InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
August 9, 1999
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Only larger extranet deployments will require policy-based management, according to industry analysts. "If your extranet is small, you can manage it on a sort of ad hoc basis," Rutstein says. "But when you have thousands of users, you can't do that anymore."
The state of New Jersey has to deal with tens of thousands of users as it builds its extranet. In phase one, the state set up a centralized list of state agencies, such as the Department of Human Services, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Health and Senior Services, and contracted agencies, such as United Way of America and Catholic Charities USA, as well as case workers, administrators, and other employees at each organization.
There is no central repository of personnel information for the 40,000 to 50,000 employees working in various state departments. Names, job titles, locations, phone extensions, E-mail addresses, and other data are stored in directories managed by the IT staff at each department. The E-mail addresses are stored in the directories that ship with messaging platforms, while security information is stored in other directories in the network.
For example, the Department of Health manages one set of directories that contains security information that lets users access servers behind their firewall, while the Department of Human Services manages its own set of directories. These directories are typically off-limits to personnel outside the particular department that maintains them, and there's no standard type of directory used by all the different departments.
The result is somewhat chaotic, according to Johnson, who says employees of different departments have no way of finding E-mail addresses of colleagues who work in other departments. There is also no way to determine when a particular employee has changed job functions, moved to another department, or left the organization.
Johnson's plan is to have a centralized directory of "white pages" that all employees--and extranet partners--can access to determine who works where and does what.
Stored in a Netscape directory server in the state's data center, the individual entries on this list--which will eventually number in the tens of thousands--can be modified by extranet partners using a Web browser interface developed by Oblix Inc. Only certain employees will have rights to modify directory entries, Johnson says. "You don't want just anybody to get in there and change the name of the executive director."
That's why Johnson has established a policy that lets users modify only their own directory entries; human-resources agents will be able to modify a wider range of entries relating to the names, job titles, phone numbers, responsibilities, and other information on employees at their particular agencies.
For example, a company might give a particular supplier access to 30 systems, such as inventory supply and factory production. If that supplier loses the contract and is replaced, a business manager at the company operating the extranet would have to make just a few changes to the directory to provide the new supplier with all the rights necessary to access the 30 systems. Without policies that automatically implement these changes, IT staff would have to manually set access rights for each system every time the supplier changes. "The idea is that the role of supplier is the same no matter whether it is company X or company Y that is playing it," Rutstein says.
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