Poo Poo Portals at Your Peril

Kenneth R Deans [HREF1], Senior Lecturer, Department of Marketing [HREF2], University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand, 9001. kdeans@business.otago.ac.nz

Sandy von Allmen, Science Library, University of Tasmania [HREF3], GPO Box 252-67, Hobart, Tasmania, 7001. Sandy.vonAllmen@utas.edu.au

Abstract

This paper re-visits the adoption and ongoing development of portals in Australasian tertiary institutions. The work builds on a survey carried out in 2000 and reports on the increasing number of portals and their relative sophistication. The authors conducted a survey using e-mail, telephone and in-depth personal interviews. A 57% response rate was achieved and some interesting results were generated. In particular the qualitative results offer a number of useful pointers to those further down the adoption continuum. Findings suggest that outside financial and HR considerations, the key issues are customer focus and efficiencies of delivery. Associated with these are topics such as in-house drivers and competitive positioning in what is becoming a more fragmented marketplace.

Introduction and background

Portals are still very much a "hot" topic both in industry and academic institutions. The number of papers and articles in academic journals (EDUCAUSE), at conferences such as AusWeb [HREF4] and EDUCAUSE 2001 [HREF5] and the popular and business press (Business Wire, PC Magazine) is testament to the sustained and heightened level of interest. It is encouraging to note just how many Australasian institutions have developed a portal and how far along the complexity / sophistication continuum the more advanced (you know who you all are!) have migrated. At the same time there are a number of institutions that are in the process of planning, development or implementation. Papers presented by Sawyer R. and Bailey N. [HREF6], Bailey N. and Treloar A. [HREF7] and Alexander D. [HREF8] at AusWeb 01 offer interesting and insightful perspectives on user and provider issues.

Towards the end of 2000 von Allmen S. L., Deans K. R. and Bartosiewicz I. undertook a survey of all fifty-one members of the Council of the Australian University Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT) [HREF9] to ascertain the level of interest and adoption of portal technology within their institutes. A forty-five percent response rate was achieved and the results were subsequently presented [HREF10] at the AUSWEB 01 conference at Coffs Harbour. The results suggested that adoption levels were likely to change as a growing number of our tertiary institutions embark on the often difficult task of deciding on the appropriate solution that will suit their often unique requirements. Those present at the conference were not only interested in the results to date but also made the suggestion that a longitudinal study would be both interesting and helpful. The authors were encouraged by this response and agreed to undertake a second survey. It is our understanding that the technology is still relatively young and constantly evolving but that the possibilities it presents and the opportunities that lie ahead are significant and worthy of investigation and reporting. There is general agreement that regardless of how far along the path of adoption and implementation each tertiary institution has gone, no one can afford to ignore portal technology.

It is the authors’ intention to explore some of the issues raised in this paper using an open participative approach during their presentation.

The following sections of the paper consider portals in tertiary institutions, the methodological approach used in the primary research, the qualitative and quantitative results and discussion.

Portals

Portal definition continues to attract attention and debate from academics, practitioners and IT specialists. As reported in their previous paper, the authors are comfortable with the Looney and Lyman (2000) definition:

"... portals gather a variety of useful information resources into a single, 'one-stop' Web page, helping the user to avoid being overwhelmed by 'infoglut' or feeling lost on the Web."

Much discussion has continued throughout 2001 on the implementation of portals by higher education institutes. The debate is often over the different approaches available and how to select the best option for your institution. At opposite ends of the scale are purchasing an off-the-shelf product versus building it totally in-house. Gleason (2001) outlines several of the possibilities in between these two extremes:

"Selecting the right portal approach is a hot issue. Some institutions have affiliated with a portal service provider, or have adopted a major application software vendor's portal as the institutional portal. Others are attempting to build a custom portal utilizing commercial portal software. Other open source portal solutions . . . have also been considered. Some universities have decided that there will not be a single institutional portal, but rather lots of portals on campus."

From our research we found evidence of all of the above methods being used or considered amongst Australian and New Zealand universities. One point that was raised again and again is that the infrastructure behind the portal is the most important issue to address. Eisler (2001) says:

"Portals do not improve on information; they only present it. A portal will only be as good as the information it contains. The development of a portal should focus as much on the information it contains and the development of this information as on the technology of the project."

