Strategic IT Workshop

Strategic IT Workshop - Minutes April 2003

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) hosted an Information Technology (IT) workshop at the IMF headquarters in Washington, D.C. on April 24 and April 25, 2003. Participants included George Brookings, Alain Coune, Michael Handelman, Patrick Hinderdael, Tom Howard, John Johnson, Adolf Limarzi, Robert Russell, and Brian Stuart (IMF); Guido Maccari, Ian Hunter, and Lester Rodriques (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development); Rakesh Asthana, Hinda Kada, and Le Anh Vu (World Bank Group); and Luiz Enriquez, Richard Herring, Bernal Jimenez, David Ryan, and Erico Silva (Inter-American Development Bank).

The purpose of the workshop was for the various organizations to share insights, experiences, and strategies, and engage colleagues in discussions of shared concerns.

The main topics for discussion were as follows:  Key strategic IT issues;  Performance measurements, benchmarks, and indicators;  IT Governance;  Strategies, architecture, and business cases for portals, content management, and the x-nets; and  Infrastructure key issues: storage, configuration management, remote access, and IP/PBX.

Key Strategic IT Issues In opening the discussion, Mr. Stuart (IMF) said that the current IT budget situation in the IMF was adequate, but conservative. While the capital budget covered most well- articulated projects for the period ahead, a decline in budgetary support could be expected over the next year or two as major enhancements to current IT systems were put into production.

The Executive Board of the IMF was increasingly vigilant about the need to demonstrate the value of IT investments, which called for cost/benefit analyses for all new projects. This kind of analysis was nearly impossible for IT systems that supported overall staff productivity—a factor that was difficult to quantify in knowledge-based organizations. While the IMF had several examples of successful projects that had been sponsored by user departments as business projects, rather than IT projects, in the past, it would be difficult to replicate such cost/benefit analyses on a cross-departmental, organization- wide basis.

The IMF was trying to develop systems for measuring the efficiency of IT. Toward that end, it was developing a number of performance indicators that could be used as management tools. It was also considering taking a balanced scorecard approach for measuring the implementation of its strategic IT program.

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He wondered what budgetary environment characterized other intergovernmental organizations and how they were measuring the value of IT projects.

Although the IMF had taken a strategic approach to IT investments, it had had a tendency to segment information in the past. It was now working on the development of information architecture for the institution as whole. This entailed looking at the information used and generated by the organization in an abstract way in order to identify operations—categorizing, metadata tagging, storing, accessing, searching, and securing— that could be applied to information across a range of applications. The IMF was also looking at the relationships between information and key work processes (along the lines of the enterprise architecture framework mandated for U.S. federal government agencies). Once the information architecture was put in place, it would be important to establish a governance model that could ensure that the framework was implemented and adhered to over time.

He wondered whether other intergovernmental organizations were looking at information management in similar ways and what value they saw in the enterprise architecture framework. He also wondered what governance structures were in place in other organizations and the extent to which they were effective in implementing information systems.

The IMF was currently conducting a pilot of a Plumtree portal with a small group of country desk economists to provide ready access to key information. The size of the pilot was expected to increase gradually as its value was demonstrated and the technology could be rolled out to larger numbers of staff. In addition to improving access to information, the IMF hoped that the development and implementation of the portal would provided greater insight into the information needs of its staff and that the portal would highlight redundancies, inconsistencies, and other problems among various information stores currently in the IMF.

He wondered whether other organizations were deploying portal technologies and how they had approached the development and implementation of those systems. Had they begun by focusing on communities of interest or taken an organization-wide approach?

One of the major challenges currently facing the IMF was the need to ensure the reliability of remote access to the IMF network by staff members working in the field or at home. This problem was a particular cause for concern among staff in small overseas offices and travelers who did not have access to high-speed Internet connections. The Fund was currently using Outlook Exchange, which did not provide the same quality of support as other systems for remote access in terms of data compression and synchronization. Also the need to have in place multiple access methods and technologies for different types of users made managing the system difficult. The need to address issues related to remote access was critical, given the important role of home computing in IMF disaster recovery and business continuity plans. 3

He wondered whether other intergovernmental had faced similar problems with remote access had how they had addressed those problems.

