<p>I) ICISA Positioning:</p>
<p>&nbsp;First and foremost before a visioning exercise is undertaken, it is important to be clear about the</p>
<p>positioning of the organization. One meeting will be held to brainstorm and discuss possibilities regarding the</p>
<p>positioning of the organization. Some basic points that were discussed include the following:<br />&nbsp;* ICISA would like to project itself as an organization of International standards. To this end the</p>
<p>websites of the supreme audit organizations of the leading countries will be explored and used as reference in</p>
<p>terms of a starting point.<br />&nbsp;* The organization should have a progressive image<br />&nbsp;* The positioning of the organization should be such that it targets international trainees, and</p>
<p>positions the organization and the trainings that it offers as a very positive and interesting experience that</p>
<p>would motivate the trainees to look forward to their training at ICISA.</p>
<p>The above will be a starting point; thereafter the positioning of the organization will be discussed starting with a</p>
<p>clean slate to arrive at the positioning that the new redesigned website is to project.</p>
<p>II) ICISA website Visioning and Design:</p>
<p>&nbsp;Once the positioning is clear, in the first meeting itself, ideas regarding how the final website should</p>
<p>appear and what kind of visual look and feel it should have will be discussed. Thereafter design mockups will</p>
<p>be created and presented to the client. The client and NC will then discuss these design options and changes</p>
<p>that come out of this process will be incorporated into the design. Thereafter two design options will be</p>
<p>emailed to the client. The client can then recommend further changes which again will be incorporated or</p>
<p>approve the design. Once the design is approved it will be translated into the actual website. <br />&nbsp;As the following section on the design process indicates, the design includes not only the visual</p>
<p>layout of the website, but also consideration including the navigation, menus and the logical flow of the website.</p>
<p>The idea is to make the website visually appealing and also user friendly and easy to navigate so that users</p>
<p>can easily and intuitively find the most important content on the website, while the reference material is</p>
<p>available but does not dilute the most important content.</p>
<p>III) Content:</p>
<p>&nbsp;This proposal assumes that ICISA will undertake an internal exercise to determine what content they</p>
<p>would like to have on the website. The organization would then have to prepare a word file that lists all the</p>
<p>content. This content should be proofread and well organized. A hierarchical section with headings and sub</p>
<p>headings that organizes the content into a logical hierarchy will also be provided to NC by the client. This will</p>
<p>eventually become the main menu on the home page. It is important to be clear that NC will not be developing</p>
<p>content for ICISA as part of this proposal, but will be supplying NC with the finalized content for the website.</p>
<p>Should ICISA need help with content a separate quotation can be solicited from the Documentation group at</p>
<p>NC, and can be provided on request.</p>
<p><br />IV) E-Learning:<br />&nbsp;The exploitation of the E-learning capabilities of the internet is crucial to an organization that</p>
<p>provides training to international clients who return to their own country. The returning of the clients to their home</p>
<p>countries provides an opportunity to put forth support material on the website that gives the trainees a good</p>
<p>reason to return to the website.</p>
<p>&nbsp;There are two possible ways to go with e-learning solutions. One is to develop customized e-</p>
<p>learning functionality that will offer basic e-learning features to the audience. The 2nd is to install existing e-</p>
<p>learning software, some of which is open source, and enable it for the ICISA website. Both need to be</p>
<p>evaluated to determine which forms the best fit with the needs of ICISA.</p>
<p>&nbsp;Since ICISA does not have very specialized needs with regard to e-learning, it is not recommended</p>
<p>that custom software be developed. This would be relevant to organizations, that have very particular needs</p>
<p>and E-learning is central to their activities. Many open source E-learning solutions are available, it is</p>
<p>recommended that these be researched by NC for ICISA, and the top 3 evaluated and presented to ICISA.</p>
<p>Based on this the best open source E-learning system should be installed and deployed on the ICISA website.</p>
<p>&nbsp;The content for the E-learning needs to be provided by ICISA. This could include transcripts of the</p>
<p>classes, and/or video/audio files. One vision is that along with the listing and description of courses that ICISA</p>
<p>offers, listed on the website, the E-Learning module would simply provide links to:<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; * Transcripts from prior classes<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; * Videos of classes where available<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; * Audio of classes where available</p>
<p>&nbsp;Existing E-Learning Content Management Systems (CMS) offer many features out of the box. It</p>
<p>would be best to spend some time exploring these and selecting the best one. This will be done BY NC for</p>
<p>ICISA and since only open source CMS's will be considered there will be no cost associated with this in terms</p>
<p>of development, only integration costs will be incurred.</p>
<p>&nbsp;Some preliminary research at the proposal stage yielded the following information about Moodle a</p>
<p>leading open source E-Learning CMS. A brief description is provided below:</p>
<p>&nbsp;Moodle is an Open Source Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning</p>
<p>Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It has become very popular among</p>
<p>educators around the world as a tool for creating online dynamic websites for their students. To work, it needs</p>
<p>to be installed on a web server somewhere, either on one of your own computers or one at a web hosting</p>
<p>company.<br />What is Moodle?<br />The focus of the Moodle project is always on giving educators the best tools to manage and promote learning,</p>
<p>but there are many ways to use Moodle:</p>
<p>&nbsp;Moodle has features that allow it to scale to very large deployments and hundreds of thousands of</p>
<p>students, yet it can also be used for a primary school or an education hobbyist. <br />Many institutions use it as their platform to conduct fully online courses, while some use it simply to augment</p>
<p>face-to-face courses (known as blended learning). <br />&nbsp;Many of our users love to use the many activity modules (such as Forums, Wikis, Databases and so</p>
<p>on) to build richly collaborative communities of learning around their subject matter (in the social constructionist</p>
<p>tradition), while others prefer to use Moodle as a way to deliver content to students (such as standard SCORM</p>
<p>packages) and assess learning using assignments or quizzes.</p>
<p>The above information on Moodle was provided to demonstrate what is available; however at this stage we will</p>
<p>not decide to go with any particular brand, rather several will be evaluated before the final choice is made.</p>
<p><br />V)&nbsp; Interactive Features:</p>
<p>Since ICISA has so many batches of domestic and international students coming in for training year after year,</p>
<p>batch after batch, a natural idea is to cerate an online community of ICISA alumni. This has many benefits and</p>
<p>synergies:<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;1) Networking among alumni<br />&nbsp;2) The ability to provide alumni with refresher material through the e-learning module<br />&nbsp;3) Improve the overall profile of the ICISA organization</p>
<p>Two relevant features come to mind:<br />&nbsp;1) E-Newsletter: The E-newsletter allows the organization to maintain a list of email addresses and</p>
<p>send newsletters out to them periodically. This serves to pull alumni and trainees to the website and also keep</p>
<p>them informed about new courses and activities at the Alma Mater. Special e-newsletter software called PHP</p>
<p>list will be installed which will enable ICISA to manage their newsletters very efficiently.<br />&nbsp;2) Bulletin Board/Forum: A forum module is very important as it will foster a sense of community at</p>
<p>the ICISA website and alumni and other stake holders who are interested in the website can interact with each</p>
<p>other. The forum will be moderated and will allow users to create threads and have discussions regarding</p>
<p>topics of interest.</p>