Strategic IT Workshop - Minutes
April 2003
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) hosted an Information Technology (IT)
workshop at the IMF headquarters in Washington, D.C. on April 24 and April 25, 2003.
Participants included George Brookings, Alain Coune, Michael Handelman, Patrick
Hinderdael, Tom Howard, John Johnson, Adolf Limarzi, Robert Russell, and Brian Stuart
(IMF); Guido Maccari, Ian Hunter, and Lester Rodriques (Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development); Rakesh Asthana, Hinda Kada, and Le Anh Vu
(World Bank Group); and Luiz Enriquez, Richard Herring, Bernal Jimenez, David Ryan,
and Erico Silva (Inter-American Development Bank).
The purpose of the workshop was for the various organizations to share insights,
experiences, and strategies, and engage colleagues in discussions of shared concerns.
The main topics for discussion were as follows:
 Key strategic IT issues;
 Performance measurements, benchmarks, and indicators;
 IT Governance;
 Strategies, architecture, and business cases for portals, content management, and
the x-nets; and
 Infrastructure key issues: storage, configuration management, remote access, and
IP/PBX.
Key Strategic IT Issues
In opening the discussion, Mr. Stuart (IMF) said that the current IT budget situation in
the IMF was adequate, but conservative. While the capital budget covered most wellarticulated projects for the period ahead, a decline in budgetary support could be expected
over the next year or two as major enhancements to current IT systems were put into
production.
The Executive Board of the IMF was increasingly vigilant about the need to demonstrate
the value of IT investments, which called for cost/benefit analyses for all new projects.
This kind of analysis was nearly impossible for IT systems that supported overall staff
productivity—a factor that was difficult to quantify in knowledge-based organizations.
While the IMF had several examples of successful projects that had been sponsored by
user departments as business projects, rather than IT projects, in the past, it would be
difficult to replicate such cost/benefit analyses on a cross-departmental, organizationwide basis.
The IMF was trying to develop systems for measuring the efficiency of IT. Toward that
end, it was developing a number of performance indicators that could be used as
management tools. It was also considering taking a balanced scorecard approach for
measuring the implementation of its strategic IT program.
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-2He wondered what budgetary environment characterized other intergovernmental
organizations and how they were measuring the value of IT projects.
Although the IMF had taken a strategic approach to IT investments, it had had a tendency
to segment information in the past. It was now working on the development of
information architecture for the institution as whole. This entailed looking at the
information used and generated by the organization in an abstract way in order to identify
operations—categorizing, metadata tagging, storing, accessing, searching, and securing—
that could be applied to information across a range of applications. The IMF was also
looking at the relationships between information and key work processes (along the lines
of the enterprise architecture framework mandated for U.S. federal government
agencies). Once the information architecture was put in place, it would be important to
establish a governance model that could ensure that the framework was implemented and
adhered to over time.
He wondered whether other intergovernmental organizations were looking at information
management in similar ways and what value they saw in the enterprise architecture
framework. He also wondered what governance structures were in place in other
organizations and the extent to which they were effective in implementing information
systems.
The IMF was currently conducting a pilot of a Plumtree portal with a small group of
country desk economists to provide ready access to key information. The size of the pilot
was expected to increase gradually as its value was demonstrated and the technology
could be rolled out to larger numbers of staff. In addition to improving access to
information, the IMF hoped that the development and implementation of the portal would
provided greater insight into the information needs of its staff and that the portal would
highlight redundancies, inconsistencies, and other problems among various information
stores currently in the IMF.
He wondered whether other organizations were deploying portal technologies and how
they had approached the development and implementation of those systems. Had they
begun by focusing on communities of interest or taken an organization-wide approach?
One of the major challenges currently facing the IMF was the need to ensure the
reliability of remote access to the IMF network by staff members working in the field or
at home. This problem was a particular cause for concern among staff in small overseas
offices and travelers who did not have access to high-speed Internet connections. The
Fund was currently using Outlook Exchange, which did not provide the same quality of
support as other systems for remote access in terms of data compression and
synchronization. Also the need to have in place multiple access methods and technologies
for different types of users made managing the system difficult. The need to address
issues related to remote access was critical, given the important role of home computing
in IMF disaster recovery and business continuity plans.
