The help desk is staffed in three levels of response. Level 1 will be staffed directly by the IJIS Institute to provide the basic responses to questions and build the knowledge base in addition to managing the project. Specific domain expertise will be available as Level 2 support from the National Center for State Courts and SEARCH, the national consortium on integrated justice. Further support from technical expertise of member companies and the Georgia Tech Research Institute will be available for the most difficult technical questions.
The goal of the help desk is to get answers back to developers within 24 hours wherever possible. The operation will keep open hours of 8 am to 8 pm eastern time to ensure service to the west coast during afternoon hours.
The GJXDM Help Desk Project Manager, Ashwini Jarral, said that "the intent is to grow the knowledge base to the point where developer's can get their questions answered without submitting a problem report, but to never let a develop starve for answers to pressing questions." Jarral said that "we will keep the staffing level in place until we discover that we have filled the knowledge void."
Funding from the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance, started the project as begun by the Institute and funded most of the planning effort. Once plans were in place, the U.S. Department of Transportation provided additional funding to ensure that the help desk will assist developers in getting questions answered about the exchange of information between intelligent transportation systems and public safety communications centers or computer aided dispatch systems. Plans are underway to ensure that the help desk supports the roll-out of the new National Information Exchange Model being co-developed by DOJ and DHS which is intended to provide a basis for expanding information sharing to multiple domains at the Federal, state, tribal, and local levels of government.
The XML Advisory Committee of the IJIS Institute is the basic steering committee for the help desk, having created the concept of operations and providing significant contributions to the knowledge base contained in the help desk. Mike Hulme, enterprise system architect at UNISYS, who is Chairman of the XML Advisory Committee, said that "this collaborative effort is exactly what we have needed to spread the knowledge about how to implement the GJXDM in order to accelerate the implementation of this important standard throughout the nation."
The fundamental idea of creating such a virtual help desk was originated in the GJXDM Training and Technical Assistance Committee (GTTAC), a consortium of service providers that attempt to provide a consistent educational and support service to developers to encourage adoption of the GJXDM in ways that ensure interoperability. GTTAC is an adhocracy formed at the encouragement of BJA and has been actively engaged in national training efforts.
The software supporting the help desk is provided by Right Now, a company that has considerable experience in implementing large scale help desks for various governmental and private organizations.
The help desk started beta operations on August 1 and will roll out for full public consumption on September 1, 2005.
