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September 29-30, 2003

Green Lake, WI

Plenary Session

Welcome from UW System (Cora Marrett and Ed Meachen)

Ron Kraemer, the chair of the ITMC, reminded the participants that in the last several years they have been responsible for a new Voyager Library System, three or four Course Management Systems, the PeopleSoft Student and Financial Systems, and an upcoming Appointment Payroll and Benefits System.

Ed Meachen introduced Cora Marrett, the UW System Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs. Dr. Marrett thanked the participants for making significant advancements over the last few years. She listed the three principles of the UW System:

1. access
2. accountability
3. quality

These principles prevailed in the institutions that came together to form the UW System. Today, developments are challenging our ability to abide by these principles in the traditional fashion. There are inequities within the state that impede the ability of some students from certain rural and urban areas to acquire the skills for access.

Today's economic problems have reduced the budget for the UW System and increased the costs for students. The economic problems have provided the most visible challenges and have prodded the the Regents to launch a year long study for charting a new course for the UW System. The study has five working groups:

1. Revenue Authority
2. Operating Efficiency
3. Educational Quality
4. Research and Public Service
5. Partnership with the State

There are roles for IT managers in all these areas. By the very nature of being a system, operating efficiencies should be possible. The efficiencies, and the desired outcomes, must be identified by those closest to the actual operations, not by remote administrators or outsiders.

Technology can also enhance educational quality in new and innovative ways. The LTDC, in concert with the other groups, can identify best practices and models for promoting learning outcomes, which is what the UW System is all about. IT managers need the resources to develop the technologies that will result in the desired outcomes. However, the State has not put any significant investments into educational technology. These groups need to help frame the message.

Dr. Marrett would like to see a budget initiative come from the participants at this conference who know the infrastructure needs and the cultures of the institutions. A coherent, cohesive case for moving the State forward needs to be made. It should be based upon collaboration, such as the libraries have made, and be understandable by a broad audience.

Ed Meachen outlined a framework for creating an IT initiative. In the private sector, the CEO and the executives are beholding to the investors in terms of return on investment. ROI doesn't apply per se to higher education because money is not being made from the product. However, IT creates value for investments. There are at least five areas where this value can be defined:

1. ERP systems, such as PeopleSoft, allow for business process reengineering (BPR) and innovation.
2. Cultivation of management and leveraging of knowledge assets
3. Collaboration and increased capabilities for learning and the development of communities
4. Professional development of individual and organizational competencies
5. New types and levels of leadership

Examples that show creativity and innovation need to be brought to the legislature and the Board of Regents, e.g., MILER, FASTAR and the Collaboratives Working Group. These efforts have already leveraged business processes for over four years. The UW System has also invested in common systems that are providing value, e.g., data warehousing, IAA and rapid PS implementations.

It is necessary to rethink business processes to gain value, otherwise implementing an ERP system will do little more than gain marginal efficiencies. The integration of D2L with other systems will enhance organizational competencies and provide ongoing, just in time, training for our own staff. Distributed training is being built into the deployment of APBS.

Business process reinvention has been taking place in the libraries for several years. One UW System library is being built out of diverse systems, including the movement of real and virtual materials. Each ERP system creates value by leveraging against the other systems. The UW System must not only keep up with its peers, but to show how it has already lapped its peers by the value created in leveraged investments for education, public service and research.

Desire2Learn (David Wirth, Kathy Pletcher, Kathy Christoph)

Last year at this time, an RFP process for a new Course Management System (CMS) was underway. Today, several hundred courses are already in production. The principle objectives of the RFP were to:

1. Choose a single Course Management System and convert all courses from other CMS platforms by fall 2004
2. Provide training for all of the UWS site administrators
3. Provide a single CMS utility at UW-Madison
4. Integrate the CMS with the campus student management systems
5. Improve the quality of web based and web enhanced learning
6. Build a learning object repository
7. Experiment with new digital learning standards

Kathy Pletcher is the chair of the D2L Steering Committee, which:

1. establishes and monitors the SLA for the central utility
2. provides oversight on project scope, budget, expenditures and timeline
3. reviews policy issues
4. resolves conflicts.

The utility and the LTDCs have done a considerable amount of work in a short period of time to get the utility running and courses converted in time for the fall semester. David Wirth demonstrated the D2L portal interface, and the lack of D2L branding, as recommended by the vendor. Each institution has its own look and feel.

