2001 NCES MIS Conference Orlando, FL

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E-Business Strategic Planning

• How is your agency addressing E-Business?
• The revolution has just begun. Are you ready?

Presented by Scott Norton Dennis Powell
Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE)
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Presentation Agenda

• Introduction Norton / Powell
• Definitions
• Past and Present
• The Strategic Plan
• Looking to the Future
• Questions Answers

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Definitions

• E-Business The beneficial exchange of
  electronic information between stakeholders who
  share common business goals (e.g. Education).
• Strategic Plan for E-Business A formal policy
  which is used to manage current and future
  E-Business.
• Customer Any entity who may benefit from the
  business that your agency conducts.

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Past Present

• 10 Years Ago at ISBE
• BBS (Bulletin Board Service) - wow.
• Client/Server Applications emerge.
• 5 Years Ago at ISBE
• The Internet was for the Network People.
• All new systems were being developed for the
  Client/Server LAN environment.
• Forms Control staff learned HTML and dreamed of
  someday becoming a webmaster.

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Past and Present

• 2 Years Ago at ISBE
• 5 Internet Applications (Head Count 2)
• Complex web-based applications were required to
  satisfy internal and external customer needs.
• There was a great need for internal staff to be
  trained on Internet Application Development.
• Sporadically, we would need to hire contractual
  employees to fill some gaps.
• These applications were very successful.

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Past and Present

• Today at ISBE
• 35 Internet Applications (Head Count 10)
• ISBE has seen an absolute explosion of requests
  for internet applications.
• An E-Business Application Development Team was
  formed to address this need on 05/2000.
• It is often necessary to hire contractual
  employees to fulfill requests. (Hidden Costs)
• We are still under-staffed by at least 3 people.

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Past and Present

• Some interesting facts at ISBE
• In the past two years, there has been a 700
  increase in the number of internet applications.
• Our head count (for our E-Business team) has
  increased by 500 in the past two years
  (including contractual employees).
• At least four(4) web applications were contracted
  outside the agency without our knowledge.
• Client/Server LAN applications? No new ones in
  the past year or two

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Past and Present

• Who are your customers?
• Internet applications bring you closer to your
  customer and your customer closer to you.
• My, oh my, the phone calls!
• Your customers are becoming more technically
  savvy.
• Your customers see better features on other
  sites.
• Did I mention the phone calls?
• Helpdesk or Technical Support for External
  Customers must be considered before your system
  rolls out the door!
• Multi-user testing is a must! Dont release an
  application until it has been stress tested!

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Past and Present

• Divided We Crawl
• We have two web teams in separate divisions
• One team for data-driven web applications
• One team for non-data-driven web pages
  (webmaster) 4 FTEs
• We are in need of more collaboration between
  teams. Ideally, we should be one team.
• We need to provide a consistent look and feel to
  our entire web site.
• We need to design our website from our customers
  perspective rather than how we view ourselves.

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Past and Present

• Can you put xyz on the web tomorrow?
• Most policy makers are now under the impression
  that everything should be on the web and that it
  takes very little effort to put it there.
• There is a big difference between a PDF file and
  a web-based data collection application some
  people still do not understand this difference.
• If data collection forms change from year-to-year
  these forms are not good candidates to design
  and build web-based data collection applications
  around. Why? Annual maintenance costs . Do
  we still build these? Yes, we oblige the boss.

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Past and Present

• From Silos to Thimbles
• There is an ever increasing need for ISBE staff
  to collect Survey or Feedback data from our
  customers.
• Smaller data collection efforts can be put on the
  web for a very low cost this is attractive.
• With a mixture of mainframe and Client/Server
  applications, ISBE still experiences some Silos
  of data within our agency.
• Now with the internet, we are collecting these
  little surveys and feedback forms. Its like we
  are placing little thimbles next to those
  silos.

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Past and Present

• Server Pastures Worst Practices
• Less than one year ago, we had five or six web
  servers with applications and web sites all over
  the place. Some servers were TEST boxes and
  others were PROD boxes some were both. Our
  customer could physically be directed anywhere in
  our server pasture.
• Our web servers were an absolute mess! When a
  site was down, sometimes we couldnt find it or
  someone on the other team had just deleted it
  from the server.

