15-0871. Distribution unlimited. Revised 3/27/15

The FFRDCs that MITRE operates take on tough technical challenges of national importance

and provide leading-edge, practical, and cost-effective solutions. Here are some examples of

recent MITRE achievements.

MITRE conducted an in-depth study in collaboration with the Veterans Health

Administration that will contribute to improving the health, satisfaction, and well-being

of veterans, while also making services more cost effective. The study resulted in nine

recommendations for creating a system that more efficiently delivers better access and

better outcomes. The resulting VA Healthcare Modernization Report includes steps for

achieving efficiencies, such as standardized physical healthcare delivery structures and

best practices for procuring equipment and pharmaceuticals as well as leveraging prime

vendor contracts. MITRE and the VHA completed the study in spring 2014. MITRE also

helped incorporate many of the study recommendations and findings into the VHA’s

Blueprint for Excellence, which the Secretary of Veterans Affairs published and provided

on the VHA website.

Every year the tax filing environment grows more complex with an increasing number of

new technologies, functions, and legislative changes. With MITRE’s support, the IRS has

introduced new efficiencies into its tax filing season planning and execution processes.

One of the agency’s principal goals is to deliver a successful tax filing season—one

with minimal processing delays and system disruptions—to the more than 200 million

taxpayers filing individual and business returns each year. MITRE is now working across

the IRS to bring together and apply best practices.

With the cost doubling for each successive census in recent decades, the Census Bureau

turned to MITRE to test new concepts. The agency staged a full-scale simulation based

at MITRE’s National Simulation and Experimentation Laboratory. Following six months of

scenario development, the simulation event took place over five days and involved dozens

of stakeholders. The simulation tested a workload management system using a database

populated with synthetic data. Though these simulations won’t completely replace a field

test, the Census Bureau can use the information gathered at the event to derive greater

value from its field operations. The event also allowed the Census Bureau to see untested

concepts in action before committing to them financially, which should lead to additional

savings in 2020.

Improving the Well-Being of

Veterans

Maximizing the Efficiency

of the IRS’s Filing Season

Operations

Simulating the 2020 Census