Componente Interpersonal

The first necessary step in a case study design is to determine the boundaries of the case (Yin 2008). The study described here examined the perceptions and relationships of recordkeeping stewards, particularly as they pertain to the traditionally defined functions and activities of records managers. Specifically, it looked at occupational group dynamics under conditions of recent technological change. Several boundary conditions define the cases explored. First, the particular technological change environment examined was the adoption of a cloud computing service in which one or more than one state-level agency participated. Second, the occupational groups were examined after the adoption had “gone live.”

Intergroup dynamics are in a constant state of flux in organizations (even virtual organizations), but the degree of fluctuation is particularly high during the early phases of technological implementations when requirements are not fully defined, technical bugs are still being reported relatively frequently and open bug reports typically present a higher degree of adverse impact to the organization, its employees, or society than those that occur later in the implementation process or after go-live. Likewise, explicit changes in roles and responsibilities also occur during the pre-go-live state and a period of testing and sometimes, trial-and-error process changes occur during the prototype and test phases. In order to reduce the impacts of these temporary changes, only organizations for which the cloud computing adoption had already gone live were included for selection. Still, it was desirable to capture adoptions that had not reached a firm sense of closure or completion for the interviewees in order to ensure that the perceptions of how the cloud implementation had changed (or were still changing) group dynamics would still be fresh in participants’ minds. As a result, only adoptions that had gone live no earlier than 2010 were included.

In order to identify the population of state-level cloud computing implementations available for study, I first examined the state website of all fifty states to determine which states had published cloud computing implementation information on their website. In addition, I performed a wide internet search of online journals and blogs using keywords “state,” “statewide,” “cloud computing” and “The Cloud.” Finally, I performed searches on several well-known computing journals, websites, and blogs that often discuss cloud computing technologies. In addition, I examined the implementations that were highlighted in former U.S. CIO Kundra’s State of Public Sector Cloud Computing (2010). Although

these latter cases were too old to meet the implementation date criterion for inclusion in the case studies, they sometimes led to additional sources for review.

In January, 2012, after identifying a wide variety of states in which statewide or local cloud computing implementations had occurred or appeared to be occurring, I re-examined the websites of all the states to update cloud implementation statistics. All local-only

implementations were removed from the list of potential cases, in order to reduce the number of potential confounding factors coming from the variety of fiscal, cultural, and political climate effects that separate state from Table 1

decision making. For the same reason, higher-education (i.e., university) implementations were removed, although implementations from states’ Departments of Education were included. From the articles and the state website searches, I was usually able to determine which of these implementations were still in process and which had gone live (and when). If it was not clear what stage a cloud implementation was in, I contacted agency personnel (as listed on the states’ websites) either by email or by telephone. As a result of this research, I determined that by February, 2012 thirty-nine states were either considering the implementation of a cloud service, in the Request for Proposal (RFP) stage, in the implementation stage, or had gone live. By early April, 2012 I had compiled a list of states involved in cloud computing implementations, along with the nature of the implementation, the specific agencies sponsoring the implementation, and the stage of the implementation. Of the implementations from these 39 states, 30 implementations fit the criteria of involving state agencies and of having gone live since 2010. They are shown in Table 3.

At this point, to validate my understanding gleaned from web-based accounts of these cases, I attempted to contact a wide variety of individuals from all of the states that

Table 3 - States That Meet the Selection Criteria

State Agency Implementation

CA Florida House of Representatives CES (California Email Services) Cloud-based email

consolidation via Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) of services offered to state agencies; involves email with legal eDiscovery capabilities. State agencies were given the option to use the cloud-based email or the state's in- house email. Although still ongoing, a number of agencies have already implemented the cloud-based service. CA Department of General Services (DGS)

Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH)

LogicBit's HoudiniESQ Legal practice management product and HoudiniESQ Right-to-Sue system. This system allows legal practice management, including workflow, document management, email, and calendaring capabilities.

CO Statewide Consolidating its 40 data centers into only three (6 have

currently been consolidated), forming a private state cloud.

CO Statewide Consolidated its email and collaboration into Google Apps

for Government. It will also consolidate the remaining 15 data centers into one single private cloud.

DE Department of Education; Department of Technology and Information (DTI) led a statewide implementation

Entire state adopted Microsoft Live@edu for email,

calendaring, and web apps. It provides Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Outlook, and a variety of Microsoft apps. DE Department of State/Division of Professional Regulation Cloud-based CRM product (i.e., "Constituent" Relationship

Management).

FL Southwood Shared Resource Center (SSRC) SSRC, the state's first primary data center, is moving to a private cloud, utility-based computing model. Many of the components have already gone live.

FL Florida House of Representatives Myfloridacensus.org is a statewide census data repository, with GIS data stored and accessibility via relational database on Microsoft Azure.

State Agency Implementation

FL All executive branch agencies and law enforcement Private cloud email archiving service via Xerox's ACS for all state email. In addition, the FBI's Criminal Justice

Information System (CJIS) law enforcement private cloud email went live in March. Thus far, the CIO's office has gone live, some questions remain about how many other agencies will go live, if any.

GA Statewide, managed by the Georgia Technology Authority Moved state agencies to a private government cloud with IBM and AT&T.

HI Hawaii State Public Library System Offers all public libraries (which are part of the State Library System) access through Lenovo's Secure Cloud Access.

ID Department of Labor Department email pilot went live using Microsoft Azure.

They are currently updating the infrastructure to move Office 365 to all email users in the state.

