Table of Contents

	Preface
	A Vision of the Future: Binghamton 2005
	Trends in Information Technology
I.	Executive Summary
II.	Introduction
III.	Binghamton University's Goals
IV.	The Information Technology Providers' Mission
V.	Governance
VI.	Major Objectives for the Next Five Years
	Providing Current Services
	Improving Our Current Services
	Building the "Best-Value" Support Environment
	Other Major Initiatives
	Goal 1: Complete, Maintain and Upgrade the Campus Network.
	Goal 2: Build a collaborative, networked, work environment.
	Goal 3. Enhance the educational technology available in the general-purpose classrooms and pods, and extend distance learning capabilities.
	Goal 4. Build a Generalized Research Support Capability
	Goal 5. Continually improve and enhance the institution's business information systems.
	Goal 6: Assist the University in reengineering operational functions.
VII.	Conclusion

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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, hand-held or clothing-attached 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 2000 was your PC, organizer, phone, radio, TV, camcorder and VCR. The Assistant incorporates browser software designed to provide a comprehensive, standardized, input and output "portal" to cyberspace. Operating on wireless networks for low-volume work and on wired nets for high, and 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, information "clips", 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 and preferences 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. 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, provide instant access to classmates who are "plugged in" at any given time, and format and submit multimedia assignments for classes. It can also handle personal matters such as housing your web pages, making electronic payments, 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., or provides a portal to the entertainment of your choice.

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. A variety of tasks that used to require a trip like shopping, banking, acquiring news and entertainment are now accomplished from your home or office. 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 customers who need additional computing power. At these times, your Assistant becomes a small part of a huge common computing resource available to all; providing massive, generalized computing power to the campus community.

Elements of this future¹ 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 above in the section "A Vision of the Future: Binghamton 2005". Though these trends are fundamentally mechanical developments, taken together they will enable transformative changes to the way we 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 in turn allows ever-more effective compression and encryption of data, and makes appliances and tools 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 has been toward the conversion of audio and video information from analog to a standard digital format, and allows 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 suddenly is so. A fourth trend is toward parallel processing by multiple computers, and increasingly allows us to break large problems not previously subject to solution by computing into smaller, more tractable problems. Fifth and sixth trends are toward high-speed and wireless networking, increasingly combining voice, video and data, and enables an "anywhere, anytime" approach to computation and the communication of all kinds of information; this trend has already had profound effects 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 is revolutionary. Together they have combined to allow the processing, storage, presentation and transmission features of the current world-wide web, allowed development of "shopbots" and other "independent" software agents, and fueled the revolution in hand-held computers, email- and web-capable cell-phones and web-TVs. In the future, faculty, students and staff will be able to use these tools to collaborate closely with colleagues and fellow workers and work effectively even when they are half a world away from the campus. We are beginning to leave behind the phase of scientific revolution described by Thomas Kuhn, where new tools are used to accomplish old tasks a little more efficiently, and we're entering the era where we will develop a whole new set of tasks that take advantage of the revolutionary power of the tools.²
 

I. Executive Summary

Information Technology has changed rapidly over the last five years, and the changes over the next five are likely to be even more rapid and revolutionary. Technological trends will contribute powerful, ubiquitous, wireless, hand-held devices that will consolidate the features of many computing, communication and home-entertainment devices today and make them smarter and smaller than ever. Standard formats for information and powerful high-speed networks will put this power at our fingertips.

This "Long Range Information Technology Plan" is the first major revision of the IT Plan adopted by the University in the spring of 1997. Many of the goals of that plan have been accomplished, and a new Plan is necessary now to refine our goals in light of our accomplishments, changes in technology, and our changed institutional needs.

The format of the new Plan follows that of the old. It describes a vision, a purpose, our approach, IT governance, and our goals.

The University's own strategic plan, "A Plan for the Future", remains unchanged, and describes six objectives and five themes for the University. The Long-Range IT Plan's purpose is to support the University's themes and objectives. Each goal section in the IT Plan describes the University's objectives and themes supported.

