автореферат диссертации по информатике, вычислительной технике и управлению, 05.13.01, диссертация на тему:Разработка управленческих и административных информационных систем в Европейской организации ядерных исследований (ЦЕРН, г. Женева, Швейцария)

Ministry of Education and Science of Russian Federation

Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (State University)

Manuscript rights

John Mcleish Ferguson

.00 0 00452 -

THE DEVELOPMENT OF MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATICS SYSTEMS IN EUROPEAN

CENTRE FOR NUCLEAR RESEARCH (CERN, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND)

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Speciality:

05.13.01 - Systems Analysis, Control (Management) and Information Processing This dissertation is submitted to the scientific degree Candidate of Technical Sciences

Author:

Scientific Advisor:

Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor A.D. Modyaev

Geneva, Moscow 2006

Preface............................................................................................................................7

Common characteristics of dissertation.......................................................................10

The Goal of Investigation and Tasks to be realised.....................................................12

Scientific Novelty consisting of the following:..........................................................14

Scientific and practical value consisting of the following:.........................................14

Presentations.................................................................................................................18

1. The State of the Organisation and the Technology in use in the Administrative Informatics Environment in the Laboratory in the Mid Nineteen Eighties.................24

1.1. Mandate..........................................................................................................24

1.2. The Technical Audit.......................................................................................26

1.3. Current Resources Used.................................................................................28

Table 1. Human Resources MIS activities in 1986..................................................29

Table 2. Financial Resources Invested in MIS activities from 1975 to 1986..........31

1.4. Review by Topic............................................................................................33

1.4.1. Management Decision Support (DBMS, analysis/presentation,

modelling)..............................................................................................................33

1.4.2. Text Processing.......................................................................................38

1.4.3. Electronic Communication for Management Purposes..........................43

1.4.4. Office automation....................................................................................46

1.4.5. Administrative use of Management Information Systems (MIS),

Administrative Data Processing (ADP), Personal Computers (PCs), Central

Computers, and Miscellaneous Systems...............................................................47

1.5. Service Requirements, Resources, Organizational Framework....................56

1.5.1. General Overview...................................................................................56

1.5.2. Service Requirements..............................................................................57

1.5.3. Human Resources....................................................................................58

1.5.4. Organizational Framework.....................................................................59

1.6. Pragmatic Implementation Proposal..............................................................60

1.7. Human Resources...........................................................................................61

1.8. Financial Resources........................................................................................63

1.9. Resulting Actions...........................................................................................64

1.10. Outputs according to the first chapter:.......................................................70

2. The Advanced Information Systems Project.....;..................................................71

2.1. Persisting Information Systems problems......................................................71

2.2. The establishment of the Advanced Information Project.............................72

2.3. AIS Strategy Decisions..................................................................................73

2.4. Success Criteria..............................................................................................79

2.5. Information System Architecture...................................................................79

2.6. Information Model.........................................................................................80

Table 3. Information system functions highest level................................................81

Table 4. Information system functions Finance second level..................................82

Table 5. Information system functions Finance third level......................................83

2.7. Business Areas...............................................................................................84

2.8. The Finance Application description.............................................................85

2.9. The systems development strategy.................................................................89

2.10. In-house applications..................................................................................94

2.11. Foundation..................................................................................................95

2.12. Office Automation and Decision Support Tools........................................96

2.13. The Electronic Document Handling application........................................96

2.13.1. Electronic signature...........................................................................101

2.14. The Budget Holders Toolkit.....................................................................110

2.15. Human Resources Information systems.................................................114

2.16. The applications architecture implemented..............................................120

2.17. Outputs according to the second chapter:.................................................121

3. The Combination of Web technology with MIS developments.........................123

3.1. Client Server Status......................................................................................123

3.2. The Creation of the World Wide Web.........................................................124

3.3. Dynamic Web Information...........................................................................124

3.3.1. Common Gateway Interface.................................................................124

3.3.2. The Creation of Java.............................................................................126

3.3.3. Applets versus Servlets.........................................................................128

3.4. First Web Applications in AIS.....................................................................130

3.5. The Move of EDH to the Web.....................................................................132

3.5.1. Enterprise Java Beans...........................................................................133

3.5.2. EDH Web Security................................................................................134

3.6. Decision Support Web Developments.........................................................137

3.7. Outputs according to the third chapter:........................................................138

4. Project management and Document Management and Archiving Applications

Developments.............................................................................................................139

