CU-Boulder Office of Information TechnologyPast and Present Milestones and Accomplishments

January 2013

About This UpdateThe CU-Boulder Office of Information Technology (OIT) strives to continually evolve to better support the diverse, ever-changing needs of faculty and students. It is a priority for OIT to partner with the Boulder Faculty Assembly, particularly the Administrative Services and Technology Committee (AST), on campus technology initiatives, through the leadership of the Associate Vice Chancellor for IT.

The fall of 2009 began many changes for OIT, formerly known as IT Services (ITS), and for the CU Boulder IT environment, beginning with the hiring of Larry Levine into the new position of Associate Vice Chancellor for IT and CIO. To provide current and future AST committee members with an OIT history that might serve as a base-camp of information for future IT initiatives, this update summarizes OIT milestones and activities from fall 2009 to now that are of particular interest to faculty and BFA members. Future updates will conceivably be approximately yearly.

Content is organized chronologically:1. OIT Evolution, 2009 to Present: How OIT has evolved since 2009 to better serve

the CU-Boulder campus with effective uses of technology:a. 2009/2010 Listening Tourb. Campus-wide IT Strategic Plan and ITS Administrative Program Reviewc. Organization Alignment

2. Technology Services Launched 2011-2012: A review of the technology services launched to date that serve faculty, students and staff.

3. Current Strategic Initiatives: A review of OIT’s major initiatives, including:a. Business Performance Excellence (BPE) and how it is transforming OIT.b. Major OIT Initiatives and how they aim to evolve the campus’ technology.

4. OIT Organization: Links to the OIT organization charts.

Please view this document electronically to access hyperlinks with reference information. This reported is posted on the OIT website at http://www.colorado.edu/oit/accomplishment-reports.

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OIT Evolution, 2009 to Present

1. Listening Tour

In a NutshellIn 2009, Larry Levine joined CU-Boulder as the new AVC for IT and CIO. He immediately set out on a “listening tour” to assess the big picture of campus IT, form working alliances and introduce initial changes by fiat. He found OIT needed to address service and support issues quicker to better serve the campus, and set out to make changes by early 2010.

In 2009, both clients and decentralized IT staff articulated that they were frustrated and dissatisfied with the organization, then called ITS. It was clear that senior campus leadership, faculty, students and staff wanted the central IT organization to align itself closer to CU-Boulder’s mission of research, teaching and learning.

“Listening Tour”To assess the climate and environment, the new CIO set out on a listening tour, beginning with the search committee who hired him and expanding to interviews with additional people recommended by Ric Porreca and Russ Moore. Additional names were solicited from those interviewed and met with as well, including over 40 stakeholders by the spring of 2010.

Breakfasts with ITS and CCITPLarry also met with ITS staff at “Breakfast with the CIO” every three weeks to obtain their candid feedback. Conversations were open-ended. All ITS staff members were invited to attend at random, 12 at a time. Those who were interested were placed on a list and randomly invited. Those unable to attend were invited to a future breakfast. Breakfasts occurred every month, and all discussions were off the record, with any and all topics and questions encouraged. Breakfasts were later expanded to include members of the Campuswide Collaboration of IT Professionals (CCITP), and have continued, with a hiatus fall 2012, resuming in 2013.

Initial ConclusionsThrough the many discussions, Larry saw that ITS was organized and managed to largely preserve status quo. The pace of change and diversity of needs across campus demanded a more client-focused IT organization, that saw not itself but the faculty and students as “the customers,” and that was willing to truly partner and leverage the strengths of non-OIT staff.

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Willingness to CollaborateDespite the significant dissatisfaction with the current ITS organization, there was a very positive (if, for some, latent) willingness to see and support IT change. Faculty members were particularly interested in building a collaborative research computing environment – a mandate of the new AVC for IT role. A natural sciences faculty member stated, “I get the vision; if you try it, I’ll support it.” This kind engagement from many faculty members was critical to make significant change.