This plan primarily provides guidance to the activities of Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center. Their mission is to provide collaboration in developing a shared vision of the future, leadership in initiating viable IT solutions to problems, expertise in carrying out those solutions, and on-going support for those solutions. Their goal is to carry out this mission while providing the highest possible levels of customer service. The mission cannot be carried out without the active participation and collaboration of the campus community.

The Plan's major objectives for the next five years are to employ IT to:

• Maintain and improve current services and resources
• 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
• Improve our research support capability
• Improve and enhance the University's business information systems
• Assist in reengineering the University's operational functions

This Plan is offered to the University community in hopes that it will stimulate discussion of the plan's objectives and lead to a general agreement on the priorities for the campus's information technology resources for the next five years.

II. Introduction

This draft plan is intended to update and replace the University's first "Long Range Information Technology Plan", adopted in the Spring of 1997. The first Plan articulated a set of major technology goals for the campus and listed the steps for accomplishing those goals. Significant progress has been made on the goals from the first plan. Among them are the implementation and near-completion of a campus network, the establishment of a more decentralized and responsive technical support environment for the campus, the creation of a new helpdesk and newer technology training center, the implementation of the Pegasus project intended to upgrade our business systems, the wholesale upgrading of classroom, lab and server equipment, software, and the creation of a new standard for general and multimedia classrooms.

In spite of its success, the old plan has run to the limit of what were then seen as the next steps for developing the campus technology infrastructure. This new plan restates the first plan's goals, sets new targets and provides a starting context for each of the goals proposed. As was the case with the first plan, this draft is proposed in the hopes that it will be widely discussed, will generate suggestions for more comprehensive approaches, and will capture widespread agreement about what our next steps should be.

Plan Format:

Vision: The plan begins with a vision of what the future uses of information technology might be at Binghamton University in the year 2005, along with a discussion of the trends that make these changes possible.

Purpose: The information technology we employ should support 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.

Approach: 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 Provider's Mission".

Governance: 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 detailed in the "Governance" section, below.

Goals: 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 a context, lists major projects that will move us toward the goal, and describes how the goal supports the University's long-range plans.
 

III. Binghamton University's Goals

The University's formal long-range plan, "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:

1. Create meaningful standards of excellence... and gauge our performance... .
2. Ensure that... [allocations] support our complex mission and that... contributions made by individuals... are recognized.
3. Become more internationally focused... .
4. Improve the quality of University life... .
5. Promote a campus atmosphere of inclusiveness and respect that fosters full opportunities for... all people.
6. 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 of the Future")The themes describe our areas of emphasis and growth. They are:

1. Teaching/Learning.
2. Research and Scholarship.
3. Campus Community.
4. Outreach and Service.
5. 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 upgrading of networking capability, extension of a collaborative work environment, and improvement of access to personal data and business systems 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 for more efficient and effective support of the University's mission; the development of a networked, collaborative environment will further all the "Themes".

IV. The Information Technology Providers' Mission

The central information technology organization in higher education necessarily operates along two distinct paths, both of which support the University's goals. On the first, the central service must provide resources, systems and services critical to the institution in a way that ensures reliability, dependability, usability and a high standard of customer service. On the second, the central service plays a primary role in working with its customers to identify and implement new and more effective uses of information technology. 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 and developing leadership in exploring and implementing emerging technologies that support the University's competitive edge.

The mission of Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center provides 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, and with the intention of providing the best computing, networking and classroom environment in higher education for the resource level available.

The success of this mission depends upon several factors. First, it depends upon the involvement of customers 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

Governance of the computing and educational technology functions at Binghamton is vested in two standing committees.

The Faculty Senate and Administration have established the joint Academic Computing and Educational Technology (ACET) committee to provide guidance for academic computing and educational technology initiatives. The ACET is served by two standing 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. Activities over the last two years have concentrated on the long-range plan, classroom equipment requirements, the question of whether students should be required to have computers, desired research support, acceptable use of computers and networks, and campus software standards.

At the same time, priorities for business and academic support systems are set by the Executive Computing Priorities Committee (ECPC), which in turn receives recommendations from three divisional subcommittees. For the past two years, systems development efforts have concentrated primarily on the two major priorities of the ECPC: preparation for Y2K and the implementation of Pegasus.
 

