Observing and Evaluating the Rollout of PAtrack

The administration of the University of Regensburg still works with paper files. Although the introduction of e-files as part of the eGovernment strategy of the German Bundesregierung is the goal, a concrete date for its introduction is not yet foreseeable. Until that date, employees will therefore have to continue working with paper files. Working with paper files entails certain limitations in their work. A major problem is the findability of paper files, since there is currently no way to determine where a particular file is currently located. Employees have to coordinate with each other to find out where a file is located. At the same time it is difficult for employees to keep track of which files they currently have. Therefore PAtrack was developed in the context of a master thesis. This system enables the location of files to be tracked by using and scanning RFID tags in combination with a central database.

The next step is to introduce this system in the administration of the University of Regensburg or to test it in trial operation. The goal of this project is to accompany this process and to gain knowledge from it. In particular, it is planned to find out whether there are problems when using PAtrack and how the way employees work changes through its use.

Preliminary study:

• Find out what the attitude of the employees is with regard to PAtrack. What are their concerns? What advantages are seen?
• Identify possible usability problems of the user interface

Support of the introduction of PAtrack:

• How does using PAtrack change the way you work?
• What problems are there?