Students enrolled in UB's two-year-old "E-Commerce Technology" course are helping to make Amherst one of the first communities in Western New York to offer major government services online.
Teams of students in the computer science and engineering department are working to add services to the town's existing Web site, which currently offers an online tax assessment challenge and comprehensive information about the town's programs.
Depending on the availability of funding, Amherst hopes to incorporate a procurement system for an online auction, recreation reservations and dog licensing onto the site.
The partnership between UB and the town of Amherst was formed because "the town needs to automate things more quickly because of [its] sheer size, and manual systems just don't cut it," stated Jerry Galkiewicz, director of computer services for Amherst, in a press release.
The possibility was uncovered in a proposal, designed two years ago, to have a course that partnered with a corporation in order to give CSE students hands-on experience.
The seminar course developed what is now called an adopter scheme, where a company would adopt the program and provides lecturers, and would help the students apply theories learned in the classroom.
"It means the students are not just coming to class and doing homework, they are actually applying what they learn," said Hejamadi Rao, a UB professor of management science and systems.
Electronic Data Systems (EDS), a global information technology services company, adopted the course in its first year, making the students consultants of the company and guiding them to develop e-services for their products. This year, the town of Amherst adopted the program.
"Professor (Sviatoslav) Braynov (UB assistant professor of computer science and engineering) came and told us that the government does not have the funds to develop much in the way of e-commerce for the community," said Sangeetha Raghavan, a computer science student in the class. "[He said] that we could help by contributing our best to developing a protocol that could be developed and implemented later on."
Through the online auction, one of the services being considered, the town hopes to eliminate the slow process of "snail mail" bidding for government contracts.
Using the auction, businesses can go and see what items are needed and place a bid for the largest portion of the order, but there is a maximum the government can pay as well as a time restriction. The hope for doing this is that small vendors will be able to ship their product and gain recognition.
"After the scheduled time is over for the particular product the results are announced, and the bidder who produces the lowest quote for the product receives percentage 'A' of the order, then the next lowest gets percentage 'B' and so on and so forth," said Raghavan. "One of the requirements was that everyone who bid got a percentage of the order."
The UB-Amherst partnership, according to Galkiewicz, will save the town money by eliminating the duplication of services and by using students as developers. At the same time, students are extremely enthusiastic about developing the protocols and gaining hands-on experience.
As one of the few universities in the country to offer such a course, many feel that continuing to involve students in solving real-world problems and exposing them to projects beyond the classroom is a key factor in preparing them for the future.
As Rao noted, it will be interesting to see if this year's crop of CSE students can move all these protocols past the prototype stage.