The use of directory services, such as Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), or similar is seen as imperative for any large organisation handling authentication, identification and access control (Bailey and Treloar, 2001). It was suggested by some of our respondents that changing or restructuring the underlying systems and producing a front-end was 95% of the work regardless of whether you are buying a generic portal or building your own. Purchasing a product and then having to adapt your underlying, often old and custom-built systems can create difficulties and counteract any savings in costs. Thompson (2001) suggests:

"one would need to be confident that the generic portal had suitable extension options in-built, with enough programming richness, to allow easy integration with other systems existing within the organisation's environment. If this cannot be guaranteed, the generic portal will likely prove inadequate."

Some software producers are now offering portal solutions to their customers. Moskowitz (2001) explains that vendors like Blackboard and PeopleSoft are bundling their portal systems with their existing offerings. This works well for institutions that are happy to have different portals for staff and students covered by the appropriate software. It can also be cost-effective because the portals are part of the campus-wide system the universities have already purchased from these vendors, as long as integration with existing systems is not a problem.

Homan, Sanchez and Klima (2001) additionally state:

"In most cases, a portal server's features and strategic direction are driven largely by the core business of the software vendor. . . Oracle's product focuses on leveraging Oracle databases and application implementations."

In their evaluation of six portal servers produced by vendors they suggest that this is a trend that is likely to continue as it can reduce the time and effort of building portals from scratch.

There is also the idea that adopting portal technology may assist in some saving of resources post-implementation. Thompson (2001) suggests:

"Portals lower the cost of delivering student services by leveraging the time and effort of students and faculty, who can use the portal to complete forms online for automated processing, reducing the need for administrative staff time."

This is complimented by comments during the face-to-face interviews that the students want to do as much online as possible - they want to have all of their administrative matters dealt with online so that their time on campus can be spent productively.

As part of our study conducted last year we addressed the future of portals wondering if they were a technological fad. Results indicate that the portal is here to stay in one form or another as the way of presenting information to users in higher education institutions.

This view is supported by the Gartner Group, as quoted in Moskowitz (2001):

"Some 80 percent of U.S. colleges with enrollments of more than 1,000 will have campus portals by 2005, predicts the Connecticut-based Gartner Group."

However, portals may not always be in the form they currently are. Gleason (2001) explains that:

"Institutions are now facing the challenge of the requirement to supply access to expansive and integrated applications, and the ability to retrieve all appropriate information resources in an integrated manner anytime, anywhere, with anything, including handheld devices."

Portal software vendors such as iPlanet and Plumtree are already using wireless technology with the aim that users will be able to access their portals via mobile devices including mobile telephones, Palm handheld computers and Pocket PC-based personal digital assistants (Mears, 2001).

To ascertain the views of the members of CAUDIT in relation to all of the above areas, the following methodology was employed.

Methodology

Unlike the previous research undertaken by the authors, it was deemed appropriate to adopt a mixed methodology approach to primary data collection. Taking advantage of other travel plans the researchers conducted a number of in-depth interviews with CAUDIT members or a member of their staff. An interview pro-forma was drawn up to ensure consistency across interviews. Secondly, and based on the positive response rate achieved from the 2000 survey, the new questionnaire (based on the interview pro-forma) was also sent electronically to all members of CAUDIT (majority) that had not been interviewed. After a period of time had elapsed, a series of telephone follow-up calls was initiated. A short telephone interview (covering the same issues addressed by the questionnaire and personal interviews) was undertaken with all non-respondents who could be tracked down. As always, job commitments and competing demands on time meant that not all respondents could be contacted in this way. The researchers accept that there is a trade off between the number of responses obtained and the mixed methodology variability. That said great care was taken to ensure consistency in the issues addressed and questions asked.

The questionnaire / interview pro forma is contained in Appendix A.

Results

The results are split into two logical sections, quantitative and qualitative. All data was derived from a total of 29 responses, which represents a 57% response rate.

Quantitative Results

The data displayed in Table 1 Portal Usage below shows that almost half the respondents had a portal and nearly all catered for both staff and students whilst only two considered users outside the institution.

