Sorry to hear that you are feeling left out. We are trying to keep the information flow going and at the same time keep things moving ahead on the project. In fact I have been away from the office the last couple of weeks conducting a series of demonstrations and question and answer sessions concerning the new release of IMSMA. This trip included meetings with the UN in New York, VVAF, SAC and the US DoS. We planning a series of regional meetings to discuss the new system and provide demonstrations to programme managers and operational staff from the current IMSMA sites. These will begin later this summer and extend into the late fall of this year. The regional coordinators will inform the sites and send out invitations as soon as dates have been determined.
In the mean time I will try to answer as many of your questions as I can. The new release will be called V4 in order to stay with the current naming convention. The NG name was never really an official part of the new release and has been dropped. As far as the internal structures and concepts being employed there has been a lot of work accomplished and we are well along with the first stages of the development process. The system is divided into a core module representing the basic information required to perform operational mine clearance activities. These elements all come from the current IMSMA data set.
The remaining IMSMA data elements will be represented and expanded into a series of functionally based support modules. These "Plug-Ins" will provide enhanced support for MRE, VA, Hazard Reduction, Q/A and many other tasks. I am scheduling a series of meetings to help us validate our approach to these functional modules. We will base their functionality on the current system and expand and update things to reflect current feed-back from the field. In all cases the objective is to design tools that are simple to use for non-IT staff. The first meeting will focus on MRE and Victim Assistance and will take place at JMU in mid-August. Invitations will be sent to MRE and VA organizations over the next few weeks. I will organize a group or groups to discuss Tasking, Clearance, Hazard Reduction and other the operational issues later this fall.
The new system will be released in small increments beginning this fall (October). The first set of locations selected for the release are all small sites with limited needs. As you can imagine this does not include Afghanistan. The sites were selected to match the capabilities available in the first Pilot Version of the new system. The Pilot test will begin sometime before Christmas. The regional coordinators will perform the installations and training on site. Once these locations have been installed and we have a good idea how operations are going we will expand to other locations. The entire process will take about 18 months.
Once all of the sites have been offered the opportunity to transition to V4 we will discontinue support for V3. This will be a phased process and has already begun. We have already eliminated V3 training from our support package and will only be providing emergency updates to the system from this point forward. All support services from ETHZ will end on June 30th of this year. The team there has already been significantly reduced and no further updates for V3 are planned.
In terms of the general concepts being put in place for V4 the key point is the shift from a emphasis on IT to Operations. The system has been greatly simplified and will contain a number of wizards designed to reduce the need for IT support and make it easier for users to interact directly with the system. This starts with the complete integration of the GIS package into the user interface. Navigation will be accomplished directly on the map or through the gazetteer. We have also redesigned the system to incorporate a much more flexible approach to data collection, form design and reporting. These tools are all new and represent a significant simplification of the system which will allow Operations users to take a much more direct role with the system.
The concept of DDE has also been much improved in order to eliminate the need for the complex data distribution schemes now being used. Data can be collected and recorded in a number of locations at the same time and is brought together through an Operations Workbench approach that allows Ops Officers to easily review and validate field reports as they are incorporated into the system. This means that the system will be available to a much wider range of NGOs and field operators for direct data entry. We will work with national authorities to regulate the distribution of the system, but from a technical perspective we will be encouraging a much wider use and distribution.
We will support this approach through direct user training here in Geneva and in the field. We have already started this training and I am sure you have received a request for information about the staff there. The idea is to identify operational users of the system and begin their training with basic courses outlining the concepts of information management. Once the basic course has been completed we plan to move on to a course directed to the integration of information management into daily operations. Finally, in a last stage we will move to training on the system itself. In all cases the basic concept courses will be required prior to moving on to system installation. Our emphasis will be on Operations Staff and system users.
The IT aspects of the system are rooted in basic open source Java and SQL technologies which are familiar to IT professionals and should not require a great deal of training. As a result the current train the trainer IT approach will be phased out. This decision reflects our commitment to make things easier to use and discussions with UNMAS and others that indicate a desire to reduce the need for IT support in the field. Clearly there will always be some needs in this area, but we are working to making these much more routine and directly related to the care and feeding of the network and the tasks directly related to IT rather than mine action.
I hope this helps to answer some of your questions. At this point we would look to begin a transition for the Afghan programme in late 2006. Thomas and I will stay in contact with you and the Operations staff there in order to keep you informed as things change. The first step is to involve the Operations staff in the training process. Please be aware that this training is not designed for IT professionals nor will it look at any of the details of the new release. In fact in the first stages we do not even have any computers in the classroom. Our goal is to provide a background that makes it possible for real operational support staff to use the system on a day to day basis and gain real value from it.
