SECTION 11: EVALUATION AND ASSESSING NEW TECHNOLOGY

Recommendations and Roadmap

Such a process starts with meetings between vendor staff, engineering staff at DIIT and members of the user community, to identify the desired goals.  Understanding what users hope to gain from the new technology is a necessary step for deciding if the introduction of such technology is successful.  Once the criteria for success are understood, engineers and users should agree on a methodology for evaluation. This will vary by technology. In some cases, the methodology may require the use of an evaluation form or questionnaire that will be completed periodically by school staff using the technology. In others cases, it may require nothing more than monitoring the network to quantify variables such as bandwidth utilization.

The periodic review of these results by DIIT staff, along with follow-up meetings between users and engineers, can allow technology deployment to follow a number of different paths, each of which is valuable.  One might be to accelerate deployment of technology that quickly proves to be very valuable, making the technology available to a larger base of users.  A second is to work with the vendor to incorporate new features that users realize would enhance the utility of the technology.  Another is to identify problems or limitations of the technology that went undiscovered during the initial testing.  The technology environment found in NYCDOE schools is so diverse, that technology that often works well in one school will perform poorly in another.  Sometimes, only experience with the technology in diverse school settings can reveal what these problems are.  Finally, one possible outcome is to realize that the technology is not accomplishing what it was intended to do, and that plans for deployment should be curtailed.  This will be crucial information for the NYCDOE.

Benefits and Impact if Not Implemented

Incorporating user evaluations in the technology deployment process will ensure that the NYCDOE is deploying technology and applications that best meet user needs. It allows the NYCDOE to expand the role of the most useful technologies, and curtail the deployment of technologies and applications that are not embraced by the user community. Only by canvassing users to understand how they use technology can the NYCDOE be sure that its investment in technology is well spent. If this is not done, the NYCDOE risks investing in technologies that are inefficient and not widely used.

Budget to Implement

The budget for user technology evaluations will be incorporated into vendor pricing as part of the RFP process.

SECTION 12: OVERALL BUDGET PLAN

The matrix below summarizes the budget estimates provided in the technology sections in this Strategic Plan.

Budget to Implement

	3-Year Plan			Total
Section:	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	(In mil.)
Section 4: Upgrading school infrastructure models for 300 schools	27.00	27.00	27.00	81.00
Section 5: Data Center Services/Unified Storage	78.00	42.00	30.00	150.00
Section 6: Deploy Unified Communications/Collaboration solutions to 300 schools	14.25	7.25	7.25	28.75
Section 6: Deploy Next Generation Wireless	8.00	8.00	8.00	24.00
Section 7: Deploy user devices to 600 schools	76.00	69.00	69.00	214.00
Section 8: Information Security and Identity	1.54	1.54	1.54	4.62
Section 9: Learning Management Systems	2.40	2.40	2.40	7.20
Section 10: Enhancements to Network Operations Center (NOC)	4.50	6.25	5.00	15.75
Total	211.69	163.44	150.19	525.32

These are summary results; detailed breakdowns of these figures appear in the individual sections.

The numbers provided here need to be viewed as guidelines/high level estimates rather than as precise budgets. There are two reasons for this:

• 
  First, technology changes rapidly. Over the course of the five year horizon of this Strategic Technology Plan, new technologies will emerge that will be incorporated into DIIT’s plans. Their inclusion will change the budget requirements.
  

• 
  Second, the technologies described in this plan are at various stages of maturity, and the accuracy of the budget estimates reflects that. Some, like the technology plans proposed for security and wireless, reflect ongoing efforts that have already begun. Plans may change as new and better technologies appear, but the estimates provided for proposed changes are fairly accurate. Others, like the plans to incorporate cloud computing and centralized storage for student activities, are just being started at the NYCDOE, and our estimates will change over time.
  

1^ Text taken from article on IPv6 in Wikipedia.

2^ Source: Attachmate

3^ Source: Forester Research

4^ Source: http://digitalcitizenship.net, Digital Citizenship.

5^ Source: http://www.usaid.gov/policy/ads/500/d522022m.pdf, United States Department of Defense.

6^ Refer to section 6, Network Infrastructure.

7^ Refer to section 5, Data Center Services.

8^ Refer to section 6, Network Infrastructure.

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