Table 1 Portal Usage

	Total	Students	Staff	External
Have a Portal	14	14	12	2
No Portal	15	N/A	N/A	N/A

Table 2 Portal Installation is interesting as it shows a movement over time to portal adoption. There are 2.3 times as many respondents with a portal in 2001 compared to 2000.

Table 2 Portal Installation

Yes

Under
Consideration

Total

2000

2001

2000

2001

26%

48%

17%

14%

57%

38%

100%

In the absence of census data we can only infer that many of those considering in 2000 have adopted in 2001. This is graphically represented in Figure 1 Portal Installation below.

Figure 1 Portal Installation

Figure 1 Portal installation

Qualitative Results

Rather than summarise the qualitative data into a number of arbitrary categories we preferred to retain the richness of the data. Whilst some editing was undertaken, the spirit and meaning of the comments remained intact. All institutional references were removed to respect anonymity. Where a respondent made more than one point, these are grouped together. Finally, the order of comments reported under each question is random, i.e. the first response box for each of the questions does not represent the responses of a single questionnaire / interview.

Each question from the questionnaire is treated separately and forms the remainder of this results reporting section.

Question 2

What has been your Portal progress related to plans and timelines?

There are heaps of things we want to add - I could see this going on for years as we integrate more features.

The timeline had to be extended, unfortunately, because of the development of the corporate site for the university (priority) = the public site. This involved a change of culture and has been / is very time-consuming.

Have not done the specification yet. The project is on the books and should happen hopefully later this year.

Slow and poorly scoped. It took 2 years to understand what the users wanted and 6 months to develop with commercial software.

Very slow, as is the uptake of e-learning in the institution however we are a unique environment.

There is ongoing development as new opportunities emerge and customer expectation builds.

Most of the work to date has been on hold until we had sorted out our PeopleSoft implementation. We have only just appointed a Web and Applications Manager about a month ago. Their primary role is to do an investigation, work out a strategy and implement it.

The student portal is currently being developed and we hope to pilot it during first semester with mainstream rollout in second semester 2002

Portal was developed in house, customised software
Plans are to purchase a package next year as we are running out of resources.
This process has not been a fixed plan but has always been an option.
The packages will add value to the existing options and cater to the increasing requirements. We don't have to reinvent the wheel if there are off the shelf products out there that include the desired functionality.
A lot more options and functionality are built into packages these days than when they first started implementing the portals.
So much is being developed at reasonable prices and universities always have issues with the resources.
Ongoing user requirements demand more functionality though.
In terms of resources the small software shops just can't compete with the big software companies anymore

2 years slower than we would have liked due to funding.

We have customised portals that have been developed in house; it's customized software that has been in production for about 3 years;
When we started talking / thinking about implementing a portal (years ago) there was no software in the market that could have fulfilled the requirements (this kind of software really just started months to a year ago).
We were "innovators" in the field of higher education portals.
Using Netscape / iportal for most of the web production stuff.
Progress has been made according to timeline - software is being developed.
Plans to change to back end systems next year and changing the back end solutions; channelling everything through portals.
Might use a commercial product sometime along the way or even freeware e.g. 'uportal'

Originally built-in house and now looking at moving to Novell or iPlanet – hope to make a choice by end 2001 and have in place early next year.

1997 Release of first generation "personal space"
2001 Change of personal space to my.xxx
2002 March Planned release of new generation portal my.xxx

We had hoped to make a selection of a suitable Portal at this stage but are still evaluating various options. We are now looking at the bigger picture including content management systems and learning management systems.

July 2000 Finance moved to Peoplesoft, HR in 2001 started looking at infrastructure for finance in 1998 - some infrastructure built in-house as at the time Peoplesoft didn't have a very good web based functionality.
Staff portal set up earlier due to the timing of the systems.
The student portal, which uses the Blackboard system went live in Nov 2001

We will be introducing a proper staff portal later in 2002.

Question 3

What are your institution's strategic reasons for embracing and adopting this Portal strategy?

To reduce web redundancy of information, make it easier for our stakeholders to navigate, to improve ease of use, and to increase the use of dynamically stored web information.

