SNAP-R is a complex web-based federal information system that allows electronic submission of export license applications and related supporting documents, and secure messaging between exporters and BIS.  As the prime contractor, Knowcean designed, developed and deployed SNAP-R on time, within budget, and in under two years. SNAP-R has successfully passed Certification & Accreditation (NIST 800-53a, NIST 800-37).

The system was successfully deployed in October, 2006 as part of  BIS’s effort to replace and modernize BIS' mission critical Export Control Automated Support System (ECASS) system. BIS has attempted to replace ECASS in the past and failed multiple times, including the effort of SNAP2000+ by previous contractors.  Knowcean came to BIS in early 2005 and performed an in-depth technical assessment of the existing SNAP system and the failed SNAP2000+ project.  Knowcean demonstrated to BIS that their existing production SNAP system’s security could be easily bypassed due to its poor application security design. Knowcean also exposed a significant security gap which allowed unauthenticated access to exporter license submissions from the internet. Knowcean provided a security patch for BIS within one day and helped BIS to avoid a serious security breach.

Knowcean maintained several key objectives for the development of SNAP-R:

• Follow BIS’ Technical Architecture and best industry practices such as multi-tiered architecture, object-oriented design and analysis (OOAD), and service-oriented architectures (SOA), in order to develop SNAP-R high level architecture (HLA) using open standards based technologies;
• Design and implement secure web-based applications for access by exporter users, BIS licensing officers, interagency users, as well as BIS system administrators, with web graphic user interfaces (GUI) conforming to government accessibility requirements;
• Develop an ECASS-R core service framework: a collection of reusable software components based on technologies including web presentation frameworks, object-relation mapping technologies, and aspect-oriented programming technologies;
• Deliver solutions for integrating SNAP-R with ECASS, LDAP-based network based authentication mechanism, as well as BIS SMTP gateways.
• Establish a network and security infrastructure implementing a firewall and VPN to support the deployment and secure access to the SNAP-R system.

Following BIS’ lifecycle management (LCM) process, Knowcean produced SNAP-R deliverables such as Concept of Operations, Level 4 Requirements Specifications, High Level Architecture, an online prototype, Detailed Design Specifications, test cases, as well as technical analysis memorandums (TAM) addressing specific technical issues. All of our deliverables have won BIS’s recommendation.

To support the seamless deployment of SNAP-R system and ensure data consistency, Knowcean performed the migration of existing SNAP production data  and ECASS legacy data from mainframe M204 databases, to the new SNAP-R database.

Knowcean provided two data cleanup efforts during the migration's several stages:

• During ECASS core database migration handle data type and field level validations
• During SNAP-R migration handle profile and work item ownership mistakes

In addition, Knowcean was able to keep both SNAP and SNAP-R live during the first three months of the deployment with clearly defined back out strategy. After SNAP-R was shown to be a success, and without any significant deployment issues, BIS was able to retire the legacy SNAP system as planned.