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Recommendation Report: Directory Services (RS-11A) - Research - Victoria Online Project

Version 1.0 - 7th December 2001

1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This paper presents the results of the VOG Directory Services Recommendation Project, a study to determine the best approach to providing a directory of the Victorian Parliament, its Ministers, Members and appropriate Officers, and of Victorian State and Local Government Services, Departments and Agencies and appropriate employees, for the use of the community, as part of the Victorian Online Gateway (VOG) Project.

This report delivers recommendations to the VOG Project to assist in determining the scope and specifications for implementing electronic directory services at the Victorian Online Gateway.

Constraints

The VOG Directory Service solution must comply with specific constraints:

• The VOG Directory Services solution must be capable of tangible implementation during the first quarter of 2002, for deployment as part of the VOG in the June-July 2002 timeframe
• VOG Directory Services should make use of existing information assets and maintenance processes. Where practicable, VOG should also leverage existing infrastructure and licensing
• The administrative and business processes involved in the maintenance of the directory information used by the VOG should be kept as simple as possible, and demands on the staff and facilities of contributing organisations should be minimised
• The electronic directory service delivered by the VOG should incorporate best practice standards

Project Methodology

This study conducted a range of investigation and consultation activities to determine the required characteristics; strategic direction and priorities; existing situation (available resources and current processes); best practice approaches in comparable environments; industry standards; and comparative costs.

The scope of the investigations has covered (to varying degrees):

• Local Government
• Victorian Government Departments
• WoVG Expert Group
• Other State Governments Initiatives
• Victorian Government Communications strategy
• Industry Experts
• Standards Groups, and
• Software Vendors

The primary methods have been interviews, telephone calls, email correspondence and use of the Internet.

Requirements

The functional requirements for the electronic directory service are to deliver interactive electronic directory information service which:

• Provides quality searching and browsing
• Promotes discovery (e.g. related services)
• Presents results in a clear manner, supporting both novice and advanced users
• Makes effective use of controlled vocabulary and thesauri
• Provides a pleasurable, interesting experience, and
• Encourages users to revisit the site, and promote the site to others

The navigation, the search and browse functionality, and the look-and-feel of the electronic directory service should be consistent and integrated with the overall VOG solution. The standards adopted for the use of classification schemes and controlled vocabulary within the VOG should incorporate (and be applied to) the electronic directory service.

A standards-based information retrieval approach should be used to provide the interface between the VOG functionality and the underlying directory information, allowing the underlying directory to be treated as a "black-box". This will allow the underlying database to be evolved or replaced, while insulating the functionality delivered by the overall VOG Directory Service from the impact of change.

The ability to change the underlying database in isolation from the functionality components is required to allow the VOG to take advantage of extensions to information scope, coverage, accuracy and completeness delivered by new or extended databases as they become available, and ultimately to front-end the solution delivered by the proposed Whole of Victorian Government Directory.

Promoting the efficient, timely, accurate and consistent maintenance of the directory information is key to delivering a usable, high-quality electronic directory service. The complexity of coordinating maintenance activities across the entire range of Victorian Government organisations is enormous. As introducing or extending administrative procedures and business processes on this scale is beyond the scope of the VOG Project, reuse and integration of existing maintenance processes are essential.

Delivery of reusability and extensibility are important aspects of the VOG Directory Services solution, as is the ability of the VOG solution to contribute cost-effectively to the evolution and delivery of the proposed Whole of Victorian Government Directory solution. The VOG Directory Services solution should assist in promoting readiness for the strategic whole of government solution by positioning the availability of important directory information for inclusion; and by establishing a high-profile, widely-used service capable of becoming one of the WoVG service delivery front-ends.

The information delivered for public access through the VOG should be appropriate for VOG users, and may be different to that required for internal Public Service use. Information pertaining to the identity, contact details, location or role of individuals must have been specifically reviewed and approved for general publication.

In addition to the functional and information related aspects involved, the VOG Directory Services solution must meet overall solution requirements for:

• Openness
• Performance
• Capacity
• Availability
• Security
• Accessibility
• Manageability
• Internationalisation and Localisation
• Recommended Solution

The recommended approach is to adopt the most effective single information source currently available, and make it accessible via a standards-based information retrieval interface for presentation by the VOG using the whole-of-portal search and browse components. Any gaps in coverage (notably Local Government information) should be covered using supplementary links (URLs) to existing external web-sites, until future evolution makes the additional information available as part of the single integrated underlying directory information source.

The Victorian Government Directory (VGD) offers the most complete available single information source, comprising information qualified for public access, described to a depth suitable for members of the public unfamiliar with the structure and functions of Victorian Government organisations, and backed by existing business processes for the collection and validation of this information.

The VGD content is currently maintained as MS Word documents, and published using other Microsoft tools. This content should be interfaced, extracted, converted or re-entered to reside in a repository (such as an X.500 directory or content management database) that supports VOG access using LDAP. The recommended approach is to cooperate with Information Victoria in re-hosting the content, and streamlining the maintenance and publication processes for the VGD, while making the required information available for deployment to an LDAP compliant repository.

VOG should deliver a subset of the VGD content, with information regarding specific people being limited to appropriate Parliamentary, Ministerial and Statutory Authority Officers, and qualified public top-level contact information for department or organisational units.

This approach delivers simplicity of maintenance, integration of functionality and look-and-feel, and an evolutionary path to implementation of the long-term strategic solution based on the proposed Whole of Victorian Government directory project.

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Reports

It is the intention of the Victorian Online Gateway project team to make available individual report findings and recommendations for appropriate use by other government organisations. Materials may be downloaded and printed with applicable copyright and other notices included. Any other use including copying, modifying, displaying or transmitting of the content of these reports requires the prior written permission of the Executive Director of Multimedia Victoria.

The Directory Services Report is available as a word97 document (396kb)

The Directory Services powerpoint presentation to the Expert Group provided on 21 November 2001 is also available (373kb)

Last updated: 28 February 2006

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