Scenario Planning in Information Services: Preparing Your Memory for the Future

Citation

Wegner, L.S. (2000), "Scenario Planning in Information Services: Preparing Your Memory for the Future", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 17 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2000.23917aac.009

Scenario Planning in Information Services: Preparing Your Memory for the Future

Lucy S. Wegner

This very useful and informative seminar explored the uses of scenario planning in technology-oriented organizations. Scenario planning grows out of the recognition that the future does not necessarily resemble the past and rapid change makes it risky to be locked into one future. Traditional strategic planning methodologies attempt to chart one course into the future and that course is difficult to change if the context changes radically or rapidly. By contrast, "scenario planning is [a] technique where the organization examines a variety of possible events and impacts, looking at the worst-case as well as the best-case scenarios. The organization then develops a portfolio of responses to the possible futures."

The seminar leader was Ellen Waite-Franzen, Vice President for Information Services at the University of Richmond. She has used scenario planning at her institution, finding it useful because "technology and information organizations ... typically are reactive rather than proactive ... we often do not take the time to look at other possibilities for the future."

Organizations are generally familiar with the traditional strategic planning process. The shortcoming of the typical planning process is that it starts with "what is", not with "what could be", and does not address nontraditional competitors or radical ideas. The future is often assumed to resemble the present (or past) and does not take into account the unknown or unexpected. It often does not look at new opportunities and may be confined to one unit in a larger organization.

Scenario planning, on the other hand, compels the organization to look at a variety of possible events and impacts and to ask and answer the question: What will we do if? Scenarios lay plans for many possible futures and plans for different paths of action. This process easily scales to cross-organizational, large policy-oriented questions. The process develops a portfolio of different future states: not one plan, but many plans. It is useful where a high level of participation is required and to get participants to look outside their "trench".

The seminar leader outlined the following process for scenario planning:

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  Identify the focal issue or question ("How shall we respond to this situation?" rather than "Will this situation happen to us?").

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  List the key factors in the environment (social, technological, environmental, political).

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  List the driving forces and trends.

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  Rank the factors and trends from least to most important.

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  Choose a position or plot line that best fits the environment and information.

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  Brainstorm to flesh out the scenarios and explore the implications. Consider how the organization gets from the present situation to the scenario situation. Quoting from Arie De Geus, he said, "Scenarios are stories. They are works of art, rather than scientific analyses. The reliability is less important than the types of conversations they spark."

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  Some decisions will make sense across many or all scenarios. Devise more robust plans based on the recurring implications that arise in the scenarios.

After being introduced to scenario planning concepts, the participants broke into small groups to consider various issues and work at the first few steps in the scenario process. There was not enough time to get more than a taste of what the process is like. In fact, the only shortcoming of this seminar was that it could have lasted the whole day rather than just an afternoon. As always in seminars, the discussion with peers was wide-ranging and illuminating. Participants came from all types and sizes of institutions and held a variety of positions.

For those interested in further information, the leader recommended two books: The Art of Strategic Conversation by van der Heijden and The Living Company, Habits for Survival in a Turbulent Business Environment by De Geus. This reviewer will also recommend a third: The Art of the Long View by Schwartz.

Libraries and Middleware: Getting from Here to There

At this informative and content-dense session, Kenneth J. Klingenstein, Chief Technologist, University of Colorado at Boulder, and Clifford A. Lynch, Executive Director, Coalition for Networked Information, did an admirable job at providing a super-quick primer to authentication issues for academic libraries. This was one of the best sessions this reviewer attended at EDUCAUSE.

Why is middleware a concern for libraries?

Authorization, authentication, proxy servers, and remote access are major concerns for any business that handles employees, customers, or the general public on the Internet today. However, higher education poses some special problems because of the user's mobility and multiple roles, the nonmonetary economics of a university, and open records of the university.

Solutions developed for the commercial sector are often inadequate, because higher education needs to solve problems that have little commercial application, such as remote instrument control, co-scheduling of distributed resources (for example, digital libraries or Globus http://www-fp.globus.org/), or interoperability with other institutions (which would be considered competitors in the commercial world). Beyond this, academic libraries have special concerns with proprietary third-party resources, patron privacy, and complicated recordkeeping requirements.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, when users were on campus, it was relatively easy to control access. Even when modem banks became widespread, the institution could function as an Internet service provider and control access in that way. However, with the emergence of DSL (digital subscriber line), cable modems, and outsourcing of infrastructure services, it became a far more complex access management problem to determine "Who are you?" and "What are you allowed to do or see or use?"

The current solution is to use a proxy server, but this presents serious scaling problems. It is difficult to insure accuracy, especially when students' status and access levels change every semester. In a large institution (25,000+ students), the maintenance, software, and hardware requirements are substantial and practically unmanageable (and certainly uneconomic).

A longer-term solution is a certificate or credentialing system, PKI (public key infrastructure). PKI is potentially far more robust and scalable than a proxy server. However, it presents major readiness issues. As of yet, development of PKI systems is fragmented and there are no widely accepted standards for certificates or credentials.

Second, the vendor has to understand and accept the certificate. Currently, vendors are more prepared to deal with proxy servers. Finally, adoption of a certification system is larger than the library, and must be adopted by the institution as a whole. This will be difficult, since there are a multitude of divergent stakeholders on any campus. Libraries have an urgent need to deal with this, but they also have the most difficult requirements.

What would "Libraryglue" middleware need to do?

Middleware is programming that glues together or mediates between two separate systems, such as the Internet and a proprietary database or site. Since the Internet is an insecure system, a middleware program (such as PKI) authenticates the user before allowing access. Middleware should handle distributed/scattered accounts, databases, and applets and is essential for ubiquitous computing. For libraries, middleware would handle meta-data, extended patron sets, complex access controls (anonymity, licensing, and accounting), copyright and intellectual property, and offer support for collaboration. It should provide:

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  Identifiers for people, groups, and objects. These identifiers must be integrated with institutional information and yet anonymous.

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  Directories that would need to be kept current and private.

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  Authentication across a variety of access formats and hardware platforms. They should have a calendar-based renewal cycle rather than relationship-based renewal.

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  Authorization to allow access to all materials and only those materials that are appropriate.

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  Applications to use all of above.

A great deal more can be read about this topic by going to www.internet2.edu/middleware

Lucy S. Wegner is Head, Strategic Planning Coordination, University Information Services, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. lwegner@usc.edu