In this months Issue:

• Progress
• Web and Audio Conferencing
• Energy Costs
• SharePoint Overview
• FootPrints Upgrade
• CRASH Program
• PM Corner - Project Team Performance
• BA Corner - Requirements Trawling

Progress

by Tom Murray

 

Much has been made about opportunity for technology to drive more efficient operations in state government and I am pleased to report that we are making significant progress. Many of the ideas and concepts that were derived out of the SEI (Strategic Enterprise Initiative) are coming to fruition or are well under way.

The big projects are the Web Portal, Grants Management, Document Management (Sharepoint), Time and Labor, Single Email System and Data Center/Server Consolidation. In addition, several "line of business" systems are being modernized, such as DMV, Retirement and the Business Tax system. AHS is also working to replace some of their large legacy systems through the "MOVE" project.

The Web Portal and the Email consolidation are the projects that are more mature; with all state agencies working with the Web Portal Team and with our upgrade to Exchange 2007, we will be bringing the last few remaining entities on the email system in the next year. The enterprise grants management contract has been signed and the Department of Education will be the first customer on the system early next year. The enterprise Sharepoint system will be implemented early next year as well, fulfilling the content and document management needs for much of the state.

The message is that we are making progress; while at times slower than we would like, things are moving forward. In fact, in many instances the pace has helped to better prepare the enterprise and to make us more thoughtful about implementations. I want to thank all of the departments and agencies that have helped the state and DII move forward on these important projects.

New Web and Audio Conferencing Service Launched

by Dave Tucker

 

iLinc Communications was recently selected to provide both Web and Audio conferencing services and the contract is now in place and ready for departments to begin to utilize. The iLinc solution was deemed to be the most accessible for individuals with a disability and includes a unique “Green Meter” that tracks the cost savings and reduction in green house gas that would otherwise result from staff travelling to attend meetings. The Web Conferencing can be easily launched and include as many or few participants as necessary, but delivered directly to each desktop.

The iLinc Audio Conferencing service replaces the now expired contract with Leader Technologies. Departments that have continued to use Leader for Audio conferencing should make plans to sign up for the new service through iLinc. It is anticipated that accounts with Leader will be closed by the end of October.

The contract includes two distinct Web Conferencing license models designed to address those departments that hold a lot of meetings and those who hold few.

Individual departments and agencies will need to establish their own accounts with iLinc. DII is not administering these accounts and there are no additional fees associated with the service other than those payable to iLinc. Information about the services and costs can be found at http://dii.vermont.gov/DII_Divisions/Customer/Wireless_Web/webconferencing

Special thanks go to Dana Bianchi, Pat McIntosh, Bart Selle, Tom Burke, David Punia and Fred Jones, all of whom assisted with the review and selection process.

Energy Costs

by Mike Morey

Photo by Narcis Parfenti, Tulcea, Romania

 

Energy costs, your personal computer, our servers and my Civic. During this last year and half, energy consumption has continued to rise, fuel prices have continued to increase and the pressure to focus on greener environments is discussed every other day on some news channel.  Being a long distance commuter, I feel the pain in filling up my two door Honda Civic 1.5 times a week.  Electricity (energy in general) is becoming a hot commodity and we need to manage it carefully.

Without spending too much time on virtual technologies and power management software, I thought it might be good to put on my electrical engineering hat and put some numbers together so we can all get on the same page regarding electrical power and your personal computer and/or server(s).

When we discuss power consumption of any electrical equipment there are four facets of power we need to understand or consider.

1. The startup energy: believe it or not when you start a pc/server/storage system it takes more power to get the hard drive spinning, than it does when the system is up to speed. This is a short time frame but you need to have the electricity available.
2. The running continuous energy consumption: when your pc and monitor (electric equipment) are on and you are operating it normally, it consumes some rated energy. Think of this as the average power consumption.
3. The cooling (in the room) to offset the temperature generated by the electrical device: a by-product of running electrical equipment like pc’s and servers is heat. We are all aware of air hot being discharged from our personal computers; and if you have been in a data center recently, the heat being generated can be substantial.  Rule of thumb is that if you require X amount of energy to run the equipment, you need an additional 30%-50% of number X to power the cooling equipment and keep the room at a constant temperature.
4. Last but not least, the amount of time the electrical devices or components of the device are powered on: we are all familiar with our pc’s going into hibernation.

