Binghamton University Long-Range Information Technology Plan
Table of Contents
Binghamton University
Long-Range Information Technology Plan
Preface
A Vision of the Future: Binghamton 2005
Envision yourself in the year 2005. Your options for where and how you work will seem unlimited by today's standards. Wherever you work, from your breakfast table or car or office, it is through a digital personal Assistant which is your electronic link with your department, colleagues, campus and world. The Assistant is the PC of the future, and has replaced and consolidated much of what in 1996 was your PC, phone, radio, TV, camcorder and VCR. At the time and place of your choosing, your Assistant reports to you on work you gave it to do the night before and lists your incoming mail and phone messages (voice, video, text). The machine responds to your spoken commands, processing each item as you direct by sending a reply, scheduling meetings or getting the appropriate person on the video.
After handling your messages, you review and process electronic work made available to you by your colleagues and students. These include reports, homework, applications, invoices, documents or other electronic "objects" which can be opened and worked on simultaneously or serially by you and the originator and other collaborators. You collaborate live, or via messages, with colleagues or other submitters of work; you redirect work, as appropriate. Where you need and are entitled to institutional data, it is easily available for your perusal and use. Per your voice commands, your Assistant displays and manipulates information, and records and retains your instructions for future use.
As a teacher, you find your Assistant to be an invaluable tool in keeping you in touch with developments in your field, delivering messages to your students, and helping you orchestrate from the place of your choosing sound, image and video to illustrate examples of important concepts to your students or display outside lectures, the comments of colleagues, or the latest journals. In addition, tools are available to you to access and review your students' progress, access special or remedial training programs, and assist you in providing more complete advising to students.
As a researcher, you find your Assistant to be dogged and reliable to a fault. In accordance with guidelines which you have provided, it searches out obscure on-line information, assists in carrying out your analyses, simulations and theoretical experiments, corresponds with your colleagues around the world, and "fetches" electronic journals for your review. Finally, it provides you with a powerful publishing tool able to handle common multimedia formats and submit your work directly to the appropriate journals.
As a student, you find that your Assistant can record and organize your electronic class notes, provide fast and direct access to library materials, search out extra examples of class material you find difficult to learn, and format and submit multimedia assignments for classes. It can also handle personal matters such as electronic payments, making travel arrangements for spring-break or ordering a late-night pizza. It can provide a channel into the University's administrative systems for getting information on grades, submitting documents, applying for loans for financial aid, etc.
As a staff member or administrator, you find it is easy to customize your Assistant to organize and present your work to you each day. It provides special tools designed to help you accomplish your assignments, incorporates standard policies in its processing and automatically retrieves the archived documents and data you need.
In all your roles, you find that the physical boundaries that once constrained your schedule and activities have been greatly reduced. At your request, your Assistant can pay bills from funds in a bank account, track your stock portfolio, provide news and entertainment, or order consumer goods for delivery to the destination of your choice. You still have to go out to get a haircut or for a workout, but work, Holiday shopping, and a "trip" to the library can all be accomplished from wherever you are. To the extent that your work or needs can be helped by an information or processing solution, your Assistant will be able to search out and seamlessly arrange for the application of the needed technology.
When you finish work and go home (if you leave home to work), the machine goes with you. But when it is idle, it can, at your discretion, revert to an institutional resource, available with other idle personal machines to work on problems submitted through the ubiquitous network by any authorized users who need additional computing power. At these times, your Assistant becomes a small part of a huge common computing resource available to all users; providing massive, generalized computing power to the community.
Elements of this future[1] [2] are already visible today, and are enabled by the trends described below.
Trends in Information Technology:
Several technology trends are converging to bring about the work environment described in the section "A Vision of the Future: Binghamton 2005", above. Though these trends are fundamentally mechanical developments, taken together they will enable transformative changes to the way we all may work.
The trends are well-known and well-established. The first is toward smaller, faster and cheaper microprocessors, and simultaneously drives the rapid consolidation of PC, phone, TV and VCR, and enables the execution of ever-more-complex software which makes appliances and tools of all kinds appear "smarter" all the time. A second is the trend toward enormously greater digital storage capacities, and allows vast libraries of information to be stored inexpensively on-line. A third trend is toward the conversion of audio and video information from analog to a standard digital format, and will allow the high-speed processors of the first trend and the on-line storage of the second to come together; information never before amenable to processing by computer will suddenly be so. A fourth trend is toward parallel processing by multiple computers, and increasingly allows us to break large problems not previously amenable to solution by computing into smaller, more tractable problems. A fifth trend is toward high-speed, wireless networking, increasingly combining voice, video and data, and is likely to enable an "anywhere, anytime" approach to computation and the communication of all kinds of information; this trend has already had profound affects on our ability to better and more immediately collaborate with work groups and one-another.
Any one of these trends might have a profound effect on the way we work, but their combination appears to be revolutionary. In the future, faculty, students and staff will have more direct access to information, will have powerful hardware and software tools precisely tailored to help them perform their tasks, will be able to collaborate closely with colleagues and fellow workers and work effectively even when they are half a world away from the campus. The major result of these trends will be in the power of the tools available for our use, and in their ability to let us accomplish our work from almost anywhere.
I. Executive Summary
[To be completed when the Plan is adopted.]
II. Introduction
This document is intended to serve as a starting point, in the Fall of 1996, for the development of the University's long-range technology plan. Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center offer it in hopes of stimulating a campus-wide discussion of how information technology should be used to support the University's goals. It is hoped that the discussion will involve all segments of the University community, including users and other providers of information technology on campus such as the Libraries and Telecommunications, and that this initial draft will be a stimulus for development of an ongoing process for continually updating the campus plan. While the long-range information technology plan will never be finished, it is hoped that the campus will approve an operating version for the coming academic year by May of 1997.