The current managers of the project are:

• Project Sponsor (Ed Meachen)
  • Steering Committee (Kathy Pletcher)
    • System Implementation Team (David Wirth)
      • Integration Subcommittee (Diane Landry, David Hart), with help from MILER, will ensure integration with PeopleSoft and other student systems and LDAP. Prototype integrations are working at UW-Madison and undergoing testing at UW-Milwaukee and UW-Eau Claire.
      • Training Subcommittee (Lorna Wong) is working with the LTDCs to create tutorials that can be used systemwide.
      • Conversion Subcommittee (Charlene Douglas, Peter Mann) has worked with D2L to improve the tools for converting courses exported from other course management systems. Many faculty are taking the opportunity to rebuild, and not merely convert, their courses.
      • Technical Subcommittee (Jeanne Blochwitz) is responsible for getting D2L running at the central utility, which is already in production this semester.
      • Functional Requirements Subcommittee (Dirk Herr-Hoyman) is working with the vendor, who is willing to listen and accept suggestions for changes. They are gathering and prioritizing suggestions from the institutions for making D2L a better tool.
      • Hosting Subcommittee (Hal Schlais) is building the service level agreement (SLA) between UW System Administration and UW-Madison
    • Utility Implementation Team (Kathy Christoph)

The D2L project management web site is uwsproject.desire2learn.com. The help number is 888-LEARNUW. There is a site representative at each UW institution who stays in contact with David Wirth to coordinate the project. The central D2L utility for the UW System is at learnuw.wisconsin.edu. The ITMC and LTDC will have a D2L implementation session later in this conference.

The UWS Digital Collection (Patrick Wilkinson, Nolan Pope, Joshua Ranger)

Overview

The creation of the University of Wisconsin Digital Collection (UWDC) is a cooperative effort of the libraries within the UWS. The purpose of the UWDC is to provide quality digital resources from its academic libraries to UW faculty, staff and students; citizens of the state; and scholars at large. The project web site is uwdc.library.wisc.edu. Some of the collections have been available for over a year, but today marks the official unveiling of the project at large. The UWDC includes cooperatively developed digital collections, as well as links to distinct digital projects accomplished at individual UWS institution libraries.

The UWDC provides the benefits of:

• digital materials with proven and potential educational research value
• a focus on undergraduate education
• useful information for researchers and the general public
• leveraging of UWS library resources
• movement toward the UWS goal of One System, One Library
• involvement of teaching faculty in selecting and reviewing the materials

The types of materials available include:

• text
• manuscripts
• photographs
• maps
• oral histories

In the future, the UWDC will:

• identify and fund new collections
• organize collections for most effective use
• improve integration of campus digital projects
• explore new types of materials, e.g., video
• promote the collection nationally

The project is only two years old. It is centered at the UW-Madison Memorial Library, but has participation from faculty and staff across the UW System. The cooperation of the Wisconsin Historical Society has been key.

Unique Collections

Live demonstrations of two of the distinct collections were shown, i.e., those that don't fit into one of the meta categories:

• The Belgian American Collection from UW-Green Bay
• The Wisconsin Pioneer Experience from materials loaned by the Wisconsin Historical Society

Meta-collections and Technical Issues

The Ecology and Natural Resources Collection brings together several different collections that describe the environmental history of the state. If the entire collection is searched, the search is done on the metadata records of the pictures, articles, etc. The URLs that are provided by the search are handles that will remain persistent over time so that they can be cited in journals and the links will still work even if the electronic materials are later moved to another location. There is also a full text search mode, similar to JSTOR. The search results display full page images.

Next Generation Network (Ed Meachen, Brian Remer)

DOA and the Wisconsin Educational Network Collaboration Committee (WENCC), which was comprised of all of the major educational entities in the state, decided that they needed to replace the current analog video network, popularly known as Badgernet. Ed Meachen suggested that video should be handled by IP, which led to unintended consequences. Subsequently, a huge investment is being made by the State in a new network that has no discernable value added.

Last year, the WENCC procurement initiative sounded very much like WiscNet. Questions were then raised by DOA regarding the legal status of WiscNet. DOA ultimately decided that WiscNet is a private entity. Despite objections, DOA is proving to outsource the entire State network as driven by E-Rate subsidies and video. A couple of RFIs are in the works. A bid for implementation is scheduled for the first quarter of 2004.

The initiative is now simply referred to as the "DOA Video Network Procurement" because the collaboration implied in the name WENCC isn't happening. Hence, the UW System is no longer participating in the procurement process or the resulting network because there is no value added for education and therefore it would not be good to be seen as a partner.

Meanwhile, the vision for WiscNet is being honed. It includes:

• flexibility
• governance by the network users rather than an outsourced contractor
• a reliable and fair funding model
• enabling of all applications, not just video
• integration of the network by the users of the network
• ongoing processes

Additional discussion between the ITMC and EMTC will take place this afternoon.

Hot Topics

Representatives of each of the breakout groups described the important topics on their respective agendas.

EMTC

The focus of the EMTC is new technology in classrooms, e.g., projection systems (see projector-central.com). The prices per lumen are dropping every year. The projectors are getting smaller, which makes them easier to steal. There are also new control systems on the market to integrate different sources on the same category 5 cable.

LTDC

The LTDC represents the people who assist faculty with integrating technology into courses with the goal of improving the quality of the courses and the quality of learning. There are three major issues facing them:

1. The LTDCs have been very involved in learning, quality testing, developing training materials and training hundreds of faculty for D2L over the last six months. They are also assisting faculty with converting courses from prior CMS systems, and fielding many calls and questions.
2. They are busy dealing with the consequences of prior successes, including the aforementioned work with D2L, as well as supporting the legacy systems and handling enormous increases in the numbers of courses using CMS systems.The faculty who have been using these systems for a couple years are now using them in more sophisticated fashions and integrating them more significantly into their courses. The LTDCs are being drawn deeper into the objectives and learning outcomes of individual courses and faculty. Hence, when the technology doesn't work, the course doesn't work, i.e., it is no longer possible to simply write Powerpoint slides on the blackboard when the projector fails because the activities include accessing videos and posting thoughts in a chat forum.
3. Workloads are increasing as described above at the very time that the LTDCs are losing staff and resources because of budget cuts.