Now that we have gone over several of these key areas of interest, let’s relate them to your personal computer. We have to start with a discussion about how much energy a common pc consumes.  There are many statistics available so I am going to pick one and base the remainder of the discussion on it.  I am also going to compare our computer equipment in terms of light bulbs - we all have some 100watt and 50watt light bulbs in our homes and we know the 100watt gives off a lot more heat.

Your Personal Computer. Let’s say your computer uses 80 watts per hour, and your monitor when not in low power mode (hibernating) eats 50 watts an hour (these are rough average estimates) - you are consuming a total of 130 watts an hour (just shy of a 150watt light bulb). If you leave your computer (light) on 24 hours a day we can calculate just the electrical cost for it pretty simply.  All we need is what we pay for electricity, and to stay simple we will use 10 cents per kilowatt/hour for our cost.

1. 24 hours x 365 day =  8760 hours/year
2. 8760 hours/year x 130 watts = 1138.8 kilowatt/hours
3. 1138.8 kilowatt-hours x $0.10 = $113.88 dollars a year.

That’s right. Leave you computer on at home 24x7 and you can be paying $114 dollars a year. Now that we see the worst case, there are numerous solutions to combat this cost. We can use built in power management features of our pc’s to hibernate our systems, place our monitors in power savings mode, virtualize desktops, load additional power management software on the desktop and even do things as simple as turning off our computers. These things need to be coordinated, as we still need to apply anti-virus protection, possibly run backups, etc., to the desktop. These tasks very often run after-hours as we catch our beauty sleep.  Regardless, we can all play a part in driving this annual cost down.  Following this simple example, we can see that a pc running 8 hours a day @ $0.10 kilowatt-hour costs us $37.00 a year.  Percentage wise this is substantial.

If we all left our work computers on 24x7 and we assume the state has 8000 pc’s, we could be talking an overall cost of $300,000 and there is no where for this number to go but up.  Remember we also have to account for air conditioning power to cool the heat generated by the computers, but I am going to save that for our next discussion, the data center and its equipment.

Data Centers (Servers etc). Now we move to data center infrastructure like servers, storage mechanism and massive cooling equipment. So we can compare apples to apples let's use the same assumption we used for our pc example ($0.10 kilowatt-hour is our electricity cost).

First and foremost, servers in a data center consume more power. For our example, our typical server consumes 350 watts per hour (3.5 x 100 watt light bulbs) using average estimates.  Unlike a PC, servers are typically on 24 hours a day so we can calculate just the electrical cost as before. 

1. 24 hours x 365 day =  8760 hours/year
2. 8760 hours/year x 350 watts = 3066 kilowatt - hour
3. 3066 kilowatt - hours x $0.10 = $306.60 dollars a year.

Now we need to add our cooling costs. Remember our rule of thumb is 30%-50% (lets use 40%) of our electrical cost to run the servers needs to be added back into the total energy cost, for the electricity required to run air conditioning to keep the servers cool.

4. $306.60 * 1.40 =  $429.24 annual cost for a server and its cooling.

Again it seems reasonable until we account for the number of servers we may have in the mix.  If the state has 500 servers this is an annual cost of over $200,000. And again, like the gas prices I pay for my commute, there is only one realistic direction for the price to go - up. How do we deal with better power management of servers since they need to stay on 24 x 7? Simple - we need fewer of them.  Hence, this becomes the green aspect of server virtualization in the datacenter.  If we could reduce 500 physical servers on 50 physical servers we can save $150,000 annually in power alone.

When you hear green data center and pc power management, this is what most people are talking about.  We need to remember that in the data center these savings are typically offset by additional software costs, specific hardware requirements and more complex systems.  The net gain is still better energy efficiency.  If anyone would like to take a data center tour and look at virtualization in action please feel free to drop an email to Joe Ng or myself at DII.

SharePoint Overview

by Joe Lenahan and Tom Jenny

SOV Embarks on Building an Enterprise Microsoft Office SharePoint Services (MOSS) Infrastructure

DII has contracted with i3solutions of Sterling Virginia to build an Enterprise SharePoint (MOSS) infrastructure for the state of Vermont. This infrastructure is currently in the early design stages with implementation tentatively scheduled for early 2009. SharePoint (MOSS) is a very powerful collaboration and information sharing platform which the state will be able to leverage in many ways. Following is some general information about MOSS.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Services (MOSS) Overview

Great collaboration. It means eliminating boundaries of time, place and technology, so people can work together effortlessly.

Today's business environment demands that people are able to communicate and share information effectively in any situation.  That means eliminating the typical constraints of location and technology so employees can remain productive in or out of the office. 

