This report presents an information needs assessment for an office automation plan to be undertaken for the School Building Services Branch of the Alberta Department of Education. This exercise complements the work of two senior committees within the Department: (1) the Electronic Information Processing Needs Study Steering Committee, and (2) the Electronic Information Processing Task Force. The first phase, in five sections, provides a background for the rest of the examination. The introduction describes the purpose of the assignment and the research activities. Section 2 describes the organization, operations, key responsibility areas, and physical environment of the branch. Section 3 describes the functions, processes, and data and information flows. In Section 4, a model displays what occurs within the branch: generation of primary data, retrieval, acquisition of data, transformation of data into usable information, interaction (communicating or disseminating) and storage of data/information. Section 5 completes the overview with a background summary. Phase 2 comprises a time log survey (Section 6) of all members of the branch. This is followed by a consideration of general automation requirements of the branch (Section 7), and a framework (Section 8) for a plan of automation, including a model of a school building's capital decision support system. A separate volume of 21 appendices is also included. It presents statistical data to complement the report. (TE)