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Preface

Envision yourself at Binghamton University in the year 2011.

Your options for how you work, study and play will seem unlimited by the standards of a few short years ago.  Where once you did certain things at work and others at home and still others in-between, ubiquitous access to information technology and instantaneous delivery systems make location irrelevant to the information-related tasks you want to do.   Wherever you work or play, from your breakfast table or car or office, it can be assisted through a digital, personal, wearable and all-but-invisible Assistant, which is your electronic link with your department, friends, campus and world.  The Assistant has consolidated much of what in 2006 was your cell phone, mobile computer, radio, TV, camera, camcorder and DVD.  Blended into your attire and into sensory inputs like glasses and ear buds, the Assistant provides you with a comprehensive, standardized, virtual-reality-capable, input and output "portal" to cyberspace.

As a teacher, student, researcher or staff member, you find your Assistant to be an invaluable extension of your personal and work environment.  Operating across high-speed, wireless networks, responding to your voice commands, knowing who and where you are, what you’re likely to want in a given situation, and always “on”, your Assistant  shows you the results of work you gave it to do the night before, plays your incoming mail, voice and video messages, maintains instant communications with those whom you identify, arrays and organizes before you the world of entertainment and the resources you need for work and play, schedules the activities of your home appliances, and virtually “scurries off” in cyberspace to carry out your new commands.

In all your roles, you find that the physical boundaries that once constrained your schedule and activities have been greatly reduced. Tasks that used to require your presence, like shopping, banking, or meeting with a colleague are now accomplished from anywhere. You still have to go out to get a haircut or play (non-virtual) softball, 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 Assistant travels 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 “grid” 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; providing massive, generalized computing power to the campus community and the world.

I. Introduction

This draft plan is intended to update and replace the University's third Long Range Information Technology Plan, adopted in the spring of 2003. Earlier Plans articulated a set of technology goals for the campus that have largely been accomplished via the implementation of a high-speed campus network and connection to Internet2, the establishment of a more decentralized and responsive technical support environment for campus users, the large-scale replacement and upgrade of our business systems, the wholesale upgrade of classroom, lab and server equipment and software, the creation of new standards for general and multimedia classrooms, the general adoption of course management software, the completion of a campus-wide, wireless overlay of the network, and the successful operation of all of the above.

Each previous Plan has set aggressive, achievable goals designed to provide the University’s faculty, students and staff with the best technology support in higher education, given the resource level available.  This Plan continues with that same goal.

II. Executive Summary

[To be completed when the plan has been finalized.]

III. The Mission of Information Technology Services (ITS)

The central IT organization at Binghamton University is made up of three organizational components:   Computing Services, the Educational Communications Center, and Telecommunications.

• Computing Services manages infrastructure including the data center with approximately 100 different servers, the campus network with some 15,000 hardwired ports and an extensive wireless overlay, facilities like the Information Commons and public computing labs (pods), the Helpdesk, Technology Training Center, and the New Media Center, services like desktop support, the Blackboard course management system (CMS),  consulting on research, statistics and computing problems, web design, documentation, and administrative systems support, including the design, development and management of business and academic software.  
• The Educational Communications Center (EdComm) manages the building, renovation and support of the educational technology and supporting environment in the campus’ 110 general classrooms, as well as audio-visual services, graphic design support and support for special campus events. 
• Telecommunications is responsible for the campus voice network providing thousands of campus phones, as well as video conferencing services, security camera management, cable and electrical installation and management for the campus’ data, voice and security networks, and billing for technology services provided to outside users. 

In March, 2006, Telecommunications was merged with Computing Services and the EdComm Center, and the new, combined organization was named Information Technology Services (ITS).  The multiple components and interaction of information technology in a rapidly-changing world are in constant flux and require a constant review and change of the technologies employed, the organizational responsibilities assigned, and the support roles of the organizations involved. 

The central information technology organization in higher education operates under two apparently contradictory directives, both of which should support the University's goals.  First, resources, systems and services provided by ITS must be dependable and consistent from day-to-day, to ensure the uninterrupted work of those who depend upon them.  People plan their activities based upon the technology environment they have successfully used in the past, and that environment has to be dependable so people can accomplish their work. So the first directive is to maintain dependable and consistent services for those depending upon them.  Second, ITS must work with its customers, within the framework of the University’s goals, to continually improve the utility and benefit of systems and services, and to identify new and more effective uses of information and communications technology.  This directive mandates constant change.  Juggling these two directives is a challenge for ITS, requiring ITS to change services only during those parts of the year when the services are least used, and to effectively communicate changes to users before they encounter them.

The mission of Information Technology Services is to provide the best computing, networking, telecommunications and classroom environment in higher education for the resource level available, by providing 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 should be carried out while meeting the highest standards of customer-service organizations.

IV. Governance

Governance of the ITS functions at Binghamton is vested in two standing committees.

