Overview

Information Technology Environment: Recent Developments

1. IT Leadership Position
   The campus is seeking applications and nominations for the position of Vice Provost - Information and Educational Technology (http://chancellor.ucdavis.edu/Resource/recruit/vpit.cfm). The Academic and Administrative Computing Coordinating Councils and the Five-Year Administrative Review Committee submitted their recommendations on the nature of the IT leadership position to Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Robert Grey in October, 1998. Review of candidates will begin January 20, 1999.

2. Five-Year Administrative Review of the IT Division
   The Administrative Review Committee held a series of meetings and town halls from October 27 through December 7, 1998 to obtain input from Information Technology clients and campus constituents. IT staff and management contributed to the process by participating in two IT-specific town halls, holding staff meetings, and submitting input to the Committee. All IT departments have started to engage staff in developing a response to the various constituent comments. The Committee's report is expected by the end of January.

   Further information on the administrative review is available on the Web at http://iet.ucdavis.edu/adminrev/.

3. Coordinating Councils
   The Academic Computing Coordinating Council (http://ac4.ucdavis.edu/) and the Administrative Computing Coordinating Council (http://adc3.ucdavis.edu), two components of the UC Davis campus coordinating framework for information technologies, held several meetings in Fall 1998. Key agenda items under discussion by the AC4 include remote access and the allocation of 1998-99 instructional funds. On the AdC3's agenda are the campus administrative computing plan (http://adc3.ucdavis.edu/adminplan/) and remote access for staff.

   The Information Technology Policy Board (ITPB) held its first meetings in Fall primarily to discuss the IT leadership position.

1. Relocation of Data Center
   The Data Center (http://ir.ucdavis.edu/dc/) move was a resounding success. More than 100 academic, administrative, and infrastructure campus computing systems were moved over a two-month period, in time to usher in the new year. The project was completed within budget, without any major incident, and with no system or service failures.

2. Communications Highlights
   See UC Davis Communications Planning Group (CPG) report (http://iet.ucdavis.edu/pubs/CPG/CPG199.html)

3. UC Davis Email Policy
   A draft of the campus implementation plan in response to UCOP's UC-wide Email Policy was submitted to the Chancellor's Office in October and awaits wider campus review.

4. Authentication and Network Security
   

   		X.509 certificate services were rolled out in support of access to MELVYL and other systemwide resources.
   		The development of the Distributed Authentication Solution was completed, providing Kerberos authentication to networked resources.
   		Network monitoring and intrusion detection have been implemented.

5. Human Resources
   

   		Efforts are underway to improve the environment for hiring and retaining employees both in campus departments and in the Division.
   		The UCD Employment/Outreach experiment with CareerBuilder online recruiting service has been discontinued.
   		The next two rounds of customer service training are scheduled for Winter quarter.
   		The need to better define programmer and analyst classifications has intensified.

   Details on these and other Infrastructure Highlights

1. General Access Computing Facilities
   

   		The M.U. Station, a new general access computing facility equipped with 34 computers, including "quick stations" and collaborative group stations, opened on Sept. 29. Over 20% of the student population used The Station in Fall Quarter. With a total of 5145 unique logons, each computer was used by an average of 151 unique users. This is consistent with the 158 to 1 ratio of students to computers on the UC Davis campus.
   		A third, on-campus general access computing facility under development. This project is expected to be completed by mid-January.

2. UCD LEAD
   The Learning Environment Architecture Development (LEAD) (http://lead.ucdavis.edu/) Project debuted in Fall quarter. The team is developing a comprehensive definition of the tools, technical architecture and infrastructure for a learning environment that will match the needs and unique culture of the UC Davis campus.

   Details on these and other Academic Computing Highlights

1. Campus Administrative Computing Plan
   A draft of the Administrative Computing Policy was presented to the Administrative Computing Coordinating Council in early January 1999.

2. Student Information System
   

   		A new Banner upgrade (Banner v 3.1) is scheduled for April 19, 1999. Advanced security and authentication features will be implemented.
   		Under development are: Degree Navigator, Registration on the Web, the first programs for the Tax Relief Act, and Banner response time improvement tests.

3. DaFIS
   

   		The number of active DaFIS users continues to grow. There are currently 2275 active users of Transaction Processing and Decision Support. By late December 1998, they had completed 1,625,939 documents, generating 18,878,770 transactions in the General Ledger.
   		The use of Decision Support continues to rise. The average number of users logging in monthly has nearly doubled in the past year - from 600 to 1,150. The number of queries in a month has increased four-fold, with the peak being this past July -- 155,793 queries! Since September 1998, an average of 387 daily users have generated a daily average of 6,175 queries. The most popular query remains the Transaction Listing by Consolidation, accounting for nearly 25% of all queries run.
   		Two upgrades (Transaction Processing and Decision Support) were released in Fall quarter, in response to requests from the Customer Advisory Team and the DaFIS Assessment Task Force.

4. Data Administration
   

   		The newly-created Data Administration unit is developing a proof-of-concept project to evaluate the use of online analytical processing (OLAP) tools in sophisticated analyses and reporting of campus data.
   		A new Data Modeling System has been deployed. This sophisticated, yet easy-to-use system will be used to develop enterprise and project-specific data models.

   Details on these and other Administrative Computing Highlights

1. Tower of Youth
   Three weekend training sessions were held in the Meyer New Media Lab for the Tower of Youth, a Sacramento-based coalition of education, government, business and youth groups dedicated to giving youth a creative outlet and the means to maximize their creativity.

2. CBT Courses
   Campus response to cbt at ucd has been very positive: over 11,500 learners have taken these courses since the roll-out in April, 1998, and nearly 600 CDs, each containing approximately 50 courses, were sold. The number of CBT courses will expand from 325 to 500 this year.

   Details on these and other Outreach Highlights

1. Next Phase of Year 2000 Efforts
   This quarter, the UC Davis Year 2000 Coordination Team will focus on contingency planning and switch-over testing. A team of students has been hired to research commercial product compliance and to refine the UC Davis Year 2000 Web site (http://y2k.ucdavis.edu/).

2. Current Status of Campus Computing Systems
   

   		18 systems were fully remediated between January and August, 1998.
   		Many systems, including DaFIS and Banner, were not remediated by December, 1998 as anticipated; bringing UCOP tracked systems to final remediation has been delayed.
   		The Syntellect application used in the Touchtone Registration System (RSVP) was recently found to be non-compliant. Compliance is expected by June, 1999.

   Details on Year 2000 Initiative Highlights