While one-third of the IT staff in the IMF were “regular” staff members, approximately two-thirds were from external vendor companies.1 The IMF was currently consolidating the number of vendor companies it worked with from about 35 to 3, covering approximately 200 employees. These “external” staff members were hired on a “time and materials” basis and managed by on-site vendor company supervisors. In the period ahead, the IMF planned to explore the advantages of moving to a performance-based outsourcing arrangement for its help desk and other first-tier IT support. This would cover an additional 80 to 100 positions managed by two vendor companies.

He wondered whether participants could comment on the outsourcing trends in their organizations. What kinds of IT functions were being outsourced and was this being done on a “time and materials” or performance basis? In this respect, which arrangements had worked well and which had not?

Mr. Brookings (IMF) commented that one of the greatest challenges in steering IT investments was the rate at which changes were taking place in the IT marketplace. Some described the current environment of IT strategic thinking as “trying to change a tire while the car is in motion.” He wondered how other organizations were reconciling the need for fixed planning with the radically changing IT market.

Mr. Maccari (OECD)2 said that he agreed with Mr. Brookings about the challenges presented by dynamic changes in the IT marketplace. It was nearly impossible to gain a full understanding of growing technologies and put in place strategic plans in an environment where critical IT systems had to be maintained and fully operational 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In that respect, it was important to bear in mind that technologies represented only the “tools” needed for knowledge-based organizations, like the IMF and the OECD, to achieve their goals. Thus, it was critical to find ways to work closely with senior managers and operational staff to ensure that IT development was closely aligned with business goals. For intergovernmental organizations, it was also important to take into account the needs of the ultimate “end users,” namely member country governments, in the design of IT systems.

The OECD was faced with demands for higher productivity against a backdrop of increasing budget constraints. The IT budget, in particular, had been cut an average of 5 percent a year over the most recent period. In this environment, technology and process reforms had to be closely linked with productivity improvements. At the same time, member country governments were looking to intergovernmental agencies, like the OECD and the IMF, to create a model for transparency and information management. In the circumstances, it would be important for senior management to take a more decisive role in setting the overall vision for the organization and in defining the role of IT in meeting business goals.

1 See attached slides from Mr. Stuart’s presentation to participants. 2 See attached slides from Mr. Maccari’s presentation to participants. 4

At the OECD, demands for enhancements to the IT and information management systems typically exceeded expected budgetary resources by at least 50 percent. Therefore, all projects were presented to the Board of Directors for Computers and Communications Technology Strategy for review. This Board assigns the relative priority of various IT initiatives as the basis for the final preparation of the IT budget.

Mobility was a major issue for the OECD, which had a fundamental need to keep its staff linked, informed, and “in touch” in the face of growing geographic dispersion and a mobile Secretariat. At present, the OECD was conducting hundreds of projects offsite each year and numerous meetings took place away from headquarters. This emphasized the need for stronger communications systems, like video teleconferencing, to keep people informed and able to conduct their work literally on an “any time, anywhere” basis. The need for continuous linkages with member countries was also critical, as 30,000 to 50,000 representatives of governments, businesses, and social groups interacted with the OECD each year, and its analysts were called on to provide information and advice to governments every day. In that respect, the OECD had truly entered the “electronic age.”

For the OECD and other cooperative international institutions, it would be important to foster closer contacts among member countries and provide the means for continuous communications, so that country representatives could regularly discuss issues that move beyond national boundaries.

There was also a need to reform statistical processes throughout the OECD and its member states in order to harmonize statistical information and make it accessible on a more timely basis.

Given the number of joint operations the OECD conducted with other intergovernmental organizations, like the IMF and the World Bank Group, it would be mutually beneficial to develop better inter-agency information sharing systems. Toward that end, the organizations could consider the establishment of a common portal or computer network to facilitate information sharing on specific operations, Executive Board agendas, and other topics of mutual interest.

With respect to internal IT systems, managers and staff increasingly expected to be able to “search” for information within their organizations they way they would search the Internet. Therefore, one of the primary goals of information architecture should be to make it easy for staff members to find information and conduct transactions through the Internet, especially for human resources transactions, administrative systems, institutional documents, budget issues, and financial and statistical work. This required not only better “search” capabilities, but also better corporate structures for preparing, storing, and retrieving information.