The Faculty Senate and Administration have jointly established the Academic Computing and Educational Technology (ACET) committee to provide guidance for academic computing and educational technology initiatives. The ACET includes representatives of the faculty, administration, undergraduate and graduate student organizations, and of Information Technology Services (ITS). The Committee maintains loose ties with other committees advising on academic computing and classroom technology issues (Pod and Learning Environment committees), and regularly appoints subcommittees to examine IT issues of interest.  Activities over the last two years have concentrated on classroom equipment requirements, new technologies of interest to the campus, copyright policy, the new university long-range plan, the rollout of wireless, and the joint implementation (with the University Libraries) of the Information Commons.

At the same time, priorities for business and office support systems are set by the Administrative Information Systems Resources Committee (AISRC).  Major projects governed by AISRC have included the review of the software development request process, the implementation of a new student recruiting system, the development of a data repository to support business decisions, and recent decisions to upgrade DARS, implement a campus portal, and proceed with replacement of legacy student systems with the SunGard Banner Student suite.

V. Binghamton University's Goals and the Objectives of Information Technology Services

In the last decade, information technology has become a catalyst and enabler for productive change and new paradigms for doing business in a whole range of industries, including higher education.  At Binghamton University, we’ve seen the development of high speed, internal and external data communications, the incorporation of collaboration and personal productivity software into the lives of students, faculty and staff, an increasingly-pervasive use of educational technology in the classrooms, ever-increasing integration in the University’s business systems, the widespread adoption of cell phones and mobile computing devices, and the adoption of course management software to the point where most students log into the system every day.  Changes in technology have been startling, with order-of-magnitude increases in computational speeds, storage capacities, networking bandwidth and throughput, and seemingly  “intelligent” software all contributing to fundamental changes in what we expect and do. 

Information technologies obviously provide opportunities for productive change, but using technology for technology’s sake is neither practical nor productive.  Our goal is to provide and promote those technologies that directly assist the University in meeting its goals.  What should those technologies and technology initiatives be?

The purpose of the long-range information technology plan is to ensure that the initiatives of Information Technology Services are targeted to support the University’s goals.  The University’s “Strategic Plan:  Excellence in a Climate of Change”, articulates four major goals for the University.  How can technology help the University achieve its goals?

First, there is an implied University Goal “0”, which calls for the community to continue to maintain and improve current effective practices which have contributed to the University’s success and to the good reputation it has built over the years.  We should not stop doing the things that have made us successful; the new Strategic Plan’s goals are ways to enhance what we already do well.  This “Goal 0” implies that we must support and ensure the dependability of services we already provide and use that as a base on which to launch new initiatives in support of the new Plan.  This leads to ITS Objective I:  “Maintain a stable, dependable environment for those using IT services and resources already in place, and an effective training and help environment to allow them to be used effectively.”  This objective supports Goal “0” and all four of the University’s new goals.

In the new “Strategic Plan”, University Goal I is: “Invest in academic excellence, innovation, growth, and diversification.”  While the whole experience of college contributes to the education of a student, the focus of what we mean by academic excellence is teaching and learning, and the heart of teaching is the dialogue and transformation of thinking that happens between and among faculty and students.  There are many technologies that can potentially play a role in this collaboration, by assisting faculty and students to communicate more effectively, by bringing additional content closer to participants in the teaching experience, by making presentations and difficult material more interesting and more informative, and by simulating proximity when people are separated by distance.  University Goal I therefore leads to ITS Objective 2:  “Be aggressive in applying information technologies that improve and extend the utility of our classrooms and of our concept of what is an effective learning environment, support established modes of teaching, and promote reasonable innovations in teaching and learning.”

The “learning” component of academic excellence refers to research and the discovery of new knowledge.  Technology can provide many tools to assist in faculty and student research, especially by bringing resources for computation to bear on problems, by providing access to information and published databases, by providing new modes of presentation of information, and by giving access to ever-more-powerful tools for statistical analysis, data mining, etc.  The “learning component of Goal I leads to ITS Objective 3: “Support research IT infrastructure improvements for faculty and students where it can be shown that they will support multiple research initiatives across disciplines.” 

University Goal II is:  “Enhance engagement and outreach.”  This goal calls for students and the whole University community to be aware of and active in the world around them, to participate with fellow students and citizens in efforts to assist others and solve community and world problems, and ultimately to become good citizens.  It particularly applies to furthering the role of a state-supported institution in engaging and being part of the local community and contributing to the economic well-being of the area, state and country.   Technology again has a role to play.  Communications, collaboration tools and networking technology can help make the educational enterprise and the results of new learning more accessible to the community and world, improving the collaboration options of students, faculty and staff with friends, family, the community and one-another.  It follows that we should continue to build on and improve our communications and networking infrastructure and connections to the world.  This becomes ITS Objective 4:  “Maintain a scalable, modern, high-speed and secure campus and externally-connected communications infrastructure sufficient to handle the University’s growth and enhance seamless collaboration among people and machines for academic, research, university business, outreach and social purposes.”  In fact, in a networked world this is a key technology which enables the University to further all its goals.