4.1. Project Management.....................................................................................139

4.1.1. Project Progress Tracking for ATLAS.................................................139

4.1.2. Earned Value Management for The LHC Project................................142

4.1.3. Earned Value Management Basics.......................................................143

4.1.4. PPT/EVM..............................................................................................146

4.1.5. Conclusion of the PPT/EVM implementation....................................148

4.1.6. Earned Value Management: Theory, Models and Methods.................149

4.1.7. The progression to the Activity Planning Tool.....................................169

4.2. The Staff Monitoring Tool...........................................................................169

4.3. Document Management and Archiving.......................................................170

4.4. Outputs according to the fourth chapter:......................................................179

5. AIS STRATEGY REVIEWED...........................................................................180

5.1. Evaluation of Results...................................................................................180

5.2. Comparison of CERN and Integrated Suite Approach...............................185

5.2.1. The Oracle Integrated Suite..................................................................185

5.2.2. Generic Suites.......................................................................................188

5.3. Service Oriented Architecture Considerations.............................................190

5.4. Outputs according to the fifth chapter:........................................................192

6. Conclusion...........................................................................................................193

List of main publications............................................................................................196

Basic Publications on the Theme of The Thesis........................................................199

Table of Figures..........................................................................................................201

Appendix 1 Explanation of Acronyms in Tables 1 and 2..........................................214

Appendix 2 AIS Applications Web Site.....................................................................215

Preface

CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) is a fundamental physics research laboratory in which the world's largest and most complex scientific instruments are constructed and used in the exploration of the constituent elements of matter.[l] CERN was founded in 1954 as one of Europe's first joint ventures, bringing specialists from 12 Member States together to pursue a common dream. Established on the Franco- Swiss border near Geneva, it has become an outstanding example of successful international collaboration. Today, CERN has 20 Member States from Europe, and additional nations from around the globe also contribute to and participate in its research programme. A number of countries including Russia, USA, Japan, India and additionally The European Commission have the status of observers. There are approximately 2,600 staff members, and CERN's research programme involves some 6900 researchers from 500 institutes in 85 countries. This comprises half of the world particle physicist population.

CERN is now a laboratory for the entire world. The instruments used at CERN are

particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high

energies before they are made to collide with stationary targets or with each other.

Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions. The oldest still-

functioning accelerator at CERN is the Proton Synchrotron (PS), which came into

operation in 1959. The Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), fed by the PS, was

commissioned in 1976. The Large Electron-Positron collider (LEP)[2], built in a 27

kilometer circular tunnel deep underground, was CERN's flagship research facility

from 1989 to 2000. Successive accelerators bring higher energies, extending the range

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of phenomena that can be studied. Its mission complete, LEP has now been dismantled to make way for a more powerful machine, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is being installed in the same tunnel and is scheduled to start up in 2007. While CERN builds the accelerators, it is the job of physicists from universities and research institutes in the Member States and other countries to build the detectors. There are 4 large experimental detector facilities being developed for operation at the LHC, these are ATLAS ( a Large Toroidal LHC Apparatus )[3], CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid)[4], ALICE (A Large Collider Experiment)[5] and LHCb ( the Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment) [6]. As physics has advanced, detectors have become bigger and more complex. The largest of those for the LHC, ATLAS and CMS stand as high as a six-floor office block, and are being built by teams of around 2000 scientists. CERN also collaborates with other European laboratories within the context of present and future projects. These include CARE (Coordinated Accelerator research in Europe), EUROTeV (European Design Study Towards a Global TeV Linear Collider), and EURONS (European Nuclear Structure Initiative). CERN's international environment and its large collaborations provide a valuable environment for educating and training young people, not only in particle physics, but also in engineering of many kinds, information technology and administration. CERN also reaches out to a wider audience through it's Outreach group, activities for teachers and schools and through Microcosm, its public exhibition centre. Research at CERN pushes technology to its limits, bringing important benefits to society. The World Wide Web was invented at CERN in response to the research community's growing communications needs. Detectors developed for experiments in high-energy physics

have been transformed for application in medical imaging, in particular in the field of positron emission tomography (PET). Computer chip manufacture and the detection of contraband are among other fields to have benefited from technological advances first made in fundamental particle physics research. With the LHC, the CERN community is driving technology harder than ever before. The data handling requirements of the LHC experiments, for example, require computing and networking technology capable of handling 800 million individual particle collisions per second. New benefits for society are as sure to follow as are the new insights into the workings of the Universe that are the physicists' goal.

Accelerator and detector construction and operation are complex engineering and physics activities, Successful implementation of these tasks and their completion according to agreed schedules depends on the effective work of all CERN subdivisions. Understanding the importance of management information systems and the automation of administrative processes in improving efficiency, the CERN Director General Professor Carlo Rubbia (Nobel Laureate in Physics) gave to the author in 1990 the task of modernization and reorganization of administrative information processes of CERN. Professor Rubbia who had considerable personal competence, experience and interest in the areas of information systems expressed the desire that a set of state of the art (or beyond) management information systems be implemented to satisfy the needs of the laboratory over the following decade. It was his wish that the resulting improvements in this field and the high level of competence developed would rival that in the area of the laboratory's scientific computing activities such that world wide interest would be generated in the systems

implemented. This resulted in the creation of the Advanced Informatics Support (AIS) project aiming at an innovative modernization of all aspects of informatics applied to the administrative processes of the Laboratory.