Initial ActionsGuided by the diverse input from listening tour, ITS began to evolve by:

Addressing low-hanging fruit: ITS quickly but sustainably changed several services that unnecessarily inconvenienced clients, such as: eliminating a variety of phone and network fees and instead bundling them into an overall lower “connectivity fee”; drastically increasing email storage from 400 MB to providing a minimum of 1 GB of storage for all Microsoft Exchange email users; and enabling a series of small conveniences, such as making “guest wireless” access accessible for campus visitors, providing a secure mechanism to exchange very large (or any size) files that could not be sent via email with colleagues anywhere and simply allowing outbound caller-ID if desired. Storage fees that hindered cross-discipline research and hampered innovation were shelved to make daily computing easier.

Evolving ITS’ purpose and structure: In addition, Levine began discussing the idea of ITS’ purpose and structure, as outlined in this example presentation (PDF) shared at a Dean’s Council.

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2. Strategic Plan and Program Review

In a NutshellThe strategic planning team collaborated with key faculty and staff to develop the campuswide IT strategic plan. This reshaped the IT organization with a new governance structure, new collaborative research computing environment, symbolically new name, new reporting structure and new continuum of IT services.

Since 1998, the Colorado Commission on Higher Education (CCHE) has required colleges and universities to submit an IT strategic plan every four years. The next plan for CU-Boulder was due in 2010. This fortuitous timing led to a visible, campus-wide effort to review all aspects of the IT environment and strategy.

Engaging the Campus in Strategic IT PlanningRather than create a strategic plan internally, ITS formed 17 committees that were mostly chaired by faculty and included many faculty and staff participants. Details may be found in Larry Levine’s Dec. 16, 2009, memo to the Chancellor’s Executive Council (CEC) inviting them to participate. The committees catalogued key program and strategic direction changes across academic and administrative IT.

Planning OutcomesPerhaps the two most important planning outcomes were:

1. Formed a new IT Governance structure : Letters from the Provost and the SVC invited faculty and staff to participate. This presentation to the CEC explained governance to various groups.

2. Launched a faculty-led research computing collaborative environment : This included moving the CU-Boulder supercomputer (Janus) into production.

Program ReviewsNot long after releasing the 2010 IT Strategic Plan, Ric Porreca asked all administrative units reporting to him to undergo an Administrative Program Review Process, similar to the Academic Review and Planning Advisory Committee process that academic departments undertake typically every seven years, which was also fortuitous timing. ITS, volunteering itself, was one of the first of Ric’s administrative units to conduct a program review, which comprised a self-study, internal campus-committee study and external committee on-campus review.

Initiatives Derived from the Program ReviewThree of the most significant outcomes of the program reviews were:

1. We reorganized IT support, beginning with the help desk. Historically, ITS employees were instructed to stay on a help desk call no longer than 180 seconds

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with the faculty, staff or student who called. A change was made to have professional IT Support staff handle the faculty and staff calls, while student workers handle the student calls. Calls were no longer monitored by length (180 seconds) but rather by resolution.

2. We established simple, correlated principles for OIT: Principles include: a) increased transparency; b) internal and external communication; and c) a continuum of IT services – whereby collaboration occurs. OIT provides the common infrastructure on which localized IT providers can build area-specific services, and importantly, whereby all are responsible to ensure there are adequate and sharable core services.

3. We established a stronger commitment to supporting teaching and learning with technology and research computing initiatives, and as a result, Larry’s reporting line grew to include a dotted-line to the Provost, strengthening the relationship between the academic mission and the centralized IT organization.

4. We changed organization name to the Office of Information Technology: The new name was symbolic, marking a new era of IT services for the campus, and connoting a collaborative breadth to the entire CU-Boulder IT environment.

All of these steps – governance, research computing, how to organize support, the dotted line, the symbolism of a new name and the IT continuum – helped pave the way to a differently organized and new OIT.

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Technology Services Launched 2011 - 2012In a Nutshell

In 2011 and 2012, OIT has launched a variety of initiatives to improve IT across campus and support the campus’ Flagship 2030 initiative. Some OIT initiatives tend to be more visible to clients, including innovative campus technology, teaching and learning technology and IT support services. Other initiatives tend to be more “behind the scenes” but are equally as critical, including technology infrastructure and IT security services. Finally, others are precursors to client-facing technology, including alliances, partnerships and studies.

