With a chief information security officer and key roles established for policy and training, engineering and operations, risk assessment, and security testing and compliance, we are ready to execute on opportunities, challenges, and expansion that await the Church.

Leadership and Governance

Which is more vital to security in an organization: the right people or the right conceptual-framework? The Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria (TCSEC), also known as the Orange Book, on computer security for the Department of Defense was first published in 1983 by a team of top scientists at the National Security Agency (NSA). Its groundbreaking information was considered useful for almost two decades, a singular accomplishment in the realm of technology. While the right people and the right criteria are both important, leadership and the staffing of key roles have been vital to beginning a new age of information security at the Church. While working at NSA, the INFOSEC chief scientist mentioned to me that no matter how great or important any produced criteria were, the criteria would only be sustainable as long as the right people were attracted, retained, and cultivated by the organization. At the Church, we are now beginning to adopt recognized standards and implement a governance framework that increases accountability and improves results. Leadership and governance is the cornerstone of our information security.

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LDS Philanthropies operates as a department of the Office of the Presiding Bishopric with the responsibility to correlate, encourage, and facilitate voluntary philanthropic contributions—beyond tithes and fast offerings—to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its affiliated organizations and activities. For Church members, LDS Philanthropies provides a way to make charitable gifts to Church institutions and priorities.

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FamilySearch announced today its second annual conference for software and Web application developers and its inaugural FamilySearch Software Awards. The 2009 FamilySearch Developers Conference will be held on Wednesday, March 11, 2009, in conjunction with the Brigham Young University Computerized Family History and Genealogy Conference in Provo, Utah. Attendees can register online at familyhistoryconferences.byu.edu/familysearch.

The 2009 FamilySearch Developers Conference provides a unique forum and opportunity for developers of genealogy-related desktop and Web applications to meet with other professionals who use similar development technologies to confront common technical challenges and share effective solutions. Conference attendees will learn about new and updated FamilySearch web services from FamilySearch engineers and best practices from current community developers.

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Copiers have long been useful in enabling local units to communicate with and inform members of necessary things, such as programs, lessons, minutes, talks, certificates, phone number and address lists, and roles. All of these would either disappear or become far more time-consuming and expensive if not for today’s copiers and multifunctional devices (MFD).

Since 2005, for the U.S. and Canada, the Church has instituted a copier purchase program. Purchased copiers have been placed in all authorized meetinghouse locations in the United States and Canada. Under the direction of the Presiding Bishopric, this new program replaced the former leasing program, and is administered cooperatively by the Materials Management Department (Purchasing Division), and the Physical Facilities Department (facilities management groups). These groups work with the Headquarters Copier Administration team to set standards, develop guidelines, choose vendors, and negotiate prices. Better and faster copiers or MFDs have been purchased at a much lower cost than would otherwise be possible.

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Processes are an important part of every business. A well-defined process can help the security, quality, and cost savings of a product or service rollout. However, some ugly side effects can result from even the best-planned processes. I've identified three general problems that creep up in many processes. I hope that we can come up with innovative solutions to make our processes run smoothly.

Square Peg, Meet Round Hole

One of the biggest problems with many processes is that they take a “one-size-fits-all” approach. For example, if your business is used to handling large projects, and a small one comes along, you may end up spending much more time, money, and effort forcing the small project through the large project process – an ugly side effect. This has happened recently on one of my projects. It took months of effort before we could even start the development. The process effort far surpassed the amount of work the project required.

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Welcome to the official technology web site for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We are excited to share with you information about our culture, process, and projects. Most importantly, we want you to get involved! Read about the purpose of this site.

The new LDS.org web site was launched on January 30th. This new website is the result of a lot of research and development in an effort to make the site more usable. 

Gospel Library 

According to Larry Richman, the Director of the Internet Coordination Group, the new site will use the new Gospel Library which is a completely new database of XML text (with links to associated PDFs, audio files, etc.). If you have links on your sites to content on the Gospel Library, you will need to update those links to the new URLs. To prevent your links from breaking immediately, we will keep the old Gospel Library functional for some time (at least six months). 

Feedback

We welcome your feedback on the new site. Just click the "Feedback" link at the top of any of the pages of the new LDS.org Web site.

My background is in software development so my first inclination in solving a business problem is to turn to custom software. I have to fight that urge as off-the-shelf applications are often more cost effective than custom-developed ones.

Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) applications are wonderful if they match your business process. Many of these applications incorporate process models which are based on industry best practices and thus if you can match your business processes to industry practices, you can benefit from an industry’s collective wisdom. Plus you have many more users testing “your” code for you. Your company may use a small percentage of the available features of a given solution, but the economies of scale a vendor leverages in creating a COTS application make a 10% value proposition worth the full investment in the product.

Note I said “if they match your business processes.” If they do not then you have two choices. You can change your business process to match the tool (much easier said than done) or you can customize the tool.

According to a January 2007 study of 500 adults ages 18 and older conducted by InsightExpress, the following are the types of content that U.S. consumers say they are likely to watch online:

It is wonderful how a community can come together to share information and to assist people.  I thought that I would take a moment and share with you some of the things that I have learned since this Web site was launched.

FamilySearch Indexing

In a forum thread discussing genealogy transcription, I recently learned that the Church has a program in which volunteers from around the world extract family history information from digital images of historical documents to create indexes that will assist others in finding their ancestors. You can read more about it and even sign up to volunteer by visiting http://www.familysearchindexing.org. I'll be talking more about this program in the near future.