Application Overview
From AADoc
Contents |
Relevant Quotes
“The Medium is the Message” because it is the medium that shapes and controls the search and form of human associations and action."
- ~ Marshall McLuhan
"The marvels – of film, radio, and television – are marvels of one way communication, which is not communication at all.
On second thought, the advantage of modern means of communication is that they enable you to worry about things in all of the world."
- ~ Milton Mayer
Simply Put
Every workplace experiences risk (a.k.a. uncertainty of loss), but few workplaces have effective systems for managing the wide variety of risks they experience.
The operative idea behind Active Agenda is very pragmatic and simple: Collect more data, in order to better identify, understand, and address problems. This may seem like an obvious concept, but it is not a common practice. This is especially true when it comes to the topic of health and human safety, and to the related goal of reducing operational loss. In fact, many workplaces use programs, measurements, or business processes that inadvertently reduce the amount of data collected about workplace risk.
Current systems for these purposes are usually cumbersome (paper-driven, bureaucratic) or improvised (Excel, Access). They are often disconnected (each being confined to a particular department or location), and reporting is often manual and therefore slow. Commercial software products do exist, but they tend to be overly specialized and fail to solve similar problems occurring in multiple departments.
Active Agenda is a general-purpose risk management database and collaboration platform. It addresses a staggering number of topics. It is highly customizable to suit the needs of any particular organization. Information is highly cross-referenced at the detail level, yet can be summarized, charted, and analyzed in a myriad ways.
What Is Active Agenda?
Active Agenda is an open enterprise, risk management, web application. Active Agenda consists of more than eighty (80) integrated modules which help companies to manage and reduce risk and related costs. Active Agenda consists of a very simple structure of:
- Global Modules
- Stand Alone Modules
- Central Sub-Modules
- Association Modules
- Guidance Modules
- Features
- Global Views
The "Active Agenda Core" consists of the basic modules required to manage risk to an organization's employees. The "core" application consists of five Stand Alone Modules and each one links directly to all of the Global Modules and Centralized Sub-Modules. Active Agenda's Features are available throughout the "core" application and the centralized Views are present when selected.
Organizations deploying Active Agenda have complete control over the scope and features available throughout Active Agenda. Organizations can limit Active Agenda's scope to tracking and managing hazards and injuries (the "core") OR they can extend Active Agenda's scope to include risks and features across the enterprise.
Active Agenda is more than a Web-based software application. Active Agenda is a global community project open to the international community.
What Can Active Agenda Do?
Active Agenda utilizes Web technologies to link and enable networks of operational managers, risk control practitioners, and external vendors, to collaborate for improved risk control results. With Active Agenda, companies can identify and substantially reduce the Total Cost of Risk, by acting upon collaborative organizational knowledge in "real time," in the following areas:
- Vision and Values Reinforcement,
- Employee/visitor/customer safety,
- Property protection,
- Environmental protection,
- Product and/or service quality,
- Vehicle operations,
- Employment liability,
- Security,
- Company ethics
Active Agenda utilizes "risk imperatives" to help companies integrate risk control business practices. We "invented" this design methodolgy following a long career of risk management and years of frustration with competing initiatives. We have refined the methodology over the past ten years of application development.
Open Source
Active Agenda is an open source software development project. This means you are free to use Active Agenda for any purpose, free to make or distribute copies of Active Agenda, free to create and distribute derivitive works of either Active Agenda or any Extensions created by a Contributor, free to access and use the source code and free to combine Active Agenda and other software, SO LONG AS... you follow Active Agenda's license requirements.
Active Agenda is distributed under the Reciprocal Public License and the Active Agenda Commercial License. The Active Agenda Commercial License essentially eliminates the obligation to share your Active Agenda modifications and extensions.
Deployment Methods
Active Agenda can be deployed as an Internet hosted software application (ASP model), an Intranet application (local network model), or as a single user application. A client-server version and/or handheld platform are natural evolutions of Active Agenda and will likely be available as the project grows and user needs dictate. Active Agenda's XML specification method enables these future platforms because the XML design specifications are 100% reusable.
Because Active Agenda is open source, the source code is available to everyone so the best deployment method can be selected according to each organization's needs. With Active Agenda, the deploying organization is in control, not an independent software vendor or service provider.
The traditional method of deploying enterprise-based software is the client-server model. The client-server model requires the installation of the entire software application on each computer and the data is shared through a central server.