Over the last several years, there have been many wild projections on the impact of technology on teaching and learning. However, we are now at the beginning of significant transformations. There is less of a focus on standup lectures, and a greater focus on interacting with students and guiding them via the opportunities provided by blended courses and technology in the classroom. This will have implications for the libraries, the network, the media development staff, and the technology infrastructure. Perhaps a budget initiative should focus on the concept of instructional transformation.

CUWL

The vision of One System, One Library, from the UWS Library Strategic Plan of 2001-03, is evolving. Endeavor is now available at all the UWS libraries and universal borrowing from any library is possible. The online ILLiad interlibrary loan service is now available at all UWS institutions. Several months ago, several UWS institutions were the forerunners in piloting Odyssey, which delivers ILL materials to the enduser's desktop wherever they are in the world. A task force is looking at federated/broadcast searching and context linking to allow searches across a wider variety of databases, journals and other sources. An RFP was let this past spring and vendor demonstrations will be analyzed during October to determine whether it is time to go forward with this technology. The UWDC was described earlier this morning, and it represents a clear reflection of the Wisconsin Idea.

A procurement task force has stepped in to provide replacements for online collections that dropped out of the market place. A strategic planning task force is now looking at the 2003-05 biennium, in particular,

• development of digital repositories
• rethinking collection duplications
• development of the UWDC
• hardware replacement requirements for Endeavor/Voyager
• virtual, real-time reference services
• integration of library resources with D2L, in particular single sign-on

Challenges include:

• stagnant funding vis-a-vis collection management
• demonstrating return on investment

ITMC

The ITMC is having strategic meetings with the EMTC and LTDC this afternoon to discuss the Wisconsin 21st century network and D2L respectively. They will be also be discussing IAA, the reorganization of IT at UW-Milwaukee for greater effectiveness, combating SPAM and worms in a pro-active fashion, and the issues inherent in providing student services via email.

CWCW

The CWCW is young compared to the other groups at this conference. They are still involved in sorting out organizational issues at their home campuses because they are housed in different divisions. They will do a lot of show and tell, and share scripts. A code repository is being built on the CWCW website.

The CWCW will charter itself as an organization at this conference. They typically meet once per year at this conference, once with the Wisconsin Communicators and once independently. A hot topic is the development of standard compliant websites, which separate the format of the page from the content, which meet the requirements of Section 508 and reduce bandwidth because the formatting info is not resent with every page, . The CWCW will also have a demonstration of user maintained databases, in particular for the CWCW roster. They will also discuss blogs, search engine optimization and vanity domains.

ITMC/EMTC Joint Breakout Session

Wisconsin's 21st Century Education Network (David Lois, Brian Remer)

WiscNet isn't just hardware or bandwidth, it's the people in this room. We all need to be flexible as we go into the future. WiscNet has been doing a road show around the state as a kind of super board meeting to get input from as many members as possible.

What does WiscNet do?

• aggressively procures bandwidth
• offers value added services
• participates with national peers
• maintains vendor independence
• provides redundancy
• looks forward
• advances educational networking
• advocates for its customers
• provides bandwidth on demand
• plans for longevity

There is sometimes confusion about the WiscNet business model and the role that WiscNet plays. WiscNet is like a campus backbone, it provides networking for a variety of constituencies that are part of the same larger, overall enterprise. Each WiscNet member can do some of the above functions, but probably not all, or not all of them well.

As of the summer of 2003, the outer WiscNet ring among the UW campuses is a legacy from the DOA network. Those contracts are coming due in some 18 months. The technologies could change radically. There is a leasing agreement to use the dark fiber owned by the Department of Transportation along the interstate 94 right of way from one end of the state to the other. The option to use this fiber has already resulted in more leverage in negotiating with vendors. It may also help with northern tier networking initiatives across the US. Internet transit is still going through UW-Milwaukee and UW-Eau Claire and additional sites are being developed at UW-Madison and UW-Green Bay.

"Super WiscNet" services, e.g., video, are being overlain atop the physical infrastructure. IP video technology plugs into the same network technology as computers, it just uses high, continuous bandwidths. The majority of the issues occur on the local loop between the high speed WiscNet backbone and the individual's desktop. Videoconferences are mediated by a multipoint control unit (MCU) if there are more than two participants. A gatekeeper architecture performs a function for video that is similar to DNS for data. A future directory service will list who has videoconferencing capability as well as provide rudimentary scheduling functions.

A live demonstration of point to point video between two IP video units (computers running Windows NT) was performed. The equipment in the room simulated the entire WiscNet network backbone between the two computers, including additional, competing bandwidth from other sites. The demonstration included talking heads, as well as live DVD video sent from one computer to the other.

