AIS Questionnaire Responses and Plans for System Improvement To: "A - Division Chief and Staff", "Frederic H Nichols, Chief, Br. of Regional Resrch, Menlo Park, CA" , "John B Weeks, Chief, Branch of Reg. Res., Denver, CO" , "Edward R Landa, Hydrologist, Reston, VA" cc: "Stephen F Blanchard, District Chief, Urbana, IL" , "Isabelle Halley des Fontaines, Chief, Br. Admin. Mgmt. Sys., Reston, VA" , "Alice A Sabatini, Administrative Officer, Reston, VA" , "Carole Nethaway, Secretary (OA), Reston, VA" Subject: AIS Questionnaire Responses and Plans for System Improvement Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996 14:44:06 -0400 From: "Carole Nethaway, Secretary (OA), Reston, VA" In Reply Refer To: Mail Stop 447 MEMORANDUM August 26, 1996 To: Regional Hydrologists and Regional Research Hydrologists From: Catherine L. Hill Assistant Chief Hydrologist for Operations Subject: AIS Questionnaire Responses and Plans for System Improvement On March 27, 1996, a questionnaire on the Administrative Information System (AIS) was distributed to users by the Administrative Officers in the Water Resources Division. Responses to the questionnaire indicated concerns with system performance, documentation, and training, especially as they relate to the input and retrieval of project budget information. To address these concerns, we have developed the following action plan. 1. HQ AIS staff, in conjunction with the Regions, will provide increased on-site training for project chiefs, section chiefs, and administrative officers. For project chiefs: focus will be to introduce and provide exposure to the AIS. For section chiefs and administrative officers: focus will be for training and mentoring project chiefs (less-frequent users will need system and project budgeting assistance). 2. Develop simpler input forms which could be used for project budgets in proposals and for setting up initial budgets in AIS. 3. Develop standard reports and the capability for user-defined custom reports. 4. Expand on-line "Help" and "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQ) to cover both hardware and software questions. Hardware information, which is currently not on-line, would help system administrators address common problems (for example, slow system response). However, in order to ensure that the most important improvements are developed and effectively implemented for the project budgeting aspect of AIS, we would like to create a team of present and potential system users to guide our efforts. Specifically, we would like the team to be made up of participants with the following levels of expertise. We request that you nominate an individual from your Region/NRP where indicated below to participate on the team. We arbitrarily assigned positions to Regions/NRP to minimize the work required to find nominees. *Project Chief: Two (NR, WR) with project budgeting experience using AIS. Three (NRP, SR, CR) with no project budgeting experience using AIS. Section Chief: One (SR) with project budgeting experience using AIS. One (WR) with no project budgeting experience using AIS. Administrative Staff: Three (NRP, NR, CR) with experience working with project chiefs or section chiefs on project budgets using AIS. *At least one project leader (experienced or inexperienced in AIS) should be from the NRP. Isabelle Halley des Fontaines will participate as the team leader. It is expected that the group will meet twice during the next few months--the first time (via teleconference) to discuss basic issues and the expectations of the group, and the second time for 2 or 3 days (at a mutually agreeable location) to dig into and make recommendations for enhancing AIS. The charter of this group will be to: (1) review the Branch of Administrative Management Systems proposal for addressing items 2 and 3 of the action plan listed above, and ensure that they meet users' requirements; and (2) propose and implement elements for a solution to item 4 in the action plan. Please send your nominations by October 31, 1996, by email to ihalley. Travel for District participants will be paid for by the Branch of Administrative Management Systems. Travel for participants funded by Tech Support accounts will not be covered.