· web viewongoing one-stop searching over all oecd information available online through olisnet...

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

MEETING INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY CHALLENGEA MEDIUM-TERM STRATEGY FOR THE OECD 2004-2007

I. Introduction: Why an ICT Strategy?...................................................................................................3II. Organisation Challenges......................................................................................................................4III. Medium-Term Strategic Goals and Anticipated Outcomes................................................................6IV. The Technology Foundations: Infrastructure and Client Support.....................................................17V. Security and Safety of Information...................................................................................................20VI. OECD Committees............................................................................................................................22VII. Substantive Activity of the Secretariat.............................................................................................23VIII. Communications and Outreach........................................................................................................27IX. Management of the Secretariat..........................................................................................................29X. ICT Governance...............................................................................................................................33

Table 1: A Snapshot of ICT at the OECD ............................................................................................…3 Table 2: An OECD Medium-Term ICT Strategy: Objectives, Outputs and Target Dates....................…9

Figure 1: Spending on ICT Security...........................................................................................................21Figure 2: Workflow Diagram for the New Statistical Information Systems .............................................24Figure 3: OECD Information Systems To Serve Management Needs......................................................33

Annex 1: Outsourced ICT Activities.....................................................................................................…36

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I. Introduction: Why an ICT Strategy?

Information and communications technology (ICT) investment over the past 10-15 years has helped to transform how the OECD operates. ICT supports and enhances the Organisation’s roles of building knowledge, communicating with the world and interacting with governments to inform and influence policy making. It also underpins the management of OECD resources.

Keep the trains running; build a better railroad. If ICT at the OECD could have a motto, such words could capture it. They reflect the principal elements of demand to which ICT services must respond, namely the seamless, trouble-free operation of what is furnished today and the steady escalation of demand for new and better services tomorrow. These two elements work in constant tension and competition for ICT resources. Rapid technological change deeply affects them both, which makes simply keeping up with progress a major investment requirement and forces forward-looking planning to pay close attention to the main directions of such change. The OECD would be ill advised to sail along content to purchase all the latest gadgetry and software, even if resources permitted; it must take a more considered view in order to maximise the return on its ICT investment and the added value of its ICT services.

The cumulative effects of ICT investment cut two ways. First, they enable the Organisation to do its job with a modern infrastructure of technology and the skills needed to use it. Without that infrastructure, the old ways of doing that job might well have induced an operational sclerosis, seriously compromising the Organisation’s effectiveness. At the same time, ICT solutions generate an appetite for more and better ones. That appetite must receive nourishment within the limits of available resources. Second, and again in comparison with not too long ago, the Organisation has become dependent on ICT. From statistical databases, econometric modelling, policy development and document production to business processes that arrange travel, hiring of experts, meeting organisation and communications both within the Secretariat and with the wider world, the technologies and their use have become irrevocably embedded within the broad OECD system (Table 1). There is no turning back.

Table 1. A Snapshot of ICT at the OECD

Indicator 2002 2003*OECD committees and interaction with national administrations National officials registered in OLISnet (OECD extranet) 9 600 11 600 Ministries and agencies with LAN-wide access to OLISnet 90 130 Delegates registered for committee meetings 35 200 44 400 Delegate and contact database 108 600 169 800

OECD Web site Visits per day 15 000 32 000 Pages viewed per day 132 000 375 000

Secretariat use of ICT E-mails per month (incoming and outgoing) 1.1 million 1.5 million Official documents produced per year 11 600 11,000 Primary statistical databases >100 >100 Central data storage (bytes) 1 300 million 1 900 million Telephone calls made (minutes) 5.8 million 5.7 million* Some data relate to March 2003-March 2004

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In such an environment, strategic planning — with wide consultation so that the entire OECD, in its broadest sense including capitals, delegations, delegates and the Secretariat, can agree on where constrained resources will be spent — becomes a necessity rather than a luxury and an essential tool rather than a bureaucratic exercise. This document sets out the Organisation’s anticipated ICT requirements over the coming three years and proposes a programme for meeting those requirements. It focuses on new challenges and changing business objectives over this medium-term horizon, and it defines viable ICT development scenarios to help attain those objectives, as they have been identified in a series of review meetings with Directorates and Services. It deals also with the ongoing work of the Organisation, identifying ways to:

· Enhance the quality and timeliness of information flows and interaction with national administrations to support the work of committees and help the OECD to communicate more effectively;

· Enable the Secretariat to work more efficiently; and

· Ensure that the information network and communications foundation remain healthy, up to date and protected from security threats.

This ICT strategy limits itself by assuming that current (2004) levels of funding remain the norm. It thus sketches a reasonable baseline scenario around which discussion can take place of priorities for husbanding fewer resources or what could be done faster if extra funding were available. At the current spending levels that govern this baseline scenario, the Organisation can take some pride in what it has been able to accomplish. Other international organisations spend a great deal more. The OECD spends about €5 700 per staff member on ICT each year, and it has no ICT capital fund. The IMF and the IDB (Inter-American Development Bank) disburse about twice as much per person and the World Bank three times as much. All three organisations have ICT capital investment programmes in excess of US$20 million annually. Currently, the OECD spends about 70 per cent of its ICT resources on maintenance and support activities and about 30 per cent on new investment. The trend is for the former to crowd out the latter. The ratio was closer to 50 per cent/50 per cent in the late 1980s. The wide spread of technology across the House, continued reductions in ICT budgets and increased fragmentation of the secretariat’s offices all have tended to skew it in a direction that could become perilous to essential new investment if the trend continues.

ICT can be seen as an input or simply a means to facilitate work. By taking a more pro-active approach however, ICT has the capacity to “transform” an organisation. That is the spirit of this strategy: it presents the best approach that OECD's management can imagine to use ICT to help the Organisation move forward in a chosen direction (without however making the Organisation ICT-driven). The strategy tries to answer the question: “What can we do with what we have?”. The time horizon chosen is three years - detailed planning beyond this period is difficult due to the rapid pace of change in ICT. This proposal is relatively straightforward and does not deal with questions of possible tradeoffs, prioritisation of tasks, detailed costing or an elaboration of what cannot be done with current ICT resources. Those important matters need to be dealt with in other contexts, including the Programme of Work and Budget (PWB) exercise. In short, this is not a PWB document, although it and the feedback that results from its wide discussion within the House will provide a foundation for clearheaded PWB thinking

II. Organisation Challenges

The medium-term ICT strategy takes it as given that the Organisation will face new challenges as it has in the past. ICT has to play its proper role in this process. The needs of Member governments will continue to evolve, and the OECD will continue to adapt to them. Interaction with and between member countries and non-member economies, other international organisations and civil society will intensify, and the number of meetings held externally will continue to increase (22 per cent of all OECD meetings in the last

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12 months were held in 75 other countries). Broadening participation in OECD activities as well as their wider scope will lead to still greater complexity and still more acceleration of data flows. Likely increases in OECD membership will render even more acute questions surrounding the decision-making process, budget contributions and work-programme prioritisation. As multidisciplinary and cross-regional work increase, requirements will emerge for greater and easier availability of information, more horizontal collaboration and a whole-of-OECD communications strategy. The Organisation may well evolve even further in the direction of developing nuclei of competences, with more projects carried out by working clusters of experts drawn from those nuclei. This implies better, faster and easier communications, new ways of handling data and information and better ways of sharing and combining analytical tasks. ICT can smooth these processes and make them seamless.

In such a nexus, ICT policy must effectively address both a source of tension and an opportunity. The tension lies in the deepening conflict between the continued opening of the Organisation to the outer world and the imperative to make its information and communications facilities more secure. Both are good things, but the problems they present cannot be hidden. The opportunity arises from the changing nature of the OECD’s work, towards both a more dispersed business model and more co-operative, “horizontal” operations involving organisationally and sometimes physically dispersed staff. Proper ICT policy and services can provide much value added by making this inherently inefficient structure more efficient and easier to manage. They also can act together as a unifying force. A dispersed staff will have greater unity working with common ICT tools — provided that those tools have been chosen with attention to staff needs — while the tools themselves will promote better horizontal co-operation and thus a more unified approach to the analytical problems with which the Organisation deals.

The special problems related to the spreading of staff across many annexes, exacerbated by the moves and other arrangements consequent upon the site renovation project at La Muette present a sort of special case of the foregoing general point. Among other things, they involve heavy extra costs. This far-reaching headquarters renovation project will continue to generate strong pressures on all staff, particularly within EXD, until its likely completion towards the end of the decade. Moreover, within the horizon of this medium-term ICT strategy, it is not too soon to start thinking about and planning the eventual “re-assembly” of the House, even if the preferred OECD business model remains dispersed in concept.

The Organisation’s management objectives will present challenges as well. The growing complexity of activities and their funding demand new approaches to accountability and transparency throughout the work-programme cycle. It is hard to imagine how such approaches could not have big ICT components. The major institutional reforms already under way — changes in committee structures and funding, statistical systems and resource management — all have implications for ICT policy. In all of these situations ICT will contribute substantially.

