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ITGC Interim Report Notes
July 5, 2007 (Dana Roode)
Background on the ITGC
- UC IT Leadership Council (ITLC), Kris Hafner, Dan Greenstein discussions late 2005
- Sponsorship of UC Provost Hume, launch in February 2006, ITGC membership
- ITGC meetings, workgroups (Instructional Technology, Student Experience, others)
- Interim report shared with campuses, presentation to Regents
Discussion questions:
- What concepts or specific recommendations in the ITGC report would support UCI’s priorities?
- Which are the most achievable? What should be done first?
- Which might inhibit progress or negativity impact programs at UCI?
- What other feedback does UCI have for the interim ITGC report?
General premise for ITGC recommendations [pg 1-5]
- UC is at a crossroads – continuing UC’s excellence is at stake. IT is critical to this. Modern problems require collaboration at a high level, UC must change to embrace it.
- “The power and promise of 10” – work as a single institution, bring together the complementary strengths of its ten campuses [pg 4]
- “Above the line” IT for distinct competitive advantage, “below the line” shared IT infrastructure to promote collaboration, avoid unhelpful redundancy [pg 2]
Recommendations
Recommendations – Research [pg 9]
- Enhance UC’s advanced network services: (upgrade campus connections from 1 gigabit/second to 10 gbps, implement a 10 gbps switched backbone and an optical light-path backbone connecting the campuses, support end-to-end performance measurement and troubleshooting capabilities
- Create the UC-Grid (mechanism to share computing resources among the UC system)
Recommendations - Teaching, Learning and Student Experience [pg 10-14]
- Courses without borders: provide the infrastructure to provide flexibility for faculty to offer, and students to take, courses at any UC campus [pg 11]
- Open Access: encourage sharing of instructional content in the UC system, and with K-12, and general public – create an open access publishing system akin to MIT OpenCourseWare [pg 12]
- Improve the student experience: fund collaborations that promote student experience in the use of information technology in academic disciplines, identify common needs and solutions to develop strategies to address student expectations, encourage multi-campus demo projects that show potential for improving IT in student experience [pg 12]
- Office of Educational and Student Technology: create UC office to coordinate initiatives resulting in strategic IT systems that advance UC education, improved service in the use of IT in teaching and learning, extension of UC’s instructional innovation to “all of California” [pg 13]
University-wide Administrative and Business Systems [pg 14-17]
- Develop the blueprint for next generation, shared admin systems and practices [pg 17]
- Adopt innovative shared service delivery models that address critical infrastructure challenges while saving money and enhancing quality of service
- Extend current inter-campus disaster recovery partnerships
- Identify opportunities for technology platform consolidation – use UC’s advanced network to merge/consolidate/virtualize UC’s computing to reduce central IT expenses and increase quality and reliability utility
- Ensure secure IT systems, data and infrastructure
Critical Success Factors
Governance [pg 17-18]
Rapid and coherent response to IT challenges and opportunities will require effective methods for decision-making, prioritization of investments and initiatives, and ensuring successful management of IT systems.
- Develop clear, transparent and widely communicated governance structures
- Foster true partnerships and coordination between UC-wide and campus units
- Clarify and enable the positions of UC-wide CIO and campus CIOs
- Clarify IT decision-making roles and responsibilities
Funding [pg 18-19]
- Despite rapid increase in scope, importance, and investment in IT, UC’s approach to funding and managing IT investments has been fragmented and disorganized
- Investments are made piece-meal based on the many sources of funding; tactically sound from the perspective of the funder, but strategically counterproductive for UC as a whole
- A new approach to funding is required: stable and predictable, based on coordinated planning and decision-making, ensuring renewal of infrastructure, etc.
Common Infrastructure in Support of Collaboration [pg 20-21]
- To exploit UC’s “power of 10” and actively foster collaboration and cooperation, UC should deploy an integrated, comprehensive set of online tools and services to support collaboration within UC and with external partners
- Web conferencing, desktop/studio video conferencing, wikis, blogs, shared document repositories
Academic Cyberinfrastructure in Support of Research, Scholarship and Instruction [pg 21]
- Create an academic cyberinfrastructure for all of UC’s researchers, instructors and students that provides access to UC Grid, Collaboration tools, publishing tools, research data sets, course materials and course management systems, digital preservation services, grant application services
- Provide end-user support services to those served by this cyberinfrastructure
Common Architecture for a Robust, Agile, and Secure Environment [pg 21-22]
“The push toward integration across applications is accelerating due to demand for usability and to provide functionality that spans multiple application areas…. We can deploy hybrid applications that have components sourced in different locations… This would allow us to centralize commodity components while campus focus on those that are strategic or unique to them…. Clearly identified standards and architectural principles are essential to enabling these kinds of deployments.”
- Create an advisory group for ongoing oversight of UC architectural standards (ITAG)
- Hybrid deployment model for UC-wide applications (PPS “SOA Wrapper” proposal)
- Endorse UC-Trust as the preferred UC authentication system
A Collaborative Virtual Organization for End-User Support [pg 22-23]
“We have done a much better job of distributing IT tools and services to the University community than we have in helping the members of the community make effective use of those tools.”
- Establish a hierarchical support framework that provides tools, services and other resources for end-user IT support personnel, empowering them to support new services without sacrificing existing services.
