This report gives a detailed assessment of the current internal QUT social technology deployed: Email (Exchange 2010), Lync 2010, Wiki (Confluence), Blackboard, Yammer and SharePoint (2010). It also gives a recommendation on how to leverage an office 365 enterprise ensuite in the University Information Management, collaborative working and communication by the university staff.
The Queensland University of Technology has recently upgraded its information communication technology services. The management has have displayed remarkable efforts in ensuring that it provides sustainable information management structure to both the staff and the students. The university has acquired office 365 subscriptions with licensing for different departments in the university. Office and exchange have been implemented for communication, massaging and productivity tools. The university intends to deploy the enterprise two technologies fully to provide collaborative workplace and content management. It is expected that sharepoint online will be implemented as a base for the different applications.
A detailed review of the existing information management system accomplished through system analysis, questionnaires and workshop revealed the following:
Technology- as a result of the university activities and purpose, several technologies are used for collaborative working and information management. The most prevalent issues that were cited related to effective multiple logins, system’s response time, cumbersome navigation between different sections and incompatibilities.
On content management, the key concerned includes lack of versioning and classification rendering it hard to locate relevant content. Backup and disaster recovery and backups, lack if search facilities across the departmental content; expiry and no retention of out-dated content.
Concerning knowledge transfer, most information-related activities depend highly on formal and informal relationship. Most employees ‘are not aware of what they know’. There is an overreliance of a small group of employees to link teams and effective information sharing, communication and expertise in the institution.
Proposed approach
The university has the mandate and responsibility of using the enterprise two technologies for all information-based tasks to provide a group-side information management structure and strategic oversight. A balance is needed between having stabled basic content services to support daily business requirement and management of digital assets and being forefront of state of the art technologies for collaborative and mobile working. The information-based tasks should be classified into four major groups (Bughin 2008).
QUT will benefit from the enterprise two starting point for all the employees regardless of the department. It would assist with navigation between different subsystems, embrace the relationship between different teams and support regular updates and announcements. An enterprise two central content management system is needed for document classification and organization so that the reusability and findability of the web content are improved. It will incorporate lifecycle management policies and guideline to identify accountability, ownership and determines compliance and retention requirements. Such application would embrace formal institution documents such as intellectual property to be captured within outputs from ongoing projects and research activities.
Each entity within the university fraternity will keep on using the their preferred applications provided by the hosting provider for team-based collaboration and local content. The external parties such as the student body will easily interact with the system. The universities will be using different enterprise two applications other needed technologies needed include Google apps, drop box and huddle.
The enterprise application will be used for institution’s business-critical activities and processes, such as customer relationship management, forecasting and accounting. These applications are deployed to work on dedicated technologies (McAfee 2006). Integration can also be crucial with the enterprise content management system which is centralized to manage related documents.
Key decision
The most critical decision that influences the priorities of the project concerns the management of identities. The university has moved towards identity management models and federated models to enable an uniform sigh-on through multiple platforms. The primary directory chosen will determine the recommended technologies the university decided to deploy.
Recommendations
Basing on the analysis of the state of the institution’s content management system acquired from workshops, feedback, and system review an information strategy is needed. The university is a collection of departments with unique mandates but a shared accountability is needed. To be a leader within the sector while using digital technologies, it is important to demonstrate advice that you give to the client and be ready to carry out experiments on new ways of working and learning. There is also need to provide and access principle business services in a reliable and stable format (Soriano 2007). The information-based tasks are categorized into four groups. A central and starter point for all the university employees, team-based collaborations that localize activities within projects. Processes and teams, enterprise content management for central collaborations and content management and enterprise applications for specialized process that needs specific applications.
An integrated, single set f information communication technology services in the university has not been implemented because of practical and legal reasons. However, they have established one layer of services that enables interoperability between subsystems and reduce administrative overheads for administrators needed to work with different services and applications across different departments. Different elements of the strategy have emerged from some users, for instance, federated identities based on SAML 2.0 which enables harmonized log-on across different systems. A single service layer is made up of the following elements; directory, community, portal, newsroom and enterprise search. A centralized directory provides content details and identifies the management fir every university employee. The directory supports federation services t let single sign-on across subsystems and integrated application and services. A centralized directory would allow personalization and content targeting in the university. The community is made up of enterprise social network which assist in building relationships and facilitates conversations between different teams in the institution, enabling the generation of ideas and fast knowledge transfer. When the social network is integrated with the directory, the normal profile features such as content details will automatically be displayed to show shared responsibilities and interests.
The portal is the starting point to locate content, processes and people. It is as simple as a wiki which has navigation pointers to link the different subsystems needed by individuals, via an integrated services showing interactive information in the linked systems. It also includes a centralized intranet which depends on resources present to maintain the content. The central newsroom provides a transparent and consistent communication sources, alerts and updates across the university.
PART TWO
Team-Based Collaborative Working
The application is part of the office 365 tools and should beverage as suitable within the university licensed the users. Some issues elements need all the users to poses licenses. It includes an email, instant messaging, shared calendars, mobile versions and personal file storage of office applications. Web Apps and SharePoint are integrated in the office 365 services used in creating web sites and for online content management. It will include form-based applications, intranets and team sites. The SharePoint sites will be shared with external users without needing additional licensing. The external users will completely participate in any activity related to content within the site plus co-authoring of content.
The introduction of a centralized content management tolls will enhance the reusability and retrieval of digital information located outside the enterprise application and provide compliance with the institution’s requirements and management of records. The institutions corporate documents including formal letters, reports and legal documents procedures and policies will be integrated. The content will be classified for easy identification of indented users. It also includes lifecycle policies for retentions that ensure that the contents are deleted or archived when it is obsolete (Cook 2008).
The project outcomes will include the documented outputs from the activities that have already received proper approval. The current PIMS core application will be used to provides programmes and projects management information with links to document outputs kept in the repository and related contacts.
The office 365 service subscription should be configured to offer the following capabilities
A centralized directory provides content details and identifies the management for every university employee. The directory supports federation services t let single sign-on across subsystems and integrated application and services. A centralized directory would allow personalization and content targeting in the university. The community is made up of enterprise social network which assist in building relationships and facilitates conversations between different teams in the institution, enabling the generation of ideas and fast knowledge transfer. When the social network is integrated with the directory, the normal profile features such as content details will automatically be displayed to show shared responsibilities and interests.
References
McAfee, A. P. (2006). Enterprise 2.0: The dawn of emergent collaboration. MIT Sloan management review, 47(3), 21-28.
Bughin, J. (2008). The rise of enterprise 2.0. Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice, 9(3), 251-259.
Cook, N. (2008). Enterprise 2.0: How social software will change the future of work. Gower Publishing, Ltd..
Newman, A., & Thomas, J. (2008). Enterprise 2.0 implementation: integrate Web 2.0 services into your enterprise. McGraw Hill Professional.
Soriano, J., Lizcano, D., Cañas, M. A., Reyes, M., & Hierro, J. J. (2007). Fostering innovation in a mashup-oriented enterprise 2.0 collaboration environment. UK, sai: sisn, 24(2007), 62-68.