-3He wondered whether other intergovernmental had faced similar problems with remote
access had how they had addressed those problems.
While one-third of the IT staff in the IMF were “regular” staff members, approximately
two-thirds were from external vendor companies.1 The IMF was currently consolidating
the number of vendor companies it worked with from about 35 to 3, covering
approximately 200 employees. These “external” staff members were hired on a “time and
materials” basis and managed by on-site vendor company supervisors. In the period
ahead, the IMF planned to explore the advantages of moving to a performance-based
outsourcing arrangement for its help desk and other first-tier IT support. This would
cover an additional 80 to 100 positions managed by two vendor companies.
He wondered whether participants could comment on the outsourcing trends in their
organizations. What kinds of IT functions were being outsourced and was this being done
on a “time and materials” or performance basis? In this respect, which arrangements had
worked well and which had not?
Mr. Brookings (IMF) commented that one of the greatest challenges in steering IT
investments was the rate at which changes were taking place in the IT marketplace. Some
described the current environment of IT strategic thinking as “trying to change a tire
while the car is in motion.” He wondered how other organizations were reconciling the
need for fixed planning with the radically changing IT market.
Mr. Maccari (OECD)2 said that he agreed with Mr. Brookings about the challenges
presented by dynamic changes in the IT marketplace. It was nearly impossible to gain a
full understanding of growing technologies and put in place strategic plans in an
environment where critical IT systems had to be maintained and fully operational 24
hours a day, seven days a week. In that respect, it was important to bear in mind that
technologies represented only the “tools” needed for knowledge-based organizations, like
the IMF and the OECD, to achieve their goals. Thus, it was critical to find ways to work
closely with senior managers and operational staff to ensure that IT development was
closely aligned with business goals. For intergovernmental organizations, it was also
important to take into account the needs of the ultimate “end users,” namely member
country governments, in the design of IT systems.
The OECD was faced with demands for higher productivity against a backdrop of
increasing budget constraints. The IT budget, in particular, had been cut an average of 5
percent a year over the most recent period. In this environment, technology and process
reforms had to be closely linked with productivity improvements. At the same time,
member country governments were looking to intergovernmental agencies, like the
OECD and the IMF, to create a model for transparency and information management. In
the circumstances, it would be important for senior management to take a more decisive
role in setting the overall vision for the organization and in defining the role of IT in
meeting business goals.
1
2
See attached slides from Mr. Stuart’s presentation to participants.
See attached slides from Mr. Maccari’s presentation to participants.
-4At the OECD, demands for enhancements to the IT and information management systems
typically exceeded expected budgetary resources by at least 50 percent. Therefore, all
projects were presented to the Board of Directors for Computers and Communications
Technology Strategy for review. This Board assigns the relative priority of various IT
initiatives as the basis for the final preparation of the IT budget.
Mobility was a major issue for the OECD, which had a fundamental need to keep its staff
linked, informed, and “in touch” in the face of growing geographic dispersion and a
mobile Secretariat. At present, the OECD was conducting hundreds of projects offsite
each year and numerous meetings took place away from headquarters. This emphasized
the need for stronger communications systems, like video teleconferencing, to keep
people informed and able to conduct their work literally on an “any time, anywhere”
basis. The need for continuous linkages with member countries was also critical, as
30,000 to 50,000 representatives of governments, businesses, and social groups interacted
with the OECD each year, and its analysts were called on to provide information and
advice to governments every day. In that respect, the OECD had truly entered the
“electronic age.”
For the OECD and other cooperative international institutions, it would be important to
foster closer contacts among member countries and provide the means for continuous
communications, so that country representatives could regularly discuss issues that move
beyond national boundaries.