Portals are just a doorway. What's behind them is important and critical. Currently have more in-client personalisation but it'll change and commercial products will be used more extensively.

To ensure students receive a greater level of customer service and that their use of technologies is simplified

To be able to better address the needs of a specific web audience and be able to deliver to them exactly what they need and not things which are of no use to them.

An attempt to develop e-learning and student facilities.

Providing one view of personalised data from multiple systems common authentication systems

To enable students and staff to have greater control over their teaching and learning activities.

The Library has a strategy but the University does not have a strategy for the implementation of portals.

Engagement and brand projection.

A desire to be more customer focused, and our growing number of remote students are driving the concept of a portal.

Current primary entry points to the University Web Presence for students, staff and external users are a custom-built portal, intranet, and the corporate web site, respecitively.
Design recommendations have been produced in order to develop a prototype of a proposed entry point (or Portal) to the University Web Presence

Student portal has gone pretty well, but we are using a commercial product. Staff portal delayed because of resourcing problems (in-house development planned)
Directory services need to be available and under control.

To improve the user experience, particularly for students.
To give more efficient and effective access to relevant information.
To improve communication through elimination of paper.

To present one entry point for staff and students to our Intranet. This includes both administrative and learning and teaching functions.
Most importantly to provide the gateway for the delivery of online official communications "eBox".

Assume it will provide a customisable and preferred interface to the University web services / WWW

To make it easier for people to get to all the relevant online services and information.
Integration is the sticking point. Things won't go very quickly until vendors adopt integration (IMS etc) standards. Personal portals will dominate in the future but will need to integrate with enterprise portals and subject portals

We don't have a Portal strategy as such as yet but as mentioned above we wish to consider it in conjunction with CMS and LMS systems as well as our ERP systems.

Consistency of information, ease of communication

Question 4

Have you ever surveyed current / prospective users? - What were the main issues that emerged?

Up to date information, access to information they currently cannot access

Download time and site architecture/navigation issues.

Ability to connect.
Local bandwidth.
Complicated procedures to establish modem connection.
Broken links.
Network stability.
Lack of 24 hours help desk.

Mock up - up on web - ran campaign on campus - students provided feedback
Invited respondents to beta test the portal
They wanted close integration with library services
Can personalise small amount - 5000 of 30000 users have changed greeting and image
Log ins of about 6000 every day.
Every time we test a new feature we select a random beta test group from among the users and make that feature available just to them. We send them an e-mail telling them that they have been selected to test this feature and could they give us feedback - they have been really happy to do that for us
Encourage user input and keep an eye on what they are asking for

90%+ like the convenience and want more content.
Initial focus was academic. Second phase included administrative functions. Some support has been provided for social / sporting activities but has been low key.
Funding priorities will continue to focus on more direct activities.

(Specifically to evaluate the eBox functionality)
Users uncertain of the frequency with which they should check the portal for next information. This resulted in us sending an email message that says there has been an update in the portal. This "mixed mode" of messaging is inevitable until the majority of email is delivered via the web.

Clarity of navigation, holistic projection.

Ineffective and hard to use, badly designed and unattractive.
Too verbose.
Set up badly and needs to be more user focused.
Needs an identity!
Would like greater continuity across sites.

Results show that after implementing the student portal only 1% of users actually personalised the web page.

Question 5

What are the resource implications and requirements of running or establishing a Portal?

The ultimate aim is to have one authentication system and a directory for authorisation as well - but it will take time to get there.
The biggest problems are political rather than technical - there are technical challenges, but it's even more difficult to get different parts of the university working together.
We are looking at how can we offer 24x7 help as more and more services are offered online.

Development time required by developers when there are other more pressing projects which are governed by the implementation of new systems and modifications/rebuilding of new systems to "hook" into the new systems.

New technical infrastructure comprised of a portal, content management and directory system.

Need increased Help Desk and System Administrator staff
Require additional hosting servers

Probably more than we can afford particularly with the lack of resources and commitment.

Extensive! We out-source for development. Content management is the big commitment.

Performance testing.
Challenge is bringing people's ideas together - can be political.

Consultancy fees, purchase of additional servers to handle the portal project.

