State of Hawaii Intranet Portal Making Something Out of Nothing

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State of Hawaii Intranet PortalMaking Something
Out of Nothing

• Todd_Ogasawara_at_Exec.State.HI.US
• July 26, 2002
• State of Hawaii
• Department of Accounting General Services
• Information Communications Services Division
• eGovernment Team Leader

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Introduction
The initial design (Summer 2001) for the State of
Hawaii Intranet Portal was built around using
commercial development tools Microsoft Internet
Information Server (IIS), Microsoft Active Server
Pages (ASP), Microsoft SharePoint Portal,
Microsoft SQL Server 2000, Macromedia Cold Fusion
Server, Macromedia Cold Fusion Studio, Adobe
PhotoShop. The target date to start the project
was Oct. 16, 2001. After 9-11, it became
difficult to obtain the funding for some of these
tools. The eGovernment Team retrenched and
searched for lower cost alternatives. This
presentation describes how the Team met the
challenge and is in the process of creating the
State of Hawaii Intranet Portal using Open Source
tools.
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The Challenges

• Budget Cut to zero
• Small Core Development Team 2 people
• Extended team (dotted-line inter-departmental
  staff resources) Limited web development
  experience
• Firm deadline The Core Teams employment
  contract expires on Sept. 30, 2002
• Project Time Reallocation Dedicate significant
  time to tools research selection

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Intranet Portal Design Goals

• Low cost software components
• Software components must be simple to install and
  maintain
• Software components must be widely accepted and
  supported by a large community
• Software design must be easy to communicate and
  teach/learn
• Software components must work on both Windows
  2000 and Linux servers
• Software components must be programmatically
  extensible
• Development tools must allow for rapid
  prototyping and ease refactoring
• All portal management, content creation, and
  workflow control must be browser based
• Non-programmers can deal with all Portal content
  creation and maintenance

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Tool Choice Progression
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Commerical vs. Open Source Solutions
Note 1 These prices are list or near-list
prices. The State of Hawaii can purchase some
items at a reduced prices Note 2 The project
uses both Windows 2000 Linux servers
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Intranet Portal Components
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Office Developer Tools
Tacmi Pixia http//www.tacmi.co.jp/pixia/ http/
/www.ab.wakwak.com/knight/ http//www.opera.com
/ jEdit http//www.jedit.org/ phpMyAdmin http//w
ww.phpmyadmin.net/
Office Productivity Graphics Internet
Explorer Programmers Editor
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Actual Portal Budget (Not including salaries)
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Intranet Portal Development Timeline
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Our Open Source Challenges

• Cohesion Time As you saw in the Tools
  Progression slide, it took some time and a few
  false starts to find a cohesive suite of tools
• Documentation Lots of Documentation. But, how do
  you identify the good ones? Same problem exists
  when using commercial products
• Programmer Learning Curve It takes time to learn
  new programming languages and applications
• Office Productivity Applications not as mature as
  Development Tools

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Intranet Portal Home Page

• The Portal home page uses a familiar horizontal
  tabbed interface combined with vertical sidebars
• The Calendar on the right is linked to a simple
  events database
• News and other items can have a discussion
  feature turned on to allow responses and feedback

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Intranet Portal Home Page
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Personalized Home Page

• Creating an account is not necessary for viewing
  the Portal
• However, creating an account provides additional
  desirable features such as a personalized home
  page and a Portal Favorites list

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Personalized Home Page
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Simple Advanced Search Methods

• All content entered into the Zope/CMF/Plone
  content management system is immediately
  cataloged and searchable
• A simple search text box is at the top of every
  Portal page
• A more sophisticated search page is found by
  clicking on the Search tab

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Simple Advanced Search Methods
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Web Based Management

• The Portal can be managed using a web browser
  based interface
• The Internet Explorer, Mozilla, and Opera web
  browsers have all tested successfully with the
  management interface

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Web Based Management
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Web-based Content Creation/Editing

• Content can be created using conventional HTML or
  the simpler (to learn and understand) Structured
  Text. HTML and Structured Text can be mixed in
  the same document
• Documents can be copied and pasted from a client
  side editor. Documents can also be transferred
  using FTP or WebDav
• Binary file documents such as Microsoft Word,
  Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, or Adobe
  Acrobat documents can be uploaded through the web
  browser interface

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Web-based Content Creation/Editing
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Web-based Publishing Workflow

• Individuals can be assigned roles like content
  creator and reviewer
• Documents can be left invisible until approved
• Documents can have publication start and end
  dates
• Documents can be retracted after publication

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Web-based Publishing Workflow
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Summary Conclusions

• The budget challenge we faced in October forced
  the team to search for new options
• The free applications and Open Source solutions
  we identified took months of research. But, the
  end result was suite of Open Source tools that
  has, we believe, produced results as good or
  superior to what we may have built using
  conventional commercial tools.
• The suite of Open Source tools we identified is
  now an integral part of any development task we
  consider.

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Mahalo (Thank you) Aloha!