Another challenge involves the ongoing debate about the extent to which the Organisation should shift its primary reliance from Microsoft products to Open-Source Software (OSS). The question will become more critical towards the end of 2006 when the Microsoft licence will need to be renewed and the present desktop environment upgraded. The main strategic factors to consider involve balancing the risks and opportunities in integrating new OSS technologies, evaluating their fitness for OECD purposes, ensuring interoperability and manageability, estimating potential efficiencies and, of course, a look at costs — including potential return on investment (ROI) and transition, training and support costs. This large topic lies outside the scope of the ICT strategy presented here. Provisionally and only as a convenience, the strategy assumes no change from Microsoft. Late in 2004, the OECD will host a workshop for ICT experts from Member governments to discuss the OSS issue. In 2005, the topic will require exhaustive study, discussion, recommendations and decisions.

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A significant number of ICT activities are outsourced (Annex 1). The Organisation will continue to monitor the market and adjust its sourcing strategy periodically (either insourcing or outsourcing) to ensure that ICT services are provided in the most efficient and cost-effective manner possible, in line with the strategic importance of each service.

III. Medium-Term Strategic Goals and Anticipated Outcomes

A successful ICT strategy must stay oriented towards the institutions and people that it serves. These include three main constituencies, and the ICT strategy has a goal for each of them:

· National Administrations. Notwithstanding developments like OLISnet, delegates and national officials should have still better OECD network support, to exchange information, to interact effectively and securely with one another and the Secretariat and to stay up to date on committee work. Such a network of enhanced, secure communications and associated information systems can boost the efficiency of committee operations and ultimately the Organisation’s influence on policies in capitals, in both member and non-member economies.

· The Secretariat. All staff should have secure access to the combined knowledge and expertise of the entire Organisation. This includes attention to the means to work effectively together within and across Directorates, wherever staff happen to be located, as well as ICT support for the management of all aspects of executing the work programme with maximum efficiency and maximum transparency.

· External Constituencies. ICT should enable the Organisation to disseminate the results of its work through effective communication with external audiences such as parliamentarians, the media, civil society and the general public. These constituencies are now very often included in OECD events.

From the viewpoint of ICT operations, the main goals can be restated in a way that applies them jointly to all these constituencies. Keep the trains running. Build a better railroad. These notions capture the objectives of operating, maintaining and improving interconnected systems that help managers to manage, let staff focus on content to produce output of high quality, integrate national administrations more closely with the Organisation’s work and raise the OECD’s profile among external constituencies. Thus the strategy aims to:

· Maintain and Improve the Technology Foundation. A broad range of systems and services, some more visible than others, sustains the day-to-day running of the Organisation. Clients reasonably expect that the ICT foundation, on which their work depends — networks, equipment, software, and voice and information systems — will always be available and adequate to their tasks. The foundation must be kept up to date to allow all applications to coexist and to ensure that the Secretariat can interact and exchange information efficiently, both internally and with the outside world.

· Safeguard OECD’s Systems and Information Assets. Security threats continue to grow in a global environment of highly interconnected networks and systems. Investment and a change of culture will both be needed to ensure continuing security and reliability. The security and safety of the Organisation’s information systems must continue to uphold the good reputation of the OECD.

· Support Corporate Innovation and Client Needs through Partnerships. Effective ICT services cannot be imposed from outside the client base or be seen as developed by people not cognisant of the OECD’s real needs. Instead, they must be developed, tested and put in place in co-operation with ICT clients in the Secretariat, delegations and Capitals. The test of success then becomes whether, in the eyes of clients and OECD management, ICT enhances the OECD’s work, increases its efficiency and, above all, adds value to it. Done

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this way, ICT can become an important enabler for major reforms and innovations. Examples include the new Statistical Information System and framework to improve the quality of OECD data, facilities to help analysts work together to produce documents and publications, and agile financial and management systems to help managers manage.

A perennial ICT issue that deserves mention here involves the conflict in organisations like the OECD between proper standardisation of ICT hardware and software across the House and special solutions for special jobs in individual Directorates. Both have their places. In the strategy presented here, ICT standards and common solutions will continue to be developed — on systems, hardware and software — for everybody’s benefit and on a cost-effective foundation. Yet the approach must also be pragmatic, taking account of the evolution of both technology and the work that ICT supports and open to reasonable exceptions. Dogmatic or rigid approaches can be inefficient in the long run.

Table 2 below sets out in detail the proposed medium-term strategic OECD ICT commitments, providing detailed objectives, the outputs to be delivered to realise those objectives and target delivery dates for each of those outputs. It is organised according to the six major ICT activity areas:

· The technology foundations: infrastructure and client support;

· Security and safety of information;

· OECD committees;

· Substantive work in the Secretariat;

· Communications and Outreach; and

· Management of the Secretariat.

Busy readers can stop at the end of this section with no loss of understanding of the strategy and with sufficient material to discuss it. The foregoing text summarises all the key ideas on which the strategy is based, and Table 2 covers the essentials of the strategy itself. The sections that follow provide for those who are interested more detail on the plans for each of the six areas and indicate the benefits expected to flow from the outputs listed in Table 2. Overlaps between the six areas are inevitable and even instructive of the degree to which ICT operations really are integrated.

A few words are in order about terminology, on which “management speak” is often very imprecise. As used here, “objectives” signal relatively broad goals, i.e. directions that strategy will take. The completed actions to achieve those goals are the “outputs”, sometimes called “deliverables” in the jargon. The target dates refer to them. They represent OECD commitments by year and quarter. “Ongoing” means “keeping the trains running”, with deliverables in every quarter of every year covered by the medium-term strategy.

Questions for discussion. The following questions may help to orient discussion of the strategy:

· Does the strategy go in the right directions?

· Bearing in mind the strategy’s limiting assumption — the constraint of present resource levels — what other initiatives might be considered?

· What are discussants’ perceptions of the main strengths of ICT as it exists at the OECD today? Does the strategy reinforce them?

· What are their perceptions of its chief inconveniences or shortcomings? Does the strategy correct them?

· What would be a productive and efficient way, when the time arrives, to launch and conduct the policy decision process concerning the Organisation’s possible shift from primary reliance on Microsoft products to OSS?

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· How could stakeholders become more directly involved in the orientation of ICT investments?

· Paragraph 5 above mentions that the OECD, unlike other international organisations, has no ICT capital fund. It also describes the continually increasing share of maintenance and support expenditures relative to capital outlays. The time may have come to launch a discussion on this important issue. Would a policy paper on ICT Capital investment funding be opportune?

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Table 2. An OECD Medium-Term ICT Strategy:Objectives, Outputs and Target Dates

Strategic Activities

Objectives Outputs To Deliver Target Delivery Dates

The Technology Foundations: Infrastructure

and Client Support

Provide continued, upgraded client support services.

Upgrade desktop hardware and software as well as Help Desk Services based on a client-satisfaction questionnaire to be issued towards the end of 2004.

Evaluation of questionnaire in

Q1,2005;ongoing thereafter, based on

detailed schedule to be established after the

evaluation.Keep software environment current. Apply software update patches and service packs quarterly. Ongoing

Full version upgrade to MS Outlook. Q2 2005Launch full desktop software upgrade. Q3 2006

Maintain continuous availability of the ICT infrastructure

Support the work of the OECD Secretariat and its interaction with other constituencies around the world.

Ongoing, with annual upgrades of

communication, server and desktop

equipmentAdapt and consolidate ICT infrastructure elements.

Meet evolving client needs, protect against obsolescence and contain operating costs.

Ongoing

Participate in the OECD site project to ensure a modern ICT environment for the future.

Establish a new ICT Centre in the Château and network infrastructure on the new site; support staff moves.

Ongoing

Provide a solution to cope with steady increases in e-mail and file volumes; offer more effective backup and restoration services.

Implement a new storage management policy and system. Plan: 2005 Implement: Q4 2006

Provide efficient communications services to support an increasingly mobile Organisation.

Integrate the different media, including voice, video, data and FAX services.

Voice/data integration: Q1-Q3 2005. New video

conferencing in line with site renovation,

starting Q3 2006.

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Security and Safety of

Information

User trust in OECD information resources and services, and the reputation of the Organisation safeguarded through improvements and updates of existing tools.

Protect against unauthorised access to and loss of or tampering with information.

Ongoing

Easy access to OECD information through most popular communications channels. Provision of OLISnet services via the Internet. Integration of newly created OECD antennas around the world.

Provide uninterrupted services through security audits, hardware and software adaptations and other feasible steps. Introduce new methods for secure access to protected information resources via the Internet.

Ongoing

New means of access to OECD information resources placed in the hands of travelling and tele-working staff.

Implement new security measures to support emerging technologies, especially WiFi and hand-held devices. Extend the security architecture because a clear-cut security perimeter between internal and external communications will no longer exist.

2006

Integrate security into the OECD corporate culture, because security is not a technology-only issue.

Review corporate ICT security in the context of general risk assessment.

Q3 2005

Client awareness raising. Ongoing

OECD Committees

Improve accessibility of committee information for delegates while maintaining access security.

Easy and ubiquitous access to OLISnet in Ministries. Ongoing

More intuitive navigation and more coherent information display in OLISnet.

Q3 2005

Directorates publish all information prepared for committee meetings on OLISnet.

