TECHNOLOGY – GAMES SYSTEMS
1.0 KEY STATISTICS
The Department of Games Systems has started from the beginning (3 years ago) to plan and design the distribution of the Games Systems. For the Special Olympics World Summer Games we have used the following Games Systems:
· GMS (Games Management System)
· VMS (Volunteer Management System)
· VSys (Credentialing – Accreditation System)
· GEMS (Guest Event Management System)
· MES (Medical Encounter System)
Below you may also find some key statistics that depict the games in numbers. 24.193 Volunteer Applications
· 182 Assistant HOD
· 333 AS Staff
· 6261 Athletes
· 1138 Coaches
· 948 Head Coaches
· 168 HOD
· 286 Unified Partners
· 14.283 Volunteers Assigned Games Time
· 4.529 Approved Family Members
· 920 Accredited Media Members
· 1.331 GOC paid staff
· 272 SOI Staff
· 200 Program Staff
· 4.700 Vendors
· 2.150 Registered ASF/MVP guests
2.0 HIGHLIGHTS
The Technology Department received most of the Games Systems (GMS, VMS) the first quarter of 2009. Initially VMS was delivered via Remote Connection to Viewpoint’s Server and later on (Second quarter of 2009) was transferred in the GOC HQ. GMS was delivered to the GOC from the first day (Version 5.6) and it was used during the test events. For the World Games there was a joint decision from SOI and GOC to use Version 6 of the program, after some addition/alterations that the GOC asked SOI to implement on the software. VSys came along the first quarter of 2011, after the decision of GOC and SOI, that VMS could not support the printing process of the Accreditation Department. GEMS was little to be used, due to the nature of the program (logging via Web and did not have complete access to the system (In the form of manipulating it). MES was primarily used by the Medical Department and was using a web-page interface to log in to the system, in order to input the medical data of the athletes. All the Games System, were residing on SOI’s GTI Rack and was transferred on Athens on the first quarter of 2010.
The following section, will explain all the issues/usage of the Games Systems.
v Volunteer Management System (VMS)
It was the Software provided by Viewpoint (a software vendor appointed by SOI) in order to manage the large number of volunteers that participated in the games. VMS has served for the registration of the volunteers and their assignment placements. Originally VMS was planned to also cater for the shift planning of the volunteers and credentialing of volunteers and other various groups, functionalities that were finally not used. Except for the group of volunteers VMS has also served the groups Families& Media. However, VMS proved unable to support the credentialing requirements for the games, as specified by the credentialing department. This resulted in huge delays, as far as the finalization of the technical specifications for the production of the credentials is concerned, until it was finally decided that VMS cannot meet the requested requirements, so approximately 6 months prior to the Games; it was found out, that it couldn’t so the GOC had to transverse to VSys, in order to print them.
VMS, despite not being a particularly flexible software platform, has performed satisfactory as far as volunteer management is concerned. Volunteer registration and assignment placement was performed without major problems. Other than that, regarding VMS:
· The supporting documentation provided was very limited.
· The system was not very flexible and a lot of times it required that the Organizing Committee adapts its business rules to the system instead of the opposite. This of course was not accepted, so requests by the Organizing Committee were either dropped or we needed to invent workarounds.
· The system had long response times that were attributed either to the way the software was designed or to the way the software was setup and shared in the PCs (this is still not clear) and as a result it was not user friendly.
· Unknown random errors appeared and although communicated were never resolved. These errors were attributed to the different Microsoft Access version in the server that VMS was installed, as opposed to the one VMS was designed for. However there was no requirement specified to GOC, to use a specific Microsoft access version in the server.
· Issues were resolved after a lot of emails had been exchanged and not in a prompt manner.
· Updated versions of the program were released and sometimes the GOC was never informed regarding these updates.
· The security module of VMS, was also a little bit unclear and it took a lot of time and effort to correctly set up the security accounts, of the users.
· Finally modules and additions, which were asked as highly critical, were not accepted by Viewpoint, but towards Games Time, were implemented by the Company.
v Credentialing / Accreditation System (VSys)
According to the original plan, accreditations for the Delegations would be produced by GMS while accreditations for every other group of the credentialing guide would be provided by VSys. In February, after it was decided that VMS could not meet the requirements set by the credentialing department and could not produce credentials of the same standards as GMS, a new credentialing system was introduced i.e. VSys. VSys would cater for every credentialing group other than Delegations. In general VSys was a flexible system, data mass import/export was easily performed with specific tools within the platform, records were easily updated with the bulk value updater tool, and credentials were produced in a timely and efficient manner. It is worth noticing that the support was excellent and immediate in all requests.
Since a separate volunteer management system was utilized, an integration solution between VMS and VSys needed to take place. This added advanced complexity to the whole project, as a two way notification process between the two systems had to be implemented. After coming into communication with both development parties – both cooperated very well – the integration solution, a two way notification process was implemented between the systems.
Other than that, the major issues with VSys were the following:
· Initial inability to work well with the SQL database. More specifically, it was not possible to make a correct backup of the VSys data in the SQL database. This problem was resolved with the updated versions provided by the vendor.
· VSys required a lot more bandwidth than originally planned or specified by the vendor.
· As a result, once queries were run from locations other than GHQ, the response times were unacceptably big. This was solved with an increase in the network connectivity bandwidth between GHQ and UDAC.