Given the pervasive role of information security in the organization, there was a need to create a “security” culture that would promote information sharing, while preserving appropriate confidentiality throughout the institution and its member governments. 5

The OECD had recently reorganized its IT functions. At present 75 percent of its IT staff were “regular” staff members, while 25 percent were contractual. Following an outsourcing study in 2001, the OECD had carried out a selective outsourcing of telephony and software development functions. While it had found that the one-off costs of outsourcing entire IT operations could be very high and entail losses in service continuity and core skills and competencies, it would continue to examine the possibilities for achieving cost savings through the outsourcing of specific activities in the period ahead.

In attaining IT goals, it would be helpful for the intergovernmental organizations to work together to establish best practices and create corporate systems that met the needs of each institution. Toward that end, it might be helpful to ask the Gartner Group or another external consultant to conduct a benchmarking study among the international financial institutions.

Mr. Asthana (World Bank Group)3 said that IT governance in the Bank had benefited from the active involvement of senior management, which had brought clear direction to IT planning and close alignment with the business strategy of the organization. Every initiative in the Bank had to be supported by a tangible business case in order to get funding. IT strategic planning in the Bank was governed by the Information Policy Council, which was chaired by a Managing Director and included business consultations with a variety of groups, including the Business Sponsors Group, the Finance Technical Steering Committee, and the IT Services Board, among others.

The World Bank had just completed a five-point IT program, which had been implemented in the period 1996-2002. Under that program, it had moved to a single “24x7” global support desk, standard enterprise-wide computing services, high-speed global communication services, and integrated enterprise information systems (including for human resources transactions, payroll, budgeting, and accounting). The Bank had also put in place a knowledge management system comprising a Statistical Information Management System (SIMA), an electronic document management system with over 40,000 Bank staff reports on line, live databases, and improvements in its libraries.

The increasing delegation of decision making responsibilities to staff in field offices had necessitated the creation of reliable centralized IT systems. While the World Bank Group had 6000 staff at its headquarters in Washington, D.C., it had another 4000 staff members assigned to field offices around the world. Thus, a global IT network was essential to ensure a high quality of work and decision-making.

Over the period 2002-06, the Bank would put in place another five point plan, focused on the following main areas:

 IT performance management  Decentralized global operations  Risk management

3 See attached slides from Mr. Asthana’s presentation to participants. 6

 Internal simplification, and  E-business partnerships.

In the past, the Bank’s IT systems had been inward looking to bolster information sharing and productivity within the organization. The Bank was now moving toward more client- focused systems to provide clients with a “one-stop shop” for services and information related to Bank operations. This would improve the Bank’s partnerships with individual member countries and increase institutional transparency. In the creation of new extranet systems and E-portals, the Bank would continue to rely on Netegrity and the use of smart card, SecureID systems, especially for Web-based transactions.

The creation of the Executive Directors’ portal within the Bank had been driven by information security policies to enable Directors to access all the information they are authorized to view through the Web. Indeed, the portal within the Bank determines individual access rights (based on the function of the individual) upon login.

In a similar vein, the Client Connection Portal, which will run through the Extranet, will identify users’ access rights on login. This portal will give users immediate access to individual projects and status reports, including loan disbursements, repayments, and procurement bids. A pilot of that portal would be launched in early May 2003.

As part of the IT planning process, the Bank had adopted a regular cycle of “bulldozing.” Under that process, all computing equipment in the Bank was upgraded at once every four years.

With respect to IT staffing, the Bank had an offshore IT development center in Chennai, India. As that offshore center was networked to the World Bank via fiber optic cable, there was no significant security risk. The Bank estimated that the offshore approach to sourcing realized savings of approximately 40-50 percent.

Mr. Herring (IDB) said that, although senior managers at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) were visionary about development issues in Latin America, they were not actively engaged in IT development. Technologies were generally seen in the IDB as critical tools needed to support operational work.

One way the IDB had garnered support for its IT development program was by demonstrating the value of technologies to its Board of Executive Directors. To support the work of the Board, the IDB had created a portal for Executive Directors that provided immediate access to Board agendas, IDB documents, and the translation request system. Directors were also able to communicate with government representatives of member countries on a real-time basis through an Extranet.

Given current budget constraints at the IDB, a thorough cost/benefit analysis was required for every IT project. While these analyses were generally successful in securing the needed funding from the capital budget to put new IT systems in place, the IDB often 7 had difficulty securing resources from the administrative budget to support and maintain systems over time.

With respect to remote access, the greatest challenge for the IDB had been bandwidth differences among its member countries. Regardless of the remote access system in place at headquarters, individual users were dependent on the IT environment in the area where they were accessing the Internet.

