Jan Whitaker, Principal Consultant, JL Whitaker Associates,
Phone: +61 3 9534 4334
Email: jwhit@primenet.com;
Home Page: Jan Whitaker [HREF
2]
In this paper we discuss the implementation of an Intranet, come to be called PrimeWeb, at the Victorian Department of Agriculture, Energy and Minerals [HREF 3] (DAEM). We look at the theoretical way this could be approached and the parallels with the way we actually carried out the implementation. One of the more interesting apsects of the implementation of our Intranet was the integration of people and information over thirty-five locations across the State of Victoria.
Much is written in management theory about dealing with or initiating change within organisations. Total Quality Management, business process reengineering (Hammer and Champy 1993), continuous improvement (Deming 1990), teams, learning organisations (Peter Senge 1982), and systems analysis are buzzwords heard in the halls and planning departments of businesses and organisations the world over. These approaches to innovation and change management are theories of human behaviour and psychology. Some are based on experimentation and observation of group process, and others are based on metaphor and modeling against other systems such as mechanistic processes [industrial models] or even living organisms (Binney & Williams 1995).
Although the authors have been involved in and have studied various aspects of these many theoretical positions, the statements here are more "after the fact" in relation to the project described of building the DAEM Intranet service. Our theories are generalisations based on prior experience in introducing different methods and opportunities into organisations as well as "hind sight" descriptions of what happened in our Intranet project and attempts to make sense out of the events of the project so as to share these experiences with others. Our goal was not to create an experiment, per se, to test these theories, but to build a functional communication system that has value for the specific group of people who we hope will derive benefit from it. If the statements feel right to the reader, strike a chord with the experience of the reader, and fit the common sense world view of the reader, we think we are on the right track and have achieved our goal of sharing an understanding of the evolution of our project.
The phases of this Intranet implementation were:
Theory: Successful technology implementation is more likely if a problem or need is seen and an appropriate solution is sought.
The idea that any technology is a "tool" that can be used to solve a problem and is NOT a solution in isolation are key aspects of this starting point. While it is true that technological developments and advancement open up new ways to approach previously unsolvable problems or enable efficiencies in work, if the problem or opportunity is not spotted, the technology implementation is a case of "toys for the boys", or worse, selection of inappropriate technology to solve the wrong problem, leading to waste of resources, frustration on the part of staff, and misdirection in efforts away from the better path of meeting a real need.
Practice: In 1994 a new group was established in the Department to identify and coordinate the supply of industry statistics and resources information to meet the Departments needs for research support and evaluation, policy development and analysis, technology transfer (extension) and Executive and Ministerial support. The Industry and Resources Information Section (IRIS) comprised ten people, with only two supporting the industry statistical information requirements of the Departments eighteen hundred staff - a solution to our information delivery needs was required if we were to service more than just a small group within the Department. The Science Unit, another new group at that stage, was also looking for an information delivery system as they had one person coordinating the external funding applications of the entire Department and had to keep staff up-to-date with R&D corporation directions and requirements.
Theory: Non-judgmental experimentation and play enable people to make mistakes and learn about a technology without pressure to perform.
Playfulness, curiosity, and wonder are parts of the learning we did as children. In today's world, adults are discouraged from these activities. We must be serious. We must work. We must put our energies into activities that have direct contribution to the bottom line. What this has done, however, is take the fun out of learning something new. To rectify this sad state, it is our contention that allowing and encouraging adults to experiment and satisfy their curiosity by dabbling in new "things" reduces mistakes and develops local expertise faster, thereby reducing the risk of rolling out full implementations before they are understood in the context of a specific organisation. Although this may appear to be a paradox to the first theory of basing technology solutions on specific needs or problems, it reality it does not have to be. The experimentation and play can strengthen the overall outcome of the project. Whether the need comes first and the experimentation with options comes second, or vice versa, is immaterial. The important aspect is that neither is ignored.