There was also a need to reform statistical processes throughout the OECD and its
member states in order to harmonize statistical information and make it accessible on a
more timely basis.
Given the number of joint operations the OECD conducted with other intergovernmental
organizations, like the IMF and the World Bank Group, it would be mutually beneficial
to develop better inter-agency information sharing systems. Toward that end, the
organizations could consider the establishment of a common portal or computer network
to facilitate information sharing on specific operations, Executive Board agendas, and
other topics of mutual interest.
With respect to internal IT systems, managers and staff increasingly expected to be able
to “search” for information within their organizations they way they would search the
Internet. Therefore, one of the primary goals of information architecture should be to
make it easy for staff members to find information and conduct transactions through the
Internet, especially for human resources transactions, administrative systems, institutional
documents, budget issues, and financial and statistical work. This required not only better
“search” capabilities, but also better corporate structures for preparing, storing, and
retrieving information.
Given the pervasive role of information security in the organization, there was a need to
create a “security” culture that would promote information sharing, while preserving
appropriate confidentiality throughout the institution and its member governments.
-5The OECD had recently reorganized its IT functions. At present 75 percent of its IT staff
were “regular” staff members, while 25 percent were contractual. Following an
outsourcing study in 2001, the OECD had carried out a selective outsourcing of
telephony and software development functions. While it had found that the one-off costs
of outsourcing entire IT operations could be very high and entail losses in service
continuity and core skills and competencies, it would continue to examine the
possibilities for achieving cost savings through the outsourcing of specific activities in
the period ahead.
In attaining IT goals, it would be helpful for the intergovernmental organizations to work
together to establish best practices and create corporate systems that met the needs of
each institution. Toward that end, it might be helpful to ask the Gartner Group or another
external consultant to conduct a benchmarking study among the international financial
institutions.
Mr. Asthana (World Bank Group)3 said that IT governance in the Bank had benefited
from the active involvement of senior management, which had brought clear direction to
IT planning and close alignment with the business strategy of the organization. Every
initiative in the Bank had to be supported by a tangible business case in order to get
funding. IT strategic planning in the Bank was governed by the Information Policy
Council, which was chaired by a Managing Director and included business consultations
with a variety of groups, including the Business Sponsors Group, the Finance Technical
Steering Committee, and the IT Services Board, among others.
The World Bank had just completed a five-point IT program, which had been
implemented in the period 1996-2002. Under that program, it had moved to a single
“24x7” global support desk, standard enterprise-wide computing services, high-speed
global communication services, and integrated enterprise information systems (including
for human resources transactions, payroll, budgeting, and accounting). The Bank had also
put in place a knowledge management system comprising a Statistical Information
Management System (SIMA), an electronic document management system with over
40,000 Bank staff reports on line, live databases, and improvements in its libraries.
The increasing delegation of decision making responsibilities to staff in field offices had
necessitated the creation of reliable centralized IT systems. While the World Bank Group
had 6000 staff at its headquarters in Washington, D.C., it had another 4000 staff members
assigned to field offices around the world. Thus, a global IT network was essential to
ensure a high quality of work and decision-making.
Over the period 2002-06, the Bank would put in place another five point plan, focused on
the following main areas:


3
IT performance management
Decentralized global operations
See attached slides from Mr. Asthana’s presentation to participants.
-6


Risk management
Internal simplification, and
E-business partnerships.
In the past, the Bank’s IT systems had been inward looking to bolster information sharing
and productivity within the organization. The Bank was now moving toward more clientfocused systems to provide clients with a “one-stop shop” for services and information
related to Bank operations. This would improve the Bank’s partnerships with individual
member countries and increase institutional transparency. In the creation of new extranet
systems and E-portals, the Bank would continue to rely on Netegrity and the use of smart
card, SecureID systems, especially for Web-based transactions.
The creation of the Executive Directors’ portal within the Bank had been driven by
information security policies to enable Directors to access all the information they are
authorized to view through the Web. Indeed, the portal within the Bank determines
individual access rights (based on the function of the individual) upon login.