Mr. Silva (IDB)4 said that the IDB was in the third year of an institutional plan aimed at accomplishing the following objectives:

 Eliminate use of mainframe systems by moving to UNIX and Oracle;  Redesign Internet Web site, and enhance Extranet portals,  Expand portal communities of interest,  Establish single sign-on capabilities through the portal, and  Move toward Bank-wide use of the electronic documents management system (Hummingbird).

The overall information management strategy was to provide all institutional documents and information to stakeholders, including staff at headquarters and in the field and member country representatives through the Internet and Intranet. In that respect, the move to the use of the documents management system throughout the Bank was an important part of the IDB business continuity plan.

The IDB faced serious challenges in the creation of its IT systems for financial arrangements and transactions, owing to the use of various currencies throughout the IDB region. It currently used Lawson + Hyperion for core financials; GSM->Summit for investments; OPICS for borrowings; Fastwire->SWIFT for money transfers; and in-house systems for cash management, projects, and loans. The IDB had also developed in-house systems for tracking and monitoring travel expenses and events management.

With respect to IT governance, the IDB had recently created a central IT department, which included a management function and two divisions. The IT Committee in the IDB was chaired by the Vice President for Administration. At present, the IT staff consisted of “regular” staff members, consultants, and contractual employees. In the period ahead, the IDB hoped to create a Bank-wide career stream for IT professionals and reduce the number of consulting firms that supplied contractual employees.

While approximately 70 percent of the IDB staff was located at its headquarters in Washington, D.C., it had several country offices. The need for constant communications between those staff members and headquarters as well as the need for continuous contact with member countries made the use of the portal a critical component of the Bank’s operations.

4 See attached slides from Mr. Silva’s presentation to participants. 8

Performance measurements, benchmarks, and indicators

Participants from the IMF noted that a recent benchmarking study by the Gartner Group suggested that the overall cost of IT operations at the IMF was high by industry standards, but that the level of quality was also very high. From that information alone, it was difficult to draw firm conclusions about the efficiency of IT operations or their relative value to the organization. It would be useful to know how other organizations assessed the value of IT operations. What performance measurements, indicators, and criteria were other intergovernmental organizations using to assess the appropriateness of IT investment in their organizations?

Participants from the World Bank Group said that the Bank used a balanced scorecard approach to measure IT inputs and outputs. However, it was difficult to measure outcomes. There are really three layers involved in planning and assessing IT spending, as follows:

Tier 1—IT investment strategy (currently 11-12 percent of overall capital spending)

Tier 2—Business application (how IT systems are aligned with objectives; how they contribute to realizing savings, avoiding costs, and accomplishing objectives)

Tier 3—Services (quality and efficiency of IT services).

While the Bank used standardized data from the Gartner Group to benchmark the level of IT services, it was extremely difficult to assess the IT investment strategy and business application against other organizations. Indeed, benchmarking in the area of IT was extremely difficult to do across institutions, owing to differences in organizational culture and IT environments. For example, IT costs vary significantly according to where an institution is on the IT planning and implementation cycle. Also, organizations took different approaches to costing IT systems depending on the extent to which IT systems were centralized or costed among various work units.

In the World Bank, the development, implementation and support of organization-wide IT systems was costed under the capital and administrative budgets. However, the Bank also took a “bundled” approach to charge backs for IT services. Under that approach, individual departmental budget were charged for a bundle of “basic services,” such as personal computers, help desk support, and e-mail accounts. Departmental budgets were also charged for a bundle of “optional” services, like cellular telephones.

Participants from the OECD said that they agreed with representatives from the IMF and the World Bank Group about the difficulties involved in conducted cost/benefit analyses of IT systems.

While IT investment represented approximately 6.6 percent of overall capital spending at the OECD, it did not include charge backs to individual departments. In this respect, the OECD differed from the World Bank to the extent that “basic” IT services were included 9 in the central IT budget. However, “optional” services were charged to departmental budgets.

The role of the Gartner Group as a consulting firm could represent a conflict of interest in presenting fully reliable and objective benchmarking data. Moreover, the databases compiled by the Gartner Group covered an array of enterprises, including private sector companies and government agencies. Given their unique role in the world community and individual characteristics, it would be useful for the international financial institutions to work together to conduct benchmarking studies and present their findings to management. In that context, it would be useful not only to present benchmarking results for Tier 1 and Tier 3, but also to identify best practices in IT planning for business applications.