Practice: Agriculture Victoria has had Internet access for many years as a Department comprising a large number of research scientists needing to communicate with colleagues and run large simulation models on off-site computers. In mid 1994 a Web browser is installed on a few machines in head office and IT staff set up a simple Home Page with Departmental phone book and external URLs. Head Office staff in IRIS and Science Unit start investigating the Internet and World Wide Web.
Theory: A need or problem is matched with an element or elements of playful experimentation that is seen as a potential solution to the problem.
This phase is the intersection of examining options and building the foundation for the choices that will the ultimate direction of the project. Some one person or group of people realise the relationship of the problem/need/opportunity in the organisation and the tool that will fix/fill/enable the organisation to meet its objectives.
Theory: Innovations need champions who will see the potential and be willing to expend energy on its development. Innovations do not happen on their own. They happen in the minds of people. Equipment and methods cannot have an awareness. They have never experienced "ah-hah! That's what 'I' am good for." People make those judgements. People within organisations see the need/problem/opportunity and must consciously decide that they are willing and able to expend energy on developing the solution. These champions recognise the potentials and are motivated within themselves to pursue them as far as they are able.
Practice: Spark/lightbulb - IRIS recognises potential of Web technology to service their internal client base, especially for the provision of statistical information (Arch & Verspay 1995), as well as the potential for other sections of DAEM and decides to take the idea to the Information Systems Policy Committee for consideration.
Theory: For a project to move forward within an organisation, it needs the formal and serious recognition by those stake holders and decision makers who will add energy to the effort and support the initial champions.
Champions cannot succeed on their own within organisations. They are parts of wide ranging systems of processes, peoples, goals and objectives. Champions need the addition of resources in most projects to have long-term effects of organisational change. They need to build support of others who can see the idea and are willing to join in the effort, usually through formally recognised status groups such as steering teams or working parties, that have the desire to make something happen within their sphere of influence. Support of supervisors and managers is critical to allot time to staff to do the work necessary to develop the project. In addition, senior management may have to be sold on the idea in order to remove existing barriers, provide resources, and speak publicly and supportively of the effort to the wider organisation that may be effected by the development.
Theory: Projects that involve stakeholders that are close to, or members of, the user community will have greater chance of success.
In addition to decision maker support, members of the user community, that wider organisation, should be involved in the early stages of the project planning. Ownership at the ground level will accomplish several things. It will bring a broader perspective on the nature of the problem/need/opportunity within the context of day to day circumstances. It will alert project developers to potential problems of acceptance early in the piece. Most importantly, having members of the user community involved in the formal planning and presentation of the project to senior management will show a stronger potential for the innovation or tool actually being implemented in solving local problems, and hopefully will gain stronger support from senior management as a result. Rather than having a single person or small group of enthusiasts make the case, the persons who will most benefit from the development are convinced of the positive impact of the development in doing "real work".
Practice: Formation of the PrimeWeb task force as a working group of DAEM's Information Systems Policy Committee formailsed the acceptance of the PrimeWeb Intranet trial. THe Working Group involved a breadth of representatives from across the Department, most without an IT background, including scientists, administrative staff, librarians and economists from head office and regional locations. Resources to assist during the pilot period identified from within IRIS as the group pushing hardest to get the pilot going.
At around the same time, the Computer Services Branch (CSB) are rolling out MS Office to replace existing software and include a group of Internet services (Web Browser, FTP, Telnet, etc) on every machine connected to every LAN across the Department, even though many of the smaller LANs at that stage did not have WAN connectivity.
Theory: Trials in real-world settings that are smaller than the whole organisation allow for affordable mistakes, faster learning, and breadth of application examination. Pilots test practicability, range of opportunity, limits to the possibilities, and pitfalls to avoid.
Changes, be they technology or methodology, happen in a context of existing practice in most instances. Seldom do we start with a blank sheet of paper with the ability to choose the "right person" with the "right skills" or the "perfect location" with the "perfect infrastructure". Innovations are expected to work in real situations with real limitations with real people who have real strengths and weaknesses. In a phrase, real life is messy.
