Overview
Information Technology Environment: Recent Developments
- Five-Year Administrative Unit Review of the IT Division
- IT Leadership Position
- Coordinating Councils
- Instructional Technology Funds (ITF) Projects
- Remote access
- The UC Davis Academic Computing Environment
- Administrative Computing Policy
On July 7, 1999, the Division of Information Technology released a detailed action plan and timetable in response to the Five-Year Administrative Unit Review (AUR) Report. The 80-page report, which concluded a 10-month review of the Office of the Associate Vice Chancellor of Information Technology, focused on five over-arching themes: Academic Priorities, Delineation of Responsibilities, Institutional Ownership, IT as a Campus Policy Advisor, and Organization and Access.
The IT response outlines the ways in which Information Technology and campus management should proceed to address the report's 43 recommendations, noting that the Division has already started working on some of these recommendations. Information Technology has made the response, including all subsequent progress reports, readily available to the campus community.
The response, as well as the AUR report, can be accessed on the Web at http://iet.ucdavis.edu/adminrev/.
John Bruno, a professor of computer science at UC Santa Barbara, was appointed new Vice Provost for Information and Educational Technology. Bruno, who is an expert on information systems engineering and management, began his new job on Sept. 1. As vice provost, he will be responsible for providing the campus leadership necessary to assure the effective and strategic deployment of information and educational technology. As recommended in the AUR report, Bruno will work closely with vice chancellors and deans to identify which levels of the campus are responsible for different types of information technology support.
Bruno has been chair of the UCSB computer science department twice. From 1987 to 1996, he was director of the campus's Center for Computational Sciences and Engineering. He has served on and led several faculty technology committees. Most recently, he was a member of the Academic Senate Committee on Computing, Information Technology and Telecommunications Policy and a member of the UCSB Information Technology Board.
Bruno replaces Carole Barone, who served as Associate Vice Chancellor for Information Technology from the time the Division was created in October 1991 until the summer of 1998. Barone is now a vice president of EDUCAUSE.
Since late Spring, the Academic and Administrative Computing Coordinating Councils (AC4 and AdC3, respectively) have discussed the following issues:
The ITF projects approved in March by campus leadership (based on AC4's recommendations) are underway. This summer, the AC4 continued to discuss these projects, including the DHCP, Distributed File Systems, and UC Davis Gateway projects. For more information about ITF projects, see http://lm.ucdavis.edu/itf/projects.html.
In March, the AC4 had listed replacing the non-compliant 14.4K modem pool as the top priority among the Instructional Technology Funds projects proposed by Information Technology. The aging modems were replaced by September 1, which brings all modems up to 56 kbps. The modems are now allocated by client group rather than by speed and functionality. The groups are: Students (756 modems, two-hour sessions); Staff (92 modems, two-hour sessions); and Faculty (92 modems, four-hour sessions). This upgrade is part of a larger effort by campus leadership to improve the campus infrastructure for instructional technology. The AC4 continues to discuss various remote access funding and service models.
The AC4 is reviewing the various components of the current UCD academic computing environment in order to identify areas where services (primarily access routes, the provision of tools, and training/consulting/evaluation services) overlap or are missing. This review has brought to light the need for a Teaching and Learning Technology Center.
The new Administrative Computing Policy, which includes an overall administrative computing plan for the campus, standards, and governance, was published in the Policy and Procedure Manual on July 1st. The policy was approved by the Information Technologies Policy Board (ITPB) in February.
The next steps include completion of data access, metadata, infrastructure, naming, and security standards. Additionally, all Tier 1 systems are in the process of filling out newly developed templates for capturing technical architecture, staffing, and budget details.
To access the administrative computing plan Web site, see http://adc3.ucdavis.edu/adminplan/.