VI. Major Objectives for the Next Five Years

Providing Current Services

The first paragraph of the "Mission" section above describes a central tension in Computing Services/EdComm service goals: should we maintain stable current services or forge ahead with new initiatives? At any given time most public attention is focussed on new initiatives and new technologies, yet 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. While we may be developing new systems, most effort goes into keeping operational systems current and running; while we may be planning for lab software upgrades, through most of the academic year the focus is on keeping software in the labs stable and running; while we may be planning the next generation of classroom equipment upgrades, most of the daily work goes into keeping the equipment ready for faculty classroom use every day of the semester.

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 customers depend.

Computing Services and the Educational Communications Center offer the following current services and resources for the entire University community:

• For all campus customers, Computing Services
• designs, installs, maintains and manages the campus network and most departmental networks,
• maintains multiple Unix-based servers to handle campus email, netnews, the white pages directory and the University's Web site,
• provides repair services for the University's PCs, Macs and Suns³,
• provides 24/7 hour mainframe resources to the campus operating under IBM's OS-390/CICS and VM/CMS operating systems on an IBM 2003 mainframe
• offers business transaction processing, data backup and storage, administrative batch job setup and data control, central printing services, and communications with the State's other CICS systems
• maintains network NT severs providing software applications like Listserv, and the Oracle, Unix-based server farm supporting Pegasus and newer academic and business applications, and
• maintains services, including the Helpdesk, the Technology Training Center, a departmental PC lease program, dial-up network access, computer account setup, a site-license software program, software evaluation, test scoring and optical mark scanning capabilities, and general consulting.
• For all campus customers, the Educational Communications Center
• provides educational media and technology services for campus and external customers sponsoring special events on campus,
• sets up and maintains sound systems, audiovisual equipment and video display services for conferences, workshops and seminars, and
• offers the campus community 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 customers:

• Academic customers have access to the above services, and in addition have access to the public pods, the residence hall network, assistance for faculty on the use of statistical packages, documentation, and consulting services. Academic customers are also provided with delivery of educational technologies for classes and classrooms, graphic production
• services for publication and classroom presentation, installation of media systems, classroom technology repair services and support in the multimedia classrooms.
• Administrative customers have access to the services provided to all customers, and in addition can request systems design and 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 business systems and disk management.

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 benefit from these services with excellent support from the CS and ECC staffs.
 

Improving Our Current Services

Context: Over the past two years, improving current services has lead to the following initiatives: staff training in customer service, identification and funding of a regular upgrade cycle for classroom, public PC lab (pod) and audio-visual equipment, the regular upgrade of central servers and software for log-in, email and web, the purchase of service contracts for critical central equipment, the simplification of the residence hall network connection process to allow complete self-service by students, installation of an uninterruptable power supply (UPS) for mainframe and network equipment, the award of an NSF grant to upgrade campus research internet access (Internet 2), the elimination of the RACS form, and other initiatives.

Current services undergo continual improvement as our staff develops better ways to provide what's needed, as the University's goals and technologies change, 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 further stabilize and improve current services:

• Continue the now-regular upgrade of servers, operating systems, compilers, database management systems, 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.
• 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 selected function.
• Implement change procedures to notify and help customers convert to newer technologies as older services become "unsupported".
• Develop more central and distributed technical resources to offer more direct software support of departmental Unix platforms.
• Produce a disaster recovery plan for critical campus information technology resources
• Make greater efforts to increase available resources by exploring opportunities for joint ventures and grants that could speed our progress toward achieving our goals.
• Develop improved procedures to disseminate information during "crisis" or "down" times.
• In general, develop procedures and processes which ensure that those who depend upon our services get the stability, reliability and usability they need to use our services effectively and that changes to supported services have minimal impact on customers.
• Reassess email service by examining the market and customer email preferences. (e.g. Implement mail forwarding.)
• Move to implement a standard LDAP (light directory access protocol) server; consolidate the (two) current campus web directories, and allow customers to make direct changes to their email and home page addresses in the directory.
• Find ways to collaborate more with other providers of campus information technology services.

