LSE for you: secure interaction with personalised information for students and staff delivered via the world wide web

ABSTRACT

LSE for You (LFY) is a web portal through which staff and students have secure and personalised access to centrally held data. It has been developed in-house at LSE through inter-departmental collaboration. There were three principal aims for the project: to meet increasing technological expectation of customers; to increase efficiency in data entry, transfer and manipulation, and to improve the accuracy and timeliness of centrally held information. We launched LFY in November 2000 internally and to the world in May 2001 via the school's website. LFY has changed the way that LSE delivers some of its core administrative student services.At LSE, students can now use LFY to access (and where appropriate alter) much of central administration data, from their addresses to exam results, and staff can view useful information like photographs of their students or their own payslips online. We have also included internal administrative functions such as room booking and reprographics' requests, which cuts down internal paper-use and staff time.LFY also reaches out to both applicants and alumni. Applicants can check the progress of their application online, reducing telephone requests for routine information. LFY works as a communication tool between the School and our alumni and is used to help alumni keep the school informed of their current employment, with obvious fundraising benefits for the school.This paper will discuss what LFY does, both at the user level and for the school as a whole, and will include a brief technical description of how that is achieved. LFY has become an important part of thinking for the future at LSE, impacting upon customer interaction, ongoing ICT development, and ways of working. We want to push forward in our commitment to web-based ways of manipulating central data in order to facilitate new and better staff and customer relations.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.5 On-line Information Services
          Subjects: Web-based services

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.2 DATABASE MANAGEMENT
      H.2.0 General
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.3 Information Search and Retrieval
          Subjects: Information filtering

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors, Management, Verification

Keywords:
WWW, databases, online access, portal