Revised April 2005
Over the past year, the areas within IT and the Libraries have strategized on several initiatives to bridge the gap between the services available and the knowledge of those services to those who might use them. These plans include an ambitious effort to launch and maintain an extensive, redesigned, and user-friendly Web site for the services available from information technologies. The Libraries will also be launching more directed informational communications regarding authoritative resources that the electronic communications revolution have made available to our community. Our continuous upgrading and expansion of the University’s campus fiber network makes possible several exciting initiatives. We are beginning to rebroadcast digital television content across campus and we are prepared to move forward with the first campus-wide integrated telephone system in the University’s history.
Given the national concern over security, including identity theft, IT will be implementing more sophisticated authentication techniques to gain access to campus networks and resources. Keeping in mind the challenge presented by complexity, the new methods of authentication should make access to University services easier for legitimate users as we move towards more ubiquitous use of a single sign-on using the same ID for all university services, including email. More intelligence built into the network will reduce the necessity for individuals to learn and remember complex policies and procedures.
While our efforts to simplify complexity are outlined in more detail within the plan, it is appropriate to note the progress being achieved in the basic maintenance of one’s own computer. The desktop PC has become increasingly complex over the last decade, as its capabilities have grown. IT’s introduction of a supported desktop platform has been warmly received by many on campus who no longer need to be concerned with updating virus software or even new word processing releases. Introduced initially in the administrative areas of the campus, the IT-supported, standard desktop is now beginning to spread to the academic side of the University. Combined with easy-to-use, Web-based training software introduced this spring, the computer on one’s desktop can become a source of productivity rather than frustration.
Clearly, one of the most dramatic challenges facing IT and the Libraries is preparing for the programming and move into the Knowledge Center. Scheduled to open in 2008, the Center is a physical manifestation of the University’s decade-long organizational unification of information technology and libraries. One of the central tenets of the programming for the new facility is to make the complexities related to IT and information resources more manageable in a one-stop environment.
The resources necessary to achieve mastery over the challenges noted at the beginning of this executive summary are incalculable. Our requested resources are far more modest. The IT/Libraries are themselves providing the biggest resource economy. The organizational combination of the various areas within Information Technology and the University Libraries over a decade ago have resulted in unimagined synergies and economies that are of interest to institutions around the country.
With a relatively modest investment in resources and a presidential philosophy that viewed information technology as a strategic asset, the University has made major strides in the area of information technology support and services over the past three years. As dependence grows on the IT infrastructure in every facet of the University’s operations, we seek to consolidate as well as respond to an insatiable demand for new services and applications. The two areas of greatest need are in areas that would facilitate the expansion of Web-based information for the entirety of the University community (a Web programmer/developer) and additional funding in support of the rapidly growing area of instructional technology (WebCT).
The greatest single need in the area of IT is also the single greatest need in the efficient operation of the campus—an integrated administrative information system. No single action would have a greater impact on the campus than to change the top-down management and direction of vital administrative systems. Although beyond the immediate control of the campus, the greatest frustration to almost every member of the University community in accomplishing her/his job or to a student completing her/his degree on time is a direct or indirect result of not having a modern, integrated information system for daily, routine administrative processes. The stark contrast of our present “systems” to the ease of use and efficiencies so common in the Web services environment gives urgency to the call for dramatic and unequivocal change. Software relics, managed centrally for all of the System and remote from and unresponsive to the specific needs of the campus, simply cannot be allowed to continue to waste precious human and economic resources. This will change; the model is dysfunctional and will eventually collapse of its own inefficiencies. One can only hope that the change can take place before the collapse.
