Portals

1
Portals Technical Aspects

• Rajan Bhardvaj ( rbhardvaj_at_worldbank.org)
• The World Bank
• 30 November 2005

2
Questions Posed

• Technology Aspects (including choice of platform,
  examples of specific software used)
• Portal architecture
• Description of specific functionalities provided
  by the portal
• Interaction between central portal and agency
  portals
• Interaction between central portal and local
  government portals
• Integration of authentication systems (PKI,
  Single-Sign-On etc)
• Integration of payment systems (organizational
  and technical aspects)
• Which other functionalities are provided by the
  central portal (e.g. content management, search,
  personalization)

3
What is a portal? A User Perspective

• At least three definitions
• One place stop to get many services and
  information about a topic or area
• A starting point or gateway to other resources
  Characteristics
• Personalized space
• Types
• General portal e.g. yahoo
• Specialized portal
• e.g. purchasing portal
• Is amazon.com a portal?

4
Key Points (User Perspective)

• Unified information architecture
• Hierarchy and organization of information
• Allows for a good frame of reference
• Think library and classification of books
• A single user identity
• Across a portal, the user should be able to use a
  single identity and password
• Consistency of behavior and look and feel

5
Portal vs. Portal Software

• Different perspectives
• Portal as seen by user
• Portals can be built using many tools and
  technologies including open source
• Yahoo, Google and many others are built on open
  technologies
• Many typically do not use portal product per se
• Portals can be built using dedicated Portal
  Products as well
• More later..

6
Federation of Portals

• Even from an information architecture
  perspective, a single portal may be just too
  big
• Architecture may support a federation of portals
• At least one entry point that provides a
  directory and some services
• A set of sub-portals that provide specific
  services or information

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Federation Example

• Audience Segmented
• Individual vs. Business vs. Employee
• Geographically Distributed
• Country -gt States -gt City
• Topically Distributed
• General
• Health
• Taxes
• Combination
• Geographical and topical
• Many other combinations as well

8
What would the portal do?

• Examples
• Directory of resources and links
• Information and knowledge
• Agriculture best practices?
• Forms Downloads/Submission?
• E-Business
• Taxes due account statement
• File taxes electronically
• Obtain no-object certificates

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Examples US Government Portal

• http//firstgov.gov/index.shtml

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Before Technology Selection

• DO develop requirements first
• PROCESS matters how and who get content in and
  how
• PILOTDepending on the budget and scale
• DO a pilot project focused on functionality
• Start small if possible and iterate through the
  technical infrastructure (i.e. be prepared to
  throw out first release)

11
Identity Management

• A very critical element to make or break a portal
• Who are you?Need to identify userse.g. US has
  social security
• Does the audience have a unique id?
• THIS IS NOT A TECHNOLOGY PROBLEM
• Process for issuing and managing ids and
  password needs to be setup

12
Performance

• Manage scale.
• of usersAre you scaling to thousands,
  millions, 10s of millions of users?
• Traffic
• Static content vs. dynamic content (from a
  database or other system)
• Different needs may indicate different approaches

13
What Platform?

• Questions
• Buy vs. Build
• Open Source vs. Commercial
• Unix/Linux/Java vs. Windows/Microsoft
• .

14
Product vs. Build

• Why Product? Usual reasons
• Time to market
• Capability
• Reliability
• Process and methodologies
• Why Build?
• Can meet YOUR requirements
• May have some cost savings (note May)
• May need both anyway.
• Generally, product preferred where feasible

15
Open Source vs. Commercial Software

• Open source is perfectly suitable for many,many
  cases Google and Yahoo run on open source.
• Can include end products or middleware
• Middleware Apache Tomcat, jBoss, Ruby or Rails
  and many others
• EndProducts Plone, Alfresco, LifeRay
• Commercial software may be needed for many cases
• Integrating with back ends
• Out of the box solution
• Reliability and Support

16
Unix/Linux/Java vs. Windows/Microsoft

• Issue on two fronts
• What operating system? (Windows vs. Unix)
• What middleware stack? Java vs. .net or other
  such as PHP/Ruby
• Generally, more of a religious issue than
  anything else
• Generally speaking, Linux/Java Scripting seems
  to have a little more momentum

17
Portal Implementation Approach

• Define requirements, information architecture and
  look and feel
• Ensure business and not technical ownership
• But, keep it cross-functional and user focused
• Define Success Factors
• Keep it simple
• pick a couple of segments (citizen and small
  business for instance)
• Stay away from personalization
• Stay low tech
• Iterate
• Have an deliverable every six months with the
  first release possibly taking a little more
• Have a feedback system and get usage statistic

18
What Not To Do

• DO NOT
• Focus on technology only
• Portals are not about technology !!
• Implementation teams can get carried away by
  cool features users usually want simple things
• Have long delivery cycles
• Setup 6 month releases and keep to that
• DO ensure QUICK wins
• Ignore process
• Getting governance, agreements, processes can
  take a LONG time

19
World Bank Example

• Most Popular
• External News, Projects Database, Research
• Internal - People Search and Projects
• About 10 of sites get 80 of traffic
• What we did not do well
• Community ModelSites are informational but do
  not connect people
• Somewhat supply driven rather than demand driven
• Search - improved marginally with a low-tech
  appliance solution
• Generally, took too long

20
Q. Portal Functionality

• Refer to definition of portal
• Building a portal typically needs
• Application server / platform
• Search engine
• Content Management
• Collaboration/Communities
• Discussion, blogs etc.
• Integration capabilities
• Web services or others

21
Q. Interaction Between Portals

• Interaction between the central, agency and local
  government portals needs further investigation
• Important to focus on user behaviors and
  expectation and not on silos
• But, breaking of silos often difficult to do
  can lead to ownership issues
• Important to show agency or local government
  leadership
• No simple answers

22
Q. Authentication, Single Sign On

• Do have a single user identity (like social
  security in the US)
• Preferable have a single userid/password
• Single Sign on really may not matter that much
• PKI is complex to implement
• Consider leaving to latter phases or implementing
  only where security needs are paramount

23
Q. Payment Systems

• Needs Discussion

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Q A