Plan Format:
Every plan begins with a vision. Ours begins with a vision of what the future uses of information technology might be at Binghamton University over the next five-to-ten years. This vision appears above in the Preface: "A Vision for the Future: Binghamton 2005".
Every plan needs justification for the initiatives proposed. After all, attaining the ideal in information technology support is not the main mission of the University; teaching and learning and research and scholarship are. The information technology we employ in support of the teaching, learning and research efforts of the University and in support of the University's business processes should be closely aligned with the University's long-range goals. The section below entitled: "University Goals" summarizes the University's goals and provides a framework for examining each initiative of this information technology Plan in light of the University's stated objectives.
Every plan should describe the approach of the implementing organizations in pursuing initiatives. The approach of Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center, as the primary implementers of the long-range information technology Plan, is described in the section below entitled "Information Technology Providers' Mission".
Every plan should have a process for review, implementation and continuing revision. This process has not yet been established, but will be in large part determined by the governing structure recently established at Binghamton for information technology initiatives. This structure is detailed in the "Governance" section, below.
Every plan is necessarily about change (or resistance to change). The initiatives which plot our course into the future are contained in the section below entitled "Major Objectives for the Next Five Years". Each initiative description states an overall goal, provides information about the current status of the information technology efforts in the given area, lists major projects that will move us toward the goal, and describes how the goal supports the University's long-range plans.
Finally, every plan raises issues and opportunities that are beyond the scope of the plan to address. A brief discussion of these appears in the section entitled "Issues and Opportunities".
III. Binghamton University's Goals
The University's "A Plan for the Future" lists six "fundamental objectives" and five "themes". The objectives state how we will approach our work and describe the environment we hope to create. In abbreviated form, the objectives are:
I. Create meaningful standards of excellence... and gauge our performance... .
II. Ensure that... [allocations] support our complex mission and that... contributions made by individuals... are recognized.
III. Become more internationally focused... .
IV. Improve the quality of University life... .
V. Promote a campus atmosphere of inclusiveness and respect that fosters full opportunities for... all people.
VI. Provide state-of-the-art technological support... [for all areas of the University].
Because the sixth objective relates directly to how information technology is expected to support the rest of the campus, it is quoted here in its entirety:
Provide state-of-the-art technological support for instruction, student learning, research, and administration, including the development of information delivery and management systems, computing and library facilities, advanced scientific instrumentation, and computing equipment and software appropriate to the needs of individual faculty and staff. Assist faculty, staff and students to adopt and use the changing technology as it becomes available. ("A Vision for the Future", pg. 5)
The themes describe our areas of emphasis and growth. They are:
A. Teaching/Learning.
B. Research and Scholarship.
C. Campus Community.
D. Outreach and Service.
E. Support for the University's Mission.
This long-range information technology Plan is targeted to support the University's goals. The Plan provides goals for achieving excellence and measuring performance in all service areas of Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center. The development of these processes will help us better understand and allocate our resources, and identify contributions that should be recognized. The implementation of networking capability and creation of a collaborative work environment will simultaneously allow greater access to resources for all, a more closely integrated campus community, an easier path toward international collaboration and a more convenient and secure campus life. By their nature, these developments will provide a more state-of-the-art technological environment for all our activities.
Particular goals are targeted to the University's themes: Classroom and lab (Pod) development will assist the teaching and learning effort; access to information, large databases and the resources of the Internet will assist research/scholarship efforts; the improvement and integration of the university's business systems allows the better and more efficient support of the University's mission; the development of a networked, collaborative environment will further all the "Themes". Appendix B provides labels for the Objectives & Themes from the University's "A Plan for the Future" for reference within this Plan, and shows how the information technology Plan's initiatives relate to the University's Objectives and Themes.
IV. The Information Technology Providers' Mission
The central information technology organization in higher education necessarily operates in two distinct worlds. In the first, the central service should provide resources, systems and services critical to the institution and/or widely needed by the campus community, and should support users of those resources in a way that ensures reliability, dependability, usability and a high standard of customer service. In the second, the central service plays a primary role in working with campus users of technology and other technology providers to identify and implement new information technology uses which support the University's long-range plan. The Mission of Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center reflects this dichotomy.
Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center will be "customer-driven" organizations whose goal is providing dependable, simple, and easy-to-use services and solutions today, while demonstrating leadership in exploring and implementing emerging technologies that support the University's competitive edge.
The mission of Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center is to work with those who depend upon the current information technology services and resources to provide and maintain a relevant, dependable and user-friendly operating environment, and to work as a partner with the campus community in identifying and implementing the information technology solutions that maximize the University's efforts to attain its long-range goals. To this end, Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center provide collaboration in developing a shared vision of the future, leadership in identifying and initiating viable solutions, expertise in implementing those solutions, and support for solutions in place. These activities are to be carried out while meeting the highest standards of customer-service organizations.
The goal of the staff of Computing Services is to provide the best computing and networking environment in higher education for the resource level available. The goal of the staff of the Educational Communications Center is to provide the best educational media and classroom support services in higher education for the resource level available.
The success of this mission depends upon several factors. First, it depends upon the involvement of the user community in setting goals and assessing plans, and upon the development of an open and honest dialog between and among students, faculty, staff, Computing Services, the Educational Communications Center and other campus information providers. Second, success depends upon the validity of the technical solutions implemented. We must take advantage of the expertise of the entire University in setting our plans, and ensure that those plans are based upon standards that can guarantee our interoperability with the rest of the world and at the same time minimize the costs of support. In a rapidly-changing technological environment, there are many options; it is not so important that we pick the right technology for a particular solution, but it is critical that we pick one of the right technologies. Third, building the best services in higher education will require continuous feedback and improvement. Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center must seek ways to measure effective performance and customer needs, solicit feedback, and use this information to continually improve operations. Finally, the mission will depend upon the emergence of a true spirit of partnership and service, both among the departments that make up Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center, and with the campus community.