University Goal III is:  “Create an adaptive infrastructure to support our mission.”  This goal urges us to maximize the efficiency and productivity of the University’s business and organizational components to push as much resource as possible to the teaching and learning efforts of the University.  It specifically targets creating flexible organizational structures to support new combinations of interdisciplinary collaboration.  The more efficient and flexible the University infrastructure can be, the better able we all are to support the University’s goals.   Technology can be a clear contributor in making business processes efficient and effective, and in maximizing the flexibility of our in-house communications systems to make the physical location of participants in the University’s work less important.  This goal leads to ITS Objectives 4, above, and 5:  “Strengthen the University’s business support systems, and focus especially on ways to improve services, reduce costs and adapt effectively to changing needs.”

University Goal IV is:  “Foster a campus culture of diversity, respect and success.”  The University is already arguably the best and most desirable workplace in the area, from a human perspective.  Part of that work environment is enabled by technology, but technology is not something per se that will further this goal.  However, a culture of diversity, respect and success can be an outcome in an organization where people work on relevant projects, are given the tools for success, participate in setting their goals, understand them clearly and accomplish great things.   The ITS component organizations have accomplished many positive changes for the University in the past, but better practices, more formal use of tested project management techniques, and better use of post-implementation reviews, feedback and follow-up could improve teamwork, success and respect.  These practice-related technologies lead to ITS Objective 6:  “Employ approaches and good practices within ITS that will foster more productivity in its projects, more clarity in setting its priorities, and more accountability in measuring and achieving positive outcomes to goals, as a means of supporting all the University’s goals.”

VI. Major Objectives of ITS:  How Will These Objectives be Carried Out?

The Preface of this Plan describes how technology might be used in a future that could be only a few short years away. Much of that technology can help us further our objectives.

ITS Objective 1:  “Maintain a stable, dependable environment for those using IT services and resources already in place, and an effective training and help environment to allow them to be used effectively.”  The maintenance of a stable and dependable information technology environment is the first priority of ITS.  This Objective supports all four University Goals.

At the direction of the first three long-range plans ITS initiated and completed many projects which have significantly improved and are now part of a pervasive, information technology infrastructure, essentially including all the voice, computing, and educational technology offered across the campus today.  The task of maintaining all this as stable and dependable environment is a demanding one.  Yet, the first priority of ITS is to ensure that services are dependable enough to allow campus users to work productively without unnecessary interruption.  Maintaining these now basic services and upgrading them to keep them current but off the bleeding edge will take us seamlessly to the future while providing dependability along the way.

Initiatives ITS should undertake in support of this objective are:

• Replace the ageing, public-domain email system and web email interface, or contract with an outside email hosting service, with the goal of providing better reliability, improved performance, and expanded features for our campus email system.
• Continue the practice of upgrading operating systems and vendor packages in a timely manner to maintain modern features without putting ourselves on the “bleeding edge”. 
• Upgrade equipment (pod, voice and data switches, server and mainframe, as appropriate) on a three-to-four year cycle, to ensure a modern, working level of technology for students and the campus.
• Find ways to share resources and expertise between the Campus Call Center and the Helpdesk, to allow them to lead one-another to ever-higher standards of excellence.
• Continue to promote “shared-support” positions with departments which have technical support needs but which should work closely with ITS and could benefit from ITS training.
• Continue work on the IT disaster recovery plan, and on a “continuous operations”, backup data center, to ensure the availability of critical services in difficult times.
• Revise the ITS customer survey as part of a periodic update of its questions.
• Engage an external review of ITS capabilities, organization and service delivery as a means toward improving all three.
• Encourage the review and timely upgrade or phase-out of older systems.
• Carry out other initiatives as appropriate.

IT Objective 2:  “Be aggressive in applying information technologies that improve and extend the utility of our classrooms and our concept of what is an effective learning environment, support established modes of teaching, and promote reasonable innovations in teaching and learning.”  This objective primarily supports Goal I.

The teaching and learning environment at Binghamton is rich with IT assets.  More than 400 public personal computers are available for students, spread across multiple public labs (pods) and the new Information Commons.  The public PC’s provide almost one hundred different software packages for student and faculty use.  Approximately 75% of our classrooms have full “multimedia capabilities” (with data projectors, video playback, document cameras, network connections and laptop hookups) called “Laptop Ready”, and 25% of those have the same multimedia equipment but also built-in instructor computers.  A third of those also have built-in Mac and Intel computers and are called “Multimedia Classrooms”.  The Blackboard course management system is widely used, so that more than 10,000 different students and faculty log in on the average day.  The