Ongoing

Enable faster, productive interaction between Provide a new generation of collaborative and personalisation Q2 2005

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committee secretariats and delegates. tools to support committee work.Meetings of committee bureaux enabled via video links on a regular basis.

Ongoing

Delegates who cannot travel to Paris enabled to participate in meetings via video links.

Q2 2006

Delegation officials able to participate in certain meeting items without leaving their desks.

Q3 2006

Substantive Work

Provide and support state-of-the-art analytical tools for the Secretariat’s economists and analysts.

Modelling activities migrated to Troll and EViews. Q4 2005

Consolidation of analytical software systems. Q3 2006XML-based tools and processes for documents and Q2 2007publications integrating text and high-quality graphics.Streamlining of process-intensive analytical databases. Q2 2005

Provide a modern Statistical Information System to help improve the quality, efficiency and visibility of the Organisation’s statistical activities.

StatWorks, for collection and validation of data. Q2 2004

MetaStore, for management of metadata. Q4 2004Principal statistical databases hosted on OECD.Stat Q2 2006PubStat, for generating electronic statistical products. Q2 2005WorkFlow, for management and monitoring of statistical processes.

Q4 2005

Joint UN/OECD Foreign Trade Database ready for roll out. Q4 2004Streamlined XML-based statistical publishing tools and processes in full service.

Q4 2007

New presentation tool in full service for the Organisation’s commercial electronic statistical products.

Q2 2007

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Full SDMX conformity of OECD.Stat Q4 2006Provide collaborative tools to assist the document authoring process, to make it simpler, more efficient and easier to manage.

Collaborative document authoring environment in service in selected areas.

Q1 2006

XML-based structured authoring pilots in selected areas Q4 2006

Communication And Outreach

Raise awareness in capitals of OECD activities.

Better use of OLISnet by increased numbers of policy makers (non-committee delegates) and senior officials.

Ongoing

One-stop searching over all OECD information available online through OLISnet (committee information, publications and statistics) and the OECD Web site.

Q3 2005

Increase visibility of the OECD for the media, academia and the general public.

Provide an OECD Web site with industry-standard performance levels that meets visitor expectations of service quality.

Ongoing

Present OECD Web-site information in a coherent and easy-to-navigate manner, and develop facilities that permit staff to perform statistical analyses of visits and use of content.

Ongoing

Webcast OECD public events, press conferences, briefings etc. on the Internet

Ongoing

Improve access to committee information for non-member economies.

Increased use of OLISnet by non-member economies. Ongoing

Improve internal Secretariat communication. Redeveloped OECD intranet site including an employee portal. Q2 2005Single channel for Directorates publishing web information on OECD Internet, extranet and intranet.

Q2 2005

Provide new capabilities for the OECD Centres and better services for tele-workers.

New ICT services deployed in OECD Centres Ongoing

Standard OECD tele-working environment deployed. Q1 2005New remote-access service for travelling officials. Q3 2006

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Management of the Secretariat

Keep the trains running - Ensure Business continuity:

All systems are available during normal working hours, provision of timely technical support e.g. EMS, payroll; budget closing and carry-forward; HR systems.

Ongoing

Provide a collaborative real-time system to organise and manage OECD events.

Support 2000+ official OECD meetings per year (including 7 Ministerial meetings in 2004), with attention to the added complexity of organising meetings during the site redevelopment.

Ongoing

Improved visibility and accessibility to delegates, member countries and journalists.

Q4 2004

Reduce workload to produce badges and track delegates, arrange services, registration, etc.

Q3 2005

Automatic posting of Calendar of Events to web sites. Q3 2005Implement a new generation of EMS with easier navigation, improved presentation, ranking and registration functionality, wider selection of reports, bi-lingual capability, more robust infrastructure & on-line secure registration for public events.

Q2 2005

Support and enhance the Corporate Contact Management system.

Improved reporting capabilities on delegates for committees, delegations and the Secretariat.

Q4 2004

Delegate tracking and enhanced view of individual schedules. Delegates can manage their personal information through on-line service.

Q2 2005

Enhance functionality of the Room Reservation System including self-service capabilities

Support new Site and interim arrangements for Conference facilities.

Q1 2006

New presentation and reporting tools to improve the Q1 2006

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transparency, flexibility and consistency of process. Incorporate budget and charge-back capability. Q2 2006

Improve the document submission and management process

Provide a new generation of RMS that will reduce costs and technology exposure and improve service to Directorates.

Q4 2004

Enhance business processes and integrate with Financial systems

SAP migration strategy for Missions and Invitees processes. Q4 2004

Develop functional specifications, including storyboards, fit-gap analyses and implementation scenarios.

Q3 2005

Reduce data duplication and redundancy of key master data

Rationalised Directory and Employee information databases; reduced technology exposure, improved quality of information, improved service to clients.

Q3 2005

Enable wider access to Media information on the OECD

Enhanced Media Review system providing staff and delegations with news and current affairs relating to the work of the Organisation. Enable OECD Centres to contribute relevant articles to the Media Review.

Q4 2005

Build a better railroad – Reform-driven initiatives:Enable Council-mandated budget and programme reforms

Programme of Work and Budget Systems for 2005-2006 including streamlined budget preparation process and improved reporting

Q2 2004

Provide systems to support EXD reform initiatives that improve business processes, reduce resource requirements and allow better management controls

Bloomberg exchange rate interface and JP Morgan Paysource EFT interfaces to effect timely and accurate exchange rates; adherence with grant contracts; reduced bank fees for the Organisation.

Q4 2004

Reduced invoicing process and support costs for reception of goods; alignment with new financial rules and regulations; improve accrual accounting for goods.

Q3 2004

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Integrated and streamlined Purchasing process for goods and intellectuals services, from request to delivery.

Q1 2006

Fixed assets accounting module in line with IPSAS norms and auditor recommendations; streamlined asset accounting process.

Q1 2005

Provide new systems to improve the management and productivity of the Translation services

New translation management system that will help improve service to Directorates, reduce support costs, improve productivity and reduced technology exposure.

Q1 2005

Digital Dictaphone and electronic distribution and workflow to external translators.

Q4 2004

Improve human resource management processes for recruitment and provide staff and managers with direct access to relevant information

Integrated high-performance recruitment process based on Peoplesoft e-Recruit module; improved candidate relationship, candidate reach and management capability.

Q4 2004 – Q4 2005

Employee and manager self-service capabilities. Greater employee and manager satisfaction; higher quality of data; reduced costs in Directorates and EXD services.

Q2 2005 – Q2 2006

Streamline information flows for transmission notes

System to manage the flow and follow up of information between the SGs’ office and Directorates. Better tracking and improved management of information with capabilities to report on past activities. Improve OECD image to external audiences

Q3 2004 – Q4 2005

Manage the railroad:

Provide strategic and decision support systems for managers and Delegations

Programme Implementation Reports for the bienniums 2003/2004 and 2005/2006. Integrated data warehouse incorporating data from PWB, Financial, HR and operational systems such as EMS, Room Reservation, OLISnet, OECD bodies, etc. to facilitate analysis along different axis.

Q2 2004 - Q1 2007

Management reporting environment that will provide accurate Q2 2004 - Q1 2007

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and comprehensive reports on the work of the Organisation, including activity indicators, charts/graphs and ad-hoc reporting capability to better understand resource utilisation, identify trends and patterns and help with decision making.Budget positioning and control at output area level; collection and accounting of staff costs on a standard costs basis.

Q4 2004

Organisation charting tools. On-line, real-time corporate directory and organisation chart facilities for all staff categories including non-employees.

Q3 2005

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IV. The Technology Foundations: Infrastructure and Client Support

Introduction

The work of the OECD depends heavily on effective ways to collect, manage, and exchange information. Modern information technology has become the pivot for these activities. Database management, reliable networks and efficient backup/recovery procedures are essential for supporting the information life cycle. The “network” has become a key enabler, but it also adds new dimensions of complexity to information systems, particularly those open for general access. Managing a networked systems environment demands from the outset clear policies, procedures and mechanisms.

Support and operation of all the information and communication systems that underpin the daily work of the OECD form the essential core of the suite of ICT services provided to the Secretariat, committee delegates and national administrations. The broad strategic goal is to deliver relevant services of high value. To this end, required infrastructure investments will sustain the key support tasks listed below and facilitate, and in some instances allow, the implementation of projects in different business areas of the Organisation:

· Ensure continuity, availability and security of the ICT infrastructure;

· Provide easy and consistent access to all information resources;

· Respond promptly to client needs, anticipating them where possible, and provide timely information and training;

· Adapt the ICT infrastructure for an increasingly mobile and distributed organisation;

· Support the OECD site project; and

· Regularly review vendor and technology strategies to ensure best value for money.