Participants from the IDB said that conducting cost/benefit analyses in the IT area was extremely difficult, because many of the benefits of technology were intangible. For example, how does one compare the cost of e-mail with that of postage, or allocate that cost among work units? To the extent that IT was used primarily to support operational work, much of its real value depended on how it was used. Also, the implementation of new technologies frequently entailed an adoption period, which understated its real value in the early stages of usage.

At the IDB, IT investments represented roughly 8.5-9 percent of overall capital spending. While the IDB did not have a formal “chargeback” system in place, individual departments paid for individual components, like personal computers. This decentralization was problematic, because it resulted in an uneven distribution of IT services throughout the organization. The “bulldozing” system used by the World Bank had the advantage of ensuring a standard IT environment for the organization as a whole.

Participants from the IMF noted that the International Finance Corporation (IFC) had recently hosted a benchmarking exercise among 13 international organizations. That study had been very helpful, but it was difficult to conduct benchmarking exercises, for the reasons cited by the World Bank. In particular, there was a need to carefully define every variable used in order to ensure that the data was fully comparable across institutions. Indeed, the recent study of IT services in the Fund conducted by the Gartner Group had proved to be very labor intensive for the IT staff, owing to the need to provide a great deal of very detailed information under tight time constraints.

Setting these difficulties aside, benchmarking for IT services, especially at the level of Tier 3, could help to identify areas where savings could be realized and reallocated to Tiers 1 and 2.

There was also a need to move beyond benchmarking to examine why and how organizations differed. In that respect, it might be useful to take the World Bank approach by benchmarking for Tiers 1 and 3 and then focusing on Tier 2 in coming to final assessments about the extent to which overall IT spending is appropriate for an individual organization. 10

The international financial institutions could ask the Gartner Group to assist in identifying criteria to be used in assessing the overall value of IT investments and ways to make comparisons among organizations over time.

Participants from the IDB said that they would support asking the International Finance Corporation to host another benchmarking exercise among intergovernmental organizations.

Participants from the World Bank Group said that they could support a study hosted by the IFC. However, it was important to consider how the results of such a benchmarking study would be used. For example, if the purpose of the exercise was to facilitate peer review among the IT functions of various organizations, an informal study hosted by the IFC would suffice. However, if the results of the study were to be shared with others, such as senior managers or stakeholders, a study by the Gartner Group would provide more objective data covering a broader spectrum of enterprises.

IT Governance

Following a brief discussion on IT governance, participants noted that the IT governance structures in the IDB, IMF, OECD, and World Bank Group were strikingly similar.5 The differences among organizations resided primarily in the degree of involvement of senior managers and department heads in the IT planning process. In that respect, the World Bank Group had benefited from higher levels of engagement. This had enabled it to carefully align IT strategies with overall business objectives.

Strategies, architecture, and business cases for portals, content management, and the x-nets

Participants from the IDB said that they had spent a year planning, designing, and selecting software for the creation for the IDB portal. The "My IBD" portal included an internal portal and two extranets for offsite meetings and for countries. The portal provided representatives from member governments direct access to the IDB loan information system.

From the portal homepage, users could access their Outlook mailboxes, classified ads within the organization, forms, and the credit union. They also had access to the applications used most in the organization, reports on county loans, and institutional documents.

For security purposes, the portal was set to “time out” if no activity took place for a few minutes.

5 See attachments on IT governance structure in the IMF and World Bank Group. 11

The Secretariat portion of the portal included the schedule of Board of Executive Directors meetings, agenda, and links to documents. This functionality had replaced the distribution of hardcopy Board documents.

The IDB was currently examining the use of Lawson to create a single sign-on system, so that users would not have to pass through different levels of authentication as they used various applications. In creating the portal, the IDB did not replace the previous Intranet. Rather, it had incorporated all previous Intranet sites, including departmental pages, into the portal.

In designing the portal, the IDB had asked users what information they needed or wanted to be included. In that respect, the business of the Bank had driven the development of the portal.

Usage of the portal varied within the IDB. While some staff members used the portal as their desktop, others were still going to individual applications separately. The IDB was closely monitoring usage statistics to gain a better understanding of users’ information needs.