· VSys had strange delays in the process of printing the credentials or modifying records. After communicating this behavior to the developer, the problem was identified and it was attributed to the integration process with VMS. Problem was successfully resolved. In addition every time VSys was synchronized with the VMS database it was loading all the report lists again for every person. This caused the huge delay on processing the data and printing accreditation cards. After examining the problem, Bespoke (Producer of VSys) and the GOC, found the solution, by deleting the entire list from the system. Unfortunately, this had to be done manually, one by one, which was time consuming and frustrating.
v Games Management System (GMS)
GMS is being used from SOI for over than years running Local, National and World Games. The GOC initially and for the Test Events had used GMS 5.6 in order to run the Games. After evaluating the results the GOC indicated the GMS 5.6 could not support several sports, especially the team ones. These sports were:
· Football
· Volleyball
· Tennis
· Table Tennis
· Handball
· Badminton
The joint decision of the GOC and SOI was to use the new version of GMS 6 for the World Games. The version was still in a beta form, but SOI had promised and approved a time schedule that the GOC released and agreed to have a working version mid-December, early January. In addition late August, early September, the GOC released the GMS Gap Analysis workbook that indicated, all the necessary changes needed to be included in GMS 6, in order to fully support all the sports. Unfortunately, until the indicated dates the GOC did not receive a working version of GMS 6. In mid-March, the GOC received a version of GMS 6, that could generate and print reports, but the requested reports and functionalities, were not there. With result the GOC to start designing and producing all the necessary reports for all the sports. During this stage, the GOC encountered many issues, with the software, which were solved by the producing company, by releasing new updates of the software. The major issue, that the GOC encountered, was, the backup of the SQL Server data, through GMS, that was adhered by the producing company. Moreover, due to speed responses of GMS, the Games Systems Team was working on a local Nexus Database and when they switched to SQL Server Database, the reports weren’t working. This was caused by the different way that, Nexus and SQL were handling null data. Again, this issue was fixed by an updated version of the software. One day prior to the Games Time, there was a serious problem, that till now we haven’t figured why it happened, that the SQL Server “went back in time” all the data (in some sports) 2 days. This issue, caused a lot of havoc and many delays, but thankfully, all the GMS Team, managed and restored all the data, in a day. During the Competition Days, the Producing Company released more updated versions of the software, for specific sports, in order to support several features that were requested previously by the GMS Supervisors and the Sport Managers. In addition, 6 sports did not run with the “live” database, but with a copy of it locally, on a Nexus Server. At the end of each Competition Day, the GMS Supervisors would export the data of their sport and send it to HQ, in order to import the data into the Database.
As a conclusion, GMS 6 did not meet the requirements agreed a year ago, and competitions in some sports needed to run in excel sheets. Additionally, all the deadlines were not kept, including, the deadlines put by the GOC for the Delegations, with results of constant changes of the Delegation Numbers, affecting all other Fas such as: Delegation Services, Accommodation, Sport and Transportation.
It is my belief that GMS should be re-designed from scratch and embedded into a new suite of applications that will support the Future World Games. SOI need to invest into a new and holistic solution and not use a different application, for each Department (Volunteers, Accreditation, Guests, and Results).
In addition, GMS has to be build, with respect to each sport exclusively. Meaning, that each sport, should have its own interface and its own reports. All sports have different needs and GMS has to support them. Off course, it will have several reports that will have the same structure (Delegation Details, Entry List Per Delegation etc.), but sport specific reports, should be unique. In addition, SOI, has to standardize the Report Names and build them into the system and embed the graphics for them. In addition, it should be made clear to the users, from where these reports are being pulled. A proposal is, to build a module, in each sport, name “Reports & Results”, and have all the reports listed there, it is not advisable to have the reports printed from different modules of GMS, instead of gathering everything into one module and into each sport with the correct and standard names. Names like heat sheets, advanced custom reports, etc. are confusing the users a lot.
3.0 FAs MAJOR ISSUES & RECOMMENDATIONS
No / Issue Description / Recommendation1 / The most important issue with the systems, that might have proven critical to the games, was the fact that there was not a unique system to handle all accredited categories. Almost three months before the games started and two months before the first credentials needed to be produced we were still contemplating how to proceed. / A single credentialing system should have been introduced from the very beginning. Since GMS was selected by SOI to handle delegations registration and credentialing, then VSys, a software from the same vendor should have been utilized from the beginning in order to handle registrations and credentialing of the rest of the participant groups associated with this games, as well as perform volunteers management. After all VSys included all the necessary tools for the assignment placement and shifting of the volunteers, plus allowing the production of credentials in the same format as in GMS. This said, without being partial to VSys as compared to any other system, just having in mind how things would have been easier for all involved parties
2 / Regarding VMS, which serves its purpose as a volunteers management system but is kind of stiff and not particularly flexible to specific customers’ needs, communication with the vendor was kind of tricky as supposed to what was originally agreed to be provided and what was finally delivered, especially in the beginning when VMS was supposed to serve as a credentialing system as well. Every request regarding additional features and functionality was met with relative cost demands, which was not the technology’s responsibility to handle. / Since not GOC, but SOI was the one who appointed Viewpoint, then an account manager from the part of SOI should have been assigned in order to act as an intermediate between GOCs requests in terms of functionality and Viewpoint’s requests in terms of cost