Evolving and Implanting Web-based E-Government Systems in Universities

TL;DR

This paper discusses transforming university IT infrastructure into a modern web-based system to improve administration efficiency and meet students' information needs, exemplified by Braunschweig University of Technology.

Contribution

It presents a practical approach to evolving legacy university systems into integrated web-based services through bridging, customizing, and developing software modules.

Findings

Enhanced online access to university services.

Improved administrative efficiency.

Active feedback loop for system refinement.

Abstract

The Bologna Process has triggered a major restructuring of the current university diploma into a bachelor/master system. As one effect, the administration effort for the new system has increased dramatically. As a second effect, students need and demand a much better information policy, given the new possibilities of the internet. Both to increase efficiency of the university's administration and to provide students as well as lecturers with modern e government services, it is inevitable to evolve the current IT-infrastructure of a university into a modern web-based landscape of systems that support business processes on campus. In this paper, we describe the approach taken at the Braunschweig University of Technology to evolve the existing landscape of legacy systems by adding bridges between previously unrelated parts, adding and customizing unused modules of existing software to bring information and services online and to develop new software, where old modules could not serve the necessary purposes. Most of all, both implementation of the results in university's business processes and the resulting quick feedback and wishes for feature enhancement are seen as part of the software development processes and discussed in this paper.