New Global nformation System for

AESEC
General introduction, Stage 1

About AIESEC
AESEC is a global, non-for-profit, non-political organization, founded in 1948. With around
85000 active members across 113 countries and territories it is the largest youth-led
organization.
AESEC focuses on leadership development for positive change in society. With that in mind,
the organization offers a unique & continuously growing global network helping high potential
youth to explore and develop their leadership potential.
The AIESEC Experience
The AESEC Experience is the
integrated leadership development
experience that AESEC offers to all
its members. All members go through
an engagement phase and then they
choose one of the four programmes
to polish their leadership skills.
The programmes are:
O Team Member Programme
O Team Leader Programme
O Global nternship Programme
(corporate exchange)
O Global Community
Development Programme
(non-corporate exchange)
Currently all activities in Team
Programmes contribute to the
delivery of nternship Programmes.
Note: Management structure
S is based on volunteering and currently operates onahierarchical structure.Strategy,
however is rather being driven than passed in a command & control nature, which gives the
organization a management structure of an association.
Identified needs towards an information system
nique characteristics of AESEC shape specific needs and requirements that a Global
nformation System for AESEC should satisfy:
O ynamicity: The organization changes the entire leadership body every single year,
which makes it a playground for innovation. Such innovation often needs to be
supported by information systems very quickly and without bureaucracy.
O ustomizability: Because of AESEC's low-coupled structure, the approach to strategy
implementation is different for every Member Committee (MC) and hence requires
different systems.
O Simplicity: A significant portion of operations in AESEC is carried out by members that
have recently joined. Therefore, a lean system with a friendly learning curve is a priority.
O General and cross-platform accessibility: Most of AESEC's members work on-the-field,
using their personal computers. The GS cannot rely on members configuring rich
clients.
O ompactness: With presence in 113 countries across all inhabited continents,
broadband internet connection is less than guaranteed. n certain AESEC countries,
even electrical power is an issue, and internet-based communication is being handled
through smart-phones, which pose a cheaper and more compact alternative to
notebooks.
Current state
As of late 2012, the official main platform of the GS is MyAESEC.net (My@net). Development
of My@net is currently fully outsourced, and the head office, AESEC nternational (A) and one
of its Global Support Teams manage change requests. This creates a centralized, outsourced
development model.
The most popular reasons to introduce
such a development model is cross-
term stability and in the past it was
believed that AESEC isn't capable of
utilizing T talent amongst its members
or if such T talent even exists. Even
today, these reasons are quite valid,
but the inflexibility of the chosen
development model shows to be very
hindering in a world increasingly
dependent on innovation, and in the
context of an operationally very
challenging midterm ambition. The
Need for business intelligence and
data administration appear but the current development model cannot keep up.
The fact that other platforms (e.g. Facebook, Podio, SalesForce, etc.) are being used globally
without official support of AESEC nternational (A) is an uncoordinated reaction to needs that
My@net couldn't and cannot satisfy.
The uncoordinated way may fill current local gaps in business intelligence or data
administration, but it causes a lot of direct challenges, some of the most significant listed below:
MyAIESEC.net home page as of 29
th
of January 2013
O Not every Member Committee (MC)
1
is capable of maintaining an T department capable
of introducing, developing and maintaining such information systems completely. n fact,
just a minority has such an T department.
O deas and information systems stay local. This challenge obviously presents huge
opportunity cost in organizational development and process optimization.
O With multiple different information systems, any global data analysis and management
becomes increasingly difficult.
O The wheel is being re-invented again and again.

roposed structure draft
Based on the current needs and
past experience, AESEC
nternational (A) has a certain
proposal towards how the structure
of the application could look like. Of
course there is flexibility to divert
from it, provided proper reasoning.
n general, A expects to co-create
the detailed specifications with the
chosen vendor.
AESEC's GS should be a modular
platform with certain stable, core
modules, and additional, optional
modules, which can be developed
by literally anyone who has access
to an AP
2
. An escalation structure then decides what Apps will be activated for different sub-
trees of the Global Association.
AI
The AP should be easy to pick up and experiment with. Therefore, a RESTful web service with
Resource-Oriented Architecture
3
seems like the best option.
The specification is to be co-created with the chosen vendor, but exchange & member
management with enhanced filtering and sorting of data will, for sure, be part of it. Keeping in
mind the needs of AESEC, the AP should be completely separating the G from server-side
business logic.

1
E.g. AESEC Australia or AESEC Afghanistan
2
The initial idea would be opening it up for MCs first.
3
"RESTful Web Services by O'Reilly Media
Main atform
The main platform should act as an implementation of the AP and a container for the Core
Modules and Apps.
Sharing Apps in the network of AIESEC entities
We can get inspired by Facebook and Facebook Apps, with only one difference: Facebook
expects third parties creating the modules to have the goal of reaching out to as many users as
possible. n AESEC, developers of these modules would use them to enhance business
intelligence and information management in their specific organizational sub-tree.
Therefore, as long as the module is running on the local servers of an organizational sub-tree,
there is not enough incentive to share it. As a consequence, introducing some kind of provided
dynamic hosting for Apps of organizational sub-trees seems inevitable. This conclusion has to
be taken under consideration while developing the Main Platform.
Deveopment process
The development will be divided into at least two stages. After Stage 1 is implemented, the full
Main Platform with an AP and App support should be developed and running in a testing
environment. However, the design and development of Core Modules will not be started until a
final tested version of the AP is available and will hence be part of Stage 2.
There is a high probability that the vendor chosen for the development of Stage 1 will also be
developing Stage 2.