Managing Electronic Information on Shared Drives

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• Managing Electronic Information on Shared Drives

Carol Lawrence Alberta Economic Development March
8, 2005
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Alberta Economic Development

• Business Plan
• Primary role is to market and promote Alberta
  to the world
• Alberta is the best place to work, live and
  visit
• Key roles
• Policy Development
• Export and Trade Expansion
• Investment Attraction
• Industry Development
• Tourism Marketing and Development

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Alberta Economic Development

• Project Objectives
• Develop common rules and practices for managing
  electronic information
• Revise the structure of the shared drive to meet
  business needs, and improve sharing and
  locating of files
• Create a meta-data tool, with search
  functionality, as a step forward toward
  electronic document management

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Shared Drive Issues at AED

• Information being created and collected at a
  constant, increasing rate
• Shared Drive Structure out of date (growth over
  10 years)
• Security on Folders (inability to share across
  organization)
• Directory naming issues (personal, organization,
  subject, project etc.)
• Orphaned folders and files (staff turnover
  reorganization)
• Staff had all been trained differently (if
  trained at all)
• Duplication of files (shared drives, individual
  drives, email)
• Variety of inappropriate files and file types
  (extensions)
• Backup of all network files was taking 17 hours
  (and growing)

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Existing Shared Drive Growth

• Snapshot of our G Drive Feb - June 2003
• 300,000 files
• 49 .DOC
• 15 .JPG
• 12 .XLS
• 5 .PDF
• 3 .PPT
• 25 Other
• - (1170 different extensions)

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Previous Shared Drive Structure
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Project Process Phase 1

• Oct. 2002
• Executive Team endorsement of new shared drive
  as a IM/IT lead project
• Nov. 2002
• Communication to Senior Management Team
• Identification of Branch staff participants (25)
• Jan March 2003
• Develop Business Rules and gain agreement
• Initial shared drive structure design (in
  correspondence with Branch Contacts)
• Review of software options (SharePoint, EDMS,
  etc.)
• Feasibility assessment of design/build option
• April 2003
• Finalize drive structure
• Endorse Business Rules and Phase 2 plan

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Project Process Phase 2

• May 2003
• Initiation of contract to design and build
  software application
• June Dec 2003
• Design and develop application
• Initiate User Acceptance Testing program and
  develop training strategy
• Dec. 2003 Jan. 2004
• User Acceptance Testing
• Branch contacts hands-on orientation/training
• Jan. 2004
• Deliver Staff training
• Feb. 2004

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Project Process Phase 2 - Reality

• January July 2004
• Staff training and re-training due to delays in
  implementation
• Expanded UAT 30 different test cases developed
• Concurrent use issues and MS Office code issues
• Multiple versions of application created and
  tested
• August 2004
• Implementation of InfoShare
• Bugs, process issues, training, enhancements
• February 2005
• New release of InfoShare
• Planned
• Review of MetaData re-adjust and retrain
  where necessary

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Business Rules and Principles

• Shared Drive (K) is a common workplace for all
  AED staff (backed up nightly, monitored for
  metadata, appropriate files)
• Structure is functional based (no personal
  names, no division/branch)
• Drive structure locked for first 3 levels, other
  levels monitored to maintain structure
• All files on shared drive must have metadata,
  key to finding/sharing
• Reduce sending attachments internally via email
  link to shared drive
• No clean up of old shared drive (G) G
  drive is read only, current edits to
  existing files on G are saved to K drive
• Shared drive does not align with department
  records management system
• Other Drives - C drive (local hard disk) is for
  personal use only I drive for working
  documents for individual use J drive for
  sharing secure files (I and J drives are
  backed-up nightly)

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New Shared Drive Structure
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Metadata Input Template
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Shared Drive Search Results
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InfoShare Metadata Validation
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InfoShare Application

• Requirements
• Microsoft Windows 2000
• Microsoft Office 2000 SP3
• Microsoft .NET operating framework
• File Server
• SQL server
• Planned testing of InfoShare against Windows XP
  and Microsoft Office 2003

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Hardware Configuration
InfoShare Application
Com Server (Virtual)
Metadata
Files
Network File Server Shared Drive
Network SQL Server Metadata Storage
Links Metadata to File
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Lessons Learned

• Change Management project culture shift is
  difficult, time consuming
• People will find ways to circumvent
• Just in Time training with refreshers and
  assistance required
• Issues filling out metadata, where do I file
  it?
• Management buy in important, staff buy in
  critical
• Ongoing communication with Branch Contacts and
  staff important
• Interfacing with MS Office code difficult
• New applications introduce new challenges
• Application Testing critical
• Responsiveness to bugs/problems critical