Common characteristics of dissertation

In the middle of 1986 the Management and Administrative Information Systems situation in the laboratory was chaotic. Developments had evolved in a distributed organizational environment which resulted in expensive, diverse and incompatible solutions. The specific problem areas were management decision support, data presentation, data base management systems, text processing, electronic communication for management purposes, office automation, administrative use of management information systems (MIS) and in particular administrative data processing (ADP).

The Director General, H. Schopper, requested that I carry out a detailed technical and

financial audit of the present situation of all aspects of management informatics to

identify current limitations and required developments and to elaborate a detailed

programme for future action including resources needed, time scale and possible

structure. The informatics services provided were not believed to be cost effective.

Thus a rationalization of services and improvements in cost effectiveness were

considered to be essential. An important aim was to achieve reductions in the cost of

hardware and software acquisitions, in maintenance and in development activities. It

was essential to improve the heavily paper based administrative processes of the

organization in order to permit a progressive reduction in the number of

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administrative staff and to increase the efficiency of the technical and scientific staff by decreasing the time spent on such procedures.

Following a rigorous analysis of the state of MIS applications in the laboratory in 1986/1987 and despite the improvement and rationalization of services which was undertaken in the next couple of years, in 1990 the new CERN Director General, Professor C. Rubbia requested a significantly more ambitious project in MIS modernization, and allocated additional financial and human resources to this project. It was observed that administrative information was still not available sufficiently quickly and easily, that it was not integrated between the existing diverse variety of systems and did not yet meet the needs of the management. All business processes concerning end users were based on paper forms and manual intensive procedures. The MIS applications were only available electronically to the corresponding professional services via clumsy, heterogeneous, non intuitive interfaces and to the wider end user community via paper for input/output. The specific problem areas persisting in 1990 were as follows: inflexible data structures and functions, lack of integration between applications, duplication of data, incoherence between systems and consequent inconsistencies, multiple data entry, incoherent user interfaces to various systems, difficulties in exploiting data spread over various systems, difficulties in providing timely management information, and high maintenance overhead, due to the heterogeneous environment. Applications ran on a diverse, often incompatible, range of relatively expensive hardware, operating system software and database systems. Some systems were obsolete from a technical point of view, were no longer covered by commercial maintenance contracts and were extremely costly to

maintain in-house. Users had requirements for functionality not covered by the existing applications, e.g. electronic document scanning and archiving, project management.

The Goal of Investigation and Tasks to be realised

The aim of this dissertation work is research into the design methods and creation of a multipurpose corporate information control system for CERN which includes electronic document handling, business-process establishment, control and maintenance, administration and human resources control. The following tasks were solved in the course of the research.

• the creation of a set of standards for management information and administrative informatics systems at CERN by rationalising and standardising management decision support, data presentation, data base management applications and systems, text processing, office automation and electronic communication;

• the creation of a conceptual information systems application architecture model permitting the introduction of a new range of specialised corporate applications, reducing the dependence on computer hardware and software suppliers resulting in more cost effective and flexible solutions for information systems. This implied the introduction of electronic data entry at source and electronic workflow for routing and authorisation and electronic signature. This required the simplification of existing procedures and the introduction of innovative electronic procedures with the aim of permitting significant reduction of personnel costs;

• the choice of an operating system and relational data base system on which the architectural model could be based;

• the creation of an Information Systems Model which identified and documented CERN's business functions, administrative information needs and provided an integrated information and function model;

• the replacement of all administrative software applications with a coherent set resulting in the reduction of maintenance effort for the support of a heterogeneous environment;

• the implementation of relatively homogeneous user friendly human interfaces for non professional (i.e. physicist, engineer, technician) users of the information systems, via decision support tools for financial and human resource management, providing the ability to rapidly obtain reliable high quality management information;

• the development of a system to permit accessing and archiving of scanned and machine-readable documents in collaboration with the scientific information services;

• the provision of innovative project management facilities for large physics experiments with highly geographically distributed members;

• the provision of an earned value management system for management of the Large Hadron Collider project.

Methods of research. The presented tasks were completed with the help of

information, information-functional and mathematical modelling, methods of

regression analysis, probabilistic methods of pattern recognition and elements of

decision theory.

