If you’ll bear with me, I may have a rather novel use for a Content Management System.

I had a question from someone recently:  “What is a Content Management System?” (CMS).  Great question -  further, what can a CMS become?

I was presenting a rather high-level view of The Business-Technology Weave, so I mentioned briefly that a Content Management System enables the efficient control and use of information in the organization:  setting triggers for archive, destruct, filing… sometimes just the removal of data from the “active environment” to preclude a glut of information.

It’s so much more of course:  It’s the assignation of metadata (simply:  data about data), tags, “handles,” for the ready “pull” of data into whatever reporting you need.  It sets classifications for data.   A CMS can cough up abstracts for larger information elements:  pointing to papers, reports, related volumes of information – independent of whether reinforcing-content is a document, spreadsheet, presentation, record in a database… info in your finance and accounting system – that is, independent of where content resides (system, building, desk… electronic or paper).  CMS manages the content contained within large, sophisticated, data repositories.  (CMS is a very large subject:  There’s an entire chapter on content and its management in I.T. Wars).

Therefore, CMS grants the ability to leverage dispersed and formerly hidden content, in bringing together scattered information assets that may be silo’d in diverse systems, repositories, departments, and so on.  A good CMS even documents the location of content that exists solely on physical paper assets.

In looking at the Social Security Administration (SSA), and related problems with their new data facilitiy and allied project, I wonder if CMS was being employed in any way? 

Most folks assume CMS is for the tracking, leveraging, reporting, and managing of information – for sole purpose of delivering to the “outside” mission.  That mission can be educating students, selling widgets to customers, providing legal services to clients, manufacturing cars, surveying labs for regulatory compliancies…  managing and dispensing payments to social security recipients…   the mission can be anything.  The “doing” of whatever it is you “do.”  Most folks employ CMS largely for what I’ve mentioned above.

But CMS can do something that may be a rather novel application:  You can register and track assets – an inventory (nothing new there), but one with “tethers” – the metadata to note any asset’s relationship, support to, and vulnerability within other supports, against all other inventoried assets – “CMS’d” assets.  I wonder if anyone is utilizing CMS in this manner?

Once all assets are “CMS’d”, keeping up-to-date is fairly easy:  Upon procurement of any resource, it is a fairly rapid and efficient task to create a record in a CMS for it.  Populated are key metadata fields with the date of procurement, purpose, class of employees supported, some history regarding the vendor (years in business, size, market presence…etc. – yielding anticipated longevity), and all associated assets and systems with dependencies and supports.  A general notes section adds to the metadata, all searchable within CMS, blooming any and all of the organization’s critical infrastructure and systems supports and dependencies; anticipated dates of major updates; anticipated dates of obsolescence, or consideration thereof.  As to that consideration, remember BIT anyone?  Ah… it all weaves together…

This does a couple things:  You don’t get surprised by antiquated, incompetently produced, cabling schemes that grew over the years as different people procured new systems, stuffed more cables under a raised computer room floor, cramming them in until it’s a snake pit.  A snake pit with no accompanying documentation or possibility of anything resembling this millennium’s best-practice-discipline of Wire/Cable Management.

Critical power sources are not located near water.  If they are, a plan for the relocation of power (or water) is at least considered.  It goes somewhere on the Five Year Plan (hopefully more near-term than far), and gets budgeted and scheduled according to the other priorities and initiatives in the organization.

It may seem a burden to administer this – but you have someone, or a whole department, inventorying already:  This is an inventory with relationships; the who, what, when, where and why for each asset, its intentions, and its relationships.  It can be done; with efficiency and accuracy.  Then turn the CMS wheel in updating, retiring, acquiring, and blending all assets for maximum gains vis-à-vis ROI, TtV, and TCO.

The Weave; it serves.

Thought for today:   

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment.  Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.   - Albert Einstein

As my father said:  From some, you learn what to do; from others, what not to do.

Oh oh – it seems someone is having trouble managing a project, and it’s a big one.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is presently getting by in a 30-year old outdated facility, known as the National Computer Center (NCC) in Woodlawn, MD.  Some of its support infrastructure, such as the UPS, is so old that there are no longer replacement parts available for maintenance.

Nearly $500 million in stimulus funding has been dedicated to building a new data center.  As often happens, the project is a year behind schedule and the lag appears that it will get worse.  Meanwhile, the old facility is filled with problems.  This is no mundane “data center” – it is a facility that delivers annual payments of $700 billion to 56+ million Americans.

Fortunately, the General Services Administration (GSA) has found a location for the new home of a new state-of-the-art data center.  It’s rather interesting to note that a significant part of the delay in prepping this new site is a concern over cost of electric power:  government auditors “expressed concern” that not enough consideration was given to this cost. 

I’m a little confused:  Power is power (a kilowatt hour is empirical, no?), a data center is a data center (a proper project knows the size, scope, and power demands… no?  Um, well, I guess, “no”), and the project is supposed to manage according to schedule and reality – right?  That’s what a project does – that its whole purpose.  Otherwise we wouldn’t waste our time shuffling all these schedules, resources and people.

I’m kinda guessing that the new site might be a bit removed from ready-access to efficient, affordable, power:  Maybe they need relay stations, or boosters, or who knows what – but this would seem to be a failure of proper survey for where they are – what they really need, and where they’re going and thus resultant trouble in the middle:  Getting there.

Kelly Croft, Deputy Commissioner for Systems at the SSA, provided some telling Congressional testimony this past February 11^th.  She cited the “dire need” for the new data center:  “Without a long-term replacement, the NCC will deteriorate to the point that a major failure to the building systems could jeopardize our ability to handle our increasing workloads without interruption.”  Further:  “Despite all of our best efforts to preserve the NCC for as long as necessary, there is always the potential that a critical facility infrastructure system could suddenly fail.”

