Cultivating innovation to ignite organizational transformation
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Authors
Yu, Warren
Subjects
Advisors
Frew, Barry
Courtney, Dale
Date of Issue
2006-03
Date
Publisher
Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School
Language
Abstract
Having graduated from the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in 1998, I found
myself reassigned there two years later only to watch the same frustrating cycle of
inefficiency and ineffectiveness. Classes were still being manually scheduled using 3x5
cards, the results transferred into a 1970’s mainframe for printout on 15 inch-wide
computer paper, and then distributed by hand. Incoming US and international families
from any of 50 countries found it difficult to locate timely orientation information.
Students, faculty and staff did not have a convenient, consistent method of finding
people, places or things on campus. The school’s intranet was littered with outdated,
irrelevant information. And the crews of 300 warships, positioned worldwide, were
hungry for 24/7 distance learning programs. Bureaucracy, fiscal pressure, excruciating
oversight, and declining enrollment stifled the school’s prospects. A group of us in the technology department launched the school’s first Web
Operations Group and I modeled NPS’s new website after Monterey’s weekly open-air
farmer’s market. I harvested three conclusions: 1) Like the fresh produce sold every
Tuesday afternoon, no one wants information that is beyond a week old; 2) The
marketplace provides a secure, convenient, consistent forum in which to transact business
as well as ideas; 3) The stalls with better marketing and more relevant produce or
services garnered more business. I started attending NPS bi-weekly leadership meetings
and asking lots of questions. With no budget, I taught myself how to use web-authoring
tools, studied the government Web edicts, and leveraged my server privileges to help
stakeholders communicate ideas, collaborate on research projects and partner with NPS.
After collecting survey data, I pitched the final concept to school leadership, crafted the
new website over Christmas break, and went live six weeks later. As a result some report processing was reduced from two days to two minutes,
information resources were doubled, data clutter was reduced by 96%. The redesigned
website now loaded in a third of the time and a simple, ubiquitous search tool helped
people locate campus resources instantly.
Type
Thesis
Description
Series/Report No
Department
Information Sciences (IS)
Organization
Naval Postgraduate School
Identifiers
NPS Report Number
Sponsors
Funder
Format
xii, 81 p. ;
Citation
Distribution Statement
Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.