V. Governance
The University has recently revised its governing structure for information technology as provided by Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center. Two structures have been created. For the past two years, the business and academic support systems' priorities have been set by the Executive Computing Priorities Committee (ECPC), which in turn receives recommendations from three divisional subcommittees. More recently, the Faculty Senate and Administration have established the joint Academic Computing Advisory Committee (ACAC) to provide guidance for academic computing and educational technology initiatives. The ACAC is served by two internal subcommittees, and maintains connections with a series of standing technology committees within departments and colleges and with other committees advising on academic computing and classroom technology issues. Members of the governing committees are listed in Appendix C.
VI. Major Objectives for the Next Five Years
At any given time, most of the staff members of the departments of Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center are hard at work supporting "current" services to the University community; the rest are engaged in new initiatives. For example, while the Administrative Computing Services group is usually involved in one or more new systems development projects, most of its effort is directed toward maintaining, enhancing and upgrading existing systems. Academic Computing Services puts considerable effort into upgrading its services during the summer, but the goal during most of the year is to provide a stable, dependable environment for faculty and students, and help them fully utilize that environment through consulting, training, documentation, etc. Similarly, the Educational Communications Center is pushing the envelope of new ways of doing business in the multimedia classrooms, but the bulk of its efforts go into supporting classroom activities throughout the year. Thus in this planning effort, current services serve as a starting point for the future, and provision of "current services" is the major project which engages most of us at any given time. Our highest priority over time is to support well the current services upon which our users depend.
Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center offer the following current services and resources for the entire University community:
For all campus users, Computing Services designs, installs, maintains and manages the completed portions of the campus network and many departmental networks, maintains multiple Unix-based servers to handle campus E-Mail, netnews, the white pages directory and the University's Web site, and provides repair services for the University PC's, Macs and Suns[3]. Computing Services provides mainframe resources to the campus operating under IBM's MVS/CICS and VM/CMS operating systems and the DB2 relational database on an IBM 9021-500 mainframe with attached vector processor operating 24 hours per day, seven days per week. Services associated with the mainframe include business transaction processing, listservs, data backup and storage, administrative batch job setup and data control, spot-color laser printing, and communications with the State's other CICS systems. Other services provided for users in general are dial-up network access, computer account setup, end-user training, a site-license software program that makes many top-line desktop applications available to the campus, test scoring and optical mark scanning capabilities, and general consulting and help-lines.
For all campus users, the Educational Communications Center provides educational media and technology services for campus and external users sponsoring special events on campus. Sound systems, audiovisual equipment and video display services are provided for conferences, workshops and seminars. ECC also provides the campus community with design and installation services for audio, video and multimedia systems.
Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center also offer services specifically tailored for academic and administrative users:
Academic users have access to the services provided to all users, and in addition have access to specialized computer training for faculty, staff and students, access to the public pods, support for the residence hall network, assistance for faculty on the use of statistical packages, documentation, and consulting services through the faculty helpdesk. Academic users are also provided with educational technologies for classes, graphic production services for publication and classroom presentation, installation of media systems, classroom technology repair services and support in the multimedia classrooms.
Administrative users have access to the services provided to all users, and in addition can access computer training for staff, ongoing systems development, maintenance, testing and installation services for the University's administrative systems, consulting on the use of technology in administrative offices, database administration services, account setup for users of business systems, disk management and an administrative helpdesk.
These services constitute the major present commitment of Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center. On any given day, thousands of members of our campus community successfully utilize these services with excellent support from the CS and ECC staffs.
Improving Our Current Services
Despite this necessary commitment to current services, any plan for computing, networking and classroom support is necessarily about change. No aspect of our lives is changing as rapidly as are these technologies, and our basic services must necessarily keep pace. We have the obligation to ensure that progress appropriate to the University's goals takes place, and to provide as smooth an upgrade path for users as is practical.
"Current" services must undergo continual improvement as our staff develops better ways to provide what's needed, as the University's goals change, as technology changes, and as the expressed needs of the groups served change.
To this end, a series of projects should be undertaken during the scope of this Plan to stabilize and improve current services:
Regularly upgrade servers, operating systems, compilers, database managers, transaction processors and other hardware and software to keep the central environment as state-of-the-art as is compatible with stability, utility, and available resources.
Create a multi-year budget which targets necessary equipment replacement in the Educational Communications Center and Computing Services.
Establish a networking group to provide for on-going support of existing campus networking efforts.
In collaboration with governing committees, develop procedures for guiding which services and applications will be considered "supported" on campus, for annually reviewing and upgrading those supported services, and for assessing the resources necessary to adequately support each "supported" function.
Implement change procedures to notify and help users convert to newer technologies as older services become "unsupported".
Establish separate testing and development environments for system development efforts.
Inventory the current services of Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center and develop an introductory document of available services and access methods for new users.
Collaborate with other providers of campus information technology services. At minimum, collaborate on an on-going, informal lunch training and information session series where technical staff and users of services can inform each other on important topics.
Move to a "one-stop shopping" approach to residence hall connection setups.
Revise the RACS (Request for Administrative Computing Services) submittal process, simplifying the information initially required of the user and providing an on-line entry and review process.
Offer more direct software support of departmental Unix platforms used as servers or as instructional machines.
Produce a disaster recovery plan for critical campus information technology resources; install an uninterruptible power supply to protect central computing and network equipment from power outages.
Improve the reliability and useable speed of the high-speed laser printer.
Where practical, join consortia of other institutions engaged in similar activities to stretch our own resources and to enhance Binghamton's reputation as a leader in the use of innovative educational and business technologies.