Streaming video will be offered over WiscNet in the next month in the form of Annenberg content residing on a mirrored server at UW-Madison. The Educational Communications Board is also putting Wisconsin Public Television content on a similar server.

Timeline

WiscNet is using IP video today for:

• UW Foreign Language Study
• UW Stevens Point's connections to Europe
• Meetings among the UW Colleges
• Technical Colleges (soon)

UW Extension's MCU is in place at ICS. Gateways and gatekeepers are in place. Quality of service prioritization will be available on the WiscNet backbone in March, followed by the directory service.

The WiscNet backbone is already in good shape. Firewalls need holes opened in a sophisticated fashion. The last mile connections may need to be upgraded at some institutions. The "last inch" technology within the users' building may need to be upgraded. Some of the legacy BadgerNet equipment may not be able to handle QoS.

Q&A

Q: Will there be workshops for video over IP? A: WiscNet originally taught most of the state agencies, including their hired consultants, how to do IP data networking. WiscNet will probably undertake a similar effort with IP video, especially for the issues of the last inch. WiscNet already has a joint employee with UW Extension to facilitate this effort.

Q: What standards did this demo use? A: The H.264 standard was used for compression running at T1 speeds. It is recommended that no more than 30% of the traffic be prioritized in a general mix, therefore putting a video stream into a mix requires about 3M of bandwidth.

Q: Why won't the UW System be forced to use a DOA solution, similar to Centrex? A: Presently, there is statutory language that says the UW System doesn't have to participate. There may be a statutory move to include the UW System in the future, however researchers must have access to Internet 2, which cannot be provided by a commercial provider. UW System Administration is opposed to a telecom integrator model that does not include the UW System in the governance, and one that merely replaces the bandwidth without any additional value added.

Q: Video over IP is frustrating because it's hard to determine where the problems exist. Don't campuses need to shape their networks to accommodate video traffic, similar to WiscNet? A: Yes, and video production staff and data communications staff need to be brought together on this kind of a project. All of the various groups are critically important, one is not going to supplant another.With ISDN networking, there have always been problems with finger pointing between the telecom and the customers. The integration of video over IP on WiscNet will help keep the troubleshooting among an integrated group.

Q: Won't the UWS institutions that have K-12 customers always need a way to communicate with those on the DOA network? A: Collaboration needs to provide the greatest value at the lowest cost, which typically hasn't been the case in regard to DOA's telecommunications procurements, especially since the UW System cannot participate in E-Rate and Universal Service Funds. There is also no guarantee that E-Rate will continue over the life of the new DOA contracts.

ITMC/LTDC Joint Breakout Session

D2L Implementation (David Wirth, Hal Schlais, Peter Mann, Lorna Wong, Ed Meachen)

Service Level Agreement

A Service Level Agreement between UW System Administration and Learn@UW has been in the works for a few months. All of the site administrators can access the document online. Prior to the creation of this document, there were handshake agreements between the UWS institutions for Course Management Systems. Given the scale of the D2L effort, a written document was necessary. The draft SLA drew from the UWS Library Hub Agreement, Gartner Group examples and dot.edu's SLA for their external partners.The effort involved regular email discussions, conference calls, surveys, site visits and the D2L workbook.

Ron Kramer outlined the goal for the SLA as :

• providing an understanding of the services
• outlining everybody's responsibilities
• creating an overarching agreement with specifics in the appendices

After many iterations, the (near) final version of a living document, has been created to guide the first year of implementation.The result is a quasi-legal document that describes five services:

1. hosting
2. system support
3. application support
4. software management
5. conversion services

The goal is to have the document signed on October 22nd at the next meeting of the Steering Committee.

Q: Is this document a contract, an agreement or a communication tool? A: It's more a Memorandum of Understanding and a communication vehicle than an actual contractual agreement.UW-Madison is committed to doing what is specified in the agreement.

D2LLO at UWS

The D2L Learning Objects group (D2LLO) has been developing learning objects to assist in training site administrators, faculty and support staff to avoid a duplication of effort at each campus. The objects are designed to be sharable and can be incorporated into different formats. The group built upon the efforts of the SCO Days at the ADL Co-Lab. Their plan is to:

• create learning objects for all of the major features of D2L
• keep the objects small, granular and standards compliant
• design the objects to be incorporated in various formats
• make the objects available to all of the UW System institutions, as well as others in higher education

Some 150 initial learning objects were identified and assigned to different people. A suite of software tools was defined for building the learning objects including: Dreamweaver, Word and Robodemo. A set of procedures for creating learning objects was developed and codified by UW-Stout. A common D2L interdisciplinary science course was used as a basis for the development of all the objects so that they would have the same look and feel. All of the objects are being uploaded and published on the web.The goal is to have all of the objects available during the fall semester.

Creating the objects proved to be non-trivial and required a variety of skill sets, meanwhile the D2L software has been changing. Currently about 42 objects have been created and published. Each object is available in a printable form, as well as a flash animation.