The strategy must address the continued sustainability of the infrastructure, which must gradually adapt to evolving technologies and changing requirements — office changes associated with the site project, for example. Rapid technological change and increasing user expectations make this task very critical and represent major challenges, particularly considering the constant cyber threat to security and the overall capacity of the network. Staff expect their systems and networks to function all the time. Even a short interruption anywhere in the system will likely cause some disruption to staff or officials in capitals. Any OECD activity anywhere in the world — a conference in Dubai, a Press meeting in Washington or Tokyo or a committee meeting in a host country, for example — must have available at all times the OECD information systems on which such activities depend. The limited resources of the Secretariat clearly make this a major challenge, which can be met only through comprehensive engineering, continuous network monitoring and rapid, competent intervention. These tasks involve keeping the infrastructure up to date, ensuring that it can evolve, keeping the system running for use globally and performing key operations and support services. They present imperatives to:

· Monitor and manage the overall network and secure access to OECD's information systems, such as statistics and ECO models, the intranet, OLISnet and Internet and HR, financial and other management systems and databases;

· Engineer, monitor and manage all the security components of the system — internally, from home and remote computers and on the Internet. The House needs protection from cyber threats such as unsolicited mail, computer viruses and attempts to block the system;

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· Maintain and develop the overall network architecture — telephony and fax, email and Internet, local and metropolitan area networks, links with Centres, delegations and capitals, etc.;

· Provide prompt assistance to clients in the Secretariat and national administrations. Keep them informed of changes, security issues, best practices and the like. Provide just-in-time training on new versions of software, special applications and refresher courses;

· Manage and support "back-office" systems, such as security, filing, office systems, databases and online storage. Continually back up all data and systems. Regularly review and test system restoration procedures; and

· Plan and review contingency and other emergency measures — offsite data storage, disaster recovery, etc.

Objectives and Outcomes

Timely assistance and focus on clients’ evolving needs are two key objectives. It has become increasingly important to help clients ahead of time, e.g. in the preparation of major meetings or on conferences away from headquarters, and to help them become self-sufficient. Special training and analyses of the help-desk database will support this new initiative, as will gathering client feedback, a project for 2005. A major paradigm shift from "client network" to "network client" is rapidly taking place on the Internet. Staff must be able to know where they are in the system and what they can do in it. The system should show them menus of available applications, how to qualify for them and more generally how to “find their way” around the global network. As staff become increasingly mobile — working from home, on mission, in Centres or in other agencies — the system should keep them connected at all times in secure and effective ways. A project for “single sign-on” to integrate all systems under a single authentication process will get under way in mid-2005 and continue through 2007.

The renovation of offices and meeting rooms at La Muette requires the heavy involvement of ICT experts. Preparing the construction site entails reinforcement of the voice and data communications networks. Active participation by ICT people in the various design, execution and move phases of the site project (2005-2009) will be essential to sustain the Organisation’s technology foundation in the long term. The move of the central computer room, with all its related risks, will present a particular challenge in late 2005.

Ongoing support and operational work include the regular updating of the operating systems as well as office software and other products. Software updates must take place almost every month. Planning ahead, a major upgrade of MS Outlook should occur in the second quarter of 2005, and, unless a different office software package is considered, an upgrade of MS Office to the latest version will become necessary towards the end of 2006.

Another major objective involves preventing obsolescence. Many of our central servers urgently need replacement; they have operated well beyond their useful lives and cannot be stretched further without jeopardising the stability of the systems they house. Particular focus will go on server consolidation (second quarter, 2005) and creation of “storage area networks”. Similar hardware and software upgrades will be required in networking and voice/data communications. New features of the telephone network will be released in stages (voice mail/e-mail integration, second quarter, 2005). Standardisation of data-switching equipment across all annexes will continue during 2005 to improve network access speed and to support emerging multi-media applications. Another ongoing task involves evaluating and applying different management models and sourcing solutions to support and keep up to date different hardware components, including desktop equipment.

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Increasingly, the OECD and national administrations find new ways to exploit ICT for their business. Budget constraints have pushed offices to use more ICT to improve productivity and contain costs. A new mid-sized information system requires substantial development resources, which makes it imperative to ensure that essential support resources do not eat too large a share of the ICT budget. Between 35 per cent and 45 per cent of existing ICT resources should go into renewal, innovation and development.

Regular ICT priority setting thus becomes fundamental to avoid conflicts of objectives and help set the right balance between what is needed and what can be done with limited budgets. The CCTS Board of Directors and the strategy laid out in this document constitute essential elements of governance to ensure the proper alignment of technology options with business requirements. The Board has provided good guidance on ICT spending and priority setting. It not only serves business application development, but also helps to focus efforts on infrastructure investment and to promote innovation.

From the operational perspective, consolidation, standardisation and automation have had high priorities for the past decade, but areas remain where consolidation could help to rationalise constantly emerging support requirements. Technology alternatives such as server federation, virtualisation or capacity-on-demand solutions will get consideration in 2005, when investments in new back-end server equipment will have to be made. Options for life-cycle management of hardware will be assessed first in the framework of an ongoing call for tender for server equipment and again in 2005. The review of alternative software sourcing approaches, including OSS offerings, will also continue, with a particular focus on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and Total Economic Impact (TEITM) analysis.

The volume of e-mail and files stored centrally continues to grow. This is normal for a knowledge-based organisation but has repercussions: users have difficulty locating information or reloading files in a timely fashion. It takes about 48 hours each weekend to carry out a full backup of online data storage, including databases, emails and the equivalent of 3.5 terabytes of data files. Adding more storage capacity will not help. The implementation of a modern storage-management solution will allow handling the Organisation’s needs in the medium term. A revised storage management plan will be developed in 2005 for implementation in 2006.

Another necessary task close to operational needs will be a review of the overall numbering system of voice and fax services; the currently available range of standard numbers has reached its limits. Technology options in this area, now under evaluation, will see gradual implementation over the planning period. Exploiting proven technologies for integrating different information media will help to maintain an efficient work environment for the OECD Secretariat. The integration of e-mail and voice services offers one example. Recent audio/video conferencing and video-casting services also bring considerable business benefits.

Anticipated Benefits

“Keeping the trains running” does not lend itself to extravagant boasting about expected benefits. The real objective here is client satisfaction. ICT must maintain and improve a user-friendly environment for all the various OECD constituencies in Paris, in capitals and around the world. Clients should be able to use their ICT tools without problems and without even thinking about the support services and incremental investments that make those tools available and as up to date technologically as resources permit. They also should become more rather than less self-sufficient in the use of those tools. Productivity gains will reflect themselves more in the output of the clients, rather than in the Organisation’s ICT establishment. The 2005-2006 implementation of a revised e-mail and file storage-management plan provides a good example. Clients will spend less time searching for information or dealing with quota problems, and will therefore have more time for real work. The less immediately visible benefits include avoiding the negative impacts of file growth on service continuity and disaster recovery.

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In discussing an earlier draft of this document, Directors not only clearly recognised the efficiency gains that ICT can provide for their work, but also expressed these gains in interesting ways as seen from their perspectives. One wished to emphasise that they will both allow and support economies elsewhere than in ICT operations per se — i.e. in substantive work. Another suggested presenting them in terms of work quality increases independently of the quantity of work produced.

V. Security and Safety of Information

Introduction

Every day, millions of computers around the world are infected and paralysed by malicious computer viruses. Cyber-crime is the most destabilising factor in today’s information society. In its latest Guidelines for the Security if Information Systems and Networks, the OECD calls for “greater emphasis on security by governments, businesses, other organisations and individual users who develop, own, provide, manage, service and use information systems and networks”.

Threats to the OECD ICT infrastructure range from unintentional misuse, unauthorised access or change of information to destruction of data and cyber attacks. Obsolescent hardware or software increases these risks. Many of these threats come from within. They require measures that go far beyond technically protecting networks and cover a multitude of organisational aspects. All are real. External threats have grown exponentially in the last few years and will not go away in the foreseeable future.

The OECD has devoted substantial resources to ensure the security and safety of its information wealth. Yet an approach to IT security spending is difficult and risky to describe, because it must encompass much more than simply a “security” budget line. The following risk-tolerance chart can help, however. It reflects a way of looking at total IT security spending relative to total IT budgets. It sees risk tolerance as inversely proportional to all the resources spent on IT security — including security awareness and training, security strategy and architecture, staff, management and supporting services like help desks. An organisation with a low risk tolerance will allot a high portion of its total IT spending to security-related services. The OECD’s position on an indicative curve like this would lie somewhere between “Commerce, Education and Housing” and “Energy and Transportation”. As regards trends, recent surveys show that security budgets have risen by an average of around five per cent annually in recent years. Last year, security vulnerability fell by seven per cent, but incidents were up 68 per cent, indicating that investments pay off but cannot be relaxed.

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Spending on ICT Security

Risk Tolerance Curve, PublicSpending Percentage of IT Budget (Estimates)

Source: Forrester Research, 2003

0%1

Risk ToleranceLow High

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Defense and Intelligence

Municipal

Energy and Transportation

Treasury

Commerce, Education, HousingSecurity

Line Items


The daily volume of information to be secured at the OECD has not stopped increasing. Material that must be stored and recovered in case of incidents has grown such that existing backup, storage and recovery mechanisms no longer suffice, even simply in terms of time. Moreover, managing them has become a full-time job for many IT specialists. The information storage management project to be launched in 2005 (described in the preceding section) will meet a major objective of improved security, addressing the key operational aspects of protecting relevant online databases.