Make greater efforts to leverage existing resources by exploring opportunities for joint ventures and grants that could speed our progress toward achieving our goals.
Implement a newsletter for users of Computing Services and Educational Communications.
In general, develop procedures and processes which ensure that those who depend upon our services get the stability, reliability and useability they need to use our services effectively and that changes to supported services have minimal impact on users.
Building the "Best-value" Support Environment
Whether or not this plan is implemented, we are being inexorably drawn into a future where we will be increasingly dependent upon technology, yet the effective use of technology requires comprehensive, responsive support. We are all justifiably proud of Binghamton University's ranking in the top ten of institutions which combine the best in academic excellence and low cost to students. Solid support for the use of technology will be a critical component contributing to the academic mission and to keeping costs low. Our goal should be to build a "best-value" support environment that matches our "best-value" academic reputation. Creating the best support environment for the resources available will require combining the efforts of highly customer-oriented, technically competent and adaptive central services with those of users committed to doing all they can to help themselves and their colleagues.
From the central side, creating the support environment will require training for CS and ECC staff in customer service and in technical topics. It will require that procedures be established for accurately determining the needs of users, that performance goals and measurements for services delivered be established, and that the results of measurements be analyzed and used to continuously improve the services delivered. Steps should also be taken to consolidate and simplify access to technical services for users wherever possible, and to target a full training program toward areas where measurements indicate they will be of the most benefit to users.
Developing the "best-value" support environment will also require that we take advantage of the expertise of our user community in a cooperative effort to support one another. No central organization can provide the level of customized support that will be effective for all users. So as the central organization takes steps to build the best "background" support environment, users must step forward to provide broad help to one another, and provide specialized expertise which will not be available centrally. How users step forward will likely be different in different offices. The support structure will depend upon departmental secretaries (who with their phones, typewriters, filing systems and copiers have always filled the role of office information technology specialists), college/division-based technical support, user groups and departmental experts who will be called upon to collaborate with central staff and users alike to troubleshoot problems, assist in training and take part in joint projects. Likewise, students working in the pods, on the helpdesk, in residence halls and in departments will be invaluable members of the support environment, both as employees and as innovators and early adopters of technology.
To this end, the following projects should be implemented:
Consolidate the multiple helpdesk functions within Computing Services, providing a single initial point of contact for users of services, and a common repository for tracking problems and providing advice. At the same time, develop smooth procedures for handing off technical problems from the helpdesk to specialized units within CS and the ECC, or to technical help in users' offices.
Conduct training with CS and ECC staff on dealing with one another as internal customers, and broaden the program to include dealing with external users.
Implement adequate and regular training for those staff who are expected to develop, implement and/or support technical services.
Expand training and documentation services for the campus, using technology and a dedicated training staff to work toward an anywhere, anytime, "just-in-time" approach to training and documentation for the University's supported computing environment.
Develop methods for on-going assessment of customer needs and attitudes toward the services provided, and incorporate the feedback received into an on-going review and improvement process.
Acquire and install performance monitoring software to properly assess the performance of critical systems and to provide data for projecting future needs.
Establish target "threshold measures" for assessing the availability of central information technology resources (i.e. average response times and total weekly availability on mainframes and servers, numbers of busy signals per 100 phone calls on modem banks, numbers of equipment problems in multimedia classrooms, packet collisions on networks, etc.), monitor the data, and use them to make changes when acceptable thresholds are exceeded.
Encourage and assist varied forms of self-support for users, such as user-groups, expert user support circles, on-line support discussion groups, shared support positions, etc.
Establish residence-hall support specialists, to assist students in the setup of dorm network connections.
Develop a program which offers colleges and divisions the opportunity to share positions which will have both central and local support assignments.
Establish the principle that Computing Services should wherever practical use the same packages and platforms in general use by users, to ensure a better "automatic" understanding of users' problems.
The "Binghamton 2005" vision at the beginning of this Plan assumes at least partial implementation of high-speed, wireless networking, Web-based transaction processing, common user interfaces including voice, electronic documents and forms, groupware, relational and object databases, modern query and programming tools, and voice, video and data integration.
In order to build the environment that will take advantage of these modern technologies to effectively support the University's long-range plans and at the same time support the day-to-day work of the University, the following new initiatives are proposed.
Goal 1: Complete the Campus Network.
A ubiquitous, high-speed campus network is essential to the vision described at the beginning of this Plan. Today's Internet, based as it is on ethernet and TCP/IP and populated with Unix servers, was developed by the research and academic community. Collaboration and sharing, the principles of networking, are fundamental to the academic enterprise. High-speed networking will be essential to the academic institution of the future for accomplishing the work of higher education and for recruiting quality students and faculty, and in this area our University lags behind its peers. If we plan to continue to operate as one of the top learning institutions in the country, completing a high-speed, well-supported network should be our most important new information technology goal.
Currently, the campus network is incomplete and exhibits a patchwork appearance. Offices seeking networks have shared the costs of networking with Computing Services, when neither was explicitly funded for this task. In fact, no estimate for the cost of completing the network has been provided to the senior administration. The result has been a variety of networking solutions, dictated partly by technical need, partly by cost and partly by personal preference. As of this draft there are more than 35 departments which have requested the installation of a network and are in some stage of receiving cost estimates or moving forward with implementation.
Under the present process, the network will eventually be completed, but in its current form it will be a nightmare to support. The time has come for our campus community to acknowledge that the network is a critical piece of the University's future infrastructure, and that completing the network as a planned, centrally-funded project is a priority for us all.
The following projects should be undertaken to accomplish this goal:
Establish the "target" networking environment for the next five years (see Appendix D).
Provide the senior administration with an estimate of the cost of the campus networking project in light of the target environment.
Name the campus network (herein called "BingNet").
