NALIT 2007 Professional Development Seminar

Preliminary Session Descriptions

Pre-Seminar Workshops | General Sessions | Seminar Sessions

Pre-Seminar Workshops: In-depth sessions for management and technical staff

Project Management Methodologies: What and Why – an examination of various methodologies with an eye to what has worked/not worked with legislative IT projects and why; how methods fit with project team and stakeholders; discussions of actual experiences.

IT Solutions for Committees: signing up/in, submitting testimony, storing and publishing submissions, electronic forms of testimony, minutes, voting, etc.

OS and Beyond: what’s new in the various arenas – Microsoft, Apple, Linux, UNIX – in operating systems for clients and servers, productivity tools, and back-office components.

Models for Developing Legislative Software: in-house, out-sourced custom development, and third-party vendors; pros and cons of each; possible combinations of these models; potential of the open-source model.

Vendor Experiences: constructive roundtable discussion of experiences with specific vendors; open to legislative staff only; no vendor-bashing allowed.

Web Site Roundup: hardware and software hosting solutions; use of portals; audio/video broadcasting solutions; design issues; tools; etc.

General Sessions

Your State’s Five Minutes of Fame: an opportunity for each state to have five minutes to present an overview of accomplishments and current issues; a chance to offer your experience and expertise and to let others know where you’re looking for advice and assistance; pre-enrollment and pre-submission of PowerPoint slides required.

IT Solutions in Historic Environments: Illinois’ clerks and secretaries discuss the chamber renovations and incorporation of IT solutions.

Seminar Sessions

Technology and Access to Information: issues of FOIA, public access, legislative intent, open meetings, and legislative rules and procedures as impacted by changing technology such as IM, email, blogging, etc.

Impact on Staff of Term Limits and Retirement: loss of institutional knowledge and insuring continuity and quality of service.

Division of Responsibilities Between Systems and Applications Staffs: defining boundaries; handling decision-making on hardware and systems design.

NALIT and NCSL: NCSL structure; NALIT’s role and interaction with other staff sections.

Authentication of and Permanent Access to Electronic Documents: considerations in ensuring that electronic versions of documents are authentic; issues and solutions for insuring continual permanent accessibility of electronic documents regardless of technology changes.

Document and Content Management Systems: options, experiences, best practices; managing workgroup documents and other collections and enabling collaboration.

Document Format Options: follow-up to annual meeting session on Open Document Format; pros and cons of ODF, OOXML, XML, and others.

Constituent Communications: products; policies; privacy issues; providing support; potential for a single solution for all users.

Remote Access Options and Issues: providing secure and usable remote access to members and staff.

Network and Systems Monitoring Tools: options, experiences, and best practices.

Server and Storage Solutions: server consolidation and virtualization, clustering, SAN vs. NAS, iSCSI vs. fibre channel - benefits, liabilities, methods, hardware and software, best practices, experiences.

Application Development Toolsets: what is being used and why; what’s new, including .NET 3.0 Framework.

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