Microsoft SharePoint is an intelligent, enterprise portal that provides a central place to access, manage, share, and interact with relevant information, documents, applications, and people. It enables faster, more informed decision making, more effective sharing across teams, and more streamlined business processes.

• An immediately productive solution: Microsoft SharePoint is an out of the box, easily customizable, flexible way for end-users to share information, and design and manage business tasks.
• An easily managed platform:  Comprehensive and secure, SharePoint connects workers to each other, customers, partners and information - from virtually anywhere. 
• Technology that builds on your existing investments:  Transform your business one phase at a time.  Choose a pace that makes sense for your organization and see significant improvements at each step. 
• A clear roadmap:  With predictable costs and lower total cost of ownership, SharePoint allows for a more efficient allocation of IT resources. 
• Minimal training requirements:  Built on familiar tools, SharePoint requires minimal end-user training and has a low impact on IT.

We will keep you informed as this project progresses and will provide updates in future newsletters. Questions about the SharePoint project may be directed to the project manager, Tom Jenny Thomas.jenny@state.vt.us or 828-1525.

Numara Footprints Upgraded to 8.1.1

by Rick Shover

 

On Wednesday September 3, 2008, DII successfully upgraded Footprints from version 7.5a to version 8.1.1. There are many changes to the new version, but for the user, most of the changes are cosmetic. You will notice a new look and feel of the application as Numara, the company that owns Footprints, has softened the look of the application so that it is easier on the eyes.

The next most noticeable change for the customer is the GO button. Numara changed that button from GO to SAVE. This is a simple change, but helps the users better understand what is going to happen to their ticket when they click the SAVE button.

As for the agents, there are a number of changes. My Preferences has many more options in it than version 7.5. Most noticeable here is the use of Tabs inside Footprints. Each time I mention tabs, people get confused with Tabs in Internet Explorer. These tabs are in Footprints and can be found and set in My Preferences.

You can find further information on what changed for the agents in the documentation listed below. DII and Numara have documented the changes for the customers and agents in five documents that can be found at: http://dii.vermont.gov/DII_Divisions/Customer/Customer_Support/Footprints. Those documents are:  

• “FP_WhatsNew.PDF” – this document was created by Numara and is for Agents
• “Whats_new_in_version_8_customer.doc” – this document was created by DII and is for customers
• “Whats_new_in_version_8_agents.doc” – this document was created by DII and is for Agents  

In addition, we have uploaded the revised training documents:

• “Footprints_Customer_training_v8_1_1.doc” – this is a document that was created by DII for Customer Training purposes.
• “Footprints_Agent_training_v8_1_1.doc” – this is a document that was created by DII for Agent Training purposes.  

We here at DII hope that you have a pleasant experience with Footprints. If you have any questions, concerns or comments please do not hesitate to contact the DII Help Desk.

CRASH Program

by Bob Thigpen

 

DII became involved in the Crash program in response to federal Department of Transportation threats to withhold funding. Despite several years of effort, the state had been unable to agree upon an interagency approach that was acceptable to the stakeholder agencies.

DII plays an important role as a neutral facilitator ensuring that the needs of all agencies are considered in the approach and solutions.

The Crash program goals are to improve timeliness, accuracy and quality of reporting the approximate 15,000 accidents that occur in Vermont annually.

AOT had worked to standardize the paper reporting process for several years. Until 2002, only a small percentage of property damage accidents were reported. There is no mandate or law that requires law enforcement (LE) to use any of the electronic reporting interfaces that have been developed or are in the development process. We have emphasized ease of use and reporting capabilities to promote law enforcement use of the system.

Until 2008, all crashes were reported by paper and it took an average of one year for crash information to be available. Data quality and completeness were poor. DMV scanned paper forms submitted by law enforcement.

The business process was re-engineered as part of a web based reporting program development and deployment. We are on a pace to have between 40-50% of crashes reported through the web interface by calendar year end and that has allowed DMV to begin to redeploy staff who had been involved in paper processing. An interface to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Agency has been recently completed and over 80% of commercial vehicle crashes are now electronically submitted to the FMCSA repository in Cambridge, MA.

There are several other interfaces in progress (see picture above). We will discuss them later but the most important part of the Crash story is cooperation between the stakeholders.