New Chief Information Officer to be employed in the future - to be responsible for web development, Peoplesoft, and hopefully a portal.
Hard bit is building bridgework in the middle.
Personalisation is low priority
Information resources owned by different sources within different groups - no one to bring them together at this time.
Have recently implemented Peoplesoft - holding University key data sets on students, staff and financial info. Students have low-level access to their own records - staff do not. Looking at combining all systems, HR and student details into one database which will then essentially be the platform against which the portal works.
Authentication and WebCT systems in place, so lots of pieces for building on to, but not yet a portal system in place

An in house development team (not a commercial product).
The main lesson is to automate as many functions as possible and build a management function for every portal tool so that updating information can be devolved.
Appropriate (i.e. very large) dev-qa-prod online environment

People and funding that we currently do not have.

We are expecting a significant resource implication both in software and staffing.

Either you need funding to purchase software or you need people to write it. You also need good control over directory information.

Question 6

What is senior management's involvement?

Senior management never put any restrictions on the plans or the software development (managerial, financial).

Senior management somewhat involved.
The approval of funds takes time and most universities face this problem.
There are pools of money, but they are too small to do the job effectively. That's why we are teaming up with other departments and bring the resources together.

The senior management is involved and makes decision but has always been very supportive of the plans.

Strategic high level planning and funding approval

Project is sponsored by the Vice Chancellor - areas that have had most involvement are ITS and the Department of Marketing and Communications.

Senior management will be closely involved in the early stages of planning.

Approvals for funding. Input as users

Strong support from DVC level from start of project.

Me! Manager – Web Centre. Hands-on

Senior management/hierarchy is very much involved and limits/restricts plans for portals (at present).

Senior Management has embraced the initiative. They have provided funding for the portal development project.

In the student services area they see it as strategic. Other senior managers have little or no interest (but no doubt will be more interested when it can be demonstrated).

Vice Chancellor is our sponsor.

The portal project is under our e-environment project, which is sponsored by the Vice Chancellor and chaired by a PVC

As this initiative will come under the governance of the Web Governance Committee at XYZ and as that committee is Chaired by senior management and has representation from delegates appointed by senior management, we envisage that there will be a great deal of involvement from senior management.

Involved in teaching and learning policy and plans as well as membership in steering committees involved in the selection of suitable strategies and systems

Policy development

Question 7

What does the future hold in terms of emerging technologies and capabilities?

Web portal is just one form of presentation portal. Will be thought of like GUI's - just a part of the furniture.

Definitely those universities that have a portal are ahead of other universities and will win more effectively the approval / dollars of users in the future, especially offshore students.

From the point of view of portals – students and staff will be able to take advantage of services like e-commerce to further cut down paper business processing of financial requirements. It is envisaged that a web farm implementation will assist with fail over, load balancing and issues of data redundancy. Students and staff will have access to details and facilities via electronic web based methods to which they did not have access before. We envisage that the portals will be customisable for students and staff. For the wider audience I do not know if configurable portals are envisaged for continuing visitors, perhaps in future releases if not in the initial release of the systems.

Directories will be a vital part of the infrastructure of information, not just for universities, but for all corporations.

Future of portals is mostly a security issue; staff and students need secure access to their data and records.

Portals may become more interactive - a (personalisable) image that will ask you how you are today, what you want to do.

Greater integration of Microsoft desktop products, more end user flexibility and programmability.

Unified messaging, Wireless technologies, CRM software.

WebCT licensing costs may well become an issue with us plus the slow uptake of the technology from academic staff and their skill levels. Cost and resources are very real barriers to a small institution such as ours.

Change in the manner our audience will access the web.

Initial investigations have already shown us that the technology underpinning portals is very much an emerging technology. This will obviously have implications for how we proceed, but I can't really comment much further on this.

If you are not building in house then you must look for standards based solutions.

Lack of standards across applicable information systems makes the creation and maintenance of effective portals very difficult. Once a portal has been developed changing the underlying systems is similarly difficult as it almost invariably entails modifications to the portal.

The ability to automate data collection and delivery further.
The ability to output to a range of client devices rather than just the web browser

Portals will be here for a long time in one way or another.

