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| Pilot Project Report -- Methodology |
Cooperation between the C&C Information Systems experts and the interested EVP offices was essential to the success of the project. Business and technical experts both participated in every major decision affecting the system or the timeline. This promoted a positive spirit of cooperation throughout the project.
Before deciding to embrace imaging, the EVP commissioned a C&C study of the potential costs and benefits. In cooperation with Records Management, a series of questions was assembled to evaluate the applicability of imaging to any given set of records. Interviews were held in over 40 administrative departments to gather information about their major files. A screening process identified 18 potential candidates for imaging based on document types, volumes, users, legal requirements, quality of originals, retention, source, format, and many other variables.
Representatives from several candidate sites met to identify and prioritize desired functions and features. It quickly became clear that building detailed business processes into the application, such as workflow or document status tracking, would require logic that is unique to a department. The group chose to pursue a simple, generic system that would work the same way in every office. Although each office could realize greater benefits from a customized system, the additional benefits would come with substantial additional development and support costs.
The user group went on to identify requirements, from response time to resolution, from screen layout to security. The requirements led to a preliminary design, which in turn was used to estimate potential costs and benefits. The list of candidate sites was prioritized based on file characteristics, technical readiness, procedural impact, and potential benefits. For example, files which are used frequently by people in multiple locations were ranked ahead of files which are used only rarely, or by a small number of people in one office. Offices with adequate desktop computers, network connections, and a positive attitude toward change were also favored.
Based on their previous work, the Student Loan Office compared the proposed central solution with the top vendor solution for their department. They volunteered to be the pilot site, and they were eager to move forward. The Open Document Image Network (ODIN) project was launched May 19, 1995, as a partnership between C&C and SLO.
ODIN was developed through prototyping. Simple web pages were developed first, then refined in an iterative process and combined with the required logic. Two independent environments were created so that development would not affect production uses.
When the development phase of ODIN was completed, an independent team stepped in to conduct a user acceptance test. The team included experts from SLO and other business areas that would be affected by the system. They created and executed comprehensive scripts to test a variety of business scenarios. As they ran into questions and problems, they gave their requests to the development team. The development team made changes, fixed bugs, and defined possible future enhancements. Then the test team executed the scripts again and the cycle continued until everyone signed off on the system.
ODIN went live on July 8, 1996, and everyone was trained by the next
day. Documents received after that date were immediately scanned and
indexed in ODIN, but there were still over 200,000 pages stored in the
paper files. The conversion of those paper files to electronic images was
done in alphabetical order over the next ten months. The paper was made
inaccessible as soon as the files were online to encourage use of the new
system, and a large sign in the file room tracked the progress.