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Government Customer-Experience and Service-Design Consultancy Technical Assent Appraised at CMMI-SVC Level 3

Summary

Of the 15,000 Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Businesses, only three have achieved a CMMI-SVC Level 3 rating. This third-party appraisal validates Technical Assent’s strong internal processes, which gives assurance to government contracting offices that Technical Assent can reliably achieve results for government clients.

Main Article

Washington, D.C. (19 Jan 2024)— Technical Assent, a leading federal government customer-experience and service-design consultancy, today announced that it has been appraised at level 3 of ISACA’s Capability Maturity Model Integration for Services (CMMI-SVC®). 

CMMI is a proven, outcome-based performance model and the globally accepted standard for improving capability, optimizing business performance, and aligning operations to business goals. Williamsburg Process Solutions, LLC, performed the appraisal. 

“Excellence is not a singular act but a habit earned through every day practice,” said John DiLuna II, Technical Assent Chief Executive Officer. “Technical Assent’s CMMI-SVC Level 3 demonstrates our corporate growth mindset and our habitual pursuit of quality.”

Of the 15,000 Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses (SDVOSBs) certified by the U.S. Small Business Administration, Technical Assent is one of just three that has achieved a maturity rating of CMMI-SVC® Level 3. CMMI serves as the foundation for Technical Assent’s CX maturity service that helps government clients build and scale their own CX organizations.

“CMMI-SVC is the foundation that undergirds our motto of delivering Services that Inspire,” continued DiLuna. “Through daily practice, we earn our clients’ confidence in taking on more complex projects and have increased confidence in our ability to deliver high quality services consistently across our entire portfolio.”

In federal contracting, contracting officers have very limited options in being able to validate that a given company has the internal structure to fulfill what it promises in a proposal; an independent CMMI appraisal provides that assurance and thus greatly reduces risk to the government. Technical Assent’s current government clients include the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Department of Defense, and U.S. Department of Agriculture. Technical Assent specializes in customer experience, service design, digital strategy, human-centered design (HCD), data science, design thinking, and change management for federal government.

About Technical Assent

Government is the world’s largest service provider and platform of human interactions. Technical Assent exists to ensure these services deliver relevant value, are easy for people to use, and earn trust in the founding principles of our country.

Technical Assent’s Service Optimization Lifecycle links the critical capabilities needed to optimize performance of government services by keeping customers as the focal point. They improve the performance of government services using experience as the primary driver for change using three core capabilities—Experience Design, Solution Implementation, and Service Management.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2999180/

Contact: Thom Sutton, tsutton@technicalassent.com, (201) 397-5764

Press release

Technical Assent Reappraises at CMMI Level 3 for Services

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Washington, D.C. — Technical Assent, a leading provider of Experience Design, Solution Implementation, and Service Management services, announced today that it has successfully reappraised at Level 3 of the CMMI Institute’s Capability Maturity Model Integration for Services (CMMI-SVC) Version 2.0. CMMI is a process-improvement approach that provides organizations with essential elements of effective processes that ultimately improve their performance. The appraisal was performed independently by Williamsburg Process Solutions, LLC.

CMMI-SVC helps ensure the processes that underpin Technical Assent’s professional services produce the highest quality work and make a difference for their clients. At Level 3, Technical Assent’s work and processes have received the highest form of third-party validation. Technical Assent manages projects with an established set of practices and is dedicated to continuous improvement. 

Technical Assent is one of just three Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses (SDVOSBs) that are both verified by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Center for Veterans Enterprise (VA CVE) and have a maturity-level rating of CMMI-SVC/3 V2.0.

“Technical Assent’s ongoing commitment to CMMI-SVC ensured our business was resilient and best positioned for success during the COVID-19 pandemic. We stayed focused on our clients’ missions with the confidence that our business infrastructure was robust,” said Technical Assent Chief Executive Officer John DiLuna.

CMMISVC / 3 2.0

About Technical Assent

Headquartered in Arlington, Va., Technical Assent is a leading provider of Experience Design, Solution Implementation, and Service Management solutions for government agencies. At Technical Assent, we believe government begins at the bottom—with the people it serves. That’s why we explore the customer experience first and use that knowledge to improve systems, processes, and service across the organization. Technical Assent, LLC is a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB). For more information about Technical Assent’s service delivery capabilities, visit https://technicalassent.com/.

About CMMI® Institute

CMMI Institute is the global leader in the advancement of best practices in people, process, and technology. The Institute provides the tools and support for organizations to benchmark their capabilities and build maturity by comparing their operations to best practices and identifying performance gaps. For over 25 years, thousands of high-performing organizations in a variety of industries, including aerospace, finance, health services, software, defense, transportation, and telecommunications, have earned a CMMI maturity level rating and proved they are capable business partners and suppliers.