The challenge for those who wish to make improvements and enable people to do their jobs better or faster or cheaper or in a more self-fulfilling way is to introduce changes with the lowest possible risk of waste of time, money, and egos. Pilots, when possible, allow the warts to show before the full power of the organisation is brought to bear. They allow for testing the idea with a subset of the organisation to see what the unanticipated effects may be. Pilots provide learning opportunities for larger numbers of people beyond the champions. Pilots involve those who become early adopters of the change, who are then the local champion who are looked upon to extend the project to the wider organisation when and if that time comes.
Practice: Three head office groups (IRIS, Science Unit and Library Services) agree to participate in providing pilot services to test the efficacy of an Intranet to deliver information services across a Dept with thirty-five offices distributed across the State. Two research institutes (Knoxfield and Horsham) also agree to trial the technology at a local level as well as contributing to the overall pilot.
IRIS staff plan to approach organising their information for distribution to the wider Department and commence HTML work themselves but quickly recognise need to have a full-time person. IRIS employed a casual staff member for HTML work in early 1995 to prepare information for Intranet and Computer Services Branch install Windows for Workgroups shareware server software onto spare a 486 machine for us.
IRIS HTML author prepares initial page for Science Unit 'Funding Submission' series and Funds Coordinator quickly learns HTML in order to put additional information onto Intranet as it becomes available from the funding bodies. Computer Services prepare initial Library Services page, but without an HTML author within their section, the library material languishes. Unfortunately, the information that many (eg. Bernard [HREF4] and Larocque [HREF5]) anticipate would form the basis for an Intranet, ie. administrative, finance and human resources material, or even newsletter, bulletins and corporate documentation was not forthcoming in the early stages of our pilot.
Theory: Adding external expertise can shift the perspective to additional concerns, buffer reactions, and synthesise input. The best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else. This adage from educational circles carries to the area of project development well, particularly in relationship to consultancies. In this case, the consultant is not the teacher, but is instead the learner. The champions and the project team are the teachers. They are teaching the consultant, or perhaps describing for the consultant, their particular organisation and their thought processes as to why they want to go the way they are going.
Innovations occur within contexts as was stated above. What external consultants can do is to provide an experienced sounding board for ideas from a wide range of options outside the current context. For example, if organisation A has seen software package X and want to select it for their project, the consultant may ask what about X is attractive to their needs. Given that information, the consultant can share experiences of other packages that carry those same characteristics, and through a dialogue on further aspects of the project, can perhaps identify a better option or support the original decision to choose package X.
External consultants can also ask the "hard questions" about projects, thereby buffering the champions and team members from career risk, head off mistakes that could bring disaster, and sometimes be the messenger of bad news to senior management if required.
Besides content expertise and buffer roles, the external consultant can also listen to many different people within in an organisation and synthesise that input into meaningful information for use by the project team. Consultants are expected to interview people and ask questions and write reports so staff within organisations are generally open to sharing information that will be passed through an impartial person to the working team in a way as to maintain a level of anonymity.
Practice: As part of an overall review of the Department's IT and communications, ABM Systems Consultants are engaged. The role of external and internal internet services is included in their brief of overall system analysis. J L Whitaker and Associates (JLW) is subcontracted to the operations side of the Internet/Intranet as distinct from the communications and hardware issues. Initially, the Working Group response is to reject the imposed Consultant, but the value of having an 'independent' person working with the Working Group is soon recognised.
Theory: Projects that involve both service provider and service user views are more likely to meet real needs and solve the right problems.
There are often many stakeholders in efforts of any scope that have large effects in organisations. The working party and champions have the advantage of being involved in the process of the development from its inception. They know how they arrived at specific decisions. They have tested them in pilot operations.
In Information Technology and Telecommunications [IT&T] projects, it is often the service provider that is most heavily involved in the development. The service provider generally has access to the latest developments in their service field that can provide better, cheaper, faster, ways of providing that service. Users are seldom involved enough in the world of any particular service provider to have much exposure to these developments. But, the user is an important, if not the most important, stakeholder in the project. They are, after all, the key beneficiary of the service being provided. Therefore it is important to define project "user" as the beneficiary of the content service, and not only from the view of the user of the technology. These may be two entirely different things.
