Directory Self Assessment Tool

A. Data assessment

• What are the NOS directories on campus? How are they used? Where do they derive official data from? For what information are they the system of record?
• What are the central directories? How are they used? Which systems do they feed? How is the information maintained?
• What's the commonality of syntax and semantics among existing distributed and duplicated data?
• For each of the major institutional data elements, who can view? Who can change? Distinguish between affiliated and non-affiliated

B. Applications Assessment

• What applications are currently directory enabled?
• What upcoming applications can use directories?
• What are the high win, easier to do apps? (Email, white pages)

C. Constraint assessment

• How much intercampus interoperability is needed?
• What is the expertise of the staff?
• What are the legacy systems and how will they interact with the directory?
• Where will leadership and funding come from?

D. Political assessment

• Where will leadership come from? Where will capital come from? Who will operate?
• Who will manage the change process?
• How is university counsel involved?
• Is there a culture to permit effective delegation of data management? Are there clear default policies for managing people and resources? Is the culture of the institution top-down or bottom-up?

E. Design Issues

• Designing for data management vs designing for robustness and performance
• Peculiarities of name space in higher ed How to organize people? How to organize resources? How to reflect group policy options?
• What are the schema issues? How will multiple communities of interest be addressed?
• Use of metadirectories
• The Database behind the Directory
• Getting the apps to work