Risks and incidents are further illuminated by Croft’s recent testimony:

-        There is No True Dedicated Power:  “Employee office spaces in other areas of the building share the same power lines and HVAC system as the data center. This design problem means that a potentially isolated issue in an area outside the data center, such as a minor receptacle overload at someone’s workstation, could temporarily shut down some power to the data center and HVAC system.”

-        There is an Aging Custom UPS System:  “The UPS is not an off-the-shelf product; it was designed specifically for the building. While we have extended our service contract with the UPS maintenance vendor over the years, the vendor recently advised us that it could not guarantee repairs in the near future. The necessary parts are simply no longer available. If the UPS failed, we would have to bypass the system and deliver unconditioned power to the data center equipment, which could quite potentially damage the equipment. Replacing the UPS would require significant downtime at the NCC.

-        Critical Cabling Problems: “Tangled cables can block the under-floor airflow that cools our servers, and we cannot work on the cables safely without shutting down the affected systems. Similarly, troubleshooting problems is difficult when we cannot isolate cable pairs easily to determine whether problems exist in the cables or in the IT equipment. There is also an elevated risk of data corruption, because electro-magnetic interference from the electrical wires that are located too close to the telecommunication wires can distort data transmission.”

-        Leaking Water in the Data Center:  “Last year, our facilities staff noticed water on the floor of one of the large battery rooms in the NCC. They quickly traced the source to a leaking water pipe in the room. Any water in close proximity to high-voltage batteries presents a serious hazard to the building and its personnel. In order to fix the leak, plumbers needed to expose the pipe and cut off the water supply. Unfortunately, without redundant systems, cutting off the water supply to the pipe also required cutting off the water supply to the large air handling equipment that is responsible for cooling our computing space. Since the air handling equipment had to be turned off, we had to actually shut down a portion of our national computing operations while making the repairs.”

Here in the Weave, I hope it’s obvious that there had to have been a failure in an ongoing survey of Where We Are (where they were) for the SSA.  Always understand where you are, thus knowing where you need to go, and thus knowing how to get there – sanctioned and known projects, with assigned budget, resources, responsibilities, and sized expectations – all done on time, in time.

Knowing where you are – the status of systems, their longevity, their safety and security, their update, their schedule for replacement – is a critical factor in any organization’s surety.  You must lead change, not mount it in a burst when critical infrastructure is failing:  finding that water is not only near critical power sources, but leaking to boot; upon discovery that cables are tangled and unlabeled – what happened to “wire management” here?  And so on…

On this day:  On February 27^th,1967 Pink Floyd released their 1st single “Arnold Layne”

In my last article, I spoke of systems security from a longevity perspective: 

How long will the system serve?   What are its prospects for ready adaptability to new platforms, interface with future technologies, it’s scalability, it’s capacity for “maximization of use”?   

When engaging new vendors and associated products, ask them about their forward view – and do your own independent analysis:  How well have their core products and services kept up?  Do they lag then lurch forward?  Look for efficient tracking with real world demands.  Further, if by chance you’re going for leading edge stuff, because you must be on a leading edge, then it’s very critical to know how efficiently vendors lead, and twist with, change.

I also mentioned that an occasional complete change of systems was inevitable.  (Read the initial article here if you haven’t seen it).  Therefore, if nothing else, how readily can the organization transition to a new system?  In the case of mission-critical applications, how readily can you prune, migrate and transfer content from an area of growing obsolescence to a new system?

Whatever you do, do not follow the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) example.  According to their own Inspector General (IG), the SSA’s present National Computer Center is approaching collapse, a situation exacerbated by delays in readying and transitioning to a new data center. 

The IG has identified several critical ongoing lags:

1.      A slowdown in application modernization – whatever that is.  Is that purposeful?  An oversight of some sort?  Akin to ignoring an elephant in the room – how do you not track applications and their suitability in a changing world?

2.     An expanding workload that has apparently gotten ahead of planning and readying of the new center – the present center may be so strained so as not to be able to function by 2012.  The new center’s readiness?  Maybe 2015.  Oops.

3.     Lag in transitioning to web interface with customers.  Hey SSA:  It’s 2011.

4.     Ongoing problems with VoIP system:  Poor sound, dropped calls, long wait times.  Fix ‘em; other agencies and organizations manage quite nicely.

My father use to tell me that you can learn something from everyone:  From some folks, what to do; from others, what not to do.

You really have to wonder if these folks have any plans and policies that lead, with actual tethers to reality, in evaluating empirical and measurable things, for best progressions in just keeping up.

Especially for my small and medium business readers (SMB); start writing plans and policies according to best practices and standards.  Frequently in smaller environments, business governance will take an informal approach to upgrades and progressions.  Don’t be lazy and fall into that trap.  Even if you write plans that sit in your drawer, get practiced in documenting and planning change – and take that facility with you when you move on and up in your career where that ability will be crucial to best protections and progressions.

Not too long ago, I wrote about an IT leader at an organization’s branch who had me write an Acceptable Use policy – even though higher headquarters had an umbrella policy.  He felt it inadequate.  He was smart to create a stronger, local, one – and even if not approved for use by HQ, he could at least wave it were there a subsequent breach or bad outcome:  “Here’s what I wanted to do…”.

Spec yourself up – don’t wait.

As to the SSA – there is no adequate excuse.  But there’s a nice lesson here – for those willing to learn…

NP:  In a Sentimental Mood, John Coltrane, Jazz24.org.  I love Coltrane.