Complete BingNet as a centrally-funded project, providing network drops capable at minimum of ethernet speeds in all offices, classrooms and dormitory rooms.
Provide the means for faculty, staff and students to acquire or access desktop computers capable of taking advantage of BingNet.
Build an on-going support structure for the campus network, and establish standards for support of networked offices and departments.
Establish target thresholds of network performance; measure performance and take corrective action when thresholds are exceeded.
Upgrade the campus backbone to allow voice, video and data capabilities in the classroom, lab, office and dorm.
Establish a standard, "free", campus-wide software suite for all campus network users, and implement procedures for the community to review and change the suite as needs change.
Plan and provide for the network in a way that allows for centralized support for a "standard" network implementation, and for decentralized support for customized network implementations, recognizing that in an academic environment customized solutions may have important advantages.
Organize central network support so it accommodates and complements decentralized efforts in the departments.
Establish an on-going planning function for BingNet.
Provide increased high-speed, dial-in access to BingNet, to keep pace with demands.
Collaborate with governing committees and other campus information technology providers to establish the basic security requirements for all campus networked devices.
Implement a telecommuting pilot project.
University Goals Supported:
Completion of the campus network supports all of the University's goals as described above.
Issues Raised:
Governance of the network; of data, voice and video resources; of change.
Support for maintenance of the network; for training.
Goal 2. Build a collaborative work environment based on personal machines.
In order to implement the opening vision of our use of technology on campus, we must shift the focus of computing from mainframes and servers and remote resources to the desktop or mobile personal machine of each user. Currently, users of campus computing resources must utilize a variety of methods to access what they need. A mainframe user might use a terminal. A networked PC user might telnet to a central machine for E-mail, or use a desktop ("client") E-mail package, etc. A user of CICS deals with a mainframe interface regardless of the access method or path. Each of these separate access and networking paths may require a different set of commands, different specialized knowledge of the user, different documents, and different training and support from Computing Services. Further, collaboration even in networked offices is at best still based on a paper document model, where mail and documents can be shipped back and forth electronically, but not shared as if people were sitting side-by-side. We are today quite far from the easy-to-use, integrated environment envisioned in "Binghamton 2005".
Once the network is in place, the first step in ensuring the shift from a mainframe- to a personal machine-oriented environment is to provide access for students, faculty and staff to quality personal machines. This is an on-going effort and depends upon making PC's available to those who do not have them and upgrading machines that are too old to take advantage of a networked, collaborative environment. Several initiatives are already underway toward this end. The continuous upgrade of the Pods, the creation of new labs and the installation of point-to-point (PPP) communications capability in the residence halls take advantage of the computers some students bring with them and provide public computers for those who do not have their own resources. Also, major manufacturers like IBM and Apple offer time-purchase agreements directly to students, faculty and staff affiliated with the University. The PC/Mac leasing program provides a similar opportunity for departments to acquire machines over time.
The next step is to make the concepts of "remote" and "access" disappear. The environment of the future will allow users to get at resources and applications through their personal desktop interfaces, regardless of whether the resource accessed resides on the PC or on a remote machine. Thus, our E-mail will all be PC-based and accessible from wherever we are at the moment. CICS access will likely evolve into a Web-based or query-tool access that will have a fully PC-based interface. The combination of PC interface and network background software should take the user through any necessary access paths with no intervention or knowledge of the path required, other than security access codes. In essence, except for passwords required of the user, commands necessary to navigate the network will be handled by the "network" itself.
Finally, collaborative software ("groupware", multi-user dungeons (MUDS), etc.) will increasingly allow the close collaboration and coordination of remote groups of people. People can share, markup and modify sets of documents, work schedules and plans, exchange messages in private or in the open, set up information libraries with multiple levels of openness and security. The complexity of such future environments will be handled behind-the-scenes at the network and server level, while the user will deal with all this through the standard Windows or Mac interface.
Projects that should be part of this goal include:
Establish a PC Lease program to facilitate departmental PC/Mac upgrades.
Move the user interface for common applications from the mainframe and servers to the PC and Mac.
Enable the consolidation of the PC, Phone, TV, Radio, VCR and Camcorder in office and classroom by standardizing on multimedia-capable machines.
Establish a common validation scheme, so access to the campus network provides automatic access to common campus resources.
Assist users in moving to client-based E-mail packages.
Implement groupware tools, first through selected pilots, then campus-wide.
Work with the Library to enable simple, systematic desktop access to large and/or remote data sets.
Establish a CD-ROM jukebox server to provide more direct desktop access to information supplied in that format by ICPSR, CRSP, Compustat, etc.
University Goals Supported:
Moving to a collaborative, desktop-oriented environment will supports objectives IV, V and VI, and themes A, B, C and E.
Issues Raised:
Governance of the pace and direction of change.
Funding adequate desktop equipment and its on-going replacement.
Funding meaningful experiments in groupware use.
Alternatives to VM.
Goal 3. Enhance the educational technology available in the general-purpose classrooms and pods, and extend distance learning[4] capabilities.
The University has approximately one hundred general-purpose classrooms. Of these, all have a basic installed set of overhead projectors; half have permanent installations of video equipment (TV monitors and VCRs), and the rest are served by mobile equipment delivered at class time by the Educational Communications Center. Currently, six classrooms are spectacularly equipped with a full range of multimedia equipment: overhead projectors, video and data projectors, VCR's, videodisc players, PC's, Macs and Elmo Visualizers. Additionally, four classrooms on campus are equipped with distance learning facilities sporting multimedia equipment and the capability for remote interactive audio and video. The multimedia and distance learning classrooms support a number of on-going experiments using information technology in teaching.