The IDB had also created an Extranet for Annual Meetings. When individuals registered to attend the Annual Meeting, they were given a user name and password. This authentication gave them access to documents and information as well as an e-mail system for those attending the meeting. Users were able to toggle between English and Spanish versions of the Extranet.

The IDB was currently testing Site Executive for use as a content management system. It was also looking into various techniques that could be used to make it easier for content providers to publish information to the Intranet and portal.

At present the authentication process was carried out through the portal, using Active Directory. However, access to information was determined by individual applications. The IDB would like to move to a single sign on system that would synchronize authentication procedures in a way that would enable the portal to convey individual access rights across applications. It was to be hoped that access rights would become less of an issue as the organization moved toward greater transparency over time.

The IMF portal was really in its infancy. Given the need to demonstrate business value before deploying the technology organization-wide, the IMF was starting with a pilot program focused on desk economists. For this purpose, the IMF had established a Desk Economist Advisory Group to identify the specific sources of information used in their work with member countries. This served as the foundation for the current portal, which provided pilot participants with ready access to their Outlook calendars and e-mail and IMF documents. The portal enabled Economists to search across IMF repositories without having to login to the electronic documents management system. 12

In the next stage of the portal’s development, the IMF would create specific country pages for each member country that would include access to the Joint Bank-Fund Library and the schedule of Executive Board meetings as well as other information sources.

The IMF was also creating a portal that would incorporate human resources and financial applications.

The IMF expected the functionality of the portal to grow with demand over the period ahead. For example, as the portal was rolled out to senior staff with responsibilities for multiple countries, there would likely be a need to create regional or summary views.

In the future, the IMF would examine the possibilities for putting in place collaborative tools for mission teams.

The need to establish information architecture was a pressing issue for the IMF, given the need to be able to compile information across a number of applications and databases. IMF participants wondered what other organizations were doing in that area.

Given the pace of changes in the current IT marketplace, the selection of software and IT systems providers was also an important issue. In the current circumstances, there was a temptation to make these selections based on companies’ relative strength in the market, rather than on the quality of services provided.

Participants form the World Bank Group said that the present portal at the Bank drew on existing databases. In that respect, the portal could be seen as a dashboard that provided users with immediate access to information on projects. In addition to information on the current status of a given Bank project, users could also access information on similar projects carried out in other countries and on the people who worked on them.

In the next phase of development, the Bank portal would become more process oriented, including through an expansion of collaboration tools.

As a stepping-stone for the creation of an institution-wide content management system, the Bank had compiled a thesaurus to be used in cataloguing information. The Bank was applying the thesaurus and a content extractor to pull data, by keywords, from individual documents and databases. While the content was already in the Bank’s information systems, this methodology was helpful in determining what information was relevant to a given area.

In the future, the Bank would put in place an integrated suite of tools for collaboration, security, and content management.

World Bank Group participants agreed with the IMF that it was not possible to avoid risk in the selection of IT providers in the current environment. For software and systems applications that are mission critical, institutions should pick the “best of breed.” 13

Participants from the OECD noted that the OECD had adopted a Vignette content management system in 2000. Given the decentralized nature of Web publishing in the Secretariat, which included 300 Web editors posting information to the OECD Web site, it was important to have in place a standardized system for categorizing and meta-tagging information. Work was underway to include the metadata of published statistics in the federated search service (for documents and publications), initially on the Intranet and Extranet (OLISnet) and eventually on the OECD Web site.

The present Extranet portal environment provided clients in national administrations with full search capability for Committee documents as well as the ability to conduct federated searches across documents and OECD Publications. The portal provided also electronic discussion groups for committees that were used to prepare for upcoming meetings and to interact between meetings. However, it was found that the success of such groups depended highly on the quality of moderating - a time consuming albeit important task in order to keep the discussion alive and under control.

The OECD has developed a comprehensive and integrated event management system for committee delegates, permanent delegations and the secretariat to plan, schedule, register and follow in real-time all aspects - agendas, locations, participants, reports, documents, etc., of all official meetings, conferences and other important events. A secure extranet allows delegates and delegations to have direct access to the system from their offices in capitals and permanent delegations in Paris. The four main components of the system are: calendar of events; conference room management; delegate registration; and the corporate contact management system. The IDB and IMF have projects underway for similar systems and are interested in cooperating with the OECD in this area.