With Active Agenda, all an organization needs is a copy of a free Web browser and access to the Internet; OR, in the case of an Intranet deployment, access to the local area network. Single user installations require a Web browser and access to the local server where Active Agenda is installed. Several reasons and/or opportunities for Active Agenda’s decision to deploy Active Agenda as a browser-based application are listed below.
- Resource Providers: Resource providers like consultants and insurance companies are here today and gone tomorrow. The tools and approaches provided by these revolving door resources disappear when they do. With Active Agenda, you control the tool and contract with resource providers to enhance it. With Active Agenda, the resource providers may change but the results of their valuable assistance and your risk operating system won't.
- Turnover: Turnover isn't limited to resource providers. Turnover rates for employees involved in the risk management effort are as high as ever and the impact is as devastating as ever. Have you ever found yourself sorting through the filing systems and resource materials of your predecessor? With Active Agenda's unique design, the loss of one or more risk control staff won't result in the next "program of the month." Active Agenda houses and secures your data, tracks your systems, and provides turnkey benefits to anyone inheriting your risk control systems.
- Cost: The tools utilized to manage risk cross functions. Certain functions have budget priority and other functions do not. As an Web-based application, Active Agenda represents value to many business practices as a collaborative tool or as a tool to the "isolated professional" trying to do it on her/his own. Our hosted design is cost effective for either approach.
- IT Support: Few tools exist to help small and medium sized businesses with risk control activities. Smaller companies cannot afford enterprise software, the computing infrastructure, or the IT talent to support them. When we went looking for capital to build Active Agenda, we ran into a wall of insurance brokers and risk services firms only interested in the "cream of the crop." We were also told that the "users" of Active Agenda were too far downstream (operations level) to represent market value. Active Agenda offers value to the decision maker no matter who or where they are. After all, aren't the employees and customers of small firms entitled to the same protections and resources as the largest companies? They are now.
- Benchmarking: Active Agenda's design not only allows us to offer value to all types of industries, all levels of an organization, and all sizes of companies, we also span the globe. With the gettext utility, Active Agenda can be made available in as many languages as there is interest in translating it. The multilingual capabilities of Active Agenda enable the global sharing of ideas and best practices without regional or geographical limitation. More languages, more geographical deployments, more ideas, more improvement!
- Product Improvement: We know that solutions come from the front line and rarely from the top. We have spent a portion of our carrier educating those sent to "assist us" regarding the realities of managing risk within a local environment. Our Internet based design allows us to convert client improvement ideas into shared innovations without continuing to increase a price point (Active Agenda is free of charge). Under the Reciprocal Public License, modifications and derivitive works must be shared with the global community. This way, Active Agenda users enjoy the rapid product improvements we can generate AND the brilliance of others contributing improvements and making their unique perspectives available for everyone.
- Criticality: No matter how bad we want to believe otherwise, risk control is not typically considered mission critical and doesn't justify the expense of enterprise software and the IT staff required to deploy it. Well, it doesn't get any better than "free of charge" and "free access to the source code" to reduce the risk of an IT investment in Active Agenda. Because the source code is open, IT departments are free to secure Active Agenda any way they deem best.
System Requirements
Internet access is NOT required to use Active Agenda!
Web Browser: Active Agenda is optimized for Firefox) but has been successfully tested with Internet Explorer and other popular browsers. The application has been optimized for Firefox because Firefox is an open source Web browser with uniquely powerful navigation and security features. Here's what a few sources have said about Firefox:
- “Beware of spyware. If you can, use the Firefox browser.” - USA Today
- “Better than Internet Explorer by leaps and bounds.” - FORBES
Internet Access: Internet access is ONLY required to use Active Agenda as a hosted Web application. Internet access is also helpful for those utilizing Active Agenda on an Intranet or single-user platform in order to take full advantage of Active Agenda's collaboration capabilities. Each module of Active Agenda links to module specific discussion groups and this documentation site. If Active Agenda is used without Internet access, these powerful features will be unavailable, as well as automated notifications and other Internet dependent features.
Active Agenda incorporates AJAX technologies to reduce the dependency on high speed Internet access and deliver data on a "just-in-time" basis. As AJAX technologies proliferate throughout Active Agenda, application performance will improve on dial-up connections but until then, a high speed Internet connection is optimal for data transfer.