Multiple PC pods are also in place on campus. They sport a range of equipment types and capabilities, and many double as classrooms. Management of the pods is in some cases by Computing Services and in others by the local department. There is a need to establish an on-going planning process for the pods, as ever-more-difficult issues are raised over their priorities and use. Currently, increased use of the pods as classrooms or as laboratory sessions is driving out general public access use. Initiatives to wire the residence halls and create new pods in the halls appear to reduce the need for the large, central pods, yet many students in off-campus housing and students without hardware or specialized software of their own continue to rely on the public pods. Finally, the software available in the labs is constantly changing (see Appendix E for changes planned for the Spring semester) in response to the stated needs of faculty; these too should be reviewed in a continuous planning process for the pods.
The goal is to provide the level of equipment and software in each classroom and lab appropriate to the need of the teacher, and that need ultimately should be articulated by the faculty. The Classroom Environment Committee has put forward recommendations that the University should take a "tiered" approach to outfitting multimedia classrooms. First, we should upgrade our definition of the "standard" classroom and lab to include standard and computer-capable displays as well as permanent installations of VCR's, phone lines, TV monitors and a network connection. This basic installation will ensure a common and relatively full-featured level of support for faculty in all classrooms and will have the added benefits of reducing our dependency upon staff to deliver mobile equipment in the nick of time and reducing wear-and-tear on the equipment caused by moving it from place to place. Laptop computers might be considered as the next tier of support; a pool of laptops could be outfitted with standard presentation and multimedia software for use in the new "standard" classroom. At the next level, full multimedia and broadcast capability is planned for new classrooms now under construction, and should then be extended to additional classrooms. Finally, a portable capability for both multimedia and distance learning could be developed for use where and as needed. In this varied environment, immediate response to problems with classroom equipment will be critical.
Projects which support this goal are:
Establish an upgraded "base" level of wiring and AV equipment support in the classrooms.
Experiment with multiple tiers of multimedia capability in the classrooms.
Automate and add capabilities to the classroom reservation system for the public Pods.
Establish availability and performance standards for equipment in the classrooms, and collect data to ensure that those standards are met.
Provide standby support staff for the multimedia classrooms.
Develop an ongoing process for gathering faculty and student feedback on the use of the classrooms for the purpose of continually improving their utility.
Establish a long-term planning process for the public PC labs.
Work to understand and improve the reliability of distance learning delivery systems.
Collaborate with faculty, administrators and other providers of technical services to overcome impediments associated with the delivery of distance education.
University Goals Supported: .
Completing the upgrade of classrooms supports objectives I and VI and themes A and E.
Issues Raised:
Governance of changes to the classroom environment.
What should take precedence in the Pods: lab use or classroom use?
The measurement of the effectiveness of multimedia use in the classroom.
What should the goals of the University be vis a vis distance learning?
Goal 4. Continually improve and enhance the institution's business information systems.
Currently, the major business systems of the University supported by Computing Services include Accounting, Admissions, Alumni, Card Access, Classroom Scheduling, Degree Audit, Graduate Financial Aid, Institutional Research, Library, Mailing, Physical Facilities, Student Accounts, Student Registration & Records, Computing Services Accounting, Undergraduate Financial Aid and ULED[5]. In addition, the Personnel, Payroll and Purchasing systems are run from Albany, and interfaces and reporting systems have been developed locally for them. Many of these systems were developed some time ago; all have been developed in a mainframe-oriented, CICS or batch mold. Individual offices have in some cases acquired their own systems which run on a variety of equipment from older mini-computers to PC's. As standard networks are installed around campus and as the Windows interface itself becomes more standard, these decentralized experiments hold considerable promise as models for future system development.
Several important initiatives must be a priority in the coming years for the University's business information systems. The most important and urgent project must be to prepare our existing systems for the year 2000. Our approach can be varied depending upon the system involved: we can correct the problem code directly, or convert code to relational database systems which handle year 2000 problems automatically, or upgrade to vendors' packages where the problem has been solved by the vendor.
The year 2000 effort will be considerable, and will certainly impact our ability to produce and enhance other systems. An assessment of the "Year 2000 impact" is in progress. One of our major objectives is to ensure that we don't work hard for the next three years and only accomplish avoiding year 2000 problems while not improving our systems. Instead, our approach should be to review each major system with an eye toward gaining substantial value by replacing or upgrading the systems, or at least converting them to more modern file formats.
Beyond the year 2000 problem, our efforts should be directed toward the overall improvement of the business systems which support our work. We must complete the conversion of our mission-critical systems to relational or object technology. Also, the University has historically developed its own systems; the purchase of vendor systems developed for higher education should be considered as a serious option in the future. As we make necessary changes to the infrastructure of our systems, and as we develop or acquire new systems, we may need to freeze development of existing systems.
As our environment is prepared for the year 2000 and standardized on relational technology we must upgrade our tools and methods for system development, pick the platforms toward which we will target our systems, and develop a system architecture which simultaneously allows decentralized systems and a common institutional database. We should use groupware tools to promote electronic document use on campus and use imaging and workflow technologies for handling current paper flow. We should establish standard, open links into our administrative systems, using the Web to present information and accept transactions. We should review our overall architecture with the intention of taking advantage of the more apparent benefits of client/server architecture. Finally, we should explore the use of new approaches to computing like Java and the "network PC", to improve function and reduce costs wherever possible.
A list of projects in support of this goal are listed below.
Assess the impact of the Year 2000 on the University's information systems and make the necessary changes.
Complete the conversion of mission-critical business systems to relational technology.
Establish measures of system stability and system development output to be used in improving development techniques and system performance.
Pilot a development project using Joint Application Design (JAD) techniques, to test their value in our University environment.
Conduct a review of the University's current business systems, building at the same time a model of the costs and benefits of moving to an integrated suite of vendor packages. Use the model to assess which systems are most in need of upgrade, and to guide us in determining whether new systems should be developed in-house or purchased.