Building the "Best-Value" Support Environment

Context: Over the past two years, building the "best-value" support environment has lead to the following initiatives: an internal emphasis on standard approaches to leverage staff effectiveness, the consolidation of helpdesk services, the establishment and staffing of the Technology Training Center, the acquisition and offering of some 500 computer-based-training (CBT) technology courses on the web, establishment of the Residential Hall Consultant program, a centrally-funded PC lease program, the funding of "shared" central/departmental network technicians, and other initiatives.

Our goal is to maintain a "best-value" support environment that matches our "best-value" academic reputation. Creating the best support environment for the resources available requires combining the efforts of highly customer-oriented, technically competent and adaptive central services with those of customers committed to doing all they can to help themselves and their colleagues.

From the central side, improving the support environment will require continued 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 customers, 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 customers wherever possible, and to target training programs toward areas where measurements indicate they will be of the most benefit to customers. However, no central organization can provide the level of customized support that will be effective for all customers. So as the central organization takes steps to build the best "background" support environment, customers must step forward to provide broad help to one another, and provide specialized expertise which will not be available centrally.

From the departmental side, developing the "best-value" support environment requires that we take advantage of training opportunities and of the expertise of our customer/colleagues in a cooperative effort to support one another. How customers step forward will likely be different in different offices. Support will depend upon departmental secretaries, college/division-based technical support, "user-groups" and departmental experts who will be called upon to collaborate with central staff and customers 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 are and will be key members of the support environment, both as employees and as innovators and early adopters of technology. Shared support positions, implemented in some colleges, may combine the best elements of "local" and "central" support.

To this end, the following projects should be implemented:

• Continue training efforts with CS and ECC staff on dealing with one another as internal customers, and broaden the program to include dealing with external customers.
• Implement adequate and regular technical training for those staff who are expected to develop, implement and/or support technical services, and encourage staff to complete certification programs in their areas of expertise.
• Use the on-going evaluations of Training Center effectiveness and Helpdesk call statistics to develop more targeted, "just-in-time" training and documentation for departments.
• 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.
• Consolidate documentation and notification services to create a comprehensive information source for customers seeking to find services or obtain status information.
• Move all CS and ECC documentation to the web.
• 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, monitor the data, and use them to make changes when acceptable thresholds are exceeded.
• Encourage and assist self-support for customers, such as user-groups, expert customer support circles, on-line support discussion groups, etc.
• Continue the program which offers colleges and divisions the opportunity to share positions which will have both central and local support assignments.
• Find improved ways to bring student and departmental technical employees into our planning and support processes.
• Support aggressive technical training for faculty, staff and students

Other Major Initiatives

The "Binghamton 2005" vision at the beginning of this Plan assumes the implementation of high-speed, nomadic networking, Web-based transaction processing, common "user-interfaces" including voice, electronic documents and forms, groupware, comprehensive databases, modern query and programming tools, and voice, video and data integration.

In order to build and maintain the environment that will allow us to take advantage of these modern technologies, the following new initiatives are proposed.

Goal 1: Complete, Maintain and Upgrade the Campus Network.

Context: Over the past two years, pursuit of this goal has led to the following initiatives: the rationalization and articulation of the campus subnet architecture, the implementation of 100 Megabit/second speeds on a switched campus backbone and at the desktop in the new Academic Building complex, the School of Engineering and several older buildings, the complete networking of 14 buildings with more than 3000 drops, the conversion of the residence hall network to switched ethernet, the installation of a pilot wireless network in the Collaboratory classroom, the successful application for a grant to join the very high-speed backbone network service (vBNS) and Internet II via the NYSERNet 2000 high-speed networking project, the listing of Binghamton among the top 100 "most-wired" campuses, and other initiatives.

A ubiquitous, high-speed campus network is essential to the vision described at the beginning of this Plan and will be essential to the academic institution of the future for accomplishing the work of higher education and for recruiting quality students and faculty. If we plan to continue to operate as one of the top learning institutions in the country, we need to complete and continually upgrade the campus network.

[Note: the network has not been completed in areas where the presence of asbestos prevents installation or upgrade of existing wire. Primary unfinished areas are in the Library North building and the University Union (which is being abated and renovated); the primary area in need of upgrade is the Library, which is also being abated and renovated.]