Practice: JLW assists the Working Group in changing their focus from "what information needs to be disseminated" to "what information do end users want to better help them do their jobs". Determination to collect key user needs data and input into system requirements is made, ie. the Working Group decides to actually go and talk to the users to find out what they want from the pilot and in the long term.
Theory: Technology is but one of the elements to consider when introducing a new way of working. Audience, management, resource requirements, and access barriers must be considered as a total system of interacting elements.
As has been pointed out throughout this paper, projects, particularly technology projects, are instituted within contexts of organisations and systems. These systems are not only the tools, but a whole range of aspects of how the organisation meets its objectives. Any area of an existing organisation that is not at least asked to consider the implications of the project may result in a failed implementation. Levels of staff, various responsibility areas or functional areas, geography, and work responsibilities, must be included in the design analysis to have the best understanding of the organisation within which the change will be made.
Practice: JLW designs information requirements survey for DAEM staff with two members of the Working Group. Working Group members organise four focus groups for PrimeWeb promotion and survey testing; two in the country and two in the metropolitan area, invloving a wide range of potential users.
The focus groups are conducted in order to:
Numerous suggestions for additional material were made. The survey also found that many staff listed "lack of time", "lack of training" and a concern that the information be "reliable and locatable" as barriers to their use of PrimeWeb.
Theory: Formal and informal channels can gain support from top management. Recommendations based on good homework and analysis are more likely to gain resources and moral support.
Once the ideas have been developed, tested, analysed and planned, the project is nearly ready for implementation. The full picture of the benefits expected, resources required, and an implementation plan along with testimonials from stakeholders should be written down for the record. This written description of what has been done and what should be done next is a formal process for self-check and for sharing the project with others, specifically senior management to gain resources and support for the change. Recommendations and "selling" of the project can be done totally formally, informally or combinations of both depending on the specific style of the organisation and senior management. Even if the plan is sold informally, it should still be recorded for the benefit of the team and as a check to ensure that the next steps built on all of this hard work is carried through. Many plans can sit on shelves as we have all experienced, but they don't have to. They can be used as guidelines and reminders of what a project is on about should a decision have to be made to vary from the original plan. At least the decision is understood in an historical context and is made with the benefit of understanding why an original decision had been made.
Practice: Before we formally approached Senior Management to gain a committment from them for the adeuqate resourcing of the Intranet, a fair amount of homework was required to ensure that we had a "saleable" commodity:
Theory: Very few innovations succeed on their own obvious merits. Planned strategies for introducing the innovation and its positive merits are needed to increase the likelihood of acceptance of the change.
By this point in the process, word has most likely gotten out to all parts of the organisation that something is happening, although the final details may not be known. Keeping in mind that the key participants to this point have been subsets of the entire organisation, it is important to bring the rest of the group into the picture in a way that builds on the positive efforts to this point. The early adopters can act as facilitators for change by providing awareness information sessions, staff training and demonstration activities, and providing local support at the time of implementation. The key point of this phase is to begin the work of carrying out the plans developed and approved by senior management, something sometimes easier said than done. Marketing the innovation to local user groups can make the implementation smooth and effective, eliminating resistance to change by identifying the benefits to be gained.
Practice: In order for PrimeWeb to be adopted Department-wide it has been necessary to carry out a large amount of marketing of the Intranet. This has been carried out through:
Lesson 1. Intranets and Internets are complimentary. Information is available across all rings of the circle that might benefit both internal and external communities.
In this project we were faced with the challenge of thinking about two sorts of information services almost simultaneously with very different characteristics. The Intranet project was designed to meet internal research support and information needs that may or may not be available to the general public outside the agency. The challenge was to deal with both needs in a way that would not stretch a limited staff too far developing double the information pages.
Solution: Build past firewalls, leverage work done on the Intranet for feeding appropriate information to those in the external community.