In a similar vein, the Client Connection Portal, which will run through the Extranet, will
identify users’ access rights on login. This portal will give users immediate access to
individual projects and status reports, including loan disbursements, repayments, and
procurement bids. A pilot of that portal would be launched in early May 2003.
As part of the IT planning process, the Bank had adopted a regular cycle of “bulldozing.”
Under that process, all computing equipment in the Bank was upgraded at once every
four years.
With respect to IT staffing, the Bank had an offshore IT development center in Chennai,
India. As that offshore center was networked to the World Bank via fiber optic cable,
there was no significant security risk. The Bank estimated that the offshore approach to
sourcing realized savings of approximately 40-50 percent.
Mr. Herring (IDB) said that, although senior managers at the Inter-American
Development Bank (IDB) were visionary about development issues in Latin America,
they were not actively engaged in IT development. Technologies were generally seen in
the IDB as critical tools needed to support operational work.
One way the IDB had garnered support for its IT development program was by
demonstrating the value of technologies to its Board of Executive Directors. To support
the work of the Board, the IDB had created a portal for Executive Directors that provided
immediate access to Board agendas, IDB documents, and the translation request system.
Directors were also able to communicate with government representatives of member
countries on a real-time basis through an Extranet.
Given current budget constraints at the IDB, a thorough cost/benefit analysis was
required for every IT project. While these analyses were generally successful in securing
the needed funding from the capital budget to put new IT systems in place, the IDB often
-7had difficulty securing resources from the administrative budget to support and maintain
systems over time.
With respect to remote access, the greatest challenge for the IDB had been bandwidth
differences among its member countries. Regardless of the remote access system in place
at headquarters, individual users were dependent on the IT environment in the area where
they were accessing the Internet.
Mr. Silva (IDB)4 said that the IDB was in the third year of an institutional plan aimed at
accomplishing the following objectives:





Eliminate use of mainframe systems by moving to UNIX and Oracle;
Redesign Internet Web site, and enhance Extranet portals,
Expand portal communities of interest,
Establish single sign-on capabilities through the portal, and
Move toward Bank-wide use of the electronic documents management system
(Hummingbird).
The overall information management strategy was to provide all institutional documents
and information to stakeholders, including staff at headquarters and in the field and
member country representatives through the Internet and Intranet. In that respect, the
move to the use of the documents management system throughout the Bank was an
important part of the IDB business continuity plan.
The IDB faced serious challenges in the creation of its IT systems for financial
arrangements and transactions, owing to the use of various currencies throughout the IDB
region. It currently used Lawson + Hyperion for core financials; GSM->Summit for
investments; OPICS for borrowings; Fastwire->SWIFT for money transfers; and in-house
systems for cash management, projects, and loans. The IDB had also developed in-house
systems for tracking and monitoring travel expenses and events management.
With respect to IT governance, the IDB had recently created a central IT department,
which included a management function and two divisions. The IT Committee in the IDB
was chaired by the Vice President for Administration. At present, the IT staff consisted of
“regular” staff members, consultants, and contractual employees. In the period ahead, the
IDB hoped to create a Bank-wide career stream for IT professionals and reduce the
number of consulting firms that supplied contractual employees.
While approximately 70 percent of the IDB staff was located at its headquarters in
Washington, D.C., it had several country offices. The need for constant communications
between those staff members and headquarters as well as the need for continuous contact
with member countries made the use of the portal a critical component of the Bank’s
operations.
4
See attached slides from Mr. Silva’s presentation to participants.
-8Performance measurements, benchmarks, and indicators
Participants from the IMF noted that a recent benchmarking study by the Gartner Group
suggested that the overall cost of IT operations at the IMF was high by industry
standards, but that the level of quality was also very high. From that information alone, it
was difficult to draw firm conclusions about the efficiency of IT operations or their
relative value to the organization. It would be useful to know how other organizations
assessed the value of IT operations. What performance measurements, indicators, and
criteria were other intergovernmental organizations using to assess the appropriateness of
IT investment in their organizations?
