Working in a fairly large school district, we in the tech department are constantly asked to use our imaginations to migrate the old paper/sneaker net into the electronic realm. One of the first, and most underutilized, forms of this is our ticket tracking system, which is supposed to take a request and assign it to the proper person.
I say underutilized because 99% of our requests come when we pass by an open office door and someone yells out "I wanted to ask you if it's possible..." The secretary to our Superintendent collects a lot of data for our Board of Education that must be collated into reports. I have worked with her in the past to update our administrative website with collection forms and csv output so that all the school data is entered in a similar way and with similar font ( a major annoyance of hers). Recently, she stopped me as I passed by her office with the following:
Secretary: I was wondering if it's possible to make a form and database for our suspension reports just like you did for staff trip reimbursement.
Me: Well, I don't see why not, but doesn't our attendance program track student attendance, including suspensions?
Secretary: No, you don't understand! I need something that the secretaries can use, that all comes out the same!
Me: Uhm...we have attendance secretaries that input all of that information every day...and it has to be entered the same way...are you sure we can't...
Secretary: No, you don't understand! I can't add any responsibility on to what they already do!
Me: Wait...wouldn't a whole new web form and proceedure be adding on to what they already do? I mean, they already enter attendance every day and...
Secretary: NO, you...don't...understand! I can't just collect that information, the Principals may not want me to.
Me: But...it's already in our systems...it's not like we're requesting new data...
Secretary: NO...
I think you can see that it was a very productive conversation. In the 20 minutes I got me "re-education" on how our systems work, I had emailed the coworker who is in charge of maintaining the attendance program and he was able to take an already made suspension report and tweak a few parameters and write the SSIS project to run it every month and email it to her as a CSV document.