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The Strategic Plan

• Its time to act! We need a plan!
• Unless something changed soon, we were knowingly
  headed down a rough road.
• It was time for us to formulate a strategic
  E-Business plan to get our agency on-tract for
  success.
• What is success? Success is when our customers
  can get what they want, how they want it and
  whenever they want it.

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The Strategic Plan

• What Resources are Necessary to Begin?
• To design, build and implement data-driven web
  applications for your agency that are to be
  aligned with a strategic plan, you will need the
  following
• A powerful visionary who is willing to think
  outside the box,
• Veteran staff familiar with your agencys data
  collection efforts over the past 5-10 years,
• Highly qualified Systems Analysts and DBAs,
• Highly qualified Internet Application Developers
  (contractual or permanent), and
• Management Policy Maker support and .

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The Strategic Plan

• Plan Formulation (Step 1)
• Formulate a current and future support
  assessment.
• Internal Support New Development Maintenance
• External Support Web Help Desk Agency-wide
  Feedback Mechanism
• Bottom-line How many bodies do we need?

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The Strategic Plan

• Plan Formulation (Step 2a)
• Secondly, propose a structure and necessary
  staffing.
• Merge into one web development team.
• Look at existing web staff and their functions in
  the agency.
• Re-define roles and create new roles if necessary
  (see step 2b).
• Provide budgeting numbers for upper management.

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The Strategic Plan

• Plan Formulation (Step 2b)
• Our Proposed Structure
• 1 Manager (Leader, Customer Liaison)
• 1 Webmaster (Site Consistency)
• 2 to 6 Web-page Designers (front-end)
• 6 to 10 Web Application Developers
• 1 - Technical Writer (FAQ On-Line Help)
• 1 Dedicated DBA (Database Design)
• 2 to 4 Helpdesk Specialists (Front-Line)

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The Strategic Plan

• Plan Formulation (Step 3)
• Address any Hardware or Infrastructure Issues.
• Work with the Infrastructure team to plan
  adequately into the future for the expected
  hardware and infrastructure needs.
• The Infrastructure team should be able to provide
  solid dollar figures for budgeting.

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The Strategic Plan

• Plan Formulation (Step 4)
• The team manager needs to be a permanent member
  of a policy-making body.
• The team manager is probably the most qualified
  individual in the agency to make a determination
  of how feasible a potential initiative will be
  (from a realistic data systems standpoint).
• The team manager will also be the most qualified
  to assess whether an application can be built
  in-house or by contractual employees.
• An agency policy-making body must set and adjust
  priorities for which web applications are
  developed, and in which order?

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The Strategic Plan

• Plan Formulation (Step 5)
• The current teams need to get together and
  formulate E-Business Standards.
• Which web applications will be accepted / turned
  away by the team?
• What are the web application coding standards?
• What are the overall agency web site standards?

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The Strategic Plan

• Plan Presentation
• Present previous work to policy makers to get a
  solid commitment.
• Much more detail must be provided than what is
  displayed in these slides.
• Make sure that the budget figures are solid.
• Make sure that the strategic plan aligns with
  agency philosophy. (e.g. ISBE uses
  Lincoln/Baldridge Leadership).

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Looking to the Future

• ISBE has not yet submitted its plan to Policy
  Council that will occur within the next couple
  of months. (5-Year Strategic IT Plan in
  progress)
• The E-Business team is moving forward with the
  elements of the E-Business Strategic Plan as if
  it were approved. (See the next slide)
• Well keep you posted check with us this July
  in D.C.

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Looking to the Future

• A Window of Opportunity - Best Practices
• Last October, we purchased three new web servers
  that would house only data-driven web
  applications. Last Friday, we finally finished
  migrating our last web application to the three
  new servers.
• Two of the servers are for Production. The third
  is a TEST server.
• Each server has two separate areas for the
  storage of web applications LTAPPS and STAPPS
  (LTLong Term and STShort Term)

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Looking to the Future

• Standards Are In Place - Best Practices
• The E-Business Team has developed Coding
  Standards for new web application development.
• Our latest web application development effort
  (Teacher Certificate Renewal) will be our
  flagship for future web-based applications.
  (COM Components, Security, Approval Structures,
  On-Line User Sign-up, System-based email, Crystal
  Reports, etc.)
• Older web applications will have to be
  retro-fitted when (and if) time permits.

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Demos

• If time permits, we may demo some sites here

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Questions Answers

• Thank You for your time!
• We will now entertain any questions that you may
  have.