The following projects should be undertaken to complete and maintain the campus network:

• Continually update the "target" networking environment to create a continually-upgraded, state-of-the-art campus network.
• Complete the campus network, providing network drops capable of 100 Megabit/second speeds in all offices, classrooms and residence hall rooms.
• Provide and promote the means for faculty, staff and students to acquire or access computers capable of taking advantage of the network.
• Establish written standards for support of networked offices and departments.
• Document the campus network wiring on the web.
• Establish target capacity thresholds of network performance; measure performance and take corrective action when thresholds are exceeded.
• Adjust the campus backbone protocols to fine-tune voice, video and data capabilities in the classroom, lab, office and residence hall rooms.
• Connect to NYSERNet 2000, Internet II and vBNS (very high-speed backbone network service) to allow high-end internet applications, and selectively implement gigabit speeds at the desktop.
• Implement policy-based routing for high-speed, high-priority network applications.
• Operate central network support so it accommodates and complements decentralized efforts in the departments.
• Expand modem pools for off-campus network access, and provide rationing and priority mechanisms for high-speed, dial-in access to keep pace with demands.
• Make Time-Warner's RoadRunner home network service more accessible to off-campus customers.
• Implement a telecommuting pilot project.
• Develop and implement a comprehensive network security plan.
• Utilize more wireless networking, as appropriate.
• Join NYSERNet's pilot, high-speed, multi-point video conferencing-over-IP project, to experiment with delivery of video over Internet 2.
• Pilot a fiber-to-the-desktop project, to provide proof-of-concept and test actual costs/economies.
• Make plans for gigabit network backbone speeds, as applications need them.
• Complete the conversion of existing shared network segments to switched connections.

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.

Network security.

 

Primary Partners in this Project:

Physical Facilities, Telecommunications, major network customers (the Colleges, the Libraries) and special network experts (Computer Science department, Center for Teaching & Learning).

Goal 2: Build a collaborative, networked, work environment.

Context: Over the past two years, pursuit of this goal has lead to the following initiatives: implementation and support for the "Topclass" web/class collaboration package, the implementation of Microsoft Exchange groupware for departmental use, refinement and upgrade of the Binghamton University Internet Connection Kit (BUICK) and Internet Suite for Macs software packages, the selection of a "free" campus applications software suite for departments (Microsoft Office), and other initiatives.

We are today quite far from the easy-to-use, integrated environment envisioned in "Binghamton 2005", where hand-held and laptop computers can connect and communicate at will. However, we're seeing the development of a common interface to which these different devices can seamlessly connect in today's world-wide Web.

The Web is making the concepts of "remote" and "access" disappear. The environment evolving today allows customers to get at resources and applications through their personal machines, regardless of where the resource accessed resides. Personal machine operating software is becoming fully-standardized in spite of the variation in the machines themselves, providing for browsers and plug-ins that are compatible with a wide range of academic and business software. On the network side, intranets, web applications and portals increasingly standardize the presentation of services and software regardless of the accessing device. The result for the customer is a mobile, consistent, customized and personalized access space which is immediately available anywhere, any time, and via any machine.

Finally, collaborative software and groupware 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. These features should be available to us in the campus network.

Projects that should be part of this goal include:

• Intensify promotion of the PC Lease program to facilitate departmental computer acquisitions and upgrades for all types of computers (server, desktop, laptop, hand-held).
• Plan for hand-held and intelligent wireless appliance use on the network.
• Acquire common software and groupware tools for customers to ensure interoperabilitiy and interworking of software across the campus, and implement selected pilots for their use.
• Develop and implement a template for a comprehensive campus "portal", which will combine basic academic and administrative services for each major user group, and allow for personalization to fit each customer's preferences.
• Complete the establishment of a standard, "free" campus-wide software suite for all on-campus customers, and implement procedures for the community to review and change the suite as needs change.
• Follow the commercial development of wireless appliance-based web and email access, and enable nomadic computing by developing remotely-accessible storage-area networks, customer profiles and address books.
• Complete development of a common server for large datasets and site-licensed software.
• Provide direct desktop access to research information supplied by ICPSR, CRSP, Compustat, etc.
• Enable selection of personalized ID's by faculty, staff and students

University Goals Supported:

Moving to a collaborative, desktop-oriented environment will support 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.

