The Client
An Indiana public school corporation
The Challenge
A large public school corporation was encountering outages with its technical infrastructure. While the outages were not extensive, they were frequent enough to spark a growing level of frustration among end-users. Additionally, the ability to fund new technology endeavors was becoming more difficult as support costs continued to rise.
The administration of the school corporation recognized the need for assistance and advice in determining the source of the outages and how to improve the infrastructure technology. The administration sought proposals from reputable technology consulting firms to perform an audit of the corporation’s technical infrastructure and support staff. After a careful evaluation process, the administration selected and gained approval from the school board to engage Haverstick Consulting, Inc. to perform the audit.
The Haverstick Approach
While many firms simply compare systems with industry best practices, Haverstick utilizes its extensive infrastructure experience to probe deeper into systems and identify more parameters. Additionally, Haverstick firmly believes that technology should enable successful business goals and not dictate them. Therefore, the goal of our audits is to identify technology that is best for the business instead of identifying the best technology.
To ensure these principles are rooted in every information technology audit, Haverstick’s team of experienced consultants uses a three-phase methodology. In the first phase, the goals of the audit are determined and areas for investigation are identified. Then the infrastructure systems and procedures are analyzed to determine and document their current state.
In the second phase, technology and business plans are reviewed, focus groups are interviewed, and applicable industry best practices are summarized to determine the appropriate desired state.
Finally, in the third phase, a gap analysis between the current and desired states is performed and recommendations to bridge the gap are formulated and documented.
The Solution
In addition to achieving the desired technical goals, Haverstick’s analysis and recommendations proceeded with the following business goals in mind:
- Increasing student achievement
- Enhancing end-user satisfaction
- Measuring regulatory compliance (FERPA, HIPAA, CIPA, PL221, etc.)
- Optimizing technology management
The Result
As a result, Haverstick delivered a comprehensive report of the findings and recommendations within the budget granted by the school board. Following a public presentation, the report received accolades from the school corporation’s administration and school board members and was featured in the local newspaper. | 