A Success Story The key stakeholders who have contributed to the success of the Crash program are:

• Statewide Law Enforcement who worked with us to design the web crash interface including State Police, local agencies and sheriffs.
• DPS IT and AOT IT who worked together to overcome resource constraints and helped build a security structure that allowed single sign on. It should be noted that the security structure was built upon previously completed directory service integration work architected and completed by DPS IT.
• Burlington Police Department, Middlebury Police department and many others who have worked to improve data quality and assisted as we work to interface to their police systems.
• DMV Enforcement who provided invaluable input to web design and to the FMCSA interface.
• The governing members of the Traffic Records Coordinating Committee including the Secretary of Transportation, the Commissioners of DMV, DII, and Public Safety who provided guidance, oversight and approvals.
• AOT’s Highway Research group who provide training, user support, design and implementation services.

The Smart Interface and Uniform Rules The Crash web interface provides tool tips (hints and format examples for most fields). It provides error messages by field (a red X) along with an English explanation of the error.

Required fields differ by accident type (property damage, injury, fatality, commercial vehicle) and are highlighted based upon type of accident so users know which fields must be completed as they input data.

Fields are automatically populated wherever possible. Input can be mouse or keyboard centric (many of the older police systems are keyboard centric).

It is possible to save in-progress reports along with complete error listings. This allows law enforcement to tend to emergency situations and return to the input process at a later time without losing data. Extensive reporting is available and is used to monitor in-progress reports to alert support staff to training/retraining opportunities.

All Crash rules are codified using XML. The report layout and field rules are codified in an XML schema and the business rules (and resultant error messages) are codified in XSL documents. Microsoft and others provide system calls to reference these rules so they do not have to be hard coded into the user input portion of the computer code. The Crash schema and rule set is published on the web for uniformity and use by cooperating programs.

The average time for training law enforcement staff on crash reporting has been reduced to less than one hour in most cases.

User Oriented Security Crash reports contain sensitive data and can include criminal complaints. There are approximately 1800 potential Crash users. To do away with the need for extra staff to administer all these accounts and to make it easy for law enforcement, Active Directory Federated Services (ADFS) was successfully beta tested and is deployed between AOT and DPS and between AOT and Burlington Police Department. This allows users to enter the username and password they use to logon to their police systems. It makes it easy for the users with little additional administrative support required because police agencies already administer their police system accounts to FBI standards.

Unique identifiers are stored in active directory that provide users with their agency view of the database and set permissions when they sign on to Crash. All data is encrypted using public/private key techniques derived from MIT’s Kerberos model. ADFS presented a steep learning curve and was difficult to implement, but the user ease of use, level of security offered and ability to maintain without additional staff have made the learning experience worthwhile. With help from DPS IT and AOT IT, we have been able to implement ADFS even with Unix based police systems.

Future Steps Vermont’s communication capabilities have improved and this has allowed LE to begin to implement mobile computing (laptops and printers in police cars). There is also a desire to be able to perform e-ticketing. Approximately 35% of crashes have tickets issued to the motorist. (This statistic was obtained from the Crash ad-hoc reporting feature.)

LE needs to have a single program interface for crashes and for e-ticketing. The web based Crash system needs to be adapted to a mobile computing client based solution and interfaces need to be developed to the Courts (many USDOT grants require these interfaces to be addressed as a condition of receiving funding).

LE wants all data on their police systems. We are in advanced stages of testing interfaces that send or receive data from the Crash repository (database at AOT) to the LE systems. When completed, we will overcome objections/resistance to change about dual entry by automatically populating all required systems. This, in turn will facilitate adding the remaining 40 LE agencies that still submit paper reports.

Auto-populate fields – we will be working with private sector businesses that can offer web services which automatically populate data fields such as VIN number, make, model, etc. The web service approach will improve data quality and reduce required input.

GPS interfaces – several communication services now offer GPS. This data will be auto-populated into accident location fields.

Ad-hoc reporting – The system offers ad-hoc reporting that will be used to help LE make deployment decisions, help OVHA ensure that Medicaid is reimbursed when recipients receive insurance settlements, help AOT target asset damage for reimbursement as well as identify high crash areas that can be targeted for remediation efforts; and many, many other examples.

Project Team Performance

by Christine Hetzel

 

Have you ever worked with a project team that operated like a finely tuned machine? Various ideas and opinions were openly evaluated; people helped and supported each other. Everyone had a common vision for the work that needed to be done and were committed to making that happen?

Have you ever worked with a project team that seemed to go no where? Where team members constantly bickered, undercut each others work and eventually stopped speaking to each other all together?

Why do some teams perform while others get stuck?

Although not specific only to project teams, Bruce Tuckman proposed a group development model in 1965. He maintained that all teams go through specific phases of development. Each phase is necessary and inevitable in order for the team to grow, to tackle problems, to find solutions, to plan work, and to deliver results.