Infrastructure Highlights
- Communications
- Technology Support Program
- Data Center
- Mothra Upgrade
- Security
- Authentication
- Software
- Document Management
See the September 1999 UC Davis Report to the Communications Planning Group at http://iet.ucdavis.edu/pubs/CPG/CPG9-99.html.
| In response to a changing campus technology environment and expectations, the TSP is expanding, taking on a more strategic role involving closer collaboration with the Colleges and administrative departments. | |
| The TSP, in conjunction with the Teaching Resource Center, has sponsored two new faculty workshops. |
| The Data Center has implemented its new Enterprise-wide Backup Solution which utilizes Veritas NetBackup software and two Qualstar 46120 AIT tape libraries with 6 AIT2 drives and 120 cartridge slots. | |
| In preparation for Fall Quarter, and as part of the Data Center's refresh/upgrade practices, several systems will be replaced by September, 1999. | |
| The Infrastructure System Management group is actively performing Year 2000 compliance testing within the Data Center. | |
| The Data Center staff is evaluating the new Holontech Load-Balancing Switches designed for Web and application server clusters. |
The UC Davis Account Management System, locally called "Mothra," is being upgraded to its fourth release in September 1999.
The Security Incident Response and Reporting Project team is developing a trouble ticket system for tracking reports and status of security incidents. The team is also seeking public comment on the latest draft of the Campus Network Security Policy.
UC Davis is beginning to develop a digital certificate service for the campus community.
| The Oracle and Microsoft site licensing contracts are up for renewal. | |
| Bovine Online v. 4.0 is available on the Bookstore shelves since September 1. |
| UCD held two on-campus Doculabs seminars in May and August to bring important departments together to research and discuss the implementation of a campus-wide document management solution. | |
| A formal Document Management Steering Committee is being formed. | |
| To accommodate the need for more information about document management systems/solutions, a Web site was created. |
- General Access Computing Facilities
- Summer Institute on Teaching and Technology (SITT)
- The Arbor Faculty Center for Teaching and Technology
| To meet the growing faculty demand for Mac computer classrooms, one of the traditional classrooms (1 Olson) was converted into a computer classroom. The new computer room opened on schedule on June 23. | |
| This summer, the IT Lab Management group completed renovations and upgrades in five computer rooms. | |
| Several Year 2000 compliance tests were performed this summer in selected campus computer classrooms. A variety of standard and class software programs were evaluated for compliance, and patches and updates were applied as needed. |
Information Technology volunteered time and expertise in support of the sixth annual Summer Institute on Technology in Teaching sponsored by the Teaching Resource Center.
| The Arbor saw increased demand for seminars in the Spring Quarter. The eight seminars, led by faculty and staff, drew in more than 106 participants during the second half of Spring Quarter. | |
| New faculty sought assistance at The Arbor as a result of the Summer Institute on Teaching and Technology (SITT). |
- Banner Student Information System
- Davis Financial Information System (DaFIS)
- Administrative Computing Policy
- Data Warehouse Project
- Alumni Information System
The Banner technical team implemented a new upgrade over the July 4th weekend. The upgrade improves performance of the Student Information System and adds Y2K compliance.
| The Transaction Processing Infrastructure was successfully upgraded to Oracle 8.04 and Uniface 7.2.03. This latest upgrade of Uniface resolved some of the minor problems encountered in the previous version. | |
| There have been 3 minor TP releases, primarily issues relating to fiscal close. | |
| Y2K testing was completed, with only 2 minor display problems uncovered. One has been resolved, the other is in process. | |
| The second Fiscal Close, since DaFIS implementation, was successfully completed. It was easier than last year and, with further refinements made this year, should run even smoother next year. |
The new Administrative Computing Policy, which includes an overall administrative computing plan for the campus, standards, and governance, was published in the Policy and Procedure Manual on July 1st.
The Data Warehouse project is proceeding as planned with its pilot project, which includes student information OLAP applications. The team has completed hardware and software purchases for the pilot.
The Alumni Information System went live in July.
Details on these and other Administrative Computing Highlights
- Over 90% of Tier 1 campus computing systems are compliant.
- Progress is made on the implementation of recommendations presented in the December 1998 report to UCOP.
- Hundreds of Norton 2000 licenses were purchased to help campus coordinators inventory and expose potential Y2K bugs.
- A new Coordinator Zone was created on the Year 2000 Web site.
Details on these and other Year 2000 Initiative Highlights