Participants from the World Bank Group said that the Bank used a balanced scorecard
approach to measure IT inputs and outputs. However, it was difficult to measure
outcomes. There are really three layers involved in planning and assessing IT spending,
as follows:
Tier 1—IT investment strategy (currently 11-12 percent of overall capital spending)
Tier 2—Business application (how IT systems are aligned with objectives; how they
contribute to realizing savings, avoiding costs, and accomplishing objectives)
Tier 3—Services (quality and efficiency of IT services).
While the Bank used standardized data from the Gartner Group to benchmark the level of
IT services, it was extremely difficult to assess the IT investment strategy and business
application against other organizations. Indeed, benchmarking in the area of IT was
extremely difficult to do across institutions, owing to differences in organizational culture
and IT environments. For example, IT costs vary significantly according to where an
institution is on the IT planning and implementation cycle. Also, organizations took
different approaches to costing IT systems depending on the extent to which IT systems
were centralized or costed among various work units.
In the World Bank, the development, implementation and support of organization-wide
IT systems was costed under the capital and administrative budgets. However, the Bank
also took a “bundled” approach to charge backs for IT services. Under that approach,
individual departmental budget were charged for a bundle of “basic services,” such as
personal computers, help desk support, and e-mail accounts. Departmental budgets were
also charged for a bundle of “optional” services, like cellular telephones.
Participants from the OECD said that they agreed with representatives from the IMF and
the World Bank Group about the difficulties involved in conducted cost/benefit analyses
of IT systems.
While IT investment represented approximately 6.6 percent of overall capital spending at
the OECD, it did not include charge backs to individual departments. In this respect, the
OECD differed from the World Bank to the extent that “basic” IT services were included
-9in the central IT budget. However, “optional” services were charged to departmental
budgets.
The role of the Gartner Group as a consulting firm could represent a conflict of interest in
presenting fully reliable and objective benchmarking data. Moreover, the databases
compiled by the Gartner Group covered an array of enterprises, including private sector
companies and government agencies. Given their unique role in the world community
and individual characteristics, it would be useful for the international financial
institutions to work together to conduct benchmarking studies and present their findings
to management. In that context, it would be useful not only to present benchmarking
results for Tier 1 and Tier 3, but also to identify best practices in IT planning for business
applications.
Participants from the IDB said that conducting cost/benefit analyses in the IT area was
extremely difficult, because many of the benefits of technology were intangible. For
example, how does one compare the cost of e-mail with that of postage, or allocate that
cost among work units? To the extent that IT was used primarily to support operational
work, much of its real value depended on how it was used. Also, the implementation of
new technologies frequently entailed an adoption period, which understated its real value
in the early stages of usage.
At the IDB, IT investments represented roughly 8.5-9 percent of overall capital spending.
While the IDB did not have a formal “chargeback” system in place, individual
departments paid for individual components, like personal computers. This
decentralization was problematic, because it resulted in an uneven distribution of IT
services throughout the organization. The “bulldozing” system used by the World Bank
had the advantage of ensuring a standard IT environment for the organization as a whole.
Participants from the IMF noted that the International Finance Corporation (IFC) had
recently hosted a benchmarking exercise among 13 international organizations. That
study had been very helpful, but it was difficult to conduct benchmarking exercises, for
the reasons cited by the World Bank. In particular, there was a need to carefully define
every variable used in order to ensure that the data was fully comparable across
institutions. Indeed, the recent study of IT services in the Fund conducted by the Gartner
Group had proved to be very labor intensive for the IT staff, owing to the need to provide
a great deal of very detailed information under tight time constraints.
Setting these difficulties aside, benchmarking for IT services, especially at the level of
Tier 3, could help to identify areas where savings could be realized and reallocated to
Tiers 1 and 2.
