Coast Guard Essay
The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is a military branch serving the both on domestic and foreign shores since 1790. With a motto of “Semper Paratus” or “Always Ready” and a force of around 42,000 the USCG maintains 11 critical missions ranging from port security and drug interdiction to ice breaking operations and enforcing international fishing regulations. One of their more known missions is for Search and Rescue, in fact there are at last five movies based upon the USCG Search and Rescue mission itself. On the less exciting side, the Centralized Service Desk (CSD) is a branch within; it supports the fleets’ daily computer operations. When people think of supply and demand or customer relationships they would rarely associate it with
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a military helpdesk. However it does seem to be easily associated with statistics. Surprisingly the CSD has a fairly clear supply and demand relationship and they also rely heavily on management information systems to report and act on statistical data.
The CSD was established on October 3, 2011 with the intent of “streamlining processes and improving response time to better support Coast Guard Missions.” (CAPT J. Gallagher) January 2012 they officially opened the doors for business. Currently the CSD maintains a staff of 200 people, including military members, civilian government workers, and contracting staff. Operationally 100 members are level 1 support, basically like a cashier in a retail store. Then we have 30 members, who are management level, that oversee the daily operations. The remaining 80 members are support staff; they are responsible for metrics, future planning, growth projections, project management, and many other functions. The CSD doesn’t “sell” anything, so what is it that they supply?
They supply a service. The CSD provides support for all information technology systems. They maintain the infrastructure of the network that allows the fleet to continue all operations. They provide low level and high-level support for applications, network security, and hardware items. The customer is the USCG and all its employees. It is not just the military members, it is literally everyone who works for/with them. It is a monopoly with no competition and only one substitution in a few situations. Our customers have the choice to call us for service or research the information and complete their request on their own, if they can. However the Department of Homeland Security determines our cost that we provide our services. As the CSD acquires new support roles and requirements, such as new products or services, they also have the opportunity to change the market and up their cost in the form of tools and labor.
A network is, in the most basic meaning, how an organization connects to the Internet.
Our customers use our services to maintain access to the network with exceptional usability. So when a part of our network is interrupted or operating in a degraded state the demand for our services go rise. The supply of our services, however, stays the same causing a shortage and a backlog in labor. Once the interruption is resolved, we resume normal working conditions and the shortage disappears. Our cost for services stayed the same; there was no increase in labor or equipment. When the network has multiple events then the demand for our services rises even more. In this instance the shortage may be above the acceptable degradation limit set by the Department of Homeland Security, therefore they will increase our budget to hire more labor and increase the equipment. Thus raising our cost to our customers and reducing the shortage. Likewise when a new information technology system is introduced and is more reliable than the previous product the fleet will use our services less often, demand will be reduced, and we will have an excess of labor and equipment. Eventually that excess is reduced by a cut in budget and a reduction to staff and equipment. Then the CSD would be back to profit maximization
level.
We now know what the USCG helpdesk, CSD, supplies their customers and how they meet their demands.
a military helpdesk. However it does seem to be easily associated with statistics. Surprisingly the CSD has a fairly clear supply and demand relationship and they also rely heavily on management information systems to report and act on statistical data.
The CSD was established on October 3, 2011 with the intent of “streamlining processes and improving response time to better support Coast Guard Missions.” (CAPT J. Gallagher) January 2012 they officially opened the doors for business. Currently the CSD maintains a staff of 200 people, including military members, civilian government workers, and contracting staff. Operationally 100 members are level 1 support, basically like a cashier in a retail store. Then we have 30 members, who are management level, that oversee the daily operations. The remaining 80 members are support staff; they are responsible for metrics, future planning, growth projections, project management, and many other functions. The CSD doesn’t “sell” anything, so what is it that they supply?
They supply a service. The CSD provides support for all information technology systems. They maintain the infrastructure of the network that allows the fleet to continue all operations. They provide low level and high-level support for applications, network security, and hardware items. The customer is the USCG and all its employees. It is not just the military members, it is literally everyone who works for/with them. It is a monopoly with no competition and only one substitution in a few situations. Our customers have the choice to call us for service or research the information and complete their request on their own, if they can. However the Department of Homeland Security determines our cost that we provide our services. As the CSD acquires new support roles and requirements, such as new products or services, they also have the opportunity to change the market and up their cost in the form of tools and labor.
A network is, in the most basic meaning, how an organization connects to the Internet.
Our customers use our services to maintain access to the network with exceptional usability. So when a part of our network is interrupted or operating in a degraded state the demand for our services go rise. The supply of our services, however, stays the same causing a shortage and a backlog in labor. Once the interruption is resolved, we resume normal working conditions and the shortage disappears. Our cost for services stayed the same; there was no increase in labor or equipment. When the network has multiple events then the demand for our services rises even more. In this instance the shortage may be above the acceptable degradation limit set by the Department of Homeland Security, therefore they will increase our budget to hire more labor and increase the equipment. Thus raising our cost to our customers and reducing the shortage. Likewise when a new information technology system is introduced and is more reliable than the previous product the fleet will use our services less often, demand will be reduced, and we will have an excess of labor and equipment. Eventually that excess is reduced by a cut in budget and a reduction to staff and equipment. Then the CSD would be back to profit maximization
level.
We now know what the USCG helpdesk, CSD, supplies their customers and how they meet their demands.