Information Systems Planning Projects
NewSouth has significant experience helping organizations plan for new information systems. This experience includes working with stakeholders to gather and document business and technical requirements, write Requests for Proposal (RFPs), issue RFPs and help our clients with vendor selection, and overseeing systems implementation (vendor management). The following are some of the projects in which NewSouth has helped our customers with Information Systems Planning.
North Carolina Office of the State Controller
- ERP Planning
Provide strategic consulting to the State of North Carolina Office of the State Controller and Division of Information Technology in the planning and acquisition of a centralized State Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to meet the state’s evolving needs. Developed short and long-term strategies to serve as roadmaps for the planning, evaluation, and the purchase of the state’s ERP solution. Created a high-level purchase strategy, the ERP evaluation and scoring protocols based on industry best practices, and assisted in the establishment of the ERP Program Office. Gathered statewide ERP requirements, wrote ERP RFPs for ERP software and for ERP Integrator Services and helped state assess RFP responses. Created large, complex reports for state legislative offices/personnel, adhering to strict timelines for completion.
North Carolina Department of Treasury
- Unclaimed Property
Developed requirements analysis document and RFP to provide the North Carolina Department of State Treasurer Unclaimed Property Division an unclaimed property management solution to support the collection, tracking, safekeeping, reporting, and return of property under the state’s Escheat Program. The Department of State Treasurer is responsible for properties, which under the law, escheat to the state when the legal owner of the asset cannot be identified or located by the property holder. The state is currently in possession of more than 11.5 million properties valued at nearly $2 billion. The requirement analysis and resulting RFP was for solution components application software and/or operational services (Software as a Service), data conversion and validation, integration, implementation, training, maintenance, and support. The processing functions to be addressed and supported by the integrated system solution includes unclaimed property management data repository and processing component, an integrated workflow management system component, an integrated document management capability, an online holder reporting portal, and an online system to support public search and claim creation.
North Carolina Department of Public Instruction
- K-3 Formative Assessment
NewSouth provided Project Management services for the design, procurement, and implementation of the K-3 Formative Assessment System, a Software-as-a-Service system implementation. Included developing appropriate vendor contracts to include a Service Level Agreement that define acceptable performance and up-time metrics and remedies if not achieved. Oversaw data integration of myriad of data sources from legacy systems and vendor systems.
- North Carolina Student Identification System (UID Student) and Staff Identification System (UID Staff)
NewSouth provided Program and Project Management services for the implementation of a Unique Student Identifier System for the NC Department of Public Instruction to assign a unique ID number to each of the 1.4 million PK-12 students in the public and charter schools in the State of North Carolina. NewSouth also lead the implementation of a Unique Staff Identifier System for the NC Department of Public Instruction to assign a unique ID number to each staff person working in all 115 Local Education Agencies (LEAs). Both systems were based on packaged products designed and developed by eScholar. Project included gathering requirements, writing and issuing an RFP, selecting the vendor, and overseeing the vendor implementation.
- Home Base Suite of Applications
NewSouth provided Program and Project Management services, business analysis, and systems integration services for the NC Department of Public Instruction in the implementation of the Home Base suite of applications. This is arguably the single most aggressive K-12 technology implementation in the country. The Home Base suite of applications includes the following:
– Student Information System (based on Pearson’s PowerSchool)
– Instructional Improvement System to provide curriculum resources and classroom and benchmark assessment (based Pearson Schoolnet)
– Learning Management System (based on Pearson OpenClass)
– Educator Effectiveness System
- Educator Evaluation Module
- Professional Development System Module
– Summative Assessment Delivery System (based on Pearson TestNav and Pearson Access)
NewSouth employees managed vendors and designed and implemented data and systems integration services to ensure that applications shared data both in real time and in batch. NewSouth employees assisted with Data Governance and helped design the SAS data warehouse used to consolidate data from a myriad of disparate systems so that data could be integrated with other applications. Project included gathering requirements, writing and issuing an RFP, selecting the vendor, and overseeing the vendor implementation.
- North Carolina Common Education Analysis and Reporting System (CEDARS)
NewSouth provided North Carolina Common Education Analysis and Reporting System (CEDARS), which is a statewide longitudinal data system (SLDS). It is a data warehouse that houses year-over-year data from more than 30 educational systems supported by the NC Department of Public Instruction (DPI). The system is used by the NC DPI management and program administrators along with LEA and school administrators to make data-driven decisions regarding education policies and programs to improve the overall education experience of NC PK-12 students and their teachers. CEDARS will be used as a major input source for the NC DPI’s new Instructional Improvement System (IIS) that currently being designed. Project included gathering requirements, writing and issuing an RFP, selecting the vendor, and overseeing the vendor implementation.
North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts
- NCAWARE
NewSouth provided Project Management services, business analysis services, Java/J2EE programming services, database management services, and Quality Assurance Testing services for the custom design, construction, and implementation of the North Carolina Warrant Repository System (NCAWARE) for the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC). NCAWARE is a statewide warrant repository that includes all criminal processes, such as warrants, magistrate orders, citations that lead to an arrest, criminal summons, orders for arrest, release orders, and appearance bonds. It also tracks information and details for all people and businesses involved in such processes (defendants, victims, witnesses, etc.). The system is currently deployed in 98 of NC’s 100 counties (rolling out to the remaining 2 by the end of 2011) and is used by more than 30,000 end-users, including all state and local law enforcement officers through personal computers in the patrol cars.
See additional details at: http://www.nccourts.org/Courts/CRS/Technology/Applications/NCAWARE/Facts.asp