How to enable on-the fly switching from wired to wireless networks and back again.

 

Primary Partners in this Project:

SUNY Central, ACET software subcommittee, Pod Committee and departmental experts.

Goal 3. Enhance the educational technology available in the general-purpose classrooms and pods, and extend distance learning capabilities.

Context: Over the past two years, pursuit of this goal has lead to the following initiatives: the significant upgrade of classroom, PC lab and AV equipment, redesign and improvement of the standard multimedia classroom podium, installation of a network drop in most classrooms, a redefinition of the target classroom equipment environment, creation of 12 new full multimedia classrooms, the upgrade of some 50 "regular" classrooms, creation of a major new public PC lab in Academic I, the institution of free laser printing in the pods for students, the development of a new "flexible classroom" (the Collaboratory), the regular solicitation of feedback on problems from faculty using multimedia classrooms, and other initiatives. As part of the planning effort for classrooms, the Classroom Environment Committee has put forward recommendations (subsequently approved by the ACET) that the University should take a "tiered" approach to outfitting multimedia classrooms, equipping every public classroom on campus with blackboard, overhead projector, screen, TV, VCR, data projection equipment and networked laptop connection (Tier I). A second "tier" (Tier II) is defined as full multimedia classrooms including all of Tier I equipment as well as Elmo, laser disk, and installed computers.

The University has approximately one hundred and ten 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, eighteen classrooms are spectacularly equipped with a full range of multimedia equipment: overhead projectors, video and data projectors, VCRs, videodisc players, PCs, Macs and Elmo visualizers. Additionally, five 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 offer a range of equipment types and capabilities, and many double as classrooms. The Pod Committee, comprised of the associate deans and academic computing staff, deals with the difficult issues raised over the central pods' priorities and use. These issues include questions of whether pods should primarily serve as public access areas or classrooms, of what software should be provided in the pods, of whether large central pods continue to be necessary with most on-campus students' use of residence hall connections, and of whether students should be required to bring their own computers to campus.

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.

However, support of faculty using technology in classroom situations remains an issue. In the technology-intensive classroom of the near future, immediate response to problems with classroom equipment will be critical.

Projects which support this goal are:

• Implement the approved two-tiered strategy of multimedia capability in the classrooms.
• Continue to refine the governing committee structure for the public PC labs, ensuring that planning for hardware and software availability reflects faculty and student needs.
• Establish written availability and performance standards for equipment in the classrooms, and collect data to ensure that those standards are met.
• Address the shortage of support personnel for the pods and the multimedia classrooms by a combination of expanding staff and improving the methods of support.
• Refine the process for gathering on-going faculty and student feedback on the use of the classrooms for the purpose of continually improving their utility.
• Find ways to gather suggestions and advice from student pod workers ("podcons") and customers on improvements and best use of the pods.
• Collaborate with faculty, administrators and other providers of technical services to ease delivery of distance education.
• Work to secure funds to further reduce the upgrade cycle for pod and classroom equipment.
• Continue to support faculty development, both for classroom, research and administration.

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?

How should we measure the effectiveness of multimedia use in the classroom.

What should the goals of the University be vis a vis distance learning?

Do we continue to need central pods?

How do we improve student accessibility to pods and classrooms?

Should students be required to bring their own computers to campus?

 

Primary Partners in this Project:

Pod Committee, Classroom Environment Committee, ACET Instructional Technology subcommittee, Physical Facilities.

Goal 4. Build a Generalized Research Support Capability

Context: In the past, Computing Services has concentrated on modernizing and improving the quality of basic computer support across campus for academic departments, students and offices. These improvements have been targeted towards the general customer, and have not necessarily addressed the more specialized, in-depth types of support needed by faculty and graduate students engaged in research. Faculty and graduate students engaged in research often have difficulty in finding specialized hardware and software resources and knowledgeable co-workers when designing or conducting research tasks. In response to a University goal to increase externally funded research, the Provost's ACET Committee formed a subcommittee that extensively surveyed faculty and recommended changes in policy and practices that will improve our faculty's competitive position with funding agencies. This goal of the Long Range Plan is targeted to the recommendations of that subcommittee.

