DLA supports Iraqis in developing asset management skills

Photo By Strategic Communications DLA | Phillip Messner (third from the right), the DLA Logistics Information Service's Logistics Data Analysis Division chief, is currently deployed and meets regularly with the Iraqi Security Force Logistics Operations Center staff.  

FORT BELVOIR, VA, UNITED STATES

02.17.2011

Story by Strategic Communications DLA 

Defense Logistics Agency   

FORT BELVOIR, Va. -- Defense Logistics Agency personnel are in their second year of assisting the Iraqi government’s development of a viable, national-level logistics system.

Senior logistics systems analysts from DLA Logistics Information Service are supporting the U.S. Forces-Iraq mission to advise and train Iraqi security forces in logistics. The analysts spend six-month deployments working directly with the Iraqi forces. Their role is to advise and train the Iraqis in developing, deploying and sustaining logistics information technology.

With the transition from Operation Iraqi Freedom to Operation New Dawn, USF-I is focused on advising and training Iraqi personnel on capabilities to defend their borders and maintain internal security. Logistics information technology is an enabler of these missions.

“As advisors to the ISF, we are contributing to the stabilization of the Iraqi government,” said Teresa Lindauer, the DLA Logistics Information Service’s Asset Visibility Program manager and recent deployee. “We are contributing to the ISF reaching minimum essential capability to better defend their borders.”

Specific examples of the contributions Lindauer and her colleagues, Kenneth Surprenant, DLA Logistics Information Service’s Data Visibility Division chief, and Phillip Messner, DLA Logistics Information Service’s Logistics Data Analysis Division chief, made toward helping the Iraqis included:

-- Assisting the transition of a logistics information system from U.S. to Iraqi ownership and sustainment. Currently, the Iraqi Asset Management Program has migrated four of 18 facilities to the Iraqi Defense Network.

-- Participating in an integrated process team of Iraqi army and USF-I process owners to resolve connectivity issues. By using a database, logisticians can better determine spare part requirements and integrate them into the budget process.

-- Creating focused initiatives to help the Iraqi forces develop proficiency in core logistics functions, for example: maintenance, supply, engineering, etc.

-- Ensuring continued logistics advisory support as U.S. forces draw down.

Planning efforts are under way to transition the work to the Office of Security Cooperation Iraq. DLA Logistics Information Service leaders believe their organization, USF-I and Iraqi logisticians mutually benefitted from improvements made in logistics and information technology over the past 15 months, officials said.

• Date Taken: 02.17.2011
• Date Posted: 02.24.2011 13:14
• Story ID: 66012
• Location: FORT BELVOIR, VA, US