Message-ID: <3A647F67.B777DD86@mit.edu>
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 12:05:43 -0500
From: Greg Anderson <ganderso@MIT.EDU>
Organization: MIT Information Systems
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: infosys@mit.edu
Subject: Discovery Project completion: MIT Portal Services
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Good morning,

I'm very pleased to announce the conclusion of the MIT Portal Services
Discovery project. Although the team completed its work in the summer,
the
process for following other developments on campus has delayed this
announcement. The findings and recommendations of the team remain valid,
even as the technology discussions continue to evolve. The charter of
this
team was to define the interest in portals, the desired portal services
as expressed by students, but not the technology or infrastructure. 

The MIT Portal Services Discovery project investigated the questions: 

- Is there customer demand for an Enterprise Information Portal (EIP) to
the MIT community, focusing initially on portal services to students? 

- If MIT and IS do provide such a portal, what services should be
included,
into what categories should these services be divided and what should be
the overall structure? 

In responding to these questions, the Discovery team conducted its work
in
the spring of 2000 with a particular focus on students and the portal
services of greatest importance to them. Two students served on the
Discovery team; the students Lewis Leiboh and Ilya Kaplun were selected
because they created the MyMIT portal prototype for 6.916: Software
Engineering of Innovative Web Services in the spring of 1999. As they
participated in the Portals Discovery Team, Lewis and Ilya wrote an
Advanced Undergraduate Project Thesis MyMIT: The Next Generation, for
Professor Hal Abelson.

The team's report is available at: 
http://web.mit.edu/is/discovery/portals
 As highlights of its work, the team confirmed that:

1. There is strong interest among MIT students for a portal for
student-related information and services.  

2. Our customers within MIT are creating portals.  

3. IS has the unique expertise in consulting on how an
environment like portals should be implemented and for providing
appropriate linkage  with the IT infrastructure. 

As part of its information gathering, the Discovery team conducted three
focus groups with 30 MIT students, and an online survey that received
534
responses. The team found strong support among students for a portal
service; the key survey findings were: 

76% of the respondents were students, with the other respondents falling
about equally into the other categories.

38% of respondents currently use a portal, of which MyYahoo was by far
the
most popular (48% of portal users), followed about equally by MSN,
MyNetscape, and MyExcite. 

A web browser was by far the most popular access method (not
surprisingly).
PDA access was the second most popular, with Kiosk, Wireless phone, and
Voice following closely behind in about equal ratios. 

Email, MIT subjects, and Academic Records were ranked the most useful
potential services by respondents. 

Search/Directory, Calendars, and Zephyr followed close behind, while
Chat
Rooms, Bulletin Boards, and World/Local News were considered mostly "not
useful" by survey respondents. 

Service usefulness rankings generally did not vary between current
portal
users and non-users.

Because this project focused on the customer demand and not on the
necessary technology or infrastructure, the team's recommendations are
based on the business case to benefit MIT students, and the
recommendations
seek to leverage the fact that MIT students are already creating and
providing portals and to leverage the strengths of IS to provide the
standards, infrastructure, and operational service and support for
portals,
and to leverage activities elsewhere on campus such as the EMCC. 

The services requested are for information that is unique to MIT;
managing access to and presentation of MIT information will require an
architecture defined by the MIT I/T Architecture Group, led by Susan
Minai-Azary
 
The Project Sponsors were Dennis Baron, Director, VDIN, and Vijay Kumar,
Director, Academic Computing.  Team members were:
                         
Team Leader, Suzana Lisanti, Web Communications Services, and team
members:
Julie Bergfeld, Sloan Computing Services; Joanne Costello, IS Support;
Craig Counterman, IS and EMCC; Ilya Kaplun, EECS student; Lewis Leiboh,
EECS student; Nicole Henning, MIT Libraries; Esther Yanow, IS Training
and
Publications.

Please join me in congratulating this team on its work, on its
collaborative efforts working with students and other campus units, and
on
its findings that can help shape and guide our early efforts on portals
at
MIT.

Greg