There was also a need to move beyond benchmarking to examine why and how
organizations differed. In that respect, it might be useful to take the World Bank approach
by benchmarking for Tiers 1 and 3 and then focusing on Tier 2 in coming to final
assessments about the extent to which overall IT spending is appropriate for an individual
organization.
- 10 -
The international financial institutions could ask the Gartner Group to assist in
identifying criteria to be used in assessing the overall value of IT investments and ways
to make comparisons among organizations over time.
Participants from the IDB said that they would support asking the International Finance
Corporation to host another benchmarking exercise among intergovernmental
organizations.
Participants from the World Bank Group said that they could support a study hosted by
the IFC. However, it was important to consider how the results of such a benchmarking
study would be used. For example, if the purpose of the exercise was to facilitate peer
review among the IT functions of various organizations, an informal study hosted by the
IFC would suffice. However, if the results of the study were to be shared with others,
such as senior managers or stakeholders, a study by the Gartner Group would provide
more objective data covering a broader spectrum of enterprises.
IT Governance
Following a brief discussion on IT governance, participants noted that the IT governance
structures in the IDB, IMF, OECD, and World Bank Group were strikingly similar.5 The
differences among organizations resided primarily in the degree of involvement of senior
managers and department heads in the IT planning process. In that respect, the World
Bank Group had benefited from higher levels of engagement. This had enabled it to
carefully align IT strategies with overall business objectives.
Strategies, architecture, and business cases for portals, content management, and
the x-nets
Participants from the IDB said that they had spent a year planning, designing, and
selecting software for the creation for the IDB portal. The "My IBD" portal included an
internal portal and two extranets for offsite meetings and for countries. The portal
provided representatives from member governments direct access to the IDB loan
information system.
From the portal homepage, users could access their Outlook mailboxes, classified ads
within the organization, forms, and the credit union. They also had access to the
applications used most in the organization, reports on county loans, and institutional
documents.
For security purposes, the portal was set to “time out” if no activity took place for a few
minutes.
5
See attachments on IT governance structure in the IMF and World Bank Group.
- 11 The Secretariat portion of the portal included the schedule of Board of Executive
Directors meetings, agenda, and links to documents. This functionality had replaced the
distribution of hardcopy Board documents.
The IDB was currently examining the use of Lawson to create a single sign-on system, so
that users would not have to pass through different levels of authentication as they used
various applications. In creating the portal, the IDB did not replace the previous Intranet.
Rather, it had incorporated all previous Intranet sites, including departmental pages, into
the portal.
In designing the portal, the IDB had asked users what information they needed or wanted
to be included. In that respect, the business of the Bank had driven the development of
the portal.
Usage of the portal varied within the IDB. While some staff members used the portal as
their desktop, others were still going to individual applications separately. The IDB was
closely monitoring usage statistics to gain a better understanding of users’ information
needs.
The IDB had also created an Extranet for Annual Meetings. When individuals registered
to attend the Annual Meeting, they were given a user name and password. This
authentication gave them access to documents and information as well as an e-mail
system for those attending the meeting. Users were able to toggle between English and
Spanish versions of the Extranet.
The IDB was currently testing Site Executive for use as a content management system. It
was also looking into various techniques that could be used to make it easier for content
providers to publish information to the Intranet and portal.
At present the authentication process was carried out through the portal, using Active
Directory. However, access to information was determined by individual applications.
The IDB would like to move to a single sign on system that would synchronize
authentication procedures in a way that would enable the portal to convey individual
access rights across applications. It was to be hoped that access rights would become less
of an issue as the organization moved toward greater transparency over time.
The IMF portal was really in its infancy. Given the need to demonstrate business value
before deploying the technology organization-wide, the IMF was starting with a pilot
program focused on desk economists. For this purpose, the IMF had established a Desk
Economist Advisory Group to identify the specific sources of information used in their
work with member countries. This served as the foundation for the current portal, which
provided pilot participants with ready access to their Outlook calendars and e-mail and
IMF documents. The portal enabled Economists to search across IMF repositories
without having to login to the electronic documents management system.