Tools for Staff Training

Since all of the UWS institutions have moved onto a common platform that is built upon common industry standards, there are new opportunities available. For example, the new Appointment, Payroll and Benefit System project will need to train upwards of 1,000 people within the UW System across many functional areas. The corporate sector approaches this challenge through distributed training. Within the UWS, Learning Innovations has expertise in corporate style training whereas the ADL Co-Lab has expertise in SCORM complaint learning objects. Therefore, a contract has been signed to develop hundreds of learning objects by next July for the benefit of those who will need to use the APBS software on an occasional basis.

Ed Meachen is looking for additional creative ideas to leverage the use of the resources of the Learn@UW utility and other UWS centers of excellence, e.g., gathering electronic content that has been developed by UW System faculty whether or not it is currently in object form.

David Hart reported that there will soon be a major new release of Brio, which is used systemwide by some 1,500 people. Perhaps Brio learning objects could be created for training, similar to APBS. Joe Douglas reported that there have been similar demands for PeopleSoft SFS training. Training on legal issues, such as FERPA, GLB Act, etc., could also be provided via learning objects. David Crass suggested involving the vendors up front since they may already have developed learning objects for their products. The provision or development of learning objects could be included in the terms of contracts.

ITMC Breakout Session

Procurement Update (Ruth Anderson, Lori Voss)

Ruth Anderson is now the Assistant Vice President for the Division of Administrative Services. A new purchasing director has been recruited from DOA. She has a wealth of experience in the decentralized purchasing of IT.

Microsoft

The server contract needs to be finalized by the end of October. Most of the UWS institutions have moved to a leasing style Campus Agreement for desktop software, although a few have chosen to purchase off of the Select contract. By partnering with the Technical Colleges, student core cals have been obtained for a dollar apiece. The procurement office has consolidated all of the campuses into a single purchase order and they will be charged back. A similar process will be followed for the server licenses. David Kieper of UW-Green Bay was thanked for all of his efforts in calculating license costs for the campuses.

The negotiation process with Microsoft was underway for over a year and Microsoft is aware that the UWS is not happy with where the two year contract wound up. The head of the Microsoft education wing will be visiting the UW System in a few weeks, and several CIOs will meet with her.

DOA IT Contractual Services Contract

Unless consulting services are locked into a specific product's contract, they must be procured from the mandatory DOA contract of several hundred vendors. As this contract has become more flexible, it has run afoul of other state regulations. An advisory group has been meeting for more than two years to discuss changes to the contract. The decision has been made to go with a vendor management service, i.e., paying a third party to manage the consulting contract. The goal is to create efficiencies that will result in lower rates that will offset the cost of managing the contract. An RFI has indicated that administrator fees are likely to be on the order of one or two percent. An RFP is being written for release in late fall for implementation with the new fiscal year. Lori Voss will keep the group informed of progress on this effort.

Gartner Contract

Only a few institutions are interested in renewing the UWS Gartner contract. If a systemwide contract is not economically feasible, the interested institutions will pursue other options.

IAA (David Alarie)

The IAA project was originally chartered several years ago by David J. Ward. After a Burton Group workshop, the decision was made to create an identity management infrastructure and a whitepages application. Today there is an elegant, robust infrastructure that takes feeds from the student administration systems around the UWS, and the UWPC. People appear once in the directory with all of their valid roles. Supplemental systems can add information about the people, e.g., their network IDs, but they cannot create new person instantiations. The repository is not a database, but a point in time representation of the population of the UW System.

An authentication hub will be created in response to the aggressive timeline for the implementation of the Kronos timekeeping system because there was great resistance to having all of the UW System staff learn their payroll ID number in addition to all of their other IDs. Employees will be able to go to a portal, enter their campus userid, and authenticate against their local campus system. This scheme will also benefit other Common Systems.

The UW System whitepages is now running. Policies and a governance structure need to be formulated to assure the campuses that the data will only be used appropriately, especially the data that comes from supplementary systems.

Not all campuses have data in IAA because some are in the midst of PeopleSoft implementations. An SQL batch extract developed at UW-Milwaukee, or a near real time ORACLE mirroring system developed by UW-Madison, can be used to generate campus data for IAA. The goal is to have data from all of the campuses in IAA by November 15th.

Thus far, only preliminary discussions have been held in regards to using IAA for authentication for the other common systems. The original design also called for the ability to pull subsets of the data back to the individual campuses for their own purposes, e.g., to offer authenticated services to staff or students from other UW System campuses, such as wireless access when they are onsite.

UW-Milwaukee IT Reorganization (Joe Douglas)

The UW-Milwaukee campus has been going through a process of redefining the technology environment for the past few years. The process was formalized four years ago, a consultant was hired, and the review began three years ago. The study took almost an entire academic year to complete. Afterwards, the campus spent a year trying to figure out what it meant. The report was 95 pages long and fairly repetitive. It didn't say anything that UWM didn't know already, but it made a good impression.

The report was used as a catalyst to begin a new process. More than half of the IT dollars ($10-$15M) are spent outside of the central IT organization on campus. Approximately the same number of permanent IT staff are distributed in campus units as are employed in the central IT organization. Hence the organizational structure and fiscal accountability are only rigorous in the central organization. There are also no formal decision making processes outside of the central organization.

