# Presentation: 163097

## 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)**

## Presentation Agenda

- Introduction – Norton / Powell
- Definitions
- Past and Present
- The Strategic Plan
- Looking to the Future...
- Questions & Answers

## 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.

## 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”.

## 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.

## 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.

## 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...

## 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!  Don’t release an application until it has been stress tested!

## 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 FTE’s
- 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.

## 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.

## 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.  It’s like we are placing little ‘thimbles’ next to those ‘silos’.

## 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 couldn’t find it or someone on the other team had just deleted it from the server.  <Insert Rant Here>

## The Strategic Plan

- It’s 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.

## 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 agency’s data collection efforts over the past 5-10 years,
- Highly qualified Systems Analysts and DBA’s,
- Highly qualified Internet Application Developers  (contractual or permanent), and
- Management & Policy Maker support and $$$.

## 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?

## 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.

## 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)

## 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.

## 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?

## 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?

## 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).

## Looking to the Future...

- ISBE has not yet submitted it’s 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...)
- We’ll keep you posted – check with us this July in D.C.

## 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 (LT=Long Term and ST=Short Term)

## 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.

## Demo’s

- If time permits, we may demo some sites here...

## Questions & Answers

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