30 Mar 2006

Government Computer News - San Francisco agency does just fine with a Web content management package

Although they’re experts at helping people in need, most of the social workers of San Francisco are not experts in computer management.

So when the City and County of San Francisco Human Services Agency wanted to upgrade its intranet, Vakil Kuner, IT director and CIO for the agency, knew the new features would have to be as hassle-free as possible. A collection of content management software from RedDot Solutions Corp. of New York provided the optimal mix of low cost and end-user ease of use.

“Integration is a huge problem. It is not easy. So it is good to have a tool that can handle that,” Kuner said. “With very few exceptions, everything that anyone needs to use to do their daily work is just a click away.”

Originally, the agency connected its 18 departments (spread across seven buildings) with a homegrown intranet. Its 2,600 employees help people in need get food and housing and provide myriad active client services, such as food stamps, medical care and housing assistance.

Lots of links

For years, each department had its own home page, which contained links to documents of interest. Employees used to upload documents from their systems to shared drives using an internally developed tool. Each page also hosted discussion groups and room-scheduling calendars. The CIO’s office developed these tools using Macromedia Cold Fusion (Macromedia has since been bought by Adobe Systems Inc.). A Microsoft SQL Server database stored all the material.

While this system worked well for several years, the agency was starting to feel its limitations. “It was easy to use but you couldn’t do much with it,” Kuner said. Only files in the Microsoft Office formats, such as Word, could be shared. When a user would click on a document link, it would launch within the browser using the appropriate Office program. Kuner wanted to render documents in pure HTML, which would be quicker.

But more important, Kuner’s office wanted to incorporate Web applications into each department’s home page. At the time, the office was building a new set of internal applications to handle chores such as job requisitions and equipment tracking systems. Employees had at least a half-dozen icons on their screens, each opening a remote application and requiring a separate password. Kuner wanted employees to access the new programs directly from within their Web browsers.

To handle all these additional duties, the office first looked at portal software, such as Plumtree (now offered by BEA Systems Inc. of San Jose, Calif.) and Websphere Portal from IBM Corp.

“They were incredibly expensive. The big portals are in a very different market space,” Kuner noted. Instead, the organization looked at what Web content management software providers could offer. “We realized that if we only did Web applications, we could use RedDot LiveServer to do the portal work.”

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