How people make use of mobile technologies has to be integrated into the portal setup, for example, in the Ipac handheld device that runs a cut-down version of Windows.

That is one problem – betting on an architecture etc. The key is that the portal will be directory driven.

Hope that we will be able to create a portal more cheaply than is currently the case.

Question 8

What is the future of portals, especially the issue of customised software versus off the shelf products?

A lot more interactive multimedia, more components and sharing of knowledge between functions; available more as university wide approaches, take snapshots.

Having sound infrastructure behind the portal is most important.

We would prefer off the shelf as we have not got the resources to support customised products unless we were in a partnership or something similar with another University.

Our strategy is to use off the shelf products where possible.

Off the shelf products could be a solution for many applications if they become more flexible and independent of the respective back end system.

One day portals will be part of standard toolkits, not proprietary products.

Happy with what we have at the moment - using Peoplesoft for all financial, HR and business and Blackboard for the student interface even going with off-the-shelf, work has to be done in-house with setting up infrastructure and we have developed our front end to give a consistent look

Often there is as much work involved in the package selection process as would be involved in development of products. With a customised software application written in house, very specific needs can be addressed by developers that sometimes cannot be found in off the shelf products. There are also additional issues of design livery, further development, copyright on original product and further development, sufficient documentation provision with the product, intrinsic knowledge of the purchased product which is not always handed over with the product as it should be, ongoing support etc.

It's not the software that is the issue; it is the user-focus that counts.

Off the shelf. Our experience is that internally developed systems prove to be unsustainable in the longer term, especially ones that are used on a large scale such as the portal.

Vanilla flavoured will always be the minimum acceptable standard. Customisation equates to differentiation in the market place.

Commercial portals still seem very expensive.
They will need to have the ability for in house tools to bolt on before they become useful to Higher Ed.
In the same way that learning systems are only just beginning to realise.
Commercial portal will need to integrate with the institutions learning management system

We will be using an off the shelf product but customising it to our requirements.

It has to be determined what the most effective approach is. That needs to be decided upon. Reinventing the wheel doesn't make sense, off-the-shelf products might be involved in the implementation, Blackboard-related product maybe … the questions haven't been asked yet. Expensive to start from scratch. Hope the university will buy in and pursue the goal of serving the community.

We will almost certainly adopt a customised approach to portal implementation although this still needs to be justified from a cost/benefit perspective

Advice received was better to do in-house - we've been really happy with the in-house development as it gives us a lot of flexibility. It fits in with all the infrastructure that we already had. The hard part is authenticating to other systems and you're going to have to do that whether you build it in-house or buy one.

The realisation of customised / personalised pages is mainly a technological issue, senior management is not involved and won't create problems for the future plans; senior management does not make the decisions.

To provide a personalised environment that can then be a pathway to other information systems.
The portal will also integrate specialised solutions for different departments where different internal databases can be managed.
Looking for technology that provides access to different back end solutions
There is a huge potential for improving the university processes through the web. In this context, changing the culture is crucial! The work/approach is more structured when thinking about publishing this information to the web.
The big challenge is the obtaining and retaining of skills within the university environment; it's hard to get the right staff and hold these people.
We are trying to communicate to staff / potential staff that we provide the opportunity to gain new and valuable skills by working on the portal project.

Cannot see them going with off-the shelf products.

This question is not just limited to Portals. As always, if you build it yourself or heavily customise a product then you must cost justify the additional functionality for both the initial implementation and ongoing maintenance of the system.

Off the shelf products don't currently deliver on promised performance particularly with respect to integrating underlying systems. Gartner's prediction (InSide Gartner Vol XVIII, No. 2, p.6) that the necessary interoperability standards won't be available until at least 2004 appears realistic.

Question 9

What can we as tertiary institutions learn from corporate portals?

A great deal, we are in the business of distributing information in a manner that must comply with W3C guidelines to address issues of accessibility. We are in the business of providing information in a not overly "flashy" format that does not waste the browsing audiences time and does not demand that they must use high end products, and endless "plugins" to be able to read the information that we provide to them. Our web sites must produce what our clients need in an easily accessible fashion. We can view the mistakes that corporate portals make and learn from them. We can also note the good ideas that are used by corporate portals and learn from them.