The phases of team development are:

Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing

In the first stage of team building, the forming of the team takes place. The team meets and learns about the opportunities and challenges. They agree on goals and begin to tackle the tasks of the project. Team members tend to behave quite independently. They may be motivated but are usually relatively uninformed of the issues and objectives of the team. Team members are usually on their best behavior but very focused on themselves. Mature team members begin to model appropriate behavior even at this early phase.

The forming stage of any team is important because in this stage the members of the team get to know one another and make new friends. This is also a good opportunity to see how each member of the team works as an individual and how they respond to pressure.

As the project manager – it is beneficial to share this model with your team, so they are prepared for the conflicts that will follow. In this phase, the project manager needs to take a directive management approach. You need to be a strong leader, prepared, organized, and focused on team goals.

Every group will then enter the storming stage in which different ideas compete for consideration. The team addresses issues such as what problems they are really supposed to solve, how they will function independently and together and what leadership model they will accept. Team members open up to each other and confront each other's ideas and perspectives. In some cases storming can be resolved quickly. In others, the team never leaves this stage. The maturity of some team members usually determines whether the team will ever move out of this stage. Immature team members will begin acting out to demonstrate how much they know and convince others that their ideas are correct. Some team members will focus on minutiae to avoid real issues.

The storming stage is necessary to the growth of the team. It can be contentious, unpleasant and even painful to members of the team who are averse to conflict. Tolerance of each team member and their differences needs to be emphasized. Without tolerance and patience the team will fail. This phase can become destructive to the team and will lower motivation if allowed to get out of control.

As the project manager – you may need to be more accessible but still need to be directive in your guidance of decision-making and professional behavior. Allow conflicts, but don’t let them spiral out of control. Remain objective and if possible, don’t take sides. Instead, help the team members find common ground.

At some point, the team may enter the norming stage. Team members adjust their behavior to each other as they develop work habits that make teamwork seem more natural and fluid. Team members often work through this stage by agreeing on rules, values, and professional behavior. During this phase, team members begin to trust each other. Motivation increases as the team gets more acquainted with the project.

A word of caution, teams in this phase may lose their creativity if the norming behaviors become too strong and begin to stifle healthy disputes and the team begins to exhibit group think.

As the project manager – you may need to be less directive and more participative than in the earlier stages. The team members can be expected to take more responsibility for making decisions and for their professional behavior. Allow your team more freedom to interact (as they would choose to) in team meetings. But, continue to challenge them to “think outside the box”, continue to solicit various opinions and encourage the discussion of opposing views.

Some teams will reach the performing stage. These high-performing teams are able to function as a unit as they find ways to get the job done smoothly and effectively without inappropriate conflict or the need for external supervision. Team members have become interdependent. By this time they are motivated and knowledgeable. The team members are now competent, autonomous and able to handle the decision-making process without supervision. Disputes are expected and allowed as long as it is channeled through means acceptable to the team.

As the project manager – you will need to be participative. The team will make most of the necessary decisions. Continue to motivate and congratulate team members on their work. Ultimately, you become their cheerleader.

One final thought. Many long-standing teams will go through these cycles many times as they react to changing circumstances. For example, a change in leadership may cause the team to revert to storming as the new people challenge the existing norms and dynamics of the team.

Although many of us are familiar with the above principles, it’s important to remember them in “the heat of battle”. The better prepared you are to assist team members through team development phases, the more quickly the team will perform.

Requirements Trawling, Part 4

by Rick Daniell

 

 

In our last newsletter article, I continued the discussion on “Requirements Trawling” - specifically we covered interviewing. As you may recall, “Trawling” makes the analogy of casting a net through an organization to “catch” as many requirements as possible. It also discussed the various types of requirements (conscious; unconscious; and undreamed) and how certain techniques work better for each type than others.

In this article I would like to introduce a new topic, “Mind mapping”. This technique combines observing, listening and interviewing into an interactive session. The typically Mind mapping session allows for the gathering of ideas, concepts and needs in a structured but free flowing venue. Most sessions utilize a large sheet of paper (or whiteboard) with a core concept placed in the center; ideas thoughts and needs can be placed around the central concept. This allows for grouping and organizing of items which help you arrive at requirements. This technique seems to work very well with a medium to large size group of people. This is another tool that can be used to gather, organize and develop requirements.

In our next newsletter article we will continue our series on various techniques and we’ll explore the technique of “Apprenticing”.