Coast Guard Officer Wins Leadership Award
Credits the Innovation Council
U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr.
Chris Kluckhuhn has been chosen as a
Government Computer
News Information Technology Leader for his innovative development of a
system that exchanges information easily and accurately between Coast Guard
aviation crews and the web-based Marine Information for Safety and Law
Enforcement, or MISLE. MISLE is the Coast Guard’s official law enforcement
information database. MISLE entries are used for documentation of a range of
activities, including vessel sightings. The United States requires all
merchant vessels notify the Coast Guard of their intention to enter the
country 96 hours in advance of arrival, and aviators routinely search for
those vessels and gather information from their captains. Before Kluckhuhn
led the development of this new system, named MISLE-Lite, aviators such as
he had to log vessel sightings on paper, then input the data into MISLE once
they returned to their duty stations. Once inputted, there was no way for
him to verify that the vessel followed its reported itinerary.
Kluckhuhn knew there had to be a better way. Through funding from the Coast
Guard Innovation Council and work from programmers at the Operations Systems
Center (OSC) in Martinsburg, W.Va., MISLE-Lite, originally piloted at Air
Station Cape Cod and proven successful, was implemented Coast Guard-wide.
Using tablet computers, Coast Guard aviators can now quickly track vessel
sightings and flag suspicious activity. "So instead of data-entry mode,
we’re in data-verification mode," said Kluckhuhn.
While grateful for the award, Kluckhuhn stressed the importance of the
support he received from Coast Guard members, "Without the Innovation
Council’s support and the hard work of OSC programmers and other Coasties,
MISLE-Lite could never have happened." The Coast Guard Innovation Council
was formally established in November 2000. They then developed three
processes to further innovation, one of which is the Innovation Venture
Capital Fund, used to fund innovative solutions to organizational
challenges. The Council also hosts a yearly exposition and presents awards
to leading innovators.
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