- 12 In the next stage of the portal’s development, the IMF would create specific country
pages for each member country that would include access to the Joint Bank-Fund Library
and the schedule of Executive Board meetings as well as other information sources.
The IMF was also creating a portal that would incorporate human resources and financial
applications.
The IMF expected the functionality of the portal to grow with demand over the period
ahead. For example, as the portal was rolled out to senior staff with responsibilities for
multiple countries, there would likely be a need to create regional or summary views.
In the future, the IMF would examine the possibilities for putting in place collaborative
tools for mission teams.
The need to establish information architecture was a pressing issue for the IMF, given the
need to be able to compile information across a number of applications and databases.
IMF participants wondered what other organizations were doing in that area.
Given the pace of changes in the current IT marketplace, the selection of software and IT
systems providers was also an important issue. In the current circumstances, there was a
temptation to make these selections based on companies’ relative strength in the market,
rather than on the quality of services provided.
Participants form the World Bank Group said that the present portal at the Bank drew on
existing databases. In that respect, the portal could be seen as a dashboard that provided
users with immediate access to information on projects. In addition to information on the
current status of a given Bank project, users could also access information on similar
projects carried out in other countries and on the people who worked on them.
In the next phase of development, the Bank portal would become more process oriented,
including through an expansion of collaboration tools.
As a stepping-stone for the creation of an institution-wide content management system,
the Bank had compiled a thesaurus to be used in cataloguing information. The Bank was
applying the thesaurus and a content extractor to pull data, by keywords, from individual
documents and databases. While the content was already in the Bank’s information
systems, this methodology was helpful in determining what information was relevant to a
given area.
In the future, the Bank would put in place an integrated suite of tools for collaboration,
security, and content management.
World Bank Group participants agreed with the IMF that it was not possible to avoid risk
in the selection of IT providers in the current environment. For software and systems
applications that are mission critical, institutions should pick the “best of breed.”
- 13 Participants from the OECD noted that the OECD had adopted a Vignette content
management system in 2000. Given the decentralized nature of Web publishing in the
Secretariat, which included 300 Web editors posting information to the OECD Web site,
it was important to have in place a standardized system for categorizing and meta-tagging
information. Work was underway to include the metadata of published statistics in the
federated search service (for documents and publications), initially on the Intranet and
Extranet (OLISnet) and eventually on the OECD Web site.
The present Extranet portal environment provided clients in national administrations with
full search capability for Committee documents as well as the ability to conduct federated
searches across documents and OECD Publications. The portal provided also electronic
discussion groups for committees that were used to prepare for upcoming meetings and to
interact between meetings. However, it was found that the success of such groups
depended highly on the quality of moderating - a time consuming albeit important task in
order to keep the discussion alive and under control.
The OECD has developed a comprehensive and integrated event management system for
committee delegates, permanent delegations and the secretariat to plan, schedule,
register and follow in real-time all aspects - agendas, locations, participants, reports,
documents, etc., of all official meetings, conferences and other important events. A
secure extranet allows delegates and delegations to have direct access to the system from
their offices in capitals and permanent delegations in Paris. The four main components of
the system are: calendar of events; conference room management; delegate registration;
and the corporate contact management system. The IDB and IMF have projects underway
for similar systems and are interested in cooperating with the OECD in this area.
Participants from the OECD agreed with the IMF and the World Bank about the
difficulties involved in selecting IT applications and systems providers. It might be useful
for the international financial institutions to share information and experience in this
work. Indeed, this might enable them not only to consolidate internal resources devoted
to the selection process, but also gain leverage in negotiations with individual companies.
Participants from the IDB agreed with others that the international financial institutions
should share information and experience with respect to individual IT service providers.
The IDB and the IMF had recently worked together successfully on the implementation
of PeopleSoft in their institutions.