In the past three years, Computing Services has significantly improved many aspects of the general infrastructure for research by the re-design of the campus network, submitting a successful NSF grant application for vBNS connection, installation of additional statistical software in the Unix environment, and providing an academic Oracle environment for both teaching and research. The BU Windows NT environment is also enriching research possibilities. Both SPSS and SAS are now available for all Windows machines connected to the campus network. Unfortunately, many faculty are unaware of these advances.

The subcommittee report calls for a Research Productivity facility and a Geographical Information System (GIS) facility. It also calls for increasing technical staff for support in statistical computing, C and FORTRAN programming, and high performance computing and networking. The committee emphasizes that these services need to be provided in a manner that resonates with the rhythms of research. The business day is not the research day. The cycles of research activity may not coincide with the academic calendar in the expected way. Wherever possible, research tools, physical facilities and information resources should be available all day, every day, the year round.

An important aspect of the committee recommendations is that we adopt a Community of Research Support paradigm to improve communication and cross-fertilization on our campus. In its minimalist form, a Community of Research Support could be a User's Group. In its full form, a Community of Research Support could be a physical location with full-time professional staff, graduate research assistants and faculty. These groups work together to foster communication among the research community and with the administration. They provide training, consulting and service to one another. The subcommittee calls for a Users' Group for Unix system administrators. It calls for increased scientific (FORTRAN and C) programming support and encourages the strong form of Community of Research Support in support of statistical, GIS, and high performance computing/networking.

We propose the following specific actions to improve the generalized research support capabilities of Computing Services and Educational Communications:

• Complete the connection to Internet 2.
• Increase commodity Internet connections to keep pace with demand.
• Monitor Internet 2 network technologies and standards and adapt the campus network so that BU researchers can take advantage of them.
• Continue building a research-grade Unix environment for both large data and computationally taxing research problems.
• Build Communities of Research Support for statistical and high performance computing/networking; provide additional scientific (Fortran and C) programming support.
• Sponsor a users' group for Unix Systems Administrators. Unix administrators from Computing Services should be active participants in this users' group.
• Provide a procedure for Communities of Support to create and maintain the web pages that describe research facilities and services.
• With the Office of Sponsored Programs, study the recommendation for a Research Productivity Facility and propose ways to create the desired facility.
• Propose mechanisms for providing preferred modem access for research faculty, including fee-for-service and authentication/authorization models; explore ways to facilitate access to campus resources from out of town.

University Goals Supported:

Increase the amount of sponsored research.

Increase the quality and quantity of research.

 

Issues Raised:

What specialized areas are best served by centralized or de-centralized support models?

How would Communities of Research Support relate to Computing Services?

How would Communities of Support be funded initially? Long term?

Should those who can pay get higher priority service?

Which facilities should be centralized and which should be departmental?

 

Cooperating Entities:

Office of Sponsored Programs, Organized Research Centers, Office of the Provost, ACET

Goal 5. Continually improve and enhance the institution's business information systems.

Context: Over the past two years pursuit of this goal has lead to the following initiatives: the revision and testing of more than 2000 programs to prepare the University's centralized business systems for the Year 2000, initiation of the Pegasus Project whose goal is to replace core business systems in the areas of finance, HR/payroll and student services, a change in the basic toolkit used by Computing Services' application programmers, a change to the platform architecture use in system development (from mainframe to server), implementation through the web of self-service for parking permits, class lists, course schedules, and other initiatives.

Currently, the major business systems of the University supported by Computing Services include Accounting, Admissions, Card Access, Classroom Scheduling, Degree Audit, Graduate Financial Aid, ID Cards, Institutional Research, Library, Mailing, Physical Facilities, Student Accounts, Student Registration & Records, Computing Services Accounting, Undergraduate Financial Aid and ULED.⁴ In addition, the HRMS (personnel), Payroll, Purchasing, Inventory, Accounts Payable and Financial 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. It is anticipated that the University's core legacy systems will be replaced over the next few years by Oracle applications via the Pegasus Project, or by new applications developed in-house.