News Release: Technical Assent Welcomes Todd Sadowski as Director of Business Development

NEWS RELEASE

Technical Assent Welcomes Todd Sadowski as Director of Business Development
The new role for the company follows a banner year in growth

Todd Sadowski

ARLINGTON, Va., November 29, 2018—Technical Assent, a leader in federal government customer experience, has hired industry veteran Todd Sadowski as the company’s first director of business development.

Todd is a client relationship executive who has supported several Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) companies during their highest growth periods. He will leverage this experience and his relationships with leading government partners to fuel sustainable growth and build new business opportunities at Technical Assent.

“We see government leaders increasingly recognizing the benefits of using customer experience to improve their program performance,” said John DiLuna, Technical Assent’s founder and CEO. “It sounds simple—design government services that people prefer to use—but there are several key factors that program managers need to get right to set the effort for success.”

The new role of business development director at Technical Assent addresses this need.

“As a member of the executive leadership team, Todd will be helping prospective clients target the correct mission problem and making sure Technical Assent and our partners are in the best position to solve it,” said DiLuna.

About Technical Assent

Technical Assent is a consultancy to the federal government that improves agencies from the bottom up—starting with customer experience. Technical Assent helps agencies design, implement, and deliver services that inspire by providing customer-experience design, solution implementation, and services management.

The company is a SDVOSB and prime contractor on the Department of Veterans Affairs flagship VECTOR contract in addition to other government-wide contract vehicles such as the GSA Professional Services Schedule. As a CMMI-SVC/3 firm, Technical Assent is committed to providing exceptional service experiences and delivering consistent results to its federal government clients.

For more information about Technical Assent, visit www.technicalassent.com and www.linkedin.com/company/technical-assent.

Media Contact

Chris Bobbitt
cbobbitt@technicalassent.com
202-904-8527

Veterans Day: All Give Some

Sara poses with our kids after their Cub Scout pack’s tour of Coast Guard Cutter Stratton.

On November 11 each year, Americans honor veterans for their willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good. Being a veteran myself, I know that there are many facets to how military service impacts an individual. Some of these facets are so nuanced that they might seem insignificant. To people who have never had an immediate family member or close friend in the military, these impacts could be invisible.

Nuanced and seemingly insignificant as they are, these impacts are anything but. They add up over years of service and they can change the entire course of the service member’s life.

The way to learn about these not-so-visible impacts of military service is by listening to veterans’ stories. In this vein, I’m offering my story. It is also my wife’s story and, together, it is the story of a dual-military couple balancing their commitment to the Coast Guard with their commitment to each other in the months before and after our nation was turned upside down on September 11, 2001.


Newly Minted Officers

Sara and I graduated from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in the spring of 2000. We had been dating since our third-class (sophomore) year, and under the Academy’s “buddy program,” we were able to be stationed in the same location. I was assigned to Coast Guard Cutter Alert,and Sara was assigned to Coast Guard Cutter Steadfast, both based in Astoria, Oregon.

The first eighteen months as a junior officer are busy. You are learning new jobs, attending vocational schools, and working toward watch qualifications in order to become a productive member of the crew. I was working toward qualifications for engineer of the watch and deck watch officer. I also had a number of collaterals such as damage control assistant, morale officer, and fueling officer. Sara was a dedicated deck watch officer and served as a boarding team member, law enforcement officer, and morale officer.

A white Coast Guard cutter on the Columbia River

Cutter Alert on the Columbia River

Patrols are the lifeblood of a cutter and where it performs the Coast Guard’s mission. With our ships being the only 210-foot cutters in Astoria, Alertand Steadfast worked in port and starboard rotations. This meant one ship would be in port while the other was running fishery patrols and drug interdiction operations in the waters between British Columbia and Central America. Each patrol lasted six to eight weeks.

By May of 2001, we had settled into our shipboard routines and started to plan for our next assignments. Summer began with Sara being on patrol. I’m a foodie and I had promised her that when she got back, we would drive my Jeep to a remote section of the beach for an elaborate picnic. It was also the perfect cover-up for a marriage proposal.

The picnic didn’t go quite as planned. I was so focused on not screwing up the proposal that I forgot entirely about the food. Also, Oregon beaches are not known for being timid. Not long after we arrived, the temperature dropped and then the wind picked up and started blasting us with sand.

Sara wanted to leave but I insisted we stay longer and take a walk. Being the good sport that she is, Sara played along and I finally got to propose. She said yes and then we scurried back to the cover of the Jeep. Given the ships’ busy schedules, we planned to elope sometime in the fall of 2001 and then have more traditional wedding the following spring.