Infrastructure key issues: storage, configuration management, remote access, and
IP/PBX
IMF6 participants said that remote access was a key area of concern for the IMF. The
present configuration for remote access, which was founded on the use of Outlook
Exchange and Windows terminal servers and involved a complex variety of tools, was
not sufficiently user friendly. The IMF was putting in place an initiative to examine
current problems with the system. Based on responses to a questionnaire the IMF had
6
See attached
- 14 recently sent to other international organizations, it seemed that other organizations
working with Outlook Exchange environments were facing similar problems to those
experienced by the IMF.
As the problems were particularly pronounced in countries with weaker IT
infrastructures, the IMF had put in place special arrangements in some of its country
offices to provide high-speed connections. The Fund currently had 90 ISP agreements in
place. SITA was its major service provider, covering about 40 overseas offices.
While many IMF staff members, including those using home computers, had obtained
DSL lines, this gave rise to configuration problems in some cases as well as security
concerns, especially for viruses. For that reason, the IMF was encouraging users with
high-speed connections to put in place their own firewalls. The IMF provided its staff
members with CDs containing standard office applications as well as programs to
establish connections with the IMF terminal server through Citrix. Users had to
authenticate each time they logged into the system using a user ID, a password, and a
SecureID.
Staff members who traveled on official business were equipped with laptop computers,
generally through a DPM at the desktop. These laptop computers had stand-alone access
to all standard IMF office applications as well as the systems needed to login to the
Fund’s virtual private network environment.
Staff members could also access their Outlook e-mail accounts through Cyber Café via
any Internet Browser, using a Secure ID card. While this system enabled staff members
to read their e-mail messages, they could not access attachments stored on the IMF
network.
The IMF had an Extranet in place to provide Executive Directors the ability to share
documents and other information with member country representatives on a real-time
basis.
The IMF had put PBX in place at the Concordia Apartments in Washington, D.C., which
was used primarily to accommodate representatives from member countries participating
in the activities of the IMF Institute. It was considering also using PBX for the
headquarters 2 building to be completed in 2005.
Data storage requirements were also becoming a challenge for the IMF, as its staff
members increasingly wished to retain data in Outlook mailboxes. At present, the
Outlook mailboxes were set to hold information for a maximum of 90 days.
Participants from the OECD said that the OECD had the same configuration for remote
access as the IMF. It had recently migrated to a Windows XP environment that
incorporated SITA dial-up capacity. The DPM laptops used for remote access during
travel included the full suite of OECD office applications as well as information,
including a user’s guide, for remote computing on the desktop.
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Although the OECD staff traveled primarily within Europe, where high-speed
connections were readily available, the OECD had found it difficult to manage user
expectations. It seems most users expect to have the same level of service via remote
access that they enjoy in the office.
Participants from the IDB said that the IDB was currently conducting a pilot program on
the use of PBX. Although that program included only 30 users, it had been very
successful thus far. The IDB planned to establish wireless access for its country offices in
the near future.
In the IDB, each user is allotted 32 megabytes of storage capacity for e-mail, although
individuals can store files to local drives.
Participants from the World Bank Group said that Bank staff members had 200-400
megabytes of on-line storage capacity for their e-mail systems. The Bank, which uses
Lotus Notes for e-mail, had developed an in-house system that conducted automatic
archiving of mail boxes. That system m would transfer data from the e-mail system to
individual CDs when a staff member’s storage space was exhausted. The CD was given
to the staff member concerned, so he or she could save the information to the desktop.
The World Bank Group provided one-on-one briefings on remote computing to its staff
members before they went on official travel. These briefings had been incorporated as
part of the normal “mission check out” system. Through the SAP, travel requests were
automatically fed into the mission check out request system.
Given the wide variations among countries in terms of telecommunications and IT
infrastructure, it might be useful for the international financial institutions to share
connections within countries.
Participants from the IMF said that they agreed with participants from the World Bank
Group. Indeed, the IMF was currently benefiting from the use of a World Bank link in
Vietnam.
Participants were asked to exchange information on the locations of their organizations’
overseas offices and the services available at those sites to facilitate sharing arrangements
for IT services in the field.