It's really more of a HR issue. Tertiary institutions will follow the corporate methodologies for sure. In Australia, legislation just recently came in that requires institutions to give access to personal data; legislation will force to make changes.

We need to integrate with them.
We need to look at efficient ways of determining relevance.

Target marketing, customer relationship management and tracking customer contacts, simple design and designs that lead to closure

It has to be the doorway to something and that's where problems arise (security etc.).
Some people only pick public information even when a portal is in place; therefore private or confidential information has to be requested to justify a portal solution.
It needs to be made clear who controls the information, who authorizes access, how users are identified and what they have access to.

Visitors like using them as their first point of entry to a site.

Corporate models are used for the educational websites; however we need more research on their effectiveness and user-friendliness.

Portals can / will get more into financial management and take on a more business-like approach.
They will start to get more dynamic and innovative (university more a conservative approach).

Having a sound back-end infrastructure

For corporate portals there is a very defined process for defining applications and functionality. This is often not very well done in the university environment and for educational websites. A more structured approach is necessary.
Disadvantage - educational websites are still compared to the corporate ones in terms of the speed of development / delivery.

Industry has been doing all kinds of interesting things with integrated data systems.
Lots of little things we can learn from and try.
Hard for us to copy industry in some ways as their drivers are more clear cut than a university.

My own view is very much so, particularly as Universities compete for students and shift to a more customer focused approach with their students.

The university environment is very different, but we can get ideas.

Depends on the nature of the company business. Portals into research organisations (eg Gartner, Ovum, Butlergroup) may be relevant as models but sales oriented portals would not.

In a technical sense not a great deal. In a cultural sense, the frequency of updating and makeovers. This tends to occur much more frequently in commercial portals where clients like change. Our students have a very similar view, however large institutions are slow to change even if it is only a "wallpaper" change.

It is a rapidly evolving market and you need to bring products/solutions to your clients quickly and remain flexible enough to move with the changing expectations of clients and advances in the technology

There are quite a few that are not good as models. The commercial portal often does not translate to being a good solution for end users.

The benefits of a portal that offers the ability to "pull in communities that are interesting to you, pull in information and the ability to customize and have services and interactions with people and information" (as quoted in [HREF10]) have not been clearly identified or adequately researched.
Portals are often portrayed as a revolutionary technology, but they only represent a slightly more complex means of navigating and displaying available information. Effectively, the distinction drawn in the article [HREF10] between a "home page and a portal" is only a question of the degree of complexity of the navigational system.
Higher Education institutions, as evidenced by the minimal interest in portals discussed in the article's abstract [HREF10], remain cautious and even sceptical of both the capacity of portal products to deliver on their promises and whether the benefits are worth the costs involved.
That this much-hyped technology failed to save dot.coms from crashing.

Discussion and conclusions

Taking a holistic view at the results reported above as well as the anecdotal comments received during interviews and documented elsewhere, there are some predictable themes that emerge from the results, specifically that the financing of the project and subsequent staffing of it caused concern among many respondents. That aside many of the responses can be grouped under the following generic headings, many of which are inextricably linked;

Efficiencies in material delivery & information management.
There was a reasonable amount of commentary based on the efficiency gains post-implementation. The value appears to be a function of the complexity of the portal and the range of services and options of offer. A sound back-end infrastructure is vital.

Customer / client (student, staff & other e.g. external) needs & wants.
Increasing customer satisfaction by providing timely, relevant and accessible information tailored to individual's unique requirements. Improved and consistent communication and a move towards paperless interactions.

User surveys.
Results suggested that surveying users prior to portal installation, upgrades and new initiatives was well received and proved constructive in terms of the final product configuration and 'look'.

Trend to Portals.
More institutions are recognising the benefits (as well as the financial burden of setting up) of moving towards a portal solution.

Competitive advantage / repositioning / manoeuvring.
There is a definite feeling that to remain competitive or simply equal base levels of user expectations, portal development is no longer an option. Rather it is an issue that institutions ignore at their strategic peril.

