Case Study

Technology is ever changing and established infrastructures must acclimate to such changes, in turn to provide effective and efficient IT solutions. With every organization, as technology is ever changing, one must adapt to be able to stay cutting edge, in a competitive market place. In the case of Jefferson County School System, which consists of fourteen elementary schools, two middle schools, and two high schools, the current technology in place was dated and needed replacement. JCSS’ assigned taskforce agreed their systems needed replacement with purchased software packages and maintenance agreements. They also recommended that the new systems should have an integrated database and report-generation software to enable shared data across applications. 1 Due to such suggestions, they came to the realization that there would no longer be needing the programming staff of the data processing department, because they would no longer be doing custom development. After taking time to evaluate the possibilities, JCCS took the initiative to find a vendor to provide the hardware and software to replace the current systems at JCCS. The committee prepared a request for proposal and had sent it to 23 possible vendors, in order to narrow down potential vendors for the vision.
Due to such RFP, the selection of the vendor was narrowed down to three contenders that could be evaluated. After looking over the presentations from the three vendors, JCCS had a pretty good idea on who they were going to use for the contract. In the end JCCS decided to choose Data Systems Inc., for the maintenance and software implementation. Working with DSI to get the software properly working and the old data converted was a nightmare. Difficult for many and it took too much time to implement such solution. Due to a lack of financing and time constraints, the counselors and staff were poorly trained on how to use the new systems, so when school