Date: June 1, 2000

To: Michael Scullard, Vice President for Administration

From: Mark Reed, Associate Vice President for Computing & Educational Technology

Re: Annual Report for Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center

I am delighted to provide you with this report of the past year's accomplishments and next year’s goals for Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center.

Last year, the Academic Computing & Educational Technology committee revised our long range plan to reflect the following goals:

• maintain and improve current services,
• improve and expand technical support for our customers
• complete, maintain and upgrade the campus network,
• build a collaborative, networked work environment,
• enhance the University's educational technology offerings,
• build a generalized research support capability,
• improve the University's business systems, and
• assist the University's reengineering efforts.

The attached list outlines our accomplishments within the framework of these plan goals. Accomplishments are listed in plain type; next steps are presented in Italics.

The range of services we offer that directly affect students, faculty and staff is startling. Some general indicators for the past year are listed below.

• 3,000 faculty and staff (headcount) attended classes at the Technology Training Center
• 4,800 network drops in the residence hall rooms were activated and used by students
• 100 batch computer production jobs were run each night, on average
• 85,000 email messages were processed per average day during the semesters
• 17,000 computer accounts were offered for student, faculty, staff and alumni use
• 2.4M pages of laser output were printed for students in the pods
• 2,200 “deliveries” of audio-visual equipment were made to classrooms or to special events by user request
• 11,000 calls were made to the Helpdesk, with 90% of surveyed customers reporting satisfaction with the service received

These numbers simply hint at the huge volume of operational tasks accomplished every day by students, faculty and staff using technology and services of Computing Services (CS) and the Educational Communications Center (EdComm).

But beyond these operational indicators, CS and EdComm are engaged in a range of projects which are changing the very fabric of the University. Not one of the projects listed in this report is trivial, and many are huge: new financial system, new HR system, new student system, new projects system, new library system, new course management system, etc.

Combined with current technology infrastructure changes and opportunities like the classroom renovation project, wireless networking, palmtop computing, IP telephony, IP multicasting and videoconferencing, our activities highlight that the capabilities and capacities of the University are changing in fundamental ways. The technology landscape of the University, just like it's physical landscape, is being transformed.

In spite of all the positive progress, issues remain. First, all this change suggests that the University should establish some top-level, on-going process for reviewing and setting the direction of these and other redesign projects.

Second, and in spite of all these accomplishments, for Computing Services an enormous amount of effort has gone into the Pegasus project, involving our systems development people, Technology Training Center, Helpdesk, systems programming, networking and operations. Our necessary work in this area has slowed our overall momentum in other areas, and I see this problem continuing though the coming years as we work to implement the Oracle student information system. Naturally, resources will be a continuing concern and a key to our continued movement forward on a broad front of technology initiatives.

Third, it's ironic that we've spent years building a network that's as open and accessible as possible for our customers, only to have threats develop from that openness. Frequent virus attacks, constant probes from the Internet and the exploding growth of non-academic network traffic like Napster are all portents of things to come. We'll need to increase our efforts to teach our community to avoid risky and selfish (computing) behavior, and will have to concentrate staff and resources on areas of network security which have heretofore not been of concern.

Fourth, last year the faculty on the ACET worked hard (at our request) to make recommendations about what campus technology enhancements would most effectively support faculty research. So far, we have not formulated a coherent answer to those recommendations, and I fear that continued delay in response will have a negative effect on relations with the faculty on the ACET who have been our allies in implementing the long-range plan. Finally, staffing remains a concern, where training, acquiring, and keeping people with the personal and technical skills required of our business remains a challenge.

We have accomplished much to be proud of this past year. Given our collaborative planning framework with the faculty and the strong support evident from the Administration, Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center continue to provide substantial value in helping students, faculty and staff accomplish their work.

cc: Mary Ann Swain, Provost