OIT GovernanceFive representative IT advisory committees that make up OIT governance: The IT Executive Governance Committee, the Administrative IT Advisory Committee, the Faculty IT Advisory Committee, the Student IT Advisory Committee, and the Campus-Wide Collaboration of IT Professionals (CCITP). Visit the Campuswide IT Governance page of the AVC for IT website for more information about governance.

1. Innovative Campus TechnologyLaunched Initiative BenefitsAugust 2012 Launched Desire2Learn

and retired CU-LearnDuring 2012, the campus online learning environment transitioned from CULearn to Desire2Learn (D2L) to provide a more robust system for faculty and students. The transition was complted, and CULearn was retired, on Aug. 31, 2012. (The two systems overlapped for approximately 1 year.)

June 2011 Launched a revamped OIT website with comprehensive client information

OIT launched a completely revamped website on the new Drupal platform. For the first time, OIT services and information are consistently explained, and customers can access resources, documentation, instructions and more whenever they needed to. The site also enables customers to provide immediate feedback on specific services.

May 2012 Launched MyCUInfo and retired CU-Connect

OIT retired the CU-Connect campus portal for faculty and staff on May 14, 2012, and extended MyCUInfo to include registration, online courses, campus news and events, and employee information and training. Over time, MyCUInfo has steadily taken on more functionality from CUConnect so that it can serve faculty and staff needs as well.

August 2012 Launched Student Mobile Site

OIT launched a new mobile website at https://m.colorado.edu/mycuinfo/ that makes it possible for students to view their class schedule and location, book lists, grades and more on a smartphone or other mobile device. It even uses your mobile device’s location functionality to map

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your route to the classroom building by car, bike or foot.

August 2012 Launched Adobe Connect to enable faculty, staff and students to meet and connect virtually

OIT launched Adobe Connect to allow faculty, staff and students to share a computer screen; create whiteboards; use text, audio and video chat; and much more – all through a web browser window. Since the service is provided as a common good to the campus (there’s no direct cost for using the service), it can replace paid alternatives like WebEx and GoToMeeting.

September 2012

Completed the migration of faculty and staff to Microsoft Exchange e-mail

OIT migrated faculty and staff from outdated CU-Link e-mail to Microsoft Outlook e-mail. This transition enables faculty and staff to access their CU e-mail seamlessly with a wide variety of devices, including Macintosh, PC, tablets and mobile devices such as phones.

September 2012

Began offering Apple software, including Mac OS 10.8 as a common good service

The campus’s Apple volume licensing agreement provides licenses as a common good to CU-Boulder faculty and staff for select Apple products and upgrades.

September 2011

Added UCB wireless connectivity to the Buff Bus

Added UCB wireless to the Buff Buses so that users can access campus resources that are restricted to the campus network, such as file servers or library resources, while riding the bus.

Ongoing Provide students, faculty and staff on the CU-Boulder campus or on all CU campuses with Microsoft and Apple software download as a common good service that they can use for productivity.

Note: A variety of versions are required to be available to accommodate for compatibility with the variety of computers and systems versions that end users have.

From Jan. 1 to Nov. 31, 2012, 4133 clients downloaded Microsoft Windows or Office, and 1,310 clients downloaded Apple Mac operating system or application software. These totals include anti-virus software listed in the “IT Security” section of this report, below.

Here are details about downloads of Microsoft, Apple and other software that is available as a common good:

Software Downloads IndividualsMicrosoft Office 2010 for PC 3235 2092Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac 2330 1615Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 66 60Microsoft Office 2007 for PC 170 131Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 21 17Microsoft Office 2003 for PC 48 40Microsoft Windows 7 OS for PC 2182 1760Microsoft Windows XP OS for PC 635 508Microsoft Windows Vista OS for PC

69 60

Mountain Lion OS (10.8) for Mac 764 562Lion OS (10.7) for Mac 763 543Snow Leopard OS (10.6) for Mac 60 52iWork for Mac 354 282Pages for Mac 333 267Keynote for Mac 395 301iLife (discontinued June 2012) 359 285

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Mathematica* 5486 3340MATLAB* 4161 2069Origin Pro* 439 n/aArcGIS Desktop* 785 n/aJMP* 729 n/a

*Provided to students, faculty and staff at all CU campuses.