The Organisation must continue to maximise protection against external threats, such as computer viruses, unsolicited mail (SPAM) and Internet attacks to block the OECD web site. While OECD’s network has a secure architecture, evolving client needs and new means of communication call for continual security investments. In the last three years, the OECD detected 105 000 computer viruses; in the first two months of 2004 alone, the number soared to 318 000. Extensive client education and awareness building have become increasingly necessary, and this costs extra time for most staff as well as security experts. Filtering software must be installed and maintained on all computers, at the office, at home and for travellers. Increasingly, this occurs throughout the day.

Managing the ICT security of an increasingly decentralised and mobile Organisation is placing a heavy demand on resources. Yet these and other central investments still do not provide foolproof security; responsibility for the safety of the Organisation’s information is shared with staff. Adopting this “culture of security” means learning how to operate preventive security measures, stay abreast of new security issues and adopt best practices. This is perhaps OECD’s main long-term information-security objective. Information security must be seen as a business enabler and not just a cost, because it helps develop trust and confidence in the use of our information systems — by staff, national delegates and the public at large. Information systems security will not be effective if the responsibility for it is not shared. Even the clearest policy regulation cannot work alone, and IT departments, top management and end-users must collaborate to make security effective. That is why the review of corporate ICT security in the context of the general risk-assessment exercise of 2005 has high importance.

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Improved internal and external users’ trust in OECD information resources and the preservation of the Organisation’s reputation as an accessible source of solid information are benefits as well as outcomes. The same applies to the “access” outcomes. Proper security measures will not constitute a bottleneck but instead will be built into the extension of access to OECD information through most popular communication channels as their technologies are adopted. Users of OLISnet services in capitals will find secure access considerably easier when they can make it through the Internet. Finally, a concerted effort to promote client awareness of security issues should eventually ease both the difficulty and the cost of providing the levels of information security that OECD clients expect and deserve.

VI. OECD Committees

Objectives and Outputs

Three main strategic objectives will govern ICT services to support OECD committees over the coming three years. First, improve accessibility while maintaining the security of committee information for some 44 400 delegates (and their teams back home in capitals) who participate in meetings each year. Second, foster productive interaction between committee secretariats and delegates in support of their work. Finally, improve the efficiency and productivity of committee secretariats in their organisation and support of the 2 000 or so meetings held each year at the OECD headquarters or off-site.

To accomplish these objectives, six concrete tasks need to be completed:

· Establish secure access to OLISnet using the public Internet;

· Achieve 100 per cent sign-up to OLISnet by committee delegates through presentations at meetings and workshops in capitals;

· Improve information presentation and navigation on OLISnet and related services in order to ease information location, access and retrieval by delegates;

· Work with Directorates to have all meeting material published on OLISnet;

· Deploy a new generation of collaborative tools for committee work, with an integrated discussion group service to make it easier for committee secretariats to exchange information with delegates between meetings; and

· Promote the use of OLISnet multimedia services.


The expected benefits are manifold. National delegates will have easier and faster access to OLISnet and become more productive in their use of all OECD information. They will have online access to all material produced in support of committee meetings and will be able to interact more effectively. Delegates who otherwise cannot attend meetings will have a capability to participate remotely. Officials who use video links to participate in meetings of committee bureaux will see their travel costs and time away from their offices reduced. Delegation officials will be able to continue to work at their desks while listening to and, ultimately, viewing committee meetings. Committee secretariats will find collaboration with delegates in support of committee work becoming more efficient. Directorate staff will no longer have to spend time satisfying delegates’ requests for emailed or faxed documents and other meeting materials.

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VII. Substantive Activity of the Secretariat

Introduction

Much of the ICT establishment in any organisation devotes itself to the provision of general-purpose business and communication tools. This applies to the OECD as well. Yet the real vocation of the OECD Secretariat lies in its high-quality intellectual work in support of the Organisation’s international mission. This work calls for special, additional kinds of intensive ICT support that goes well beyond the needs of ordinary business and administrative organisations, even if they are global in scope and dispersed like the OECD. The ICT strategy for 2004-2007 will address these unique requirements under three main headings: policy work, statistics, and document process management.

These headings, in fact, overlap. For example, policy-analytic work relies importantly on graphical analysis, and the effective expression of policy conclusions often uses graphical outputs. As a result, the Organisation has a growing need for facilities to streamline the preparation and dissemination of “compound” documents and publications integrating text, high-quality graphics and source databases. A review of existing workflows and processes involved in producing compound documents and publications will therefore be carried out to ascertain requirements, and market products with potential for meeting them will be evaluated. The objectives are to identify and implement tools and processes (e.g. XML-based) that will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of preparing compound documents and publications: eliminating error-prone “cut-and-paste” operations, shortening time-to-publication, and facilitating the re-use of component elements (e.g. for Web pages).

Some directorates maintain a number of complex datasets with special processing needs as an integral part of their analytical activities. Examples include the Science and Technology Directorate’s Structural Analysis (STAN) database, the Statistics Directorate’s Statistics on Enterprises by Size Class (SEC) database, and the Economics Department’s Analytical Data Base (ADB). The work methods and technologies involved in managing these databases will be reviewed, with a view to improving their efficiency and modernising underlying software platforms.

ICT staff are also directly involved in various substantive activities, particularly in the sector of statistical processing with involvement in the Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange initiative (www.sdmx.org, see paragraph 59 below) and in the domains of information security, data protection and privacy. In these activities, the technical expertise of ICT staff is being called upon to contribute directly to the substantive outputs of the Organisation.


Policy Work depends heavily on sophisticated tools for statistical analysis, modelling and simulation. Providing and supporting such tools for the Secretariat’s economists and analysts will continue to receive high priority. A considerable array of them already is available via the Organisation’s network (FAME, SAS, SPSS, EViews, etc.). Complements include a number of special-purpose systems (seasonal adjustment software, mathematical software “libraries” and purpose-specific applications that have been developed in-house. All these tools will be fully integrated with the Organisation’s new central repository for statistical data and metadata, OECD.Stat.

Where feasible, opportunities for consolidating analytical tools will be explored to reduce software license costs and training and support requirements. OECD now is installing two widely-used commercial software systems – Troll for large-scale, mathematically complex models and EViews for smaller models — which will progressively replace legacy software systems developed in-house over the years. These systems will also be fully integrated with the OECD.Stat central data repository.

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Statistical Activities. The gathering and harmonisation of international data in a multidisciplinary environment are key to international comparative analysis and policy work. A modern Statistical Information System is being developed in partnership with Directorates. The main objectives are to:

· Take full advantage of advances in information technologies and standards (e.g. relational databases, OLAP, XML, Web Services, GESMES/TS);

· Improve the efficiency of data and metadata1 collection;

· Streamline data validation;

· Rationalise processing and storage;

· Eliminate errors and duplication in and across databases;

· Facilitate identification and retrieval of statistical data and metadata;

· Shorten statistical publication production cycles and streamline related work flows; and

· Enhance the timeliness, visibility, coherence and availability of the Organisation’s statistical outputs.

The component modules of the new Statistical Information System will encompass all aspects of the Organisation's statistical activities. A related workflow system (Figure 2) will facilitate management of these activities, automating them wherever practicable.

Figure 2. Workflow Diagram for the New Statistical Information System

OECD.Stat is the central repository ("warehouse") that stores validated statistics and related metadata destined for publication and/or sharing with others. It has been designed to preserve the decentralised nature of OECD directorates' statistical activities while making their data and metadata part of a coherent corporate system. Each directorate will contribute contents of its production databases to OECD.Stat, which will constitute a single source with all validated data and metadata readily available. OECD.Stat is being populated progressively from the more than 100 production databases managed by different directorates. It will in due course become the sole and coherent source of statistical data and related

1 “Metadata” consists of information describing the characteristics and features of a dataset, its component elements, related publications, etc.

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metadata for the Organisation's modernised statistical publication and electronic dissemination processes. Interfaces between analytical tools and OECD.Stat will also be developed to replace numerous database-specific interfaces with a single access method, thereby reducing on-going maintenance and support costs.

OECD.Stat will include an agreed set of “Reference Series” (series frequently used in the calculation of other economic and social indicators), to help ensure that these indicators are computed coherently and consistently across the House. OECD.Stat will make it possible to streamline the production of existing “horizontal” statistical publications (e.g. OECD in Figures) and make it feasible to produce new ones (e.g. an OECD Statistical Yearbook).

Directorates will be encouraged to migrate production databases to the OECD standard (MS SQL Server) and will receive help to do this. Even with such help, the task has recognised implications for staff time in the Directorates. The objectives are to minimise the number of tools used in statistical activities, reduce training requirements, facilitate staff mobility and reduce support and maintenance requirements. StatWorks, an SQL-based environment for hosting production databases, will facilitate this migration. A companion toolkit for managing statistical data will eliminate the need for developing and supporting database-specific programmes. It will provide database managers with facilities for database administration, data collection via interactive questionnaires, data import and conversion, data validation, data manipulation and export of validated datasets to OECD.Stat. Priority will go to migrating databases presently in Express, as vendor support for this product will soon cease. Directorates that wish to set up new statistical databases will be encouraged to do so in the standard OECD database environment and to take advantage of the StatWorks toolkit.

