Part 1 reported on the beginnings of the Native American Document Conversion Program (NADCP), a program in which DCL worked to help develop conversion production facilities on remote Native American reservations. With unemployment on many reservations often exceeding 70%, young people are forced to leave to seek opportunities elsewhere. This program provides employment opportunities that allow Native Americans to remain close to their traditional homes and cultures.

The continuing program has been a wonderful partnership pairing DCL's expertise in engineering and managing conversion projects with new job creation in places where such jobs are badly needed. The program, so far, has created over 300 jobs.

This month we turn to the challenges in building NEW high-tech facilities with new work forces in these remote locations, and the positive effect the program has had on the tribal members.

Building Facilities & Networks

While some tribes built facilities from scratch, others converted existing structures ranging from woodsheds to a house that had recently been used as a "crack house."

With the program officially started and with initial funding established, ten tribal groups set up an Anchorage-based consortium called the Intertribal Information Technology Company (IITC) (http://www.iitc.us/about.html) to receive the funds and distribute them equitably.

The new organization soon faced the challenge of working with the individual tribal groups in setting up high-tech facilities in fairly remote locations. While some tribes built facilities from scratch, others converted existing structures including a woodworking shed and a house that had recently been used as a "crack house." Getting high-speed Internet hookups to these facilities was often no small feat. For some it meant pulling miles of new cable, while for others it depended on sophisticated satellite downlinks.

The recent availability of high-speed internet, linking even very remote locations, was a key enabling technology. These internet links, combined with DCL's workflow management systems, allowed work to be distributed and tracked nationwide among the multiple facilities doing the work, and to be routed back to DCL as needed for specialized conversion processes and for quality assurance.

Building a Work Force

And then there was training of the new personnel, many of whom had never worked before. Because unemployment exceeding 70% in some of these locations, many of the new recruits had never worked before, and also didn't have workplace role models. So, aside from training on the technical work, there was also a need to train new recruits on the expectations of the workplace. While there were problems initially, the tribal firms made much progress very quickly.

The First Projects

Click here for satellite view of Zuni

While the program was slated to get work from the various US defense agencies, it soon became apparent that it might take more than a year before all the preliminaries would be completed, and in the meantime people needed work. To get a head start, DCL identified some work from outside the program that would be suitable as a starter project, and started working with the Zuni Tribe (http://www.ashiwi.org) located a 3-hour drive west from Albuquerque, NM.

The pilot project, the program's first success story, led to award of the follow on work resulting in the conversion of another 20,000 pages.

This first project was a pilot project, a contest of sorts awarded to DCL and several companies, to convert 5,000 pages of aircraft technical manuals. The results of the contest would determine the award of a larger follow-on project. Following a frantic conversion of an old woodworking shed into a data center, several members of the Zuni tribe flew to New York for intensive training on DCL software and processes, then returned to New Mexico and completed the pilot project, exactly on time, eight weeks later. And as an omen of good things to come, DCL was soon notified that they had been selected to perform the follow-on conversion which was also done with the Zuni tribe. To the credit of the Zuni tribe, the newly trained team was also able to meet their new deadlines and the team was able to make a high-quality on-time delivery.

For another project that followed soon after, DCL brought in an additional tribal firm, MHA, an affiliation of the North Dakota Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara tribes (http://www.mhanation.com/main/main.html), which worked together with Zuni and DCL to convert over 100,000 pages for yet another aircraft project.

Moving much further west, another pilot project conducted with Hawaiian Homestead Technologies (HHT) (http://www.hhtech.net) successfully converted 5,000 pages for the Army. This project was performed at a facility that had been converted by the community from a former "crack house."

The early successes of these pilot projects highlighted the tremendous potential of the IITC Native American Document Conversion Program (NADCP).

When it Rains it Pours

Once the program was officially launched, all the tribes were immediately faced with scaling up to the much larger challenge of converting a very significant number of Technical Manuals originating from many areas of the military, utilizing many different DTDs.

Not surprisingly, the biggest challenge came not from the task, but from the practicalities of running a business. Many of the tribal firms

Perhaps the biggest challenge came not from the task, but from the practicalities of running a business.

had been newly established and for many of the staff, both technical and managers, this was the first experience of a deadline driven work environment. In addition, the needs of the program also meant that publishing industry concepts and technologies such as PDF, SGML and XML had to be introduced to workers with little or no technical background. DCL set up a formal training program to teach the concepts of data conversion and markup language, as well as the detailed processing steps involved in converting documents using DCL's software and processes. With tribal facilities located in some very remote locations, DCL took advantage of the high-speed internet links and conducted many classes though interactive online training.

Looking Ahead

It's clear that not only has the conversion program changed the lives of many individuals who were previously being forced to choose between keeping their heritage or earning a livelihood, in some instances, it has also transformed the lives of the tribal communities.

Not only has the conversion program changed the lives of many individuals, it has also transformed the lives of tribal communities.

The program, now in operation for three years, has recently expanded to include two more Native American organizations for a total of twelve. The program employs over 300 people on tribal lands across the United States, and despite a number of initial challenges, has clearly accomplished much.

"For DCL, it's been an ideal partnership," said Mark Gross, DCL's President. "Historically, we're a company that often subcontracts to vendors for the high-volume labor-intensive portions of a project, while we focus on our core competencies of project management, conversion software development, detailed data analysis, quality assurance, and streamlined production control processes. This program is developing these tribal companies into vendors that can handle large-volume production; services DCL will utilize for years to come."

While the initial challenge was met with great success, the next challenge is to find work outside of the Congressional funding stream. IITC is hoping that industry will utilize their conversion capabilities when conversion projects arise, and DCL is working with IITC to develop those new opportunities. With 12 established conversion facilities, DCL with IITC are organized to ramp-up to handle significant projects in a relatively quick time frame.

For comments or further information about this article please write to dclnews@dclab.com or call 718-307-5731

DCLnews Editorial
November 7, 2006