On Oct. 26, 3012, the following software became available. From Oct. 26 to Nov. 31, 2012, clients downloaded it as follows:

Software Downloads IndividualsMicrosoft Windows 8 OS for PC 511 437

Note: The “downloads” column lists the times the software was downloaded. The “individuals” column lists individuals who conducted downloads. Often, an individual will download multiple copies for multiple computers.

2. Teaching and Learning with TechnologyLaunched Initiative BenefitsOctober 2012

Added Web conferencing to Desire2Learn

In October we added Adobe Connect web conferencing’s Online Rooms to Desire2Learn (D2L). This integration allows users to share a computer screen; create whiteboards; use text, audio and video chat; and much more all through your web browser window. D2L Online Rooms also allows users to archive past meetings, so attendees can view past sessions on demand.

Fall 2012 Conducting an E-Textbooks Pilot

CU-Boulder is one of over 20 colleges and universities participating in a pilot of E-Textbook technology during the Fall 2012 semester. Led by EDUCAUSE and Internet2, the pilot involves replacing physical books with virtual ones. Our participation involves 9 instructors and 8 classes, totaling approximately 800 students and spanning several disciplines including business, science, social science and engineering.

August 2011

Updated classroom iClicker technology

OIT updated iClicker technology that is installed in most classrooms and lecture halls seating over 40 students. The update eliminated registration issues that had been disrupting the use of iClickers.

January 2011

Rolled out Classroom Capture technology

OIT launched Classroom Capture technology in Dec. 2010, in advance of the 2011 spring semester. This technology automatically captures, stores and indexes classroom-related audio and video from faculty lectures, for subsequent review by students on the Web. OIT has partnered with vendor Sonic Foundry and is using their Mediasite solution to deliver the

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service.

Ongoing Conducted many Desire2Learn workshops

In 2011, OIT’s Academic Technology team conducted 18 workshops, with 171 attendees and an average session size of 10. In 2012, Academic Technology significantly expanded the D2L sessions. Between Jan. 1 and Nov. 30, 2012, they conducted 42 workshops with 449 attendees and an average session size of 11. Topics included: Getting to Know D2L; Working with the D2L Gradebook; Using D2L Quizzes; and more.

Ongoing OIT’s Academic Technology team provides consultative support to faculty in the use of technology to further the teaching and learning mission of the campus

Over the past three years, OIT’s team of Academic Technology Consultants (ATCs) has steadily increased its one-on-one support of faculty’s technology teaching and learning needs:

2010 2011 2012 (YTD)Total Faculty Contacts

1546 1755 2164

Unique Contacts

444 724 732

ATCs have consistently supported CU-Boulder’s schools:2010 2011 2012 (YTD)

Arts and Sciences

53% 59% 51%

Education 9% 9% 6%Engineering 7% 3% 10%Law 16% 17% 16%Leeds 15% 12% 12%Music N/A N/A 5%TOTAL 100% 100% 100%

ATC contact as a percent of total faculty per school is as follows:

2010 2011 2012 (YTD)Arts and Sciences

35% 38% 37%

Education 89% 90% 64%Engineering 19% 9% 20%Law 96% 93% 81%Leeds 99% 74% 82%Music N/A N/A 24%

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3. Technology InfrastructureLaunched Initiative BenefitsFall 2012 Upgraded the campus network Starting in August 2012, began work to improve our

campus network infrastructure. All campus switches (1000+) were upgraded to support local network speeds up to 1 gigabit (GB) per second, which is a tenfold increase over our current network standard of 100 megabits per second. This change will also allow for improvements in our wireless network, making it possible to upgrade our wireless access points to the latest standard and support an increase in network speeds by 6 times over the current technology.. Initially, this work was planned to be conducted in four phases over four years; however, given the criticality and dependency of these upgrades, the team fast-tracked the upgrades in the fourth quarter of 2012, on time and on budget. The work took place in six phases from September through December.

June 2011 Upgraded infrastructure for www colorado.edu

Given vendor support for the www.colorado.edu computing hardware infrastructure reached end of life, OIT replaced all infrastructure and migrated all content to a new hardware platform.