The MetaStore database is being developed to facilitate management of statistical metadata. The objectives are to foster development of and adherence to common standards for statistical metadata, make its management more efficient and ensure its coherence across the Organisation’s databases. MetaStore forms a natural counterpart to StatWorks, with which it is tightly linked. Publication-related metadata ( i.e. formatting, layout) used for piloting modernised statistical publication processes will also be managed within MetaStore. As with StatWorks, validated metadata will be exported from MetaStore to the Organisation’s central data repository, OECD.Stat.

XML-based technologies and publication standards will be applied to modernise statistical publication methods (PubStat). The existence of a single source for validated statistical data and validated statistical and publications-related metadata (OECD.Stat) now makes this feasible. The objectives are to increase the efficiency of statistical publication processes, reduce time-to-publish, give the Organisation's statistical publications a common "look and feel", reduce the number of different software tools and corresponding support effort and minimise the time that statisticians spend dealing with publication and formatting issues.

A multi-Directorate task force will also review opportunities for developing a state-of-the-art presentation tool for the electronic dissemination of OECD statistical outputs from OECD.Stat, via the OECD Intranet, OLISnet, the OECD Web Site, SourceOECD and CD-ROMs. A more user friendly and functionally rich browser interface for locating and retrieving OECD statistical data and metadata will serve three functions. It will increase the visibility of OECD statistical outputs for both internal and external users, enhance the potential for generating revenues from access to statistical databases and minimise resources required to create files for electronic dissemination.

Database managers seeking to modernise the methods they use to gather statistics and related metadata from national agencies and other international organisations will continue to receive technical assistance. The Organisation will also support a paradigm shift, based on a “data sharing” (rather than “data collection”) model that has the potential to produce important changes in the way in which national data providers and other international organisations interact with the OECD. Web Services, which provide

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reliable and secure interconnection of applications across the Internet, will play an important role in this regard. OECD will also help support the goals of SDMX (Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange), an international co-operative initiative aimed at developing and employing new e-standards for exchange and sharing of statistical information and metadata between international organisations and national statistical agencies. Key objectives include enhanced reliability and timeliness of statistics and related metadata and reduced processing burdens for both OECD statisticians and reporting statistical agencies.

Following their agreement to share responsibilities for collection of annual foreign trade data, the OECD and UN have also agreed to work jointly to establish a common system for managing annual foreign trade data, using an SQL-based data model designed by the UN Statistics Division. The two organisations share the costs of developing the data-collection, validation, processing and management software. Responsibilities for collecting and validating data will also be shared, with data periodically replicated from one site to the other.

A number of other software tools and standards for management and exchange of statistical information will also be developed co-operatively with other international organisations. Examples include the UNESCO Statistical Institute for StatWorks, the IMF and World Bank for the Technical Collaboration Project on Web Services and six other international organisations for SDMX.

Document Process Management. Most analysis results in substantive documents. The Organisation produces well over ten thousand official documents per year — an activity that absorbs a substantial share of its resources. Document preparation is a complex process, typically taking several months and involving multiple authors, multiple data sources and multiple meetings and discussions. It can extend across Directorate boundaries and even include people outside the Organisation. It is a collaborative process, with substantial potential for achieving productivity gains. Yet few systems or technologies presently available can help the several hundred OECD staff who author and manage substantive documents. ITN, in partnership with substantive areas, has therefore initiated a review of the Organisation’s document authoring processes to identify ways in which they can be made simpler, more efficient and easier to manage and to introduce, where appropriate, collaborative tools to help achieve these aims. Such tools hold the promise of benefits in many areas:

· Shorter times to prepare and publish documents;

· More efficient communication and information sharing within an authoring team and with its partners (e.g. other substantive directorates, the Translation Service, OPS, PAC);

· More efficient interaction with people working outside OECD (staff on mission, staff working from home, consultants);

· Greater re-usability of elements common to different documents;

· Reduced network storage through elimination of multiple copies on shared file servers and Outlook e-mail; and

· Possibilities for managers to view easily the status and progress of document preparation.

In a collaborative environment, an authoring team can share information and knowledge in a common document workspace. Everything will be in one place (text, tables, graphics, and schedules), which all participants can access in real time. This will eliminate the confusion and redundancy resulting from duplication of files across multiple network drives and e-mails, facilitate the document review process and simplify version management. Further, it will become possible to archive an entire shared workspace and later restore it, thus making it easier to retrieve files and other information pertaining to past documents and simplifying the management of recurring projects.

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An initial survey of collaborative software products has led to selection of some software for proof-of-concept trials in substantive areas, successfully completed last year with positive results. Several in-depth pilots are now being prepared. They will refine information on how various participants (both internal and external) work together during document preparation. They will measure potential productivity gains, determine how fast collaborative tools can be mastered and assess both the degree of autonomy in directorates for managing a collaborative environment and the level of necessary ICT support. These pilots will aid preparation of detailed functional and technical specifications for a collaborative authoring environment, providing the basis for a systematic evaluation of available tools and how best to proceed with their implementation. In due course it should be possible to extend this collaborative environment to external users (i.e. in other international organisations) involved in collaborative activities with OECD staff.

This project will also assess how best to take advantage of emerging “structured-authoring” tools. Technologies already exist (e.g. XML), but the related end-user tools are only now beginning to reach a level of maturity and user-friendliness that could be considered suitable for widespread deployment at OECD. Objectives include minimising the amount of time authors spend on formatting issues, facilitating re-use and re-purposing of document content, reducing time-to-publish, generating document bibliographies across multiple files, etc. This analysis will proceed apace with the upgrade of MS Office (assuming that an OSS alternative is not chosen), which will have native XML-based structured-authoring capabilities that are essentially transparent to the user.


The expected benefits for the Organisation are:

· More efficient policy analytic work;

· More reliable, timely and efficient statistical data exchange between member countries, the Secretariat and other international organisations;

· Improved availability and coherence of statistical data and metadata for both internal and external users of OECD statistics;

· Improved efficiency in the production of statistical publications and electronic products, with a common “look and feel”;

· Improved user friendliness and enhanced features for users of OECD’s online and CD-ROM statistical data and metadata;

· Improved efficiency in the management, preparation and dissemination of official documents and publications.

VIII. Communications and Outreach

Introduction

The Organisation’s mission depends on efficient, effective internal and external communication. Over time, technology has revolutionised flows of OECD-related information with and among the Member countries. It also has become the main means by which the Organisation has begun to come to grips with steeply escalating demand for similarly sophisticated information exchanges with non-member economies, civil society and the general public. The same applies to the demands imposed by the increased dispersion and mobility of the OECD itself.

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This field has five main medium-term strategic objectives. The first is to support the Organisation’s effort to increase its impact on Member countries’ policy thinking and raise the awareness of OECD activities within national administrations. The second is to increase the visibility of public information on OECD activities and to open events for the media, academia and the public. The third turns towards non-member economies, to deepen their understanding of the work of the Organisation. The fourth and fifth have an in-house focus, namely to improve internal communication and information exchange within the Secretariat, to provide the OECD Centres with new services that will increase their effectiveness and to facilitate communications with internal OECD systems for tele-workers and staff on mission. Accomplishing these objectives will involve a number of key tasks or outputs:

· Provide secure Internet access to OLISnet and organise workshops hosted by capitals, to significantly increase the number of policy makers using the service;

· Bring information about the OECD into Ministries on a continuous basis through links on Ministry intranets to an OECD portal page;

· Increase accessibility of information on OECD activities for policy makers in capitals through integrated cross-domain searching (one-stop access) over OLISnet and the OECD Web site;

· Promote use of video briefings by OECD staff for senior officials and parliamentarians in capitals;

· Promote use of OLISnet by non-member governments to give free access to unrestricted committee documents, publications and statistics;

· Provide a well-maintained Web site with regular review of its services, facilities and usage details;

· Webcast key public OECD events on the public Internet;

· Review intranet and extranet services;

· Help OECD Centres promote their activities through use of more modern tools;

· Identify a more integrated service portfolio to enable travelling officials to remain in contact and be located regardless of where they are; and develop a new tele-workers’ home environment with the most appropriate standard voice, data and video capability.


The expected benefits will affect three distinct populations — national administrations, the media, NGOs and the public, and OECD staff. To the extent that ICT services can facilitate it, OECD work will have a higher profile in capitals. Committee information will become accessible to a wider population of policy makers, and senior national officials can become better briefed on the work of the committees. Parliamentarians and senior national officials will have better understanding of what the OECD does. Non-member economies will be able more easily to follow the work of the Organisation. Governments, the media and NGOs will make more use of the OECD Web site and thus become better informed about our activities. Staff will become more productive in publishing information on the Internet, OLISnet and the intranet. Management will be able to communicate more easily and effectively with staff, who in turn will find it easier to locate corporate and administrative information. The OECD Centres and other overseas antennas will have a more productive environment for their promotional and contact activities and tighter integration with internal systems and services. Tele-working and travelling staff’s remote interaction with

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internal OECD systems and colleagues will be easier and more integrated through more mobile and supple technology.

IX. Management of the Secretariat

Introduction

The OECD has developed and implemented a series of reforms to improve the management, performance and evaluation of the Organisation’s work. The following key business drivers will impact the ICT strategy for Corporate Management Systems over the next 3-5 years:

· A move from Activity-Based to Results-Based Budgeting (RBB).

