Miami Dade County Public Schools
Miami Dade County Public Schools (MDCPS) is one of the largest public school districts in the
United
States
. They service over 400 learning facilities throughout
Miami Dade
County
and have one of the most diverse student bodies in the nation.
The school system encompasses K-12, adult and vocational education programs, and
specialty magnet schools.
MDCPS has hundreds of locations and tens of thousands of employees. Due to
government regulations, all prospective employees must submit numerous documents
and go through a rigorous screening during the hiring process. All final processing
must occur on their IBM mainframe system, so the Human Resources department was
stuck doing double data entry, or copying and pasting information into the Mainframe
via terminal emulation. This was very inefficient and was a bottle-neck to
reviewing needed applicants.
Using Microsoft's ASP.NET, an external Internet site was created to allow prospective
employees to begin their applications online.
An additional internal Intranet portal was created that allowed Human Resources
managers to log in and review all incoming applications, and approve of these application
for automated transfer to the mainframe.
The specific technologies used were: Microsoft ASP.NET 1.1, SQL Server 2000, DTS,
and
Visual Basic.NET.
Once the search is performed, a list of the results are presented. The Manager
can sort the list or page through the result set, and select a
single application
for drill
down detail.
The Human Resources Manager can search
for applicants on several different criteria,
from name, social security number, application date, birth date, or incomplete application
age.
Within the detail, the Human Resources Manager can make changes to the record or
flag several different status codes to affect processing on the mainframe,
as well as set it ready for transmission to the mainframe.
On a nightly batch, those records that are ready for transfer are moved into the
mainframe where final processing will occur.
This system saves hundreds of hours of Human Resource Manager's time every month. This system was written in about four months, giving MDCPS return on investment in under six months.