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Improving Collaboration and Information Protection with Web Standards
9/26/2003
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
A leading international authority on public health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH) carries out its mission in research facilities and educational centers located in 40 countries. More than 1,500 students and 1,000 faculty work together every day in this global effort, managing 25 research initiatives including bio-terrorism detection, disease prevention, and healthcare management. Each initiative generates tremendous amounts of information including research data, analysis, and course materials created by its researchers, students, and faculty. In total, this output represents one of the school’s greatest assets.
Many of the files generated are too large to e-mail as attachments, so the standard practice was to load files onto a floppy disk and mail them. IS management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health needed a way to address this security risk.
“With a large amount of field work done in developing countries and remote locations, e-mailing attachments was simply not an option. A single large attachment could unacceptably delay communications for hours or even days,” explains Michelle Campbell, assistant director for IS at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. From a user standpoint, there was a growing need to access and share information quickly among participants in a way that was simple to perform and possible from remote locations.
The file system for Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is centrally located and each area of research accesses the same file system. The IS team wanted to promote accessing the file system from any PC in the world by encouraging traveling researchers to access their files from any Internet-connected PC, such as in a cyber café. This would reduce the risk of losing files carried on disk or on the hard drive of a laptop.
The JHSPH Portal
The IS team’s first decision was to build a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School
of Public Health portal to provide a single Web-based point of entry for all
users. Using Citrix technology for the branded portal, my.jhsph.edu, users were
encouraged to visit the portal for the latest news and information about the
school. “This was a great way for everyone in the field to get familiar
with using the Internet to access information,” explains Campbell, “but
the portal was only the first step.” The portal solution had a document
storage component that allowed users to store files privately, but it was difficult
to use. Many users would go to the portal to access published information, but
would not use it to manage or share their own information. They needed a simple
way to post their files to the Web portal without having to learn how to become
Web publishers.
Once the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health portal was introduced, the team moved on to the next step, finding a safe and easy way for users to post their own information to the portal and begin to share it with their colleagues.
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