Summer 2011

Implemented several improvements to the campus network

Over the summer, OIT upgraded the campus network to make it faster and eliminate congestion on the network.

Summer 2011

Implemented uninterruptible power supplies for network switches

Over the summer, OIT added uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) to network switches across campus, providing backup power in the event of a power outage up to 30 minutes. This infrastructure enhancement has helped reduce network outages and prepared the campus for Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoiP) telephony.

November 2012

Upgraded the emergency power system in the campus’ datacenter located in the Computing Center building

This upgrade replaced the existing uninterruptible power supply (UPS) and supported other upgrades to the emergency power distribution system. The upgrade resolved issues encountered at this facility in Sept. 2011 and Jan. 2012.

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Fall Semester, 2012(Aug. 1, 2012, - Dec. 12, 2012)

OIT has approximately 85,000 devices registered on the wireless network and supports an average of over 25,000 simultaneously connected wireless clients daily. OIT’s wireless offerings include campus UCB wireless that is available to campus users with an IdentiKey, as well as Buff Bus UCB wireless and guest wireless for campus visitors.

An average of over 25,000 users connected to wireless in some fashion during the fall semester:

An average of 800 – 900 users connected to the guest wireless during the Fall 2012 semester:

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An average of 500 – 600 users connected to UCB Buff Bus wireless during the Fall 2012 semester:

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4. IT Support ServicesLaunched Initiative BenefitsAugust 2012

Extended Service Center hours

To make it easier for OIT clients to get the IT support they need, when they need it, starting Aug. 20, 2012, the IT Service Center opens earlier and stays open later on weekdays, and also has regular weekend hours for the first time.

September 2011

Published an IT quick-start guide for faculty, staff and students

To make it easier for faculty, staff and students, OIT published an IT quick-start guide summarizing the steps users need to get started with critical campus technology services such as IdentiKey, E-mail, UCB Wireless, Wired Internet, Portals, IT Training, Academic Technology, Desktop Support, IT Security and more.

2012 year to date

The IT Service Center help desk supported the campus’ IT issues and service requests

Between Jan. 1 and Nov. 31, 2012, the IT Service Center help desk has responded to nearly 40,000 calls for IT help or service requests from faculty, students and staff.

The top IT issues clients called about, in descending order, include:1. Help with IdentiKey user IDs and passwords2. General desktop support3. CU-Link student e-mail4. Support with using and education technology facility5. Login issues with UCDAccess6. Requests for account setup7. Signups for the CU Police Department’s laptop anti-theft

program8. Help using Microsoft Exchange E-mail9. Support migrating from CU-Link e-mail to Exchange e-mail10. Requests for new IdentiKey user IDs and passwords

2012 year to date

OIT’s two campus IT Walk-in Desktop Support Centers supported the campus’ IT issues and service requests

Between Jan. 1 and Nov. 31, 2012, the two IT Walk-in Desktop Support Centers, located in the Technology Learning Center (formerly Telecommunications building) and in the Norlin Information Commons building, provided help to 5,505 faculty, students and staff with their IT issues.

The top 5 resolutions to address these clients’ issues, in order from most to least, are:

1. Virus/Spyware Removal2. OS Upgrade or Reinstall3. Software Installation4. Data Backup5. Application Issue

Ongoing Provided comprehensive information about IT services on the OIT website, including a wide

Between Jan. 1, 2012 and Nov. 31, 2012, the OIT website saw 1,599,138 page views, and the average time spent on a page was 1:38.

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array of self-help resources to help faculty, students and staff use CU-Boulder technologies and services.

Top pages visited, in descending order, include: IdentiKey CULearn VPN Software and Hardware Exchange Quick Start D2L

The site saw 38,798 visits from mobile device, including tablets. Top mobile devices include:

iPhone iPad SonyEricsson LT15i Xperia Arc iPod Touch T-Mobile myTouch4G HTC Incredible and EVO Motorola DroidX

The site saw 2,102 visits via social media referrals. Top referrers include:

Facebook Blogger Twitter

These data are for Jan. 1, 2012, through Nov. 30, 2012. In order to depict proactive client visits to the site, these data exclude campus lab and kiosk default home pages that are served from the OIT website pages.