IL Partially funded by Department of Education; offered statewide; run & operated by IT staffers around the state

IlliniCloud: community infrastructure and cloud services offered to over 150 school districts by a non-profit

consortium; data warehouse and reporting capabilities; IaaS services for schools to run their information systems and curriculum applications. This also offers disaster recovery and storage services.

KS Statewide Statewide IT consolidation, offering a statewide private cloud

email solution for all agencies; two agencies already host their email in the Cloud.

KS Department of Wildlife and Parks Google Apps for Government.

KY Department of Education The Department began with a Microsoft Live@edu email,

communications and collaboration for all 174 school districts. In 2012, they upgraded to Microsoft 365.

KY Department of Education Financial Software Package for all 174 school districts

moving to the Cloud.

KY Department of Education Kentucky Student Information System (KSIS).

MD Statewide (Department of Information Technology) Cloud Messaging and Collaboration Services with Google Apps for Government.

MD Maryland Education Enterprise Consortium (MEEC) Google Apps for Education.

State Agency Implementation

MI MI Department of Technology, Management and Budget MiCloud provides storage and hosting services for agencies statewide, using a statewide private cloud infrastructure. MN Statewide; let by Office of Enterprise Technology State's Enterprise Unified Communications and

Collaborations services delivered through Microsoft 365.

NB Statewide Human capital management (through Workday &

Cornerstone). ND ND Information Technology Departments and K-12 School

Districts

PowerSchool student information system.

SC Department of Health and Environmental Control Google Apps for Government messaging and collaboration services.

SD Statewide Intermap's NEXTMap GIS service.

UT Department of Community and Culture CRM through Salesforce.com.

VA Virginia Information Technologies Agency Enterprise Application Development Platforms, offering a virtualized software development platform, using Amazon EC2 service.

WA Washington Sound Transit Microsoft 365 hosted email and collaboration.

WY Statewide Google Apps for Government Email and Collaboration.

appeared to be engaging in or considering cloud computing, after receiving approval from UNC Chapel Hill’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) in the form of an exemption under the category labeled “4.Existing data, public or deidentified, 2.Survey, interview, public

observation” cited under 45 CFR 46.101(b) of the Office for Protection from Research Risks (OPRR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

(http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/policy/exmpt-pb.html).

I contacted individuals both to assess the most appropriate implementations to include as case studies and to validate my understanding of the cloud computing implementations. In addition, I wanted to speak with individuals whose states did not necessarily meet the

requirements of inclusion as a case study but whose reports could provide comparative information to be used when analyzing the chosen cases. In other words, when questions regarding relations in cloud computing came up, I wanted a basis for comparing the perceptions of those individuals who were part of the case study with a more general population of individuals who were not part of the case study. Thus, I sent requests for participation to individuals at all of the original 39 states identified. I sent requests to the state archivists, to CIOs when this contact information could be discovered, to members of the IT groups involved in the cloud implementations when their contact information could be discovered, and to any specific individual that was listed on the state website as affiliated with the cloud implementation when their contact information could be discovered. In addition, I spoke with an individual at the National Association of State CIO’s to determine more about what is occurring within the various states and to gain information and

recommendations on further approaches to use to initiate contact with state employees. Although contact information could not be found for all state cloud implementations, I was

able to identify 69 individuals from: (i) a state professional organization involved in one of my cases, (ii) two independent contracting firms working directly on an implementation in one of my cases, and (iii) the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which is an integral partner in the case involving a shared services cloud implementation. The list of states or districts from which I was able to garner interviews is given below. Those states that were chosen as case study subjects are emphasized via underlining and bold font.

• Florida • Georgia • Kansas • Kentucky • Minnesota • Nebraska • New Jersey

• North Carolina/Washington, D.C./Independent Consultants

• South Carolina

• Wyoming

To request interviews I sent an email letter to all potential interviewees requesting participation in my study, as well as a “Consent to Participate” form. The template of the letter of request is provided in Appendix D and the Consent to Participate form is provided in Appendix E. After obtaining consent, I scheduled telephone interviews with the participants. Typically I called the interviewees at their offices, although on a few occasions they called me. The interviews were recorded and the audio transcripts were saved to a password protected folder.

Between April and July, 2012 I conducted 25 interviews. I conducted a follow-up interview with a new participant (on the basis of a later recommendation made by a previous interviewee) in early February, 2013 to gain some crucial missing information on a project, two conversations with a new participant in April, 2013 and another new one in June, 2013. I also conducted a follow-up conversation requested by one of my earlier interviewees when new information became available at his implementation site. In total, I conducted 38 telephone interviews throughout the project. Of these, 29 were with participants that represented the implementations included in the case studies. During the course of each interview, I used snowball techniques to elicit other potential interviewees from the current interviewee, based upon the current interviewee’s belief that the referred individual could help me understand a variety of aspects and points-of-view associated with the cloud implementation. In addition, I engaged in follow-up email queries to the original

interviewees, resulting in twenty-one email “conversations” (i.e., twenty-one threads, not counting the back and forth responses on both sides) in July and August, 2012. Finally, as a result of interest in the project, some of the original interviewees spontaneously sent me further documentation on the project or about their roles and responsibilities within the project and organization. This occurred on thirteen separate occasions between July and October, 2012.

Those interviewed represented a wide variety of occupational groups, including: State Archivist, Archivist, Records Manager, Data Practices Liaison, Compliance Official, Chief Technology Officer, CIO, Senior Director, Director, Manager of IT, Data Architect,

Epidemiologist/MD, Program Director, Independent Consultant, Implementation Director, Collections Assistant, Senior Policy Analyst, and Program Director. Backgrounds and

training included records management and/or archives, law, computer science and/or IT, and medicine.