UC Davis

 

Quick Menu
Infrastructure
Academic Support
Administrative Support
Outreach
Year 2000
JOG Information
UC Davis JOG Reports
January 1999
September 1998
May 1998
January 1998
September 1997
JOG Home Page

   
JOG Report

Overview

 

Information Technology Environment: Recent Developments

  1. Five-Year Administrative Unit Review of the IT Division
    The Administrative Unit Review Committee submitted its final report to Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Grey on April 29, 1999. The report, which concludes a 10-month review of the Office of the Associate Vice Chancellor for Information Technology, is built around five overarching themes: Academic Priorities, Delineation of Responsibilities, Institutional Ownership, IT as a Campus Policy Advisor, and Organization and Access. The report reflects the input obtained from clients and campus constituents as well as IT staff through a series of meetings and town halls held from October 27 through December 7, 1998.

    The report is available on the Web at http://iet.ucdavis.edu/adminrev/report/.

  2. IT Leadership Position
    While the Recruitment Advisory Committee continues to meet and discuss potential candidates, two candidates -- Mary Doyle, Director, Information Technology, Washington State University and Max Ivey, Director of the Center of Computing Services and Telecommunications, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology -- were interviewed for the position of Vice Provost-Information and Educational Technology on Monday, May 3 and Thursday, May 6. Each candidate gave a talk, with time for questions from the campus community, on their "Vision for Information Technology in Higher Education at a Research University for the Next 3-5 Years." A decision is expected this summer.

    The position description is posted on the Web at http://chancellor.ucdavis.edu/Resource/recruit/vpit.cfm.

  3. Coordinating Councils
    To improve access to the campus network, the Academic Computing Coordinating Council (AC4) has authorized the replacement of the 14.4K Legacy Modem Pool with a new 56K pool dedicated to students. A one-time allocation of $278,000 will be used to cover the cost of the replacement and one year of operation. The new modem pool is scheduled for September 1, 1999. The campuswide consultative process is still underway to determine UCD's role in providing remote access services to faculty, students and staff.

    In April, Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Robert Grey, in collaboration with the AC4, approved of list of 12 projects for funding through a one-time allocation of $1.5 million dollars in Instructional Technology Funds (ITF). These funds are to be used to build and/or improve the reliability, security, and accessibility of applications that serve as the campus's infrastructure for instructional technology. A draft of the overarching project timeline is expected by May 30, 1999.

    Other issues discussed by the coordinating councils include:
  4.  
    		5. Student Computer Ownership: The discussion focuses around the type of computers that should be required, financial assistance issues, timing for implementation, institutional readiness, and commitment of resources.
  5.  
    		6. Administrative Computing Policy: In February, the Information Technologies Policy Board (ITPB) approved the policy identifying administrative computing system development standards and the responsibilities of the various parties involved in the development and maintenance of campus administrative systems. (The policy can be viewed at http://adc3.ucdavis.edu/adminplan/.)

 
Infrastructure Highlights
  1. General Infrastructure Highlights
  2.  
    		3. The security Incident Response and Reporting Project is underway. The team is developing formal incident response and reporting procedures at UC Davis (http://dcas.ucdavis.edu/security/srp.html).
  3.  
    		4. A cross-IT workgroup is developing procedures for a comprehensive Campus Notification Plan for use with network or other computer-related outages.
  4.  
    		5. Project "Swordfish", comprised of IT Webmasters, graphic designers, and communication specialists, is working on developing information architecture and design standards for all IT Web pages.

  5. Communications Highlights
  6.  
    		7. See the UC Davis Communications Planning Group (CPG) Report (http://cr.ucdavis.edu/reports/cpg599.htm).

  7. Human Resources
  8.  
    		9. Several IT staff members participated in the April focus groups conducted by Watson Wyatt under the aegis of JOG.
  9.  
    		10. By the end of June, 150+ IT staff members will have gone through the Ouellette & Associates two-day customer service training, "I.S. as a Service Organization."
  10.  
    		11. Given the culture shock sometimes experienced by new employees in IT, we are 'test driving' a program called Fast Start.
  11.  
    		12. To meet the needs of managers regarding employee performance management, we are piloting a series of three classes (4.5 days total training) for 21 managers and HR analysts.
  12.  
    		13. UCD HR (Employment/Outreach) has developed a proposal for an employee referral program to encourage current staff to identify qualified, non-university applicants for hard-to-fill positions.
  13.  
    		14. The possibility of base and variable pay has been suggested to help compensate 'hot skills' appropriately, while allowing the ability to stay in synch with market pay when those skills cool off.

