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INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop
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INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

Dec 19, 2015

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Page 1: INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

INFORMATION RESOURCES

Dave Little, Business Group Manager

Bringing Information to the Desktop

Page 2: INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

INFORMATION RESOURCES

Dave Little

“Performing a Successful Upgrade”, or

“How to minimise the pain”

EUUG, Madrid, September 2000

Page 3: INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

Introduction to DERA (current)

DERA - Defence and Evaluation Research Agency, a part of the Ministry of Defence in the UK.

12,000 staff on a high number of sites across the UK.

Over 8,000 scientists, many of them world-leading experts in their field researching in all fields of science.

A large number of evaluation facilities for testing and measuring.

Also involved in non-defence research.

Page 4: INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

Introduction to DERA (future)

Reducing MOD demand for DERA’s services as more requirements are fulfilled with off-the-shelf products.

Hence a need to find a new model for DERA in the future.

Privatisation of 75% of current organisation so that commercial opportunities for growth can be explored - “NewDERA”.

Remaining 25% will stay with MOD with a close connection between the two organisations - “Retained DERA”.

Majority of Information Resources will be in “NewDERA”.

Page 5: INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

Information Resources - Background

Originally formed in 1995 from the joining of 15 disparate Information Centres on a number of different sites.

For historical reasons, each Information Centre has different subject specialisations and a different way of recording their stock (and sometimes their own unique cataloguing methodology!).

Introduction of guidelines and “desk instructions” to bring uniformity across the whole organisation (except for the catalogues).

Decision to introduce one Information Management System for whole department.

Page 6: INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

How Many Information Management Systems?

Decision taken that only one system would be chosen for all the cataloguing needs of the department.

Despite the wide variation of material held;– internal reports (of varying levels of security up to Secret),

– defence publications including standards, handbooks and manuals,

– large collection of commercial publications including over 1,000 journal titles and 100, 000s of books,

– maps, photographs, multimedia and vast numbers of ephemera (including an Enigma machine),

– and a shocking number of catalogue cards!

Page 7: INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

Which Information Management System?

Tender process selected Sirsi Unicorn. In the words of Peter Gethin, “No system could do what DERA wanted, but Unicorn could do it better than any of the others.”

Internal reasons meant that the timetable for implementation of the system had to be accelerated. Go live for 98.4 was planned for August 1998 (always a good idea to do these things in the summer holidays).

System required to import data from a number of different platforms using over 15 different cataloguing formats.

Page 8: INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

A Perfect Catalogue - Not

Despite the best efforts of Sirsi and Information Resources’ staff, the result was an inevitable mess of duplicated and overwritten records (not to mention the records which were missing as they were not in a machine-readable format).

Page 9: INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

Panic 1

Crikey I think I’m giving the wrong presentation. This is supposed to be about successful upgrading, not a history of disasters incurred during implementation.

No, hold on, I’ve checked my notes, I’m getting on to upgrades soon.

Anyway, they’ve all dropped off to sleep again. They won’t wake up unless I get out my maracas!!!

Page 10: INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

Panic 2

The customers think we’ve gone mad. Here is this great new system available on the Intranet for the first time ever, but it’s full of rubbish.

In response, we set up a special project to identify the problems, prioritise them and set out to solve them.

These problems came to be known as “Issues”. Each one had an owner and a reporting structure (so that the Issues Manager, that’s me, can’t hide them under the rug.

Also a procedure was set up to ensure that future issues could be raised, prioritised and solved (in most cases).

Page 11: INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

Procedures, Procedures, Procedures

I am the last person to stand up for bureaucracy, but it was the only answer to regaining successful control of our IMS.

We now have a procedure for managing issues and another for managing upgrades.

Everything is defined and all responsibilities are appointed (even if the buck always appears to end up with me!).

Page 12: INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

Responsibilities

Unicorn Issues Manager Unicorn Systems Administrators Unicorn Advisory Group Super Users Group Skill Groups, including;

– Reports Cataloguing

– Journals

– Inter Library Loans

Page 13: INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

Lines of Responsibility

Approval

Informm

Informmm

IRSenior Management Team

Team Leader or SuperuserISSUE

Issues Manager Log Issue Publish on FORUM

Unicorn Advisory Group

Regional OperationsManagers

Regional OperationsManagers

Issues Manager Log solution

UAG Chairman Amend manual

SystemsAdministrators

UAG Chair

ProposeSolution

SystemsIssues

Recommendation

Task SystemsAdministrators

ProcessIssues Skill Group Focus

Page 14: INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

Issues

We have now registered over 120 issues. All but a handful have been resolved.

Every time we start work on a new upgrade, the first task is to raise it as an issue. By doing so, we ensure that the procedures is followed correctly to retain full control.

Page 15: INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

So you want to upgrade?

As a result of previous experience, if we are to upgrade, we will not do so until a number of other UK sites have already done so. In this way we should be aware of any problems that are likely to be encountered with the new version of Unicorn.

Another prerequisite is that our Systems Administrators must attend the Unicorn Upgrade Seminar to gain precise first-hand knowledge of the changes. This will help them to assess whether we should upgrade at this point.

Page 16: INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

Yes please Mr Gethin

The initial step for the upgrade is to update the software on our test/training server (Hedge).

This is essential to achieve approval from the Network Controllers. All new software must be tested for compatibility with current systems (we don’t want to be responsible for crashing the payroll program).

Any significant technical problems are raised with Sirsi (they do not have remote access to our systems).

Page 17: INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

Testing

Whilst the new version of Unicorn is on Hedge, the Superusers carry out a series of test scripts. The purpose of these is to expose bugs and glitches as well as changes which might affect the working procedures within IR.

If a change represents a significant deviation from current working procedures, then this needs to be discussed with the owners of the procedure. If agreed, all paperwork must be amended to reflect the changes (including the manual). [Thankfully, we have already passed through the Infoview -> Workflows nightmare.]

Page 18: INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

Training

The Superusers are also responsible for identifying any necessary amendments to the internal Unicorn Manual as well as any training that is required by IR staff.

The Superusers produce crib sheets to assist the staff and to forewarn them of any significant changes.

Finally, after carrying out any training and amendments to the manual, the two “real” systems are updated.

Page 19: INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

All systems are GO

Notifications are sent out to all users 3 days in advance that the systems will be down for upgrading for a day. Another reminder is sent out 24 hours before upgrade.

The systems are updated and the System Administrators test compatibility with the Network.

Once these tests are passed then the users are again allowed access to the brilliantly enhanced library system.

And everybody involved breathes again!

Page 20: INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

We have lift-off

And that hopefully will have led to a successful upgrade. Any problems encountered will have been logged and hopefully we will have learned something in the process so that next time it can be even more successful !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Page 21: INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

Alternative Plan Number 1

In case you missed it earlier, an alternative to getting everything written down in procedures (and, of course, following them) is to time your upgrades for the summer and to leave the country (without leaving a forwarding address).

Unfortunately, a lot of us work for organisations who could probably track us down, especially when it all goes wrong.

Page 22: INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

Alternative Plan Number 2

CENSORED BY SIRSICENSORED BY SIRSI

Page 23: INFORMATION RESOURCES Dave Little, Business Group Manager Bringing Information to the Desktop.

Gracias, Adios

Thanks for listening and snoring quietly.

I am happy to send out copies of our Unicorn procedures to anybody who is interested, or to discuss further in the bar.

You can contact me by email at the following address: [email protected]