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5. IT SecurityLaunched Initiative BenefitsOctober 2012

Issued new standard antivirus for Macintosh

The IT Security Office provided a new standard antivirus software, called Sophos Endpoint Protection for Mac, replacing iAntivirus, which maker Symantec stopped supporting earlier this year. Sophos is available for all CU-Boulder-provided computers that are used by faculty, staff and students.

To date in 2012

Addressed approximately 50 significant IT security related incident s

Incidents included software security updates (e.g., Adobe, Apple, Java, Microsoft, etc.) that involved updating campus software to ensure continued compatibility of OIT systems.

September 2011

Implemented malicious website protection technology

IT Security implemented web security technology that helps protect the campus from websites that are known to contain malware and transmit data back to a hacker. Blocked websites and ads display a notice to users.

OIT’s “Phishing E-mails” information page displays reported phishing e-mails, to help raise awareness about false e-mails. The page was launched in 2012, and thus far it has received 600 views. This page is gaining steam, and we anticipate many more visits as we continue to promote and prioritize this important information resource.

March 2011

Launched IdentityFinder technology, further securing private data

Identity Finder enables faculty, staff and student employees to scan the content of all computer files to identify private data that should be protected. Action can then be taken to protect this sensitive information, preventing a gap in security.

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Jan. – Nov., 2012

Provided students, faculty and staff with Microsoft and Apple antivirus software as a common good service to protect their technologies.

From Jan. 1 to Nov. 31, 2012, clients downloaded antivirus software as follows:

Software Downloads

Individuals

Microsoft Forefront Antivirus for PC

1865 753

(In 2010, Forefront was downloaded 5,143 times. In 2011, it was downloaded 2,572 times.)

On Oct. 26, 3012, the following software became available. From Oct. 26 to Nov. 31, 2012, clients downloaded it as follows:

Software Downloads

Individuals

System Center 2012 Endpoint Antivirus for Mac

82 65

Sophos AntiVirus for Mac* (launched Oct. 19, 2012)

334 n/a

*Provided to students, faculty and staff at all CU campuses.

6. Alliances, Partnerships and StudiesLaunched Initiative BenefitsJanuary 2012

Conducted a future of labs study Conducted a study regarding converting central computing labs into flexible-use spaces and deliver lab software to students, faculty and staff over the campus network.

December 2012

Conducting teaching and learning spaces study

The Teaching and Learning Spaces committee is working to better understand campus needs and to propose support, maintenance, and funding for the technology in centrally- and departmentally-managed teaching and learning spaces, including instructional and open computing labs. The committee will submit its proposals to the Provost and to the Senior Vice Chancellor for Budget and Finance.

Ongoing Increased understanding and alignment to IT Information Library (ITIL) industry best practices

In support of continuous improvement, OIT is adopting ITIL best practices. According to the official website, ITIL is “the most widely adopted approach for IT Service Management in the world. It provides a practical, no-nonsense framework for identifying, planning, delivering and supporting IT services to the business.” In 2012, 67 OIT staff completed formal ITIL training and certification.

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Current Strategic Initiatives1. Business Performance Excellence (BPE)

In a NutshellIn 2012, OIT launched a BPE initiative, in partnership with Dr. Jeff Luftig, Professor of the Engineering Management Program. This program aims to permanently and sustainably change the OIT organizational culture.

OverviewOIT is partnered with Dr. Jeff Luftig of the Engineering Management Program for its BPE initiative. The primary goal of this initiative is to render OIT a client-needs responsive and employee-empowered organization, as assessed by metrics, and as a sustainable culture not dependent on any set of persons.

According to Dr. Luftig, empowered employees know: what is expected of them; how what they do is part of organizational mission and purpose; and how they will contribute. In addition, they have the skills and resources they need to be successful.

Learn MoreTo learn more about this initiative, please view this memo that went out to OIT staff regarding BPE.

Proactive Customer SurveysOn Oct. 15, 2012, OIT launched a new survey that provides critical feedback from faculty, staff and students. Shortly after receiving help from OIT, an email goes out to our clients with a link for a quick follow-up survey.

Clients are asked to share how satisfied they are with OIT services and what specifically they find satisfying or dissatisfying. All answers are strictly confidential, and no individual responses are shared.