Move to a model of computing which supports distributed systems and institutional control of important data. Use client/server and Web-access technologies to improve the efficiency, accessibility and ease-of-use of institutional data systems.
Develop or acquire new systems or upgrades of systems supporting the Binghamton Business System (BBS), HRMS (I-81 Consortium), Graduate and Undergraduate Admissions, Student Accounts, Revenue Accounting, and Student Records.
Aggressively move to use the Web as a primary internal (Intranet) transaction tool.
Pilot an imaging project for use in areas with a high-volume of paper flow.
Incorporate modern IT tools in our systems development efforts and train our staff in their use. Develop a rapid and effective systems development capability.
University Goals Supported:
Upgrading the University's business systems supports objectives I, II and VI and theme E.
Issues Raised:
Governance of setting priorities for business system upgrades and of the pace of change.
The cost of maintaining an integrated, state-of-the-art set of business systems.
Identification of the right business system architectures and tools.
Goal 5. Provide direct access for students, faculty and staff to the data which affects their work and lives.
Traditional business systems have been developed to provide support for discrete business functions in different offices. The data used in these systems have been considered "owned" by the department or departments which generated it, and access to data has been limited to owners.
The "BUSI" system, which provides direct student access to information which affects them, is an innovation which breaks this traditional access model. We should build on this model for the business systems we develop or acquire in the future. Systems may be designed to support particular business functions, but the functions of the modern organization increasingly cross departmental and divisional lines. Information gathered at one point is ever-more important to "downstream" users who have nothing to do with the department which collects the data. Information used by multiple departments should be considered "institutional" data which are gathered, secured, utilized and managed as an institutional resource; these institutional data should be made available across-the-board to students, faculty and staff whenever it is necessary for them to do their jobs or to have access to personal information that affects their lives.
The priorities for this effort will be to provide closer integration of systems, conduct exercises to determine which current and future information is or will be important to the University, develop an institutional database, and settle on an approach for providing web access to important common data.
In addition, Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center should aggressively assist the departments and faculty to establish a strong presence on the world-wide web. To that end, server space and software support should be allocated to support departmental, faculty and student web pages.
A list of projects in support of this goal are listed below.
Assess the University's current and future data needs, and develop an institutional data repository of data definitions, business rules and critical information.
Develop standard interfaces to allow decentralized, department-based systems to feed data to the institutional database.
Develop policies which define which and how data will be made available.
Develop standard, secure, Web-based "Intranet" access to commonly-used information from the institutional database.
Develop a Web-support capability to assist departments in establishing home pages.
Provide Web server space for the instructional, research and business needs of the University, and enable faculty, staff and student home pages.
Provide Binghamton alumni with ever-wider access to E-mail and Web services through the University.
Place the latest version of the University's "Long-Range Information Technology Plan" on the Web.
University Goals Supported:
Providing members of our campus community with direct access to the data that affect them supports objectives II, IV, V and VI and themes A, B, C, D and E.
Issues Raised:
Who owns the data collected by departments?
How do we balance our desire for opening data to those who need it against reasonable security concerns?
What policies will apply to student home pages and to faculty ownership of course-related home pages?
Goal 6: Assist the University in reengineering operational functions.
As a matter of course, departmental and Computing Services staff embark on a project of reengineering whenever a system is developed or upgraded. However, in the past, departments largely determined the scope and pace of change of operational procedures, while Computing Services served as a consultant to help find the best way to implement departmental goals.
As economic and competitive pressures grow upon the University, the University has the opportunity to require that plans for any new system be finalized against the background of significant review of the processes affected by the system. Thus, future system projects utilizing central (CS) systems developers should be those that are central to the University's enterprise and automate the best "reengineered" practices. At the same time, Computing Services should assist departments in improving their own efficiencies by making easily available the links to institutional data so departments can develop their own systems.
If departments are able to develop their own systems using valid institutional data, and major systems are developed after rigorous review and rationalization of the processes involved, the University should benefit from greater system efficiencies, more streamlined processes and better integration of data.
A list of projects in support of this goal are listed below
Work with the system priorities committees to establish a basis for wider process review when system requests are received.
Establish a procedure for wider review of processes to be reengineered as a condition of system development.
University Goals Supported:
Reengineering University processes as systems are upgraded or acquired supports objectives II, IV and VI, and theme E.
Issues Raised:
More data administration is necessary to ensure the integration of disparate systems.
What process will be used to guarantee the reengineering of existing processes?
Goal 7. Automate internal Computing Services processes to free resources for the support of user services.
The demands on Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center for services in the form of technical support for equipment installed in classrooms and offices, development of networks and software to support academic and business processes, maintenance of common resources and provision of expertise for developing IT solutions for the institution are considerable. Many critical skills and needed personnel are in short supply. It is imperative that Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center stretch the resources they have as far as they will go.
One method of stretching resources is to automate operational processes wherever possible, and to redeploy personnel into non-automatable technical and support roles. A major goal of Computing Services should be to move toward "lights out" (i.e. automated and unattended) operations wherever possible, and to share resources among internal Computing Services groups as staff are available.
Major projects in this area are:
Acquire help-desk software which can track and escalate problems, provide a repository for expert advice, and be accessible to users and support staff across campus as help and support resources become decentralized.
Fully implement the CS's job scheduling software for overnight batch work.
Implement automated restart/recovery software to work with the job scheduler.
Implement automated operator console software.
Implement automatic network backups.
Acquire and install a tape robot to reduce manual tape handling and to handle anticipated increases in tape loads from automated network server backups.
As automation frees time for computer operators, have them assume network operation tasks.
Fully implement automated assignment and distribution of computer accounts for faculty, students and staff.
