Tim Evans March 2018

It’s been nearly a year since this blog was last updated, and I’ve become aware that many people are interested in what’s happened over that period, and indeed what is happening with the HERALD project overall.

For those blissfully unaware, HERALD is the overarching title for the project that is actively redeveloping the OASIS system. For background, please do have a look at the revitalised HERALD wiki pages.

Well, a great deal has happened! In the first instance there have been significant staffing changes and reshuffles here at the ADS. Over the winter, one of our Developers (Lei Xia) moved on to a fantastic job with  University of York IT Services. Lei was one of the key brains behind the new ADS Library, and his last few months were spent finishing the final tasks and processes for that system. With Lei moving on, we’ve looked around for a new Java Developer to take over as a designated ‘OASIS Developer’ to work with our existing Development team. It turns our that despite casting a wide net, the answer was very close to home and in February Jo Gilham (previously the  HERALD Project Manager) successfully interviewed for the post.

Those reading this will probably be aware of Jo through the scoping work she did as part of  Stage 1, and it was Jo that wrote the final Functional Specification for the new OASIS system that was signed off by HE and HES in July 2017. Not many people know this, but Jo comes from a technical background and in recent years has begun programming in Java, so she’s ideally based to take on  this challenge.

Despite this quick turnover, losing an experienced member of staff has not been ideal and has led to a delay in the expected delivery of the project. In truth, this delay has also been exacerbated by the need to finish work on the previously mentioned ADS Library, which has proved to be an extremely large and complex piece of work that has consistently thrown up problems that could not have been predicted at the outset. Significant delay on HERALD has thus been inevitable.

With support from Historic England, we’ve thus gone back to the original plan, identified which pieces of work may require additional resources (one of the positives of the Library was that we learnt alot more about the complexities of particular tasks), and come up with a new time frame for the OASIS redevelopment. I’ve created a project timeline on the HERALD wiki pages for easy reference, but to summarise we are now looking at completion of the Beta format of new OASIS in March 2020. Although that seems a long way off, in terms of development time this is still relatively short, so for the new/old HERALD team it’s full steam ahead.

On a final note, one of the issues that was raised recently was the need for increased communications regarding HERALD, especially in the build up to the public release of the Beta after March 2020. We’ve come up with a broad strategy of ways to accomplish this, of which you’ll see a great deal of in the immediate future, including:

• the HERALD wiki pages and this blog will be kept up to date, and act as a constant guide to what’s happening and a reference resource with accessible reports and other publicity materials
• you’ll also see me (Tim) out and about as much as possible at conferences, workshops and meetings
• production of a great deal of paper-based literature about HERALD
• new electronic publicity material which can be reproduced by non-ADS individuals if required
• a greater presence on ADS and partner social media

I hope this does not seem like an overkill, or a saturation of the landscape! The desired effect is instead to try and make as many people aware of how the redevelopment is going, how they can participate and feedback  on testing and establishing training needs.

The redevelopment of OASIS is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create an excellent resource that plays a core part of Historic England’s HIAS, and a system that will work optimally for everyone involved. The communications side of this work will focus on making the existing community aware of this, and how their specific concerns and issues with the old system are being addressed. It’s also an opportunity to engage those who previously have not used OASIS, or have thought that OASIS is not suitable for their work.

So please, do keep up to date with this blog, and related social media channels such as

• https://twitter.com/oasis_data
• https://twitter.com/ADS_Update

For those of you who prefer face-to-face chats, please have a look at the upcoming events to see where members of the HERALD team will be in attendance. If you have any questions about the project or require any information that is not available on the main HERALD wiki then please email the team.