The collective and continued input of our clients is critical to enable OIT to clearly understand what is and isn’t working. If we don’t know about problems, then we cannot work on adequate solutions, and that is why this process is so important.

Here is the current report of trends from the reactive customer surveys.

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2. Major OIT InitiativesIn a Nutshell

OIT has several ongoing technology initiatives. This section summarizes the current initiatives that aim to meet the critical technology needs of faculty, students and staff.

1. Innovative Campus TechnologyInitiative BenefitsGoogle Apps for Education and Microsoft Office 365

OIT is undertaking a major change in the way e-mail, calendaring and other collaboration services are provided. Student e-mail will be migrated from an outdated, in-house solution (i.e., CULink) to Google Apps for Education, which includes Gmail and Google Calendar. Faculty and staff e-mail will be moved from an in-house hosted Microsoft Exchange service to Microsoft Office 365, which is a cloud-based service that also includes other collaboration and productivity tools. Eventually students, faculty and staff will be all able to use both services, and the OIT will support an ability to select their preferred e-mail and calendaring platform.

Conducting Identity and Access Management Study

OIT is collaborating with University Information Services (UIS) and the Denver and Colorado Springs campuses to conduct a study regarding shared identity management infrastructure. A shared approach could improve processes to create and maintain accounts and access privileges, triggered by updates in the source systems (i.e., HRMS and ISIS). It could also allow campuses to share data to "cross-authenticate," whereby credentials provided by one campus could be used for services provided by another.

2. Teaching and Learning with TechnologyInitiative BenefitsCampus and System Strategy on Digital Education

OIT is working with campus and system leadership to better understand the campus’ teaching and learning environment in the context of national and global education. Likely outcomes of this strategic initiative include venturing into a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) and providing tools and support to encourage a “flip-the-classroom” approach to teaching.

Technology and Campus Strategic Studies

OIT is currently leading several strategic and technology tools studies to shape the campus’ future IT environment. A campuswide group is determining how best to continue to fund classroom and lab spaces to support teaching and learning. A second group, working with the Office of Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement, is rethinking how different units (e.g., Disability Services, University Communications, OIT and Human Resources) can collaborate to better meet the needs of students, faculty and staff that use assistive technologies because of a disability. Three smaller studies planned for the spring semester include an independent (not publisher-sponsored) e-textbook pilot, a web-based cellphone student response system pilot and an investigation of the correlation between student computing device ownership, student computing lab usage and student socioeconomic status.

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Rich Media Enterprise Streaming

OIT is establishing streaming media services for the campus to enable two things. First, it will enable faculty and staff to host and deliver copyright-sensitive materials in a fair use and protected manner (i.e., restricted access and non-downloadable). Second, the service will provide live streaming and archiving of classes/lectures, presentations and events using Kaltura open-source video hosting technology.

IT in teaching and learning

OIT is partnering with the College of Arts and Sciences Support of Education through Technology (ASSETT) and the Provost’s office regarding how CU-Boulder can better use IT in teaching and learning (including an approach to campus-wide advising and a new LMS).

2. Technology InfrastructureInitiative BenefitsProject Management Office and Project Portfolio management

OIT is maturing its project management and portfolio management processes, focusing on three main goals:1) Better prioritize our work and have consistent shared priorities across the organization.2) Ensure that when services are launched or changed through a project, they are completely supportable through fully implemented support and operations processes and documentation.3) Improve our ability to execute on projects to meet established schedules and deliverables.

Datacenters OIT developed a comprehensive datacenter strategy for the campus, to support the growing needs for research and administrative computing. The strategy includes: continuing development of the Space and Science Center (SPSC) (formerly Sybase); developing a plan for a possible data center in the to-be-built SEEC Annex (formerly MacAllister); and growing the Janus supercomputer container to serve more high-density computing. OIT is also developing a plan to facilitate the transition of many small, local datacenters across campus into future datacenters in the in the SPSC, SEEC and Janus buildings. The benefits will include: improving physical and technical security; providing power and cooling redundancy as well as backup, and scalability that small, local datacenters do not have; helping reduce high costs for power to support datacenter cooling and heating; and un-impeding growing limits to research computing.

