SMARTER STRATEGIES

Legacy System Gets Sprung

Dennis McCafferty | Date: 02-15-10 | Comments

The state of Kansas is finally overhauling one of the oldest legacy data systems in the nation, thanks to an ambitious enterprise business architecture project.

Every prison has its "lifers," the guys who have lived in the joint for decades who can tell one colorful story after another about inside rackets, tough guards and attempted break-outs. Within the state of Kansas prison system, however, there has been another "lifer" with a story that wasn't so entertaining: a legacy system some three decades old that badly needed to be replaced.

The Kansas Department of Corrections (KDOC) realized this, concluding that its system, while still functional, presented increasing difficulties when it came to day-to-day operations. It tracks essential information about inmates with respect to their individual cases, disciplinary records, mental/health history and other essential data.

But because some of the software for this system dates so far back�it is the second-oldest Department of Corrections system in the country�some of it is written in programming languages that are outdated.

"This makes it very difficult to maintain and modify the system," says Cathy Clayton, manager of application development for the state's corrections department. "Like many agencies, we are facing a wave of retirements among our Baby Boomer employees. The people coming in to replace them have not been trained in these languages. They don't teach the languages in college anymore. Also, we have had duplication of data created when people have to input the very same data twice, into two separate parts of the system. It simply has not been efficient."

Replacing the systems is a costly endeavor, and the state budget is cash-strapped, as so many are these days. So, state lawmakers challenged KDOC officials with developing an enterprise-architecture approach so that future IT investments benefit the agency's business and technological needs at the same time.

KDOC used Metastorm ProVision software from Baltimore-based enterprise/business architecture software company Metastorm. KDOC realized that collaboration would be key here, so 150 employees throughout the agency provided input into the project. A "business first" mentality took hold, as more than 100 enterprise-architecture models were developed to make the best use of the agency's data, applications and other technologies. A new system will allow agency staffers�regardless of what department they serve in or where they are geographically�to gain a better sense of what other KDOC employees do day-to-day and how technology supports them.

So far, so good. KDOC is now in the beginning stages of a 10-year overhaul plan and will abandon a fat-client model in favor of a Web-based one. Available funding, of course, will determine how quickly KDOC can move forward. But KDOC is already starting to transition pieces of its inmate data into the business-architecture plan.

"We really needed to align our IT needs with our business needs," Clayton says. "The fat-client structure simply didn't make the data available to the number of users that needed it. With the road map in place, we should be able to get the users the data they need."