· The need for performance measurement and stakeholder evaluation of the work of committees.

· The need to re-allocate resources to shifting priorities.

· A continued increase in voluntary contributions, which now make up about 30 per cent of the overall budget.

· Expansion of the Organisation to include new member countries.

· Outreach and increased participation of non-member economies in the work of the Organisation.

· An ongoing focus on reform and efficiency improvements.

· Increased staff mobility, in forms such as teleworking, missions and travel.

These drivers have several implications for management systems. They imply a management and reporting structure that moves away from inputs, activities and sources of funds to outputs and performance. Member countries would like to know the tangible outcome of the work of the Organisation and the impact it is having on the World. They are also interested in eliminating obsolete or marginally useful activities so that resources can be shifted to priority work.


Information-management systems find extensive use in managing the day-to-day operations of the Organisation. High priority will continue to go on evolving these systems to provide both qualitative and quantitative management information and performance indicators on the outputs and effectiveness of work programs. The growing complexity of the Organisation’s funding and activities demands a new approach to accountability and transparency throughout the entire work-programme life cycle. It is necessary to implement new data-collection, management, analysis and reporting facilities that will help EXD and Directorates to manage their budgets and meet the requirements of member countries. Opportunities to automate and further streamline processes also will be pursued in order to bring about economies that will help the Organisation cope better with new demands and reduced budgets.

Over the coming years, the strategy for corporate management systems at the OECD will focus on the following three areas:

A. Business continuity — supporting the day-to-day operations of the Organisation;B. Strategic and Decision Support — systems that mine operational data and support programme

and senior managers in planning, managing and decision making; andC. Reform-driven initiatives — streamlining and enhancing the efficiency of end-to-end processes.

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A. Business Continuity. Administrative and financial systems are used to support the day-to-day running of the Organisation. Given the business drivers outlined above, existing systems will need to be enhanced and new systems introduced.

The OECD uses the SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to support its financial management. A number of ancillary systems developed in-house support workflow and process management. These systems, useful in their time, cannot meet new business needs and support reforms. The financial framework needs review and revision to provide the kind of management reporting necessary for RBB and performance management. This entails better costing mechanisms, capturing of information at the output level, integrated workflow and budget control, among other things. The in-house developed suite of applications (PRISM) is reaching the end of its life and needs re-writing. Where feasible and cost-effective these applications will be integrated into SAP. New modules for fixed-asset accounting, cost accounting, project accounting, budget preparation and control, grant management and publications stock control will be implemented in line with business needs and available funding. The strategy is to replace bespoke development with functionality available in SAP. OECD processes will be brought into line with industry best practices. In-house developments will be undertaken only for internal services that have very little financial information or cannot be implemented easily in SAP.

The Peoplesoft ERP is used to manage personnel-related information and payroll. Its systems primarily support back-office functions relating to position management, workforce administration, recruitment, training, benefits and compensation, pensions and payroll. The new focus for HR systems will extend functionality to managers and end users. Self-service capabilities will be greatly enhanced to allow managers and staff to access and update data relevant to their situations, with the objectives of reducing transaction costs, improving processes and enhancing client service while assuring data accuracy, privacy and integrity.

The recruitment process will be streamlined and automated through the e-Recruit module of Peoplesoft. It will make the Organisation better able to target potential candidates, improve gender balance and provide improved service to managers and candidates. The streamlined process will improve the administrative recruitment functions in Directorates and allow HRM to focus on value-added tasks.

The Kiosk concept will expand to include manager and employee self-service facilities. Staff will be able to request services and access information relevant to their employment at the OECD through a controlled, secure and integrated one-stop facility. They will be able to update personal information such as addresses, diplomatic car information, personal situations, etc., as well as to obtain information on their employment status and benefits such as loans, payslips, dependent allowances, leave, petrol coupons, etc. Information will flow automatically to the relevant services in EXD for authorisation and processing. Managers will have direct and immediate access to budget and staff information pertaining to their areas of responsibility. They will be able to generate relevant reports as well as request specific services through their on-line self-service kiosks. Administrative Officers will continue to have access to a whole range of personnel and financial information for their Directorates.

Organising committee meetings is a complex activity involving committee secretariats, delegations, delegates and most EXD services including translation, interpretation, document production, security, information technology and conference services. The level of interaction and the need to have the right information at the right time are intense and essential for all players involved. The Organisation’s Event Management System (EMS) brings all these elements together to provide seamless and transparent organisation and management of OECD events. The system has streamlined several processes and has improved overall operational efficiency. Information is available in real time to all relevant parties. The system will be enhanced to provide still greater value to delegates and the Secretariat as evolving business needs dictate.

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The corporate Contact Management System (CMS) tracks information on delegates, experts and other individuals that work with the Organisation or are interested in its work. The system allows Directorates to manage relevant details and track information such as delegate interest profiles, expertise, meetings they have attended, their level within governments, etc. CMS also handles direct mail such as newsletters or e-mails promoting publications, based on contact profiles. All Directorates need to do is create the newsletters and identify the profiles to which they want to send them. CMS is also integrated with EMS, allowing registration of delegates for meetings without the need to retype all the associated details.

OECD has also developed a number of applications specific to the needs of the House. Functions that cannot be serviced by SAP, Peoplesoft or other commercial packages will continue to be developed in-house. For example, the translation and document reproduction applications provide enhanced front-office and back-office functionality to manage quotas and charge-backs, with links to PWB outputs and the financial systems.

B. Strategic and Decision Support.

Historically, not much has been done from a systems perspective to provide senior managers with information that will help with decision making and strategic planning. The data that exist in transactional and operational databases are geared to serve the applications for which they are designed. At an operational level these systems meet the business need, but because the data are spread over several databases it is not easy to get a consistent, high-level view of information useful for decision support and strategic planning at the Organisational level.

Thus perceptions get formed based on anecdotal evidence. Alternatively, periodic intensive studies need to be conducted to provide management information, e.g. the Vinde and Nicholson reports. Information on committees, how they may have evolved, how many there are, meetings held, their output, etc. is not readily available. The same applies to work carried out in service areas such as translation, interpretation and document production.

Consolidating operational data and transforming them into management information can provide an insight into the way in which the Organisation works. Material collected at an operational level can provide indicators and help measure performance. For example, one can combine financial and operational data to provide performance indicators that measure outputs related to the PWB. This insight can provide managers and Council information on how resources are used and can help with priority setting.

EXD will develop, in consultation with program managers, SPP, FIN and other functional areas, a business-driven data warehouse and reporting environment that will facilitate management reporting. The warehouse will create an integrated organisational information environment for managers. Data quality, defining the business rules for transformation and integration, and populating and updating the warehouse are some of the issues that will need study prior to implementing it.

C. Reform-driven Initiatives.

The ultimate purpose of these projects is to improve business process efficiency or enable new business processes. Apart from providing the basis for the reallocation of resources within EXD, the main business driver of these projects is to maintain business performance levels in the face of resource reductions. Working with Directorates, EXD will help identify areas where business processes can be transformed to secure efficiencies and savings. Projects in this area include:

· Employee and Manager Self-service: Define and implement processes to enable employees and managers to initiate and follow transactions and maintain their own information. These processes provide access to information and tools not previously available. They aim to

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reduce reliance of staff on central services to complete transactions, allowing focus on higher-value activities.

· Recruitment: Implement an e-recruit process integrated with the mainstream HR management system. Adopt best practices and streamline existing processes.

· Enterprise Directory: Integrate and consolidate a number of human-resource and organisation management processes into a central repository to enable improved provisioning, organisation charting and provision of a corporate directory.

· Improve translation quota management and reporting.

· Automate badge production for delegates

· Streamline the distribution and tracking of transmission notes sent from the SGs office to Directorates for action.

A significant proportion of the projects planned for 2004 and beyond relates to the implementation of major reforms mandated by the OECD Members via the governance structure of the Organisation (e.g. Council, Auditor, Budget Committee, Audit Review Committee). Reforms in this area fall into three broad areas:

· Budget Reform: Transformation of the PWB process to deliver a results-based budget and reporting mechanism. Projects here include developing applications to support the preparation of the 2003 and 2004 programme implementation reports, including tools to solicit feedback from members to assist performance evaluation, and a new application to support the preparation of the 2005-2006 PWB.

· Management Accounting Reform: Introduction of new processes to improve management of and control over costs in the Organisation, to facilitate reporting against a results-based PWB and ensure equitable allocation of costs to consumers. Specific developments in this domain include the implementation of an appropriate cost-management methodology for the Organisation, with specific emphasis on budgeting by output, staff expenditure accounting against a standard cost, and management reporting improvements.

· Financial Accounting Reform: Implementation of new processes and procedures to improve accuracy and quality of our accounting statements, and to ensure good corporate governance through the introduction of revised financial rules, regulations and procedures. Projects in this area include the implementation of enhanced asset and purchase management and accounting processes in the corporate financial system.


Figure 3 shows how an effective information systems framework can yield measurable benefits in terms of process efficiency, quality of work, staff productivity and organisational effectiveness. Based on the initiatives described above as the objectives and outputs of the medium-term strategy, it foresees placing in the hands of OECD managers for the first time an integrated body of strategic management information. Such information will be useful in all three areas of most concern, namely business continuity, strategic and decision support and reform-driven initiatives. Moreover, and because managers will have better, more organised information than in the past, decisions can be better informed and reforms themselves placed on more solid footings.