Planning approval & Portal support.
Senior management including VC's generally support and drive portal initiatives where other criteria have been satisfied (need, funds, and expertise).

Future Directions & Opportunities.
Personalisable interface available to all interested parties as standard. Greater integration with other software. Move toward wireless technology and varying interfaces.

Lessons from Industry.
Provision of fast efficient information to time poor users. Taking a more customer-centric approach to relationship management. This means hard decisions about update frequency and depth of material.

Finally, we consider the future bright, although challenging, but one where perhaps learning from each other will be ever more critical as the only constant will be change. Fascinating and frightening in one!

References

Bailey, N. and Treloar, A. (2001), "What's under the threshold? Portals and Portal Infrastructures". Proceedings of AusWeb01, pp 49-62. Available online [HREF 7]

Eisler, D. (2001), "Campus Portals - are we ready?", Workshop held at Connections 2001 - Centre for Curriculum, Transfer & Technology May 8, 2001 - Whistler, British Columbia Canada. [HREF 11]

Gleason, B. (2001), "uPortal: A Common Portal Reference Framework", Syllabus Magazine, July. Available online [HREF 12]

Homan, D., Sanchez, E. and Klima, C. (2001), "Building a portal? Vive la difference", Information Week, Nov 5, p.62.

Looney, M. and Lyman, P. (2000), "Portals in Higher Education: what are they and what is their potential", EDUCAUSE Review, Vol. 35, No. 4, July/August, pp.28-36. Available online [HREF 13]

Mears, J. (2001), " Corporate portal vendors ready for wireless", Network World, Vol. 18, Iss. 15, Apr 9, pp.10, 81

Moskowitz, R. (2001), "Campus Portals come to Higher Education", Matrix magazine, June. Available online [HREF 14]

Thompson, R. (2001), "Web Portals and Integration Issues at the Enterprise Level", paper presented at Educause 2001, 20th-23rd May 2001. Available online [HREF 15]

Hypermedia References

HREF1: http://marketing.otago.ac.nz/marketing/staff/deansk.html
HREF2: http://marketing.otago.ac.nz/marketing
HREF3: http://www.utas.edu.au/
HREF4: http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/
HREF5: http://www.gu.edu.au/conference/educause2001/
HREF6: http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw01/papers/refereed/sawyer/paper.html
HREF7: http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw01/papers/refereed/treloar/paper.html
HREF8: http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw01/papers/edited/alexander/paper.html
HREF9: http://www.caudit.edu.au
HREF10: http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw01/papers/refereed/deans2/paper.html
HREF11: http://provost.weber.edu/Connections2001/portals.doc
HREF12: http://www.syllabus.com/syllabusmagazine/article.asp?id=4136
HREF13: http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm00/articles004/looney.pdf
HREF14: http://www.matrixmagazine.com/issues/jun01/story.asp?txtFilename=portal.html&txtTitle=Campus Portals Come to Higher Education
HREF15: http://www.gu.edu.au/conference/educause2001/papers/Bob_Thompson.doc

Appendix A

Portal Questionnaire

Do you currently have a portal? Yes / No

If YES, please explain your current portal set-up:

Which user groups does it cater for?

Students Yes / No

Staff Yes / No

External Yes / No

Other Yes / No

What year was it introduced? ………….

If NO, are there plans to establish a portal? Yes / No

If YES, briefly what are they?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

What has been your Portal progress related to plans and timelines?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

What are your institution's strategic reasons for embracing and adopting this Portal strategy?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Have you ever surveyed current / prospective users? Yes / No

If YES, what were the main issues that emerged?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

What are the resource implications and requirements of running or establishing a Portal?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

What is senior management's involvement?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

What does the future hold in terms of emerging technologies and capabilities?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

What is the future of portals, especially the issue of customized software versus off the shelf products?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

What can we as tertiary institutions learn from corporate portals?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Copyright

Kenneth R Deans and Sandy von Allmen, © 2002. The authors assign to Southern Cross University and other educational and non-profit institutions a non-exclusive licence to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The authors also grant a non-exclusive licence to Southern Cross University to publish this document in full on the World Wide Web and on CD-ROM and in printed form with the conference papers and for the document to be published on mirrors on the World Wide Web.