NERAC Connect - A Homeland Security regional collaboration solution
12/1/2009
The Northeast Homeland Security Regional Advisory Council (NERAC) has been looking for a solution to help its many members and areas of discipline to collaborate in an easy method. NERAC covers 85 communities in northeast Massachusetts, see
www.nerac.us for more information. NERAC wanted to connect it's seven primary disciplines (Emergency Management, Emergency Medical Services, Fire, Hospitals, Police, Public Works, and Public Health) so they can seamlessly collaborate on any number of items, while still keeping each discipline unique and secure.
"Delphi's guidance and technological know-how were invaluable in creating a multi-layered Microsoft SharePoint workspace for NERAC. They skillfully guided decision-makers through the maze of choices available to produce a three-tiered web-based environment that serves as a public access website and doubles as a two-layered secure workspace for emergency response disciplines in the NERAC region.
Delphi's ability to draw on its knowledge, experience and "can do" enthusiasm to mold a concept into a workable cross-communication platform for emergency management information sharing has moved the NERAC community far beyond its previous capabilities." - Steve Daly, Director of Municipal Governance (Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC))
NERAC Connect was built from the bottom up. Public Consulting Group,
www.pcgus.com, was the successful bidder and chose Delphi Technology as the project technical lead. Fourteen focus groups were conducted to collect the end user’s desired configuration and requirements for each discipline. Two focus groups were held per discipline, the first was to collect the initial set of requirements. After the system was designed according to the preliminary specifications, a second focus group was held to confirm and refine the SharePoint product. Over 80 users were consulted and offered their valuable input. The final result gives day to day users buy in to a system design according to their business process. System administrators from the NERAC community are primarily responsible for system content and user security reducing the region’s dependence upon third party vendors.
NERAC Connect is based on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 with Microsoft SQL Server 2005. The entire site of NERAC Connect is SharePoint.