  14. Document Management
  15.  
    		16. UCD departments are collaborating on their research and exploration efforts in the field of document management.

  16. Software
  17.  
    		18. UCD and UCOP are negotiating a new contract with Oracle. The current contract, from May 1995, will expire in May 2000. The establishment of a new contract will provide greater access to Oracle's product line after May 2000.
  18.  
    		19. Information Resources is core-funding 14,000 faculty and staff licenses for anti-virus software, and 4,000 student licenses (for the Bovine Online product).
  19.  
    		20. IT Express has begun development of Bovine Online version 4.0.

    Details on these and other Infrastructure Highlights

     

Academic Computing Highlights
  1. Instructional Technology Funds
  2.  
    		3. Based on a recommendation by the Academic Computing Coordinating Council (AC4), Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Robert Grey approved a one-time allocation of $1.5 million in funding to build and improve the reliability, security, and accessibility of campus instructional technology applications.
     
  3. General Access Computing Facilities
  4.  
    		5. A third, open access computing facility opened for business at 301B Surge IV on March 8. The new facility is part of an ongoing effort to improve on-campus computer access.
     
  5.  
    		6. A new computer classroom currently under development is expected to open in 1 Olson Hall in time for Summer Session classes in late June.
     
  6.  
    		7. With the recent relocation and re-structuring of the visualization facility, we can now meet the current demand for instruction in Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
     
    Details on these and other Academic Computing Highlights

     

Administrative Computing Highlights
  1. Student Information System

  2.  
    		3. The Banner Student Information System security schema was upgraded on April 17 and 18 to include Kerberos authentication and one-time passwords.
     
  3.  
    		4. Programming for the Tax Relief Act is completed.
     
  4.  
    		5. The Degree Navigator team is in the final stages of development.
     
  5.  
    		6. This year's Banner 3.1 upgrade from SCT is nearing the testing phase.
     
  6.  
    		7. Registration on the Web was deployed in Winter Quarter 1999.
     
  7.  
    		8. Information Technology and the Financial Aid business unit modified existing programs to accommodate the financial aid award packaging this year.
     
  8.  
    		9. A new module brings faculty information from our Personnel database into Banner, which helps the graduate admission process for advancing students to candidacy.
     
  9.  
    		10. A new program under development will help UCD Bookstores to provide the ability for UCD students to purchase items over the Web.
     
  10.  
    		11. The Banner team has also begun planning for a change to the system that will remove its reliance on social security numbers as student ID numbers.
     

  11. DaFIS

  12.  
    		13. There have been two new releases since January: Transaction Processing 2.5, and Decision Support 3.0.
     
  13.  
    		14. Decision Support Upgrade: five new queries were added in DS 3.0, bringing the total number of queries to 163.
     

  14. Data Administration

  15.  
    		16. The Data Warehousing project team is selecting OLAP tools to support the pilot data warehouse.
     
  16.  
    		17. The Data Center is transitioning from individual back-ups of administrative systems to an enterprise wide backup solution. This solution is expected to meed the needs of the Data Center for the next 3 to 5 years.
     
    Details on these and other Administrative Computing Highlights

     

Outreach Highlights
  1. In response to the changing campus technology and expectations, the Technology Support Program (TSP) is expanding its role to involve closer collaboration with Colleges, Deans' Offices, Vice Chancellors' Offices, and Administrative Departments.

  2. IT Training, in partnership with Staff Development and Professional Services (SD&PS) and the sponsoring administrative departments, offered a series of courses on connecting to the main campus databases and generating custom reports.

  3. The Arbor provided support and resources to assist in training two members of the Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute on instructional technologies.

  4. Beginning in June 1999, the Desktop Systems Group will begin mentoring the Information Technology Representatives (ITRs) to strengthen the ITRs' NT skills.

  5. Project Management personnel have provided general consultation services to California State University at San Luis Obispo, Human Resources unit.

Details on these and other Outreach Highlights

 
Year 2000 Initiative Highlights

  1. IT created a Year 2000 Program Office.

  2. Norton 2000 helps users find Y2K problems at the hardware, operating system, application, and data level.

  3. Most Tier 1 campus computing systems are nearing Y2K compliance.

  4. The Year 2000 Team is implementing the recommendations made in the UC Davis UCOP Report (12/31/1998).

Details on these and other Year 2000 Initiative Highlights