The
NIH Electronic Directory (NED) interface development team (Akinyele Akinyelu,
a.k.a. “Junior,” Bob Borah and Tom Bodine) has been testing since work began on
the interface in March. In August, the
interface was made available to members of the DSC and others within CIT for
testing. As part of this process,
feedback was collected and changes incorporated into the design. Interface demos have also been a regular
part of DSC meetings since April, during which additional functional
requirements have been identified and incorporated as part of the interface
development process. The remainder of
this document outlines the project team’s plans for the next step, or pilot
phase, of the NIH Electronic Project.
Pilot Group
A pilot group has been identified consisting of administrative officers
(AOs) and administrative technicians (ATs) from the following NIH
Institutes/Centers (ICs): Center for Information Technology (CIT), National
Institute of Nursing Research (NINR), and National Center for Research
Resources (NCRR).
The
pilot phase will commence the week of October 4 with CIT pilot group training
and last approximately through the week of November 15. A 3-week CIT pilot operation will be
launched on October 11, followed by a similar pilot operation in NCRR and NINR
that will be begin two weeks after CIT’s.
Feedback will be collected during this period and changes incorporated
based on the information gathered.
Following the incorporation of all feedback into the system design, a
final pilot validation will be conducted by CIT, NCRR and NINR. A pilot timeline is presented below.
Task Description Start
Date Duration
CIT pilot group
training 10/4/99 < 1 week
Pilot environment setup
and rollout
10/4/99 < 1 week
CIT pilot operation 10/11/99 3 weeks
NCRR, NINR pilot group
training 10/18/99 < 1 week
NCRR, NINR pilot
operation 10/25/99 3 weeks
Collect feedback 10/11/99 5 weeks
Incorporate feedback 10/18/99 4 weeks
CIT, NCRR, NINR validation 11/15/99 1 week
Primary objectives of the pilot include:
§
Testing the
usability of the web-based user interface;
§
Identifying
additional functional requirements of the system;
§
Determining
whether the interface accommodates the current business practices for the
registration, update, transfer and deactivation of NIH workers in the
Electronic Directory;
§
Identifying
changes to current business practices processes that may be necessary in order
to accommodate the implementation and most effective use of the Electronic
Directory.
The hardware infrastructure is already in place and the required software has been installed and configured. Successful pre-pilot testing has already been done in the same environment that will be used for the pilot. To access the directory, pilot users will simply need a web browser and access to the web. It is assumed that all pilot participants currently have this capability.
Prior to the pilot, the directory will be populated with real data from existing databases and permanent NIH IDs assigned to each entry. Pilot users will need to be educated on this point, since during pre-pilot testing they have been working with dummy data and have not had to worry about messing up the data.
Prior to rollout, Tom Bodine will conduct training sessions for AOs and
ATs in each of the three participating ICs and will also provide a basic system
reference guide. The interface is
fairly straightforward and should not require significant training. During the pilot operation, users will
contact Bodine (or in his absence, Junior) with questions that might arise with
respect to using the interface.
Since this is the whole point of the pilot, it’s important to make sure that effective mechanisms are in place to gather user feedback. One of the most effective techniques for gathering information is conducting personal interviews with users. This is also the most labor-intensive, but since the number of AOs and ATs participating in the pilot is relatively small, it’s probably feasible. If this does turn out to be too time consuming, however, small group interviews provide a good alternative. In any event, Tom Bodine will conduct pilot user interviews at some point during the pilot operation.
In addition, throughout the pilot operation, feedback and comments can
be sent via email to Tom Bodine, who will maintain a master list for tracking
purposes. We might also want to utilize
the NIH LISTSERV facility to facilitate the collection of information and
discussion of pilot issues among users.
The pilot phase will conclude with a 1-week validation period for pilot users to determine whether pilot objectives have been successfully achieved. The results of this evaluation will determine the next steps with respect to the implementation of the NIH Electronic Directory.