Now that our systems have been prepared for Y2K, our applications development toolset has changed to make use of open relational databases and web enablers, and our legacy systems have been targeted for replacement, we should intensify our efforts to bring our remaining systems in line with web and network technology. 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 adopt and adhere to the principle that our business systems should enable and encourage "self-service", and should enhance the ability of our students, faculty and staff to directly access the information which affects their lives.

Projects which support this goal are listed below.

• Complete any necessary changes to mitigate the impact of the Year 2000 on the University's information systems.
• Complete the Pegasus project, implementing a new set of core systems in Finance, HR and student applications.
• Enable e-commerce on campus, by developing web-front ends for remaining CICS-based transaction systems that have a solid self-service component (like BUSI and the Library's Notis system), and by developing a standard approach to secure web transactions.
• Assist the Library in implementing the new ex-Libris (SUNY Connect) package.
• 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.
• Aggressively move to use the Web as a primary internal (Intranet) transaction tool, and design administrative access methods to feed the University's comprehensive portal.
• Utilize our new systems development toolset to develop a rapid and effective systems development capability.
• Assess the University's current and future data needs, and develop an institutional data repository of data definitions, business rules and critical information.
• Develop a data warehouse plan to create a comprehensive University information reporting capability
• Develop standard interfaces to allow decentralized, department-based systems to feed data to the institutional database.
• Develop policies which define what data will be made available, and how.
• Develop standard, secure, Web-based access to the institutional database.

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.

Management of wholesale change of business practices on campus.

 

Primary Partners in this Project:

Pegasus Project and Teams, Vendors, Campus customers of administrative systems, ECPC Committee.

Goal 6: Assist the University in reengineering operational functions.

Context: Over the past two years, pursuit of this goal has lead to the following initiatives: the sponsorship (with the office of Budget & Institutional Research) of a 3-day, campus-wide seminar on business process reengineering (BPR) attended by 150 staff, participation in the Pegasus planning and implementation effort, elimination of computer account limits for students, faculty and staff, the redefinition and refinement of our target campus classroom design, the implementation of measurements for certain key internal service performance indicators, the implementation of a tape robot to automate the backup of network and Unix productionservers, and other initiatives.

As a matter of course, departmental and Computing Services staff members embark on a project of reengineering whenever a computing 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.

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 (within the confines of the "Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act") whenever it is necessary for them to do their jobs or to have access to personal information that affects their lives.

As economic and competitive pressures grow upon the University, the University should 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 important 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 creating standardized links to institutional data so departments can develop their own systems.

If departments are able to develop their own systems using valid institutional data, if major systems are developed after rigorous review and rationalization of the processes involved, and if CS personnel are trained to see and take advantage of opportunities for business reengineering, 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

• Develop a set of templates to assist departments, students, faculty and staff in establishing home pages, and support an aggressive, campus web -- information presence for University departments.
• Work with the system priorities committees to establish a basis for more effective process review when system requests are received.
• As the University's data warehouse takes form, create standard links to institutional data for departments to use in improving their internal systems.
• Train Systems Analysts in reengineering techniques to make them better able to lead departments through redesign of office procedures via use of information technologies.
• Emphasize self-service and web-based access to data.
• Look for opportunities to automate operations in Computing Services and Educational Communication.
• Create a separate cost center for application development to outside customers.
• Apply the principles of automation to software development, systems support and network operations as it becomes feasible to do so.

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 on-going process will be established to guarantee the reengineering of existing processes?

 

Primary Partners in this Project:

(Pegasus) Steering Committee, Campus Center for Quality.

 

VII. 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.

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¹ "The Knowledge Navigator" by Apple Computer, Inc., Transforming Higher Education by Dolence and Norris, books by Greg Bear and others have contributed to this vision of the future.
² Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1962)
³ Throughout the rest of this document, the term "PC" is generally used to indicate a personal machine whether a MS-Windows platform, Macintosh, Unix workstation, or hand-held computer.
⁴ Classroom Scheduling, Degree Audit, Library, Card Access, ID Cards, Undergraduate Financial Aid are purchased systems; the others have been developed in-house.