Network infrastructure – ongoing upgrades

OIT is upgrading the core network infrastructure to support continued wired and wireless growth on campus. The backbone of the network will be upgraded from 10-gigabit (GB) to 40 GB per second. In addition, in-building networks will be upgraded from 1 to 10 GB, to support growing needs on the distribution layer.

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3. IT Support ServicesInitiative BenefitsStandardizing desktop support campuswide

OIT is working to realign its desktop support services. Once launched, this new service will provide desktop, laptop and smart device support on a more equitable, less “have/have-not” basis across campus. This improved service aims to eliminate the disparities, where some have support while others do not, by standardizing desktops and consolidating much of the distributed and non-standard support across campus.

Continue improving IT Service Center

OIT continues the work to improve the services offered by the IT Service Center, or help desk. Goals include resolving 80 percent of calls within the first call, adding a remote desktop capability, increasing evening and weekend hours, and adding new tools that will allow end users to track the progress of their trouble tickets and service requests.

Launching a new Web Express service

OIT is launching workshops, training and technical support for all academic departments. This new service will include standardized web content tools with CU-Boulder branded themes that groups can use to build and host self-service websites.

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4. IT SecurityInitiative BenefitsNetwork access control OIT is replacing the system used to register computers on the network. The new

system will improve the security of the network by allowing risk-based security requirements for network access and much more rapid response to security incidents. The initial deployment will focus on providing network authentication for networks where registration is currently in place (e.g., residence hall networks and wireless). Future phases will focus on ensuring that computers and devices that connect to the university network meet security requirements (in particular those departments maintaining high risk information) and enable support of campus emergency communication efforts.

Information risk management improvements

As part of a university-wide effort to measure the effectiveness of efforts to protect University information and IT systems, the CU-Boulder campus is implementing an information security metrics program. The core objective of this program is to assist leadership in understanding risk. Information from security audits, policy exceptions, security incidents, information asset inventory, a new risk self-assessment tool and security awareness and training data will be aggregated to identify risks to the campus and individuals departments. As part of the effort, all departments will be asked to complete the risk self-assessment survey tool.

5. Research ComputingInitiative BenefitsNSF subsidized storage Research Computing (RC) at CU-Boulder is committed to the vision of

redefining discovery and transforming research support by setting new standards. In support of this, RC will implement an foundational storage infrastructure. University Libraries and RC propose to acquire, deploy and maintain an expandable petascale storage infrastructure.

The CU-Boulder petaLibrary integrates disk and tape to enable faculty, staff, postdocs, graduate and undergraduate students to build, store, share, and merge large and growing data collections. The petaLibrary will be made available to all CU-Boulder’s researchers at the cost of the storage media.

NSF funded network for science

Researchers at CU-Boulder use a hierarchy of computational resources, ranging from desktops to lab machines to campus clusters to national supercomputers. As they compute on these resources, they inevitably want to move data among them. The current Research Computing (RC) DMZ (RC-DMZ), is a 10 GigE dedicated layer-2 network serving as a critical infrastructure for a number of data transfer services provided by RC to the CU-Boulder campus community.

The NSF funded improvements of the RC-DMZ will include better traffic separation, improved scalability and resiliency, state-of-the-art, real-time security and performance monitoring, and integrated Dynamic Network System (DYNES) capabilities. Enhancing the existing RC-DMZ is collaboration between RC, the departments of Computer Science (CS), Physics and Molecular, Cellular

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and Developmental Biology (MCDB), the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), and the Office of Information Technology (OIT) – in consultation with other departments and institutes.

Research data management services

Research Computing (RC) and University Libraries will follow a recommendation of the Data Management Task Force to formalize the existing collaboration to support research data management. RC and the Libraries will establish a new virtual organization call Research Data Services (RDS). RDS will support at the beginning the following services:

i. Data management planning, consulting, and trainingii. Research data storageiii. Metadata and documentation consultingiv. Support for sharing data among collaborators during active

projectsv. Periodic ata value assessmentvi. Referral to existing archival servicesvii. Referral to existing data visualization/analysis resources

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OIT OrganizationHere is the current OIT organization chart:

For more information about the OIT organization, visit the Organization page of the AVC for IT website.

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