Office of Information Technology

Ultimately, the 95 page report was distilled down to two pages, and the 150 repetitive recommendations, down to 11. Hence, a new CIO office, known as the Office of Information Technology (OIT) was defined after researching comparable institutions on the web. The nine basic job functions of the CIO are:

1. Vision and Planning
2. Governance
3. Funding & Budget
4. Architecture
5. Deployment
6. Security
7. Policies
8. Human Resources
9. Vendor Relationships

The Office of Information Technology was organized around the CIO and five deputies who oversee the nine functional areas. Their basic job is to build relationships across the campus and begin to exercise oversight. Note however, that the 100+ distributed FTE have not been transferred to the central IT organizations. The goal is to build teams and remove redundancies. The Provost has asked the OIT to do three things:

1. develop a new culture for IT
2. set a strategic direction for campus technology
3. plan for the wise use of technology with the existing number of people.

The campus is slowly being converted to campuswide standards that have been under development for three years, and are now starting to be enforced. There is resistance because the campus has been widely distributed by culture.

The five deputies are responsible for the following areas:

Vision, Deputy CIO David Stack

• Integrating technology into the planning for academics, administration and facilities to realize strategic campus goals.
• Facilitating unit level planning that is aligned with strategic campus goals.
• Fostering strong governance participation
• Influencing planning at the UW System level

Design, Deputy CIO Paul Trebian

• Fashioning a campus technology architecture.
• Facilitating collaboration across campus
• Team building, sharing expertise
• Implementing project management
• Implementing change management
• Negotiating with hardware vendors

Execution, Deputy CIO Bruce Maas

• Catalyzing campus technology projects
• Developing a cadre of project managers
• Establishing periodic progress reporting
• Implementing project support services
• Providing a liaison role with vendors and UW System
• Establishing policies and procedures for effective project management

Implementation, Deputy CIO John McCarragher

• Delivering central technology services
• Creating stable and reliable environment
• Implementing new technologies
• Providing useful and responsive services
• Assuring efficient and effective products and services in the UWM technology environment

Stewardship, Deputy CIO Kathy Heath

• Maximizing the skills of people, career growth and opportunities
• Leveraging campus resources
• Facilitating financial planning for technology
• Enhancing communications between and among technology service providers

The consultant also recommended the creation of four IT committees to replace all pre-existing groups: .

1. Council on Information Technology (CIT) includes the Provost and the Vice Chancellors
2. Information Technology Policy Committee (ITPC) is a faculty governance group chartered by the Faculty Senate
3. Information Management Technology Planning Committee (IMTP) includes the heads of all the non-academic units
4. Unit Technology Representatives Council (UTR) has a technology liaison from every school/college/division on campus

Core Services

One way in which UW-Milwaukee is bringing all of the distributed IT staff and resources together, is through the use of Core Services. The Core Services approach is based upon the Provost's charges to the Office of Information Technology:

• Ensure the wise use of technology
• Invest in UWM by re-investing, i.e., no additional resources)
• Re-engineer the campus technology environment (promote standardization)
• Promote shared resources and shared governance (new committee structure)
• Align expenditures to support academics

To accomplish these goals, a team mechanism was created for energizing the 250 IT FTEs from across the campus to create campus specific methods for attacking issues including, How do we do this? What's the process? How will it work? What are the savings, if any? Core service teams have already been launched to address:

• Desktop Hardware Acquisition
• Account Management
• Electronic Mail
• Electronic Calendar
• File Sharing
• Printer Sharing
• Desktop Support
• Campus Portal

Other potential teams include:

• Backup & Restoration
• Server OS Support
• Security & Abuse
• ERP Access
• Web Applications
• Content Management
• Software Licensing
• Technology Training

The hardware acquisition team has been meeting since June, and is almost ready to deliver an initial recommendation and operating procedures. It is led by the Assistant Dean for Education, and has only one team member from the central IT shop. Their proposed process will go through the committee structure next month for approval. The second portion of their charge is to create an ongoing structure to continue monitoring and tweaking the service. The second phase may have some, but not all, of the original members.

In general, the core service teams are:

• chartered by CIO
• coordinated with oversight from the OIT
• composed of technology experts selected from campus units (not just volunteers)
• responsible for designing the service and the delivery process
• functioning in a model of shared responsibility
• responsible for recommending policy changes for governance approval
• developing a collaborative technology environment

As core service teams define and standardize campuswide services, the distributed IT staff across campus will have more time to provide local support to their own units.

After the design is finished, the ongoing operational versions of the core service teams will be:

• chartered by CIO
• coordinated and supported by the OIT
• composed of both functional and technical staff
• responsible for service delivery, user satisfaction and change/upgrade planning
• provide professional development opportunities

The benefits of the core service approach are:

• effective use of existing staff
• elimination of have versus have-not departments
• relief of stress on both the computer center and the distributed staff
• increased level and quality of services
• minimized expenses related to technology
• maximized utilization of existing resources
• creation of a new, wise use environment

Worms, Viruses and SPAM - A Strategic Perspective (Kim Milford, Dave Kieper, Eric Stevens, Doug Wahl)

Worms and Viruses

The virus attacks of the past summer provide an interesting case study. Before the attacks, UW-Green Bay had:

• campus firewall between the campus and the housing/campus/internet intersection
• access list at the core switch to separate the housing network from the campus network
• a Windows updating service
• anti virus software installed on all the university's machines
• anti virus software available for all personally owned computers
• warning flyers and emails messages to students.

