IT Transformation Town Hall Meeting
March 7, 2008
- Vendor selection for Shared IT Service Desk team gets underway with valuable demo feedback from participants.
- Frequent user of piloted Strategic Information Reporting Initiative (SIRI) systems demonstrates significant improvements.
- Microsoft Sharepoint tools enrich team collaboration.
- Campus-wide spam management improvements coming soon.
Read on for more information...
Shared IT Service Desk Project Update
Presented by team leader Daniel Arrasjid
In February, the SITSD team hosted a series of three selected vendor demonstrations for product evaluation. A follow-up evaluation tool, composed of questions that enabled participants to compare vendor features, yielded a 20 percent response rate, providing useful information toward selection recommendations. The team will consider how well the product meets the technical and functional requirements, implementation and licensing costs, as well as campus feedback from the vendor demonstrations.
“We are seeking the true cost of what an actual implementation will look like,” said Arrasjid in response to a question on project status, adding, “Educating UB is a very important part of the project and will be included in the final recommendation.”
A final recommendation is expected by April, with subsequent development of an implementation team.
For the detailed slide presentation, click here.
Strategic Information Reporting Initiative
Presented by team leader Joe Kerr
In describing details that led to the second phase of the finance, human resources, and resource management systems implementation, Kerr highlighted two key project topics: progress on data definition and transformation, and identification of data quality issues needed to be resolved.
Results of Systems Improvements
Beth Rogan, Director of Resource Planning, Processing and Development in Student Affairs, exemplified how the new systems are a major improvement to her work functions, highlighting the speed and performance, the integration, and, most importantly, the analytical ability. “Student Affairs is heavily student fee-based, so it’s great to be able to work with the fees so smoothly,” she stated. Rogan described how much less time she now spends on the procurement functions and how much more meaningful reporting she is able to do. “I’m very excited about the enhanced resource management tools being worked on,” she concluded.
Many improvements to these systems components were noted, with progress toward a single authoritative source of data being the most vital. An example cited was one chart of accounts having replaced fourteen. These components were deployed initially to the SIRI Customer Team and the Resource Management Group, and will be released to the university in the next deployment stage.
Additional improvements with an enhanced resource management component will add data and analytical tools so “we’ll get much more value out of the information,” according to Kerr, who added, “These are issues that the campus has been dealing with for a long time, and we’ve all been solving them in our own ways. Now you can focus more on the value-added things and not spend as much time cleaning and aggregating data, etc.”
The current focus of the SIRI Team is streamlining the security elements and progressing to the remaining data areas: student, facility, research, philanthropy, financial, and HR data that has been out of the project scope, commitment management, and forecasting and planning.
For the detailed slide presentation, click here.
Sharepoint at SIRI: To meet the challenges of effective collaboration, Kerr acknowledged the implementation of Microsoft Sharepoint—a server program that facilitates collaboration and content management. Some of the benefits that Kerr highlighted were the ability to work on documents in a team environment, track issues, customize, the ease of use, and the document check-in/check-out feature. For campus-wide use, MS Office Sharepoint Server Enterprise 2007 Edition is required.
Servers and Services Consolidation (SSC): Campus-wide SPAM Management Improvements
Presented by team leader Saira Hasnain
In regard to the status and details of the SPAM management project, Hasnain noted that, “We’re getting close, and part of that is to determine how to deliver what we need to.”
Describing the current state of SPAM E-mail activity at UB compared to three years ago, Hasnain showed the magnitude of the increase. As a result, the team developed a solution, according to Hasnain, that “checks for SPAM at the ‘gate’ versus accepting and dealing with the aftermath.” The solution will quarantine E-mail that has a 50 percent or greater probability of being SPAM, resulting in less SPAM reaching mailboxes and less delay in E-mail delivery.
When the new SPAM management system is fully deployed, the default setting will be “opt-in”, with user capability to remove their participation. The system is user-accessible via a secure E-mail management Web site. Users will be able to sort the list of SPAM, have options of how long before E-mail gets deleted, and block by domain as well as approve senders. Users will receive a daily digest of quarantined E-mail at 3 p.m., and existing filters will continue to work normally.
Hasnain demonstrated these features with a ‘live’ SPAM quarantine example. She credited vital participation and assistance from the following:
- IT Node Directors, for supporting the various policy changes
- IT SSC Committee, for the opportunity to make this service more effective
- UB2020 UNIX & Exchange Email Consolidation Team, for identifying and articulating the needs for a better SPAM management service
- Pilot participants
- Members of the CIO Area-EIS Service Team, including Jared Macleod, Andrew Benson, Lisa Maira, Jim McNutt, and Paul Graham
- Members of the CIO Area–ASCIT Service Team
A campus communication campaign is coming shortly, with expected rollout of the system by the end of March. Elias Eldayrie, Associate Vice President and Chief Information Officer, encouraged attendees to communicate about this new system as widely as possible in their areas.
For the detailed slide presentation, click here.
IT IQ: Prior to the above presentations, Town Hall attendees participated in an interactive slide show of UB Information Technology trivia that utilized UBclicks audience response system technology—an entertaining exercise in the expanse of IT knowledge.
The next IT Town Hall is scheduled for Friday, May 2, 2008 at 8:30 a.m. in 120 Clemens on the UB North Campus.
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UB 2020 IT Transformation Project Communication Team