Eliminate the unnecessary overhead of setting pre-established usage limits on student, faculty and staff use of central computing resources, and of closing student accounts between semesters.
Work to consolidate the multiple computer accounts of users (general, E-mail, class) toward a single account.
Consolidate account management tasks into the helpdesk function.
Apply the principles of automation to software development, systems support and network operations efforts as it becomes feasible.
University Goals Supported:
Automating internal Computing Services operations supports objectives I and VI, and potentially frees resources to support themes A through E.
Issues Raised:
What support will be available to assist staff in retraining for new support roles?
VII. Issues & Special Opportunities
The implementation of information technology solutions to academic and business needs will naturally impact the way we go about our daily work. Many issues were raised above in the discussion of each goal. Below are a set of additional issues and opportunities which will be raised simply from the changes to our work environment and from implications of what the technology allows.
Issue/Opportunity: Funding adequate network and computing support services. The Gartner Group claims that its research indicates that the technical and hardware support costs of networked computing exceeds $5,000 per year per networked PC. While we can take pride in the fact that we can support ourselves for much less, we are currently spending less than one-twentieth of that amount for networking and PC support. Gartner makes the point that if technical support is not available in an organization, the lack of support is made up in the lost productivity of people in offices trying to support themselves and one-another. If we are to be a networked university in the information age, we will have to establish and fund some acceptable, non-disruptive level of support for students, faculty and staff. This plan assumes that there are benefits to developing technical support in user offices, and that Computing Services should plan for and assist in helping such a support environment grow.
Issue/Opportunity: Establishing a program for on-going equipment replacement. In order to take full advantage of information technology, our faculty, students and staff must have adequate access to the networked, workgroup-oriented environment information technology offers. The present life cycle for PC's and networking equipment is 3-4 years. The cycle for the same equipment as used in our classrooms is even shorter. The institution will have to establish methods for keeping pace with the rapid evolution of computing and networking equipment.
Issue/Opportunity: Establishing a program of on-going maintenance for critical equipment. The timely replacement of equipment is only a part of the problem. As we become more dependent upon a computerized and networked environment, equipment breakdowns will become more disruptive. Equipment that is critical for programs or that is used for a critical service should be on an explicit program of maintenance that ensures repair or replacement in a timely fashion. Currently, Computing Services provides the labor for repairing PC/Mac equipment on campus, but funding for PC parts or off-campus repair or server maintenance is borne by departments. Explicit budgets should be set aside, either in departments or centrally, to ensure the availability of maintenance for critical equipment.
Issue/Opportunity: Balancing the needs of user-friendly access and security in the future environment. The successful use of information technology depends heavily upon ease-of-use. Efforts to reduce the need for support, to make users more knowledgeable, to provide simple access to services are all directed toward making access and use simpler and more automated. However, the automation of ever-more-powerful access methods opens paths for those who wish to misuse equipment, destroy others' work, or to engage in other mischief. Striking a balance between the goals of unfettered use, open access and security will be an on-going challenge in this environment.
Issue/Opportunity: Distance learning. As technology makes location less important in learning situations, and as more adult learners become interested in continuing education but less able to be on campus, the University has a unique opportunity to capitalize on its distance learning classrooms and establish itself as a leader in distance learning. At the same time, distance learning poses a potential threat to the University: that distance learning could make our superb campus less important to prospective students, or that distance learning might be used as a downsizing tool. What will the University's goals be? The University has the challenge of supporting and coordinating the use of the physical facilities, of developing the programmatic guidelines for distance learning, establishing adequate administrative support and devising a workable incentive structure for faculty involved in the distance learning effort.
Issue/Opportunity: Faculty incentives for multimedia teaching and distance learning. The university has invested in spectacular and leading-edge facilities to allow multimedia approaches to teaching and to enable distance learning. Are the incentives in place to encourage and support faculty who wish to take advantage of these technologies?
Issue/Opportunity: Telecommuting for faculty, staff and students. If, as is predicted, the advent of networked, collaborative environments allows people to work and learn without regard to location, there are implications for an institution like Binghamton, where the physical campus is an integral part of our environment and appeal. Yet, telecommuting is claimed to be a powerful boost to productivity for some categories of workers. Clearly, we will want to experiment with telecommuting options for faculty, students and staff, but in a way that maximizes the benefits to the University.
Issue/Opportunity: Access to computing. In spite of initiatives outlined above to improve faculty and staff access to computing or improve the pods for better student access to computing, access will remain an issue for those who cannot afford their own computers or who have special needs. The issue of access will have to be continually reexamined.
Issue/Opportunity: Reengineering the University's business processes. As the work environment changes with the implementation of networks, groupware and "intelligent" software, the opportunity grows for consolidating like functions and handling the work of the University in more efficient and effective ways. How will the University approach these opportunities in a systematic way?
Issue/Opportunity: Consider expanding the University's technical leadership in the local community. The University contributes to the local community as an employer, a cultural and intellectual resource, and an educational institution. The University is currently engaged in formal and informal technological initiatives of benefit to the community, as well. The University might consider a more striking and inclusive partnership with the local community, based on the model of Virginia Tech's "Electronic Village" in Blacksburg, Virginia. There, the University has teamed with local business and government to include the entire community in an electronic network which provides a whole range of electronic services from Internet access and E-mail to electronic ordering of groceries; the "campus" network operates seamlessly across the entire community in a prototype of what the real world may look like in a few short years. Should our University embrace this future more rapidly?
VIII. Conclusion
This long-range information technology Plan draft is offered to the campus community as the Computing Services' and Educational Communications Center's view of our current efforts and planned initiatives. It is hoped that the document will serve as a stimulus for a campus-wide discussion of what the campus' long-range IT Plan should be and for establishing a process for ongoing revision and validation of the Plan.
Last updated Aug 17, 2006