September 11, 2001

My ship departed to patrol off the coast of Mexico a few weeks later. On the morning of September 11, we had a brief refueling stop in Mexico. I was on duty on the ship as engineering officer of the watch when we received a priority Z message, which requires immediate action. The message provided few details of the attacks and ordered us to get underway immediately.

As the ship’s crew struggled to make sense of what was happening and why, we set armed guards on the gangway and I rushed to light off the ship’s engines. Being at sea in a foreign country, our access to news was limited and inaccurate. None of our crew would have an accurate picture of what had happened at the Pentagon, World Trade Center, and Shanksville until our return to Astoria nine days later.

In the meantime, I had no way of communicating with Sara other than a few abbreviated emails sent and received through Alert’s spotty internet connection. While we focused on our immediate work, everything else was uncertain. In the span of hours, we had gone from serving in the military during a time of peace to serving in the military during a time of conflict. We didn’t know how long the 9/11 surge efforts would last and how that would impact our ships’ schedules.

While the ships’ operations surged, the bureaucratic assignment process churned on, inching us closer to a deadline to submit “dream sheets” to detail our requests for our next assignments. As the deadline loomed closer, the assignment officers made it clear that without a marriage certificate, a request from Sara and me to be co-located would not be considered.

We thought we’d have plenty of time to elope once I returned to Astoria, but then my ship’s patrol was extended to support maritime security efforts and Sara’s deployment was moved sooner. We soon realized that we would only have forty-eight hours in port together once my ship arrived. To further complicate the logistics, my dad and his wife were flying in to Oregon for a previously scheduled visit. To have only them at our elopement wouldn’t be fair to Sara’s family, so we decided to keep our marriage a secret. The problem was, this left us a grand total of two hours to get married.

September 20, 2001

While I was underway in the Pacific, Sara coordinated the details from Astoria. My ship arrived mid-morning on September 20. I disembarked the moment the brow was in place at the Coast Guard pier and Sara picked me up. We raced home where I changed into a pair of khaki pants and a shirt that she had ironed for me. She put on a blue-flowered sundress and grabbed an old fleece sweatshirt on her way out the door in case the weather changed.

A husband lifts his wife up in celebration after getting married.

The single photo we have of our elopement in Astoria, Oregon.

We hurried to the Astoria pier to meet the officiant and our two witnesses. And there, on that overcast day near the mouth of the Columbia River, we exchanged our vows. The ceremony lasted all of ten minutes. We celebrated with a brief lunch at Cannery Cafe on the pier with our witnesses, snapped a quick picture, removed the rings we had exchanged just thirty minutes before, and then got in the car to make the hundred-mile drive to the Portland Airport to pick up my dad.

Those hundred miles were hardly enough time for the events of the previous two weeks to sink in, but it was all we had before turning to the business of helping America regroup and prepare for a new era in defense. A day and a half later, Sara was underway to the busy ports of San Francisco and Seattle to ensure commerce continued flowing by providing security escort services for merchant ships.

While many newlywed couples struggle in their first year of marriage, ours was actually quite blissful . . . we saw each other only three times, and one of those times was through a set of “big eye” binoculars as our ships passed each other in the waters of Northern California.

In our Christmas cards that year, Sara and I revealed to our family and friends that we had gotten married. We reaffirmed our vows in a traditional ceremony one year and one day later in Sara’s hometown of Phoenix, Arizona.

A uniformed Coast Guard woman poses for a photo with her son in his elementary school classroom

Sara with our son at his elementary school.

The DiLunas Today

After seven years in the Coast Guard, I resigned my commission to pursue my entrepreneurial passions and eventually start Technical Assent. Sara continues to serve and just celebrated her eighteenth year in the Coast Guard. We have two great little kids, ages seven and nine, and our life as an active duty military family is typical of any family with two working parents–extremely chaotic!

As September approaches each year, I find myself reflecting on the tragedies 9/11. In recent years, I’ve also struggled to find a way to talk with my kids about what happened. At this young age, there are only so many details I can give, but even when they are old enough to know everything, I wonder if they’ll ever be able to truly comprehend the magnitude of the attacks.

What I talk about instead is how afterward there was an undeniable force that united all Americans. Heroes emerged from the stories of horrific tragedy, and this wasn’t just individuals, but groups of strangers who shared a unity of purpose to rescue, recover, and restore our way of life.

Our family’s history is intrinsically tied to the tragedies of 9/11 and that effort to recover and restore. Though Sara and I were simply service members fulfilling our duty to protect and defend the United States, the story of our marriage in the wake of the attacks illustrates one of the less-visible facets of what it means to serve.

For us, as with any veteran or active duty service member, by agreeing to serve, we give up control of certain aspects of our lives. Even above the biggest milestones in life, the mission comes first. The people we love often come second. That is our sacrifice and it is a sacrifice that our family members make, too.