Scientific Novelty consisting of the following:

• the choice of the Unix operating system and the adoption of the Oracle Relational Data Base Management System and SQL as the unique basis for management information systems development and operation;

• the original architecture model of a suite of specialized corporate applications from different suppliers running on Unix and the Oracle relational data base system with the electronic document handling system as an underlying horizontal application for automating business processes;

• the development of the highly innovative Electronic Document Handling system and associated workflow for routing and authorization with secure electronic signature. This evolved significantly with the move of this development from a client server architecture to a three tier model (client / applications server / data base server) with a commercial workflow package and later highly innovative use of Java and J2EE;

• the combination of the management information systems applications with emerging world wide web technology.

Scientific and practical value consisting of the following:

• the methodology for a major management information systems analysis and implementation project has been created. It's validity has been demonstrated by

the development of the management information and administrative informatics systems of CERN and their successful operation over more than 15 years; the architecture model was a blueprint for future developments. It has proven highly effective in practice, remains valid today and has stimulated significant interest in industry;

a highly cost effective solution to the laboratory's MIS requirements has been achieved, providing a suite of corporate applications closely corresponding to the laboratory's needs. Having looked at major projects of a comparable nature of the AIS project, in terms of range of applications and dimensions and complexity of the operation, It is noted that the total cost (personnel plus capital investment) of the Advanced Information Systems (AIS) project was of the order of 1/3 of the cost of similar projects observed;

the Electronic Document Handling System with the concept of the associated workflow for routing and authorization with secure electronic signature has been developed and implemented. This was a highly original development. The product now covers over 45 business processes and has permitted significant manpower savings in administrative staff and permitted increased efficiency in the scientific and technical staff;

the Project Progress Tracking and the Earned Value Management System have been developed. The LHC international cost and schedule review committee and the LHC project leader have rated the PPT/EVM application for control and tracking of the Atlas detector construction project and the LHC construction project as "world class";

• a suite of Decision support tools has been implemented for financial and human resource management, with relatively homogeneous user friendly human interfaces for non professional (i.e. physicist, engineer, technician) users of the information systems. These provide the ability to rapidly obtain reliable high quality management information;

• the CERN Document Server System for electronic document archiving, and retrieval, has been developed. It is linked to an agenda management system and is widely used in the scientific community.

Positions to be defended:

• the methodology of analysis, development and application of large network administrative information systems for electronic document handling, business-process control and maintenance, administration and human resources control;

• the architecture of an Internet-based corporate system, on which development has been based;

• a highly economically effective administrative information system (AIS), which consists of a complex of corporate applications satisfying the information needs of CERN in the area of administrative activity;

• the electronic document handling system that has been developed and used at CERN, which ensures creation and routing of documents and their required authorization with secure electronic signatures;

• a project progress tracking system and an earned value management system (PPT and EVM);

• a complex of decision support tools for control of financial and human resources with uniform user-friendly interfaces;

• a complex of CERN document servers for document archiving and search, integrated with information control systems utilized by the scientific community.

Authenticity of the developed principles of design of corporate systems, methods, means and problem-oriented methodology of creation of multifunctional information-control network environments is ensured by the adequacy of utilized models and matching of experimental and calculated data and is confirmed by the successful operation of the developed systems over many years at CERN and in particular during the construction of the Atlas detector and the Large Hadron Collider. Realization and application of the work results. The scientific results obtained in the dissertation in the form of principles of development, structures, architectures, models, methods, algorithms and the methodology of development of network corporate administrative information systems have been used in CERN for the development of a large multifunctional complex of Web-based information support systems. Formal confirmation has been provide which confirms that this development is state-of-the-art and has been used in the construction of the Atlas detector and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The scientific materials presented in this dissertation are planned to be used for the training process of a distributed scientific training centre being created.

Presentations

This work has been regularly presented between 1986 and 2005 in the CERN Management Board, Directorate ,External Member State Committees and to the LHC Cost and Schedule Review Committee.

It has been presented at scientific seminars and international conferences including the following:

• European Oracle Users Group Conference Cannes March 1992;

• Research and Development Management Conference Lausanne 1996;

• MEPhI scientific sessions January 2005;

• Technological Observatory of Geneva April 2005;

• Earned Value Management Conference of the Association for Project Management London May 2005;

• University of Geneva Informatics Commission June 2005;

• International Linear Collider Workshop Snowmass August 2005;

• MEPhI scientific sessions January 2006.

Publications

There have been in total 21 printed publications on the subject of the dissertation, including one monograph and 4 articles in periodicals recommended by the Russian High Attestation Committee for publishing the main work results.

Structure and volume of work. The dissertation consists of an introduction,

five chapters, a conclusion, bibliography of 120 references and two appendices. The main part of the dissertation contains 213 pages of typewritten text, including 34 figures and 5 tables. Contents

In the introduction the need for the dissertation work is justified and a brief description is given. The purpose of the work, subject of research, scientific novelty and practical significance are given, the authenticity of work is justified, the information about the approbation and the publications is given, and the main points to be defended are presented.

In the first chapter , the state of the organisation and the technology in use in the admi