Participants from the OECD agreed with the IMF and the World Bank about the difficulties involved in selecting IT applications and systems providers. It might be useful for the international financial institutions to share information and experience in this work. Indeed, this might enable them not only to consolidate internal resources devoted to the selection process, but also gain leverage in negotiations with individual companies.

Participants from the IDB agreed with others that the international financial institutions should share information and experience with respect to individual IT service providers. The IDB and the IMF had recently worked together successfully on the implementation of PeopleSoft in their institutions.

Infrastructure key issues: storage, configuration management, remote access, and IP/PBX

IMF6 participants said that remote access was a key area of concern for the IMF. The present configuration for remote access, which was founded on the use of Outlook Exchange and Windows terminal servers and involved a complex variety of tools, was not sufficiently user friendly. The IMF was putting in place an initiative to examine current problems with the system. Based on responses to a questionnaire the IMF had

6 See attached 14 recently sent to other international organizations, it seemed that other organizations working with Outlook Exchange environments were facing similar problems to those experienced by the IMF.

As the problems were particularly pronounced in countries with weaker IT infrastructures, the IMF had put in place special arrangements in some of its country offices to provide high-speed connections. The Fund currently had 90 ISP agreements in place. SITA was its major service provider, covering about 40 overseas offices.

While many IMF staff members, including those using home computers, had obtained DSL lines, this gave rise to configuration problems in some cases as well as security concerns, especially for viruses. For that reason, the IMF was encouraging users with high-speed connections to put in place their own firewalls. The IMF provided its staff members with CDs containing standard office applications as well as programs to establish connections with the IMF terminal server through Citrix. Users had to authenticate each time they logged into the system using a user ID, a password, and a SecureID.

Staff members who traveled on official business were equipped with laptop computers, generally through a DPM at the desktop. These laptop computers had stand-alone access to all standard IMF office applications as well as the systems needed to login to the Fund’s virtual private network environment.

Staff members could also access their Outlook e-mail accounts through Cyber Café via any Internet Browser, using a Secure ID card. While this system enabled staff members to read their e-mail messages, they could not access attachments stored on the IMF network.

The IMF had an Extranet in place to provide Executive Directors the ability to share documents and other information with member country representatives on a real-time basis.

The IMF had put PBX in place at the Concordia Apartments in Washington, D.C., which was used primarily to accommodate representatives from member countries participating in the activities of the IMF Institute. It was considering also using PBX for the headquarters 2 building to be completed in 2005.

Data storage requirements were also becoming a challenge for the IMF, as its staff members increasingly wished to retain data in Outlook mailboxes. At present, the Outlook mailboxes were set to hold information for a maximum of 90 days.

Participants from the OECD said that the OECD had the same configuration for remote access as the IMF. It had recently migrated to a Windows XP environment that incorporated SITA dial-up capacity. The DPM laptops used for remote access during travel included the full suite of OECD office applications as well as information, including a user’s guide, for remote computing on the desktop. 15

Although the OECD staff traveled primarily within Europe, where high-speed connections were readily available, the OECD had found it difficult to manage user expectations. It seems most users expect to have the same level of service via remote access that they enjoy in the office.

Participants from the IDB said that the IDB was currently conducting a pilot program on the use of PBX. Although that program included only 30 users, it had been very successful thus far. The IDB planned to establish wireless access for its country offices in the near future.

In the IDB, each user is allotted 32 megabytes of storage capacity for e-mail, although individuals can store files to local drives.

Participants from the World Bank Group said that Bank staff members had 200-400 megabytes of on-line storage capacity for their e-mail systems. The Bank, which uses Lotus Notes for e-mail, had developed an in-house system that conducted automatic archiving of mail boxes. That system m would transfer data from the e-mail system to individual CDs when a staff member’s storage space was exhausted. The CD was given to the staff member concerned, so he or she could save the information to the desktop.

The World Bank Group provided one-on-one briefings on remote computing to its staff members before they went on official travel. These briefings had been incorporated as part of the normal “mission check out” system. Through the SAP, travel requests were automatically fed into the mission check out request system.

Given the wide variations among countries in terms of telecommunications and IT infrastructure, it might be useful for the international financial institutions to share connections within countries.

Participants from the IMF said that they agreed with participants from the World Bank Group. Indeed, the IMF was currently benefiting from the use of a World Bank link in Vietnam.

Participants were asked to exchange information on the locations of their organizations’ overseas offices and the services available at those sites to facilitate sharing arrangements for IT services in the field.