4. Implementation Experience
MST learned significant lessons from the implementation of the ACS, which has contributed to improving overall operations at the agency. MST had to be persistent with the vendor until the system became stable in 2005, almost 4 years after the start of implementation.
In general, process management during previous technology deployments was a challenge for MST. During the initial ACS implementation phase, MST had to interact with several different project managers from the vendor, which made process management challenging. Also, MST recognizes that this is an ongoing challenge for MST with current implementations and will be taken into account during any future deployments.
MST's experience with the implementation of various technologies is as follows:
- The HASTUS implementation was relatively straightforward and was completed within a year. The timekeeping (DDAM) module of HASTUS was added subsequent to the initial HASTUS deployment and has been live for 1 year (as of August 2008).
- The FAMIS implementation started in 2006 and is not completed yet. Several modules, such as grants tracking, have not been implemented so far. MST believes that FAMIS is not functioning as expected since certain business rules are not set up correctly in the system. Also, MST cannot access some of the information stored in FAMIS (e.g., tables in the database).
- The MMS has been operating for 3 years (as of August 2008). MST has not faced any major issues with implementing or operating this system. They encountered relatively minor issues with the hardware that is used in the FuelFocus component at the beginning of the implementation, but that has been resolved.
- The video surveillance system implementation was relatively straightforward, and its operation has been as expected for both on-board and facility systems. As stated in Section 0, security cameras were installed on buses and inside facilities in several phases.
- MST evaluated several alternatives for an automated trip planning system before selecting Google Transit. Google Transit went live in November 2008. The use of Google Transit was evaluated in Phase III by analyzing the results of the customer intercept survey.