The Simple Life
Posted by Blogger@ dsiiti.com on Fri, Mar 19, 2010 @ 02:00 PM
After a bit of a hiatus, I am finally starting back up with my blog. On tap for the next couple posts are certainly a few things about integration concerns and NIEM specification. But today, I want to take a look at a general topic that hits all of us in this highly technical world...simplicity!
A few months ago, I received the Roku (www.roku.com) device. If you haven’t heard of it, it is a device that connects to your TV and uses an internet connection to stream movies from Netflix, Amazon, or live out of market MLB games. I’m a fan of the Cleveland Indians, and since I live in central PA, I don't get to see them on TV very often.
This little device is pretty small and un-assuming (and being a tech guy I know what kind of work and technology needs to go in this thing) yet it’s quite impressive. However, what was more impressive to me was how it just works. Within 10 minutes of getting the thing out of the box, my son was streaming Thomas the Tank Engine and I was enjoying some piece and quiet!
I would love to get to the point where we can drop off an OMS system (or an OCS system) and have it up and running in 10 minutes. Unfortunately, this functionality is a long way off! Due to the fact that every correctional facility (that I've seen) operates its business processes and describes operations differently from one another, the implementation process often becomes long and complex. What is standing in our way, in this case, is the lack of standardization. The NIEM spec is looking to address some of this standardization, at least as far as system integration and data sharing are concerned however, the business processes is another matter. The NIEM spec also suffers from the lack of standardization and consistency within the corrections world because it makes the specification have to handle everything that anyone may try to use it for, greatly increasing the complexity factor.
Most of the time, facilities may not even be aware that they are doing things slightly differently than someone else. That’s why it is always interesting to be a fly on the wall at our annual User Group conference, where we get to hear individuals from different facilities talk to each other and compare notes. But until those notes are a shared on only one piece of paper, I’m afraid that the simplicity factor of the Roku isn’t coming to the deployment process just yet. But we can all dream, right?