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Figure 3. OECD Information Systems to Serve Management Needs

OECD Information systems serve management needsOECD Information systems serve management needs

e.g. Committee Reform efforts, WG1, WG2, Nicholson, Member Priorities, …

PWB• Strategic Objectives• Plan• Achieved Results• PI R

Bodies:• Comprehensive list: official, Project, ad-hoc• Mandate• History: Sunset, renewals

EMS:• Events by Cluster, Body… •Delegate profiles• Resource utilisation

OLISnet:• OECD Information access in MCs by Committee, time, …

Transforming Operational data into Strategic Management I nformation

Overall Event Planning & ManagementProgram Evaluation

Appreciation of OECD valueSupport for Decision Making

PWB• Strategic Objectives• Plan• Achieved Results• PI R

Bodies:• Comprehensive list: official, Project, ad-hoc• Mandate• History: Sunset, renewals

EMS:• Events by Cluster, Body… •Delegate profiles• Resource utilisation

OLISnet:• OECD Information access in MCs by Committee, time, …







X. ICT Governance

Introduction

OECD services have evolved historically around a model of centralised competence focused on vertical skills and capacity-driven supply. By and large, central services and associated management policies were based on a largely centralised budget, supporting mainly Paris-based activities of policy analysis and committee meetings and an unchanged membership for almost 30 years. This model began to change in the late 1980s with the Organisation’s enlargement, its shift towards increased openness, the growing influx of non-centralised funds, the diversification of multidisciplinary work and an almost concomitant dispersion of offices in annexes. The centralisation of functions began to lose its attraction, increasingly giving way to parallel, at times conflicting “mini-service” functions in substantive directorates — for recruiting, accounting, publishing, computing and even the servicing of meetings, increasingly away from Paris. Meanwhile the rapid spread of information technologies — PCs, networks, email, Internet, etc. — and their growing dominance over traditionally centralised data processing for payroll, accounting, statistical processing and many other substantive tasks helped keep geographically dispersed staff together and support a more outwardly oriented and distributed management of activities and resources.

The OECD has made many structural reforms, aiming for a new governance model. It has tried to move away from its traditional strongly centralised management by streamlining the decision-making process, preserving only limited, essential corporate policies, guidelines and core services, and distributing operational functions and responsibilities across substantive units. This trend towards a flatter matrix organisation will likely continue, given the growing share of voluntary funding, the increased relevance of and demand for multidisciplinary (“horizontal”) work and the uninterrupted expansion of membership and outreach. Among other things, different ICT approaches will be needed to accompany and sustain change. In parallel, a fast-paced ICT industry brings new opportunities for highly cost-effective and useful networking, information and management systems for “global” organisations.

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ICT management must foster and seize all opportunities to bring IT closer to clients at all levels and help them become fully familiar with the great potentials that ICT-driven innovation can offer them. The intelligent evolution of ICT should be appreciated by clients as a means to achieve better results on their jobs and not seen as a threat to their stability and comfort. Those who deliver ICT services bear the main responsibility for such positive perceptions.

The OECD has been in the forefront with many ICT systems for many years — on macroeconomic modelling, statistical databases, electronic fax and mail, OLISnet, EMS, etc. Until recently, the main focus of ICT management has been to ensure that these systems continue to be secure, efficient and easy to use with proper training. In the new OECD, ICT management must also address a completely different client model. The new client is mobile and highly autonomous, information-savvy and substance-focussed, as opposed to office-based, procedure-heavy and process-focussed.

Staff and delegates, our main clients, are increasingly present and active in all aspects of the work of the Organisation and its committees and thus in the use of OECD’s information systems. The continuing spread of OECD’s reach to non-member economies extends the need for fast, relevant and outwardly focussed electronic information well beyond the traditional boundaries of Secretariat offices. Information systems must evolve to bring information to work teams and staff and not the other way around. These systems must “learn” to compare and exchange the wealth of information they store and to bring results to clients. Information must be presented in interesting, intuitive, non-intrusive and content-focussed ways. Paper is no longer its main carrier. New computer systems must shift from “managing paper” to “managing information” for possible presentation on paper in addition to screens, Internet and other rich electronic media. Security must be there to simplify access to information by authorised staff only and not to screen and filter them out.

The Board of Directors for Computing and Communications Technology Strategy (CCTS Board) continues to be a very effective forum for ICT management to listen to senior management concerns and needs, work on priorities and options and develop a sound corporate approach to information systems in support of the Organisation’s work programme. While the composition and agenda of the Board may evolve, the objective remains to ensure that ICT serves the needs of the House and that directions are taken from the top. This approach must continue to be complemented by an effective programme of participation, consultation and sharing at various management and operational levels — programme managers, interest groups and Directorate ICT liaison staff, in regular dialogue. In the same vein, all staff must be kept aware of what is happening, what is planned and why. Regular training and information sessions on systems functionalities and changes must be maintained high in the client focus of ICT management. Clients carry the biggest weight in the success or failure of technological innovations. Their readiness for change, views and preferences must be taken into account when evaluating options for new systems. Ultimately, the objective is to sustain a culture of high quality service that attracts the buy-in and appreciation of the majority of staff.

As an intensive information-processing organisation, the OECD has also a tradition of highly qualified ICT professionals. It is to their credit that in all these years the Organisation has enjoyed high-quality computing and networking at very low cost. On the other hand, ICT is becoming more complex, not less, and it wears out and demands replacement exactly like any other good. Furthermore, the particular ICT needs of the OECD may not always find standard commercial solutions, for example in world-wide statistical networking. Thus internal ICT expertise must continue to be developed and strengthened where and as needed. ICT professionals must be kept fully abreast of industry changes and directions and receive continual training in new hardware and software. High-quality staff training and professional development are major long-term goals for ICT management.

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In the last several years, the Organisation has experienced great pressures for budget austerity and cost containment, ICT not excepted. Nevertheless, ICT managers need the means to support streamlining, downsizing, reform and innovation. Priority setting and a continual search for cost-effective solutions on a wide international basis remain major responsibilities and objectives for ICT managers. A “right-sourcing” strategy, i.e. determining the optimal combination of insourcing and outsourcing of ICT services is one aspect of this (Annex 1).

Conclusions

ICT managers are trained to envision, plan, introduce and manage change. Habituated to think about innovative ICT solutions, they develop a natural tendency to anticipate needs and foresee opportunities and benefits for the House. ICT no longer concerns just tools and computers. At the OECD, it focuses on better information to support the Organisation’s substantive work and to help make better decisions. The benefits are often major, enabling new courses of action that would otherwise be impossible. Nevertheless, it is a paradox that those benefits must perforce appear elsewhere than in the ICT establishment. ICT managers will be doing their job best when OECD staff and senior management are satisfied that, with the help of ICT, more and better output, productivity gains and cost containment occur steadily throughout the Organisation in a working environment that ICT has helped to improve.

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Annex 1. Outsourced ICT Activities

MAINTENANCE· Installation and maintenance of copper and fibre optic cabling for data and telephone networks· PCs, printers and office equipment· Network equipment and software: maintenance and support· Servers, operating system software and utilities: maintenance and support· Telephony PBX, handsets and network: maintenance, support and operation· External audits of NT domain and network security· Design and support of the Organisation's IT security "firewall"· Systems engineering support e.g. problem resolution; migration to Windows 2000, to Exchange

2000 and to SQL Server 2000; monitoring utilites, backup/restore hardware and software · Network Engineering support e.g. problem resolution; secure remote LAN access; Internet traffic

prioritisation; intrusion detection; computer virus protection

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT & SERVICES· Administrative/Financial applications development, e.g. new payroll system. · Analytical/Statistical applications development and ongoing specialist support. · Authoring environment support.· OECD web site: Application development and ongoing specialist support. · OLISnet: Application programming and ongoing specialist support. · Application programming for Event Management and Room Reservation Systems· Programming for Web-based business applications· Help Desk and Desktop Equipment Support Services· Office moves of telephones and desktop equipment

TELECOMMUNICATIONS· International Data network linking OECD Centres, travelling staff, and member country

administrations· Metropolitan area network (Links to Annexes) · Link to public Internet (incoming, outgoing and e-mail) · Business communications services: remote access and security - specialist advice and guidance. · Voice Services (local, national, international, to GSM)

HARDWARE Installations· Desktop Equipment (PCs, printers, laptops)· Network and Communications Equipment (Network, remote access, telephone systems, etc.)· Server and Video/Multimedia Equipment

SOFTWARE Licenses· Network and security software: e.g. Network monitoring and traffic prioritisation, backup, etc. · Server, Analytical, Statistical, Financial, Desktop software, e.g. Windows 2000, Exchange 2000,

Windows XP and Office XP, TROLL macroeconomic modelling package, etc.

TOUR EUROPE annex move· Major tasks partially or fully outsourced: installation of local PBX, cabling for voice/data,

data/voice link with La Muette, PC moves, etc.

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· web viewongoing one-stop searching over all oecd information available online through olisnet...

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