Lesson 2. Intranets are by nature closed to scrutiny by people who are not members of those communities. Role models aren't readily available to provide insight on others' successes and failures.
Human beings learn from each other. We apprentice ourselves in schools and formal programs. But we also participate in professional organisations, read publications in our field, read materials from the "competition", and attend seminars and discussions in order to "keep up". Intranets have at least two aspects that did not allow us to take these typical approaches to learning how to build one. First, they are rather recent developments in internal communication so there aren't many models to be studied; and second, they are by nature closed to outside scrutiny. The only information that is available is self-reporting of those involved with building some, but not for others to see to check on those self-reports (very much like this paper!).
Solution: participate in on-line discussions, visit similar organisations if not competitors in the same industry, work with consultants who have experience guiding Intranet developments, consult with your users to determine what information they really want to have made available.
Lesson 3. In spite of the supposed attractiveness of the Web, IT departments don't always want to participate with user driven efforts, particularly if the solutions developed are not in line with the current IT vision of the future.
One of the authors has observed this in several organisations. IT departments don't naturally see the benefit of all this Web business just because it's technology. The move from centralised data control to distributed access was difficult enough. Now we're talking about putting the data directly out from departments without the "control" of an IT area and taking CPU time away from the "real work" of the IT staff efforts. We are being a bit tongue in cheek here and would not imply that this is the real state of affairs in the DAEM IT area or in any particular IT department anywhere. However, it is important to point out that cultural changes are happening in the IT field as well as in organisations generally that challenge belief systems and ways of doing things that have been comfortable for at least the last few years. Is Web information delivery another revolution that requires IT departments to reassess their contribution to the organisation?
Solution: Don't let the lack of IT department champions hold back the development of a Web based solution to your internal information distribution problems. Initial Intranet implementation can be done with minimal support and simple tools. The proliferation of Intranet discussion in the media in the first half of 1996 seems to indicate that it is indeed an important aspect of future information delivery.
Lesson 4. The technology involved is a moving target. Software updates alone can create massive log jams in user support and multiple software versions can make training a nightmare.
This is an unstable, early stage technology. Having an attractive personal "publishing house" without the checks and balances of existing methods, and the understanding of how to support stand-alone systems rather than interdependent USER ACCESSED software systems, comes with challenges as well as opportunities. As people become dependent on the webserver and as editors change to include the latest and greatest markup tags, how will the organisation cope with the constant improvements?
Solution: Software updates page, maintained centrally, from Intranet in the same way that forms/documents are held centrally. Having a standard browser being addressed along with standard office automation software that can act as "viewer" applications also helps significantly with information markup.
Lesson 5. The well informed service providers didn't have all the answers. Talking to the users was a wonderful new view on what is important in the field in an Intranet service. Process factors that were assumed to be doing well were not as smooth as believed. Other hiccups in the organisation were uncovered when talking about the web project.
Solution: Keep talking! Pass these issues along to someone who can do something about them.
The project has reached the stage of full implementation with other groups within the Department now wanting to place their information on the Intranet also. The project has also branched out to include the development of the Departments external Web presence to service external clients and promote the Department to a global audience.
Our experience in implementing the Agriculture, Energy and Minerals Intranet is one that we thought was worth sharing with the Web community, especially considering the usual closed and hidden nature of these internal projects.
Andrew Arch & Hetty Verspay (1995) "Provision of Statistical Information in the Department of Agriculture, Victoria", Paper presented to 19th Australian Agricultural Economics Society Conference, Perth.
George Binney & Colin Williams (1995) "Leaning into the Future", Nicholas Brealey, London.
Michael Hammer & James Champy (1993) "Reengineering the Corporation", Nicholas Brealey, London.
Peter Senge (1990) "The Fifth Discipline", Century Business, London.
Edwards Deming (1982) "Out of the Crisis", Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Centre for Advanced Engineering Study.
Andrew Arch, Janet Whitaker ©, 1996. 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 grants 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. Any other usage is prohibited without the express permission of the authors.
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