Nevertheless, about 100 out of 1,500 campus machines got hit because:

• some virus scanning software was not up-to-date
• not all machines were recloned to WIN 2000 SP3

There were two sources for the infections:

• laptops that were taken home for the summer and reappeared on campus inside the firewall
• embedded PC systems connected through the firewall to external vendors

New procedures that have been put in place since the attacks:

• a weekly wake up on Sunday at 1:00 am via the LAN of all campus machines
• periodic scanning for unpatched or infected machines
• greater diligence on software updates, patching clone images and verifying patch status
• review of the firewall to reduce holes to external vendors
• investigation of the possibility of installing desktop firewall software for all clients

The damage on the housing network included:

• 300-400 out of 1,000 computers were infected
• network performance impaired

Remediation efforts for the housing network included:

• blocking ping traffic at core switch
• blocking port 135 traffic at firewall
• help desk set up for two weeks in housing
• distributing CDs with patches, etc via the Residence Assistants

After one month:

• about 50 systems still infected
• following up with emails telling people to clean up or get cut off from the network

The future of the housing network includes:

• more information to students before they move in
• no pre-scanning of computers before students move in because there isn't enough time during the move in
• putting infected computers on a separate quarantine VLAN where they can still get patches and receive email messages from the computer center

UW-Stout and UW-Eau Claire are using network registration to track where computers are actually at. At UW-Stout, the website for the network registration tool has mandatory links and scripts for cleaning and patching computers before they can get to the registration screen.

UW-Eau Claire has been plagued with SPAM generated viruses flooding their email servers. A lot of viruses have embedded smtp clients that bypass the campus mail relay. Some institutions are considering blocking email that doesn't go through their email relay. UW-River Falls and UW-Green Bay filter out all incoming email attachments that are executable files. New impetus has been given to creating VPN access for faculty and staff from off campus.

UW-Madison did not have a lot in place before the attacks, other than a campuswide scanning service, which did help when the attacks began. Firewalls are decentralized and ad hoc. Port blocking was started, which originally resulted in a lot of push back until people realized that it was buying them time. A black hole service was created that allows DoIT to turn off hosts that are known to be affected. Once a computer is repaired, the user has to contact DoIT. Ironically, the viruses have resulted in improved communication and collaboration with housing.

Internal, proactive procedures, and an internal incident response team need to be formalized, e.g., who decides when something is an emergency? A more integrated firewall strategy is needed, which may include personal firewalls, although they can be a two-edged sword. Ways of collaborating with departmental email servers need to be developed.

UW-Stout is going to use NetReg as well as Active Directory for pushing updates in the future. A web patch page will be created to assist people in checking their computers. The ports on the edge of the campus network have been blocked. The biggest control problems are wireless and dial-up access. It isn't really possible to shut off wireless machines that are compromised. As a result of the SoBig virus, the email servers weren't keeping up with the scanning, so a gateway was put in front of the email server. Dealing with the worms, probably put the campus a month behind.

Because of the barrage of email traffic, announcements about the virus that were sent at 10:00 in the morning didn't get fully distributed until 5:00 in the afternoon. Email shouldn't be the sole communication method. It should be supplemented with web pages, voice mail broadcasts, etc.

Spam

At UW-Green Bay, about 35% of the campus email messages were spam over a three day period, which is close to the industry average. Assuming that people are paid $10/hour, and can delete one email message per second, is costs $40,000 annually to manually remove spam at the UW-Green Bay campus.

UW-Green Bay selected the iHateSpam product from Sunbelt Software for $1/mailbox and $0.25/mailbox/year for maintenance. It integrates with Exchange/Outlook at the server. Everyone was given spam filtering, but they can opt out. It has a 95% catch rate. Advertisers seem to be switching to graphics instead of text, which is more likely to slip through filters.Spam is routed to a special quarantine folder which people can check for 30 days.

After working with UW-Stevens Point and UW-Green Bay, UW-Eau Claire also purchased iHateSpam, but disabled it because of problems with scalability and bugs in the latest version. Users must read disclaimers and opt in if they are interested. Approximately 2,000 of 13,000 accounts opted in. It had a 95% catch rate when it was running. The spam is never deleted, but it counts against the person's quota as an incentive for them to delete it.

Judy Brown set up an eWeek shootout for anti-spam vendors for the case of a state network, such as WiscNet. They sifted and winnowed vendor responses to the scenario. The six highest then did actual presentations. The results should be out this week (see www.eweek.com/category2/0,4148,1304524,00.asp). WiscNet is investigating whether it might be possible to keep spam entirely off the network.

UW-Stout filters spam via black and white lists, and investigated a few applications, but has not made any final determination. The furor seems to have died down in recent months. It is still an issue, but people have gotten more used to it. It is still a huge resource sink.

Ron Kramer raised two legal issues. Does there need to be consent from users to move their email to a quarantine area, e.g., moving a crucial email message about Financial Aid. By not doing spam filtering, are we allowing a "hostile work environment" to continue?

Expanding Use of Email in Student Services (Diane Blohowiak, Marian Ritland, Dick Cleek, David Hart )

UW-Green Bay doesn't provide email accounts for incoming students until two weeks before the fall semester. They are re-evaluating that approach, and may be providing accounts for students who come to orientation sessions in June. Questions have arisen about the cost of the accounts, when they should be created, the support load, what types of correspondence should be sent, etc. If handled incorrectly, there may be unintended negative consequences.

The UW Colleges are interested in the same questions. Dick Cleek recommends making sure that student services representatives are expressing their needs clearly. At issue may not be email accounts, but rather access to the PeopleSoft self service features. There are challenges with getting new and revised passwords to students who are not yet fully involved with the institution.

David Hart is interested in exploring the intersections and tradeoffs between email, PeopleSoft self service and portal functionality. As the UWS ERP systems become integrated, there may be new opportunities.

Marian Ritland said there are some things that can be done in multiple ways, but others specifically need to be pushed via email, e.g., mailing schedules, bills, textbook information and grades. The controller at UW-Eau Claire refuses to do paper bills. Approximately 97% of the UW-Eau Claire students use email, the other 3% are graduate students taking one class. 95% of the faculty and staff use email, with the exception of some people who don't work at a desk. The campus has a long standing culture of using email exclusively for certain functions, e.g., sending degree audits via email since1996. People can forward their email to other accounts, but generally all correspondence is sent to the university account. Forwarding is not recommended, and a test message is sent and confirmed before the forwarding is activated. No social security numbers are sent via email. At UW-Stevens Point, only links are emailed, not grades or earning statements, passwords, etc.

At UW-Eau Claire, the advisor is emailed when a student drops a class or withdraws from the university. Freshman mid term grades will be collected via the web and emailed to the students beginning this semester. If the grades are below a C, the advisor will also be emailed.

UW-Superior has a PeopleSoft account creation process that they are willing to share. The PeopleSoft view has been modified to include students when they make an admissions deposit. A batch process then creates the network and email accounts. A letter is generated automatically and sent to the student. The PeopleSoft password also works for network access.

At UW-River Falls, the UW-Madison regsync process for synchronizing PeopleSoft with LDAP has been implemented using ORACLE triggers to create email accounts, etc.

UW-Eau Claire sends credentials via US Mail that freshmen use to access a web page to sign up for orientation sessions.

UW-Whitewater recently removed their forwarding service because they could not guarantee message delivery. Spam controls at Yahoo!, AOL etc were preventing mass email messages to students from reaching the recipients.UW-River Falls had a similar issue, so they reconfigured their servers to send out the email in smaller batches.

ITMC Business Meeting

Elections

The slate of candidates was elected by acclaim:

• Chair - Marian Ritland (UW-Eau Claire)
• Chair Elect - Doug Wahl (UW-Stout)
• Secretary - David Stack (UW-Milwaukee)
• Executive Committee:
  • Judy Caruso (UW-Madison)
  • Nancy Crabb (UW System Administration)
  • Paul Diedrich (UW-Eau Claire)

Their terms begin today.

Suggestions for Future Conferences

• Breaks during the plenary session
• Joint breaks promote interaction, but are a hassle for those in remote meeting rooms
• Wireless and Internet access are becoming better, but electricity is still a problem
• Capacity of the Heidel House is being stretched for the joint conference
• Setup costs can run into hundreds of dollars per room if the facility provides all of the media equipment
• Joint meetings are much more difficult to plan and organize than just ITMC meetings
• Agendas were not provided by each of the joint groups in time for inclusion in the conference packet
• Ask the other breakout groups to assist in the planning and financing
• The American Inn at Kohler is too small
• The Dells are about on a par with the Heidel House
• Meeting on a campus has downsides in regards to parking, commuting from the hotel, etc
• The spring meeting is more likely to be cancelled for budgetary reasons, than the fall meeting
• Perhaps the OLIT office could help with the logistics of arranging a convention center, taking registrations, etc.
• Campus outreach offices could be used to help with logistics
• How much work should the ITMC do to foster ongoing meetings of Help Desks, Lab Administrators, etc?
• The ITMC could facilitate meetings of breakout groups at other times, perhaps around other specific events such as the Lockdown hosted by UW-Madison. UW-Milwaukee runs a 2 or 3 day conference every summer organized around training students to support help desks, labs, etc. An additional day for UW-System could be added.
• The technical specialists typically don't have support staff to help them put together meetings
• The DoIT site has aided in processing registrations
• A group registration form, rather than individual registrations, would be preferable
• More joint sessions between pairs of groups should be scheduled
• Spring meeting - perhaps just the ITMC with a few breakout session
• Likely breakout groups include:
  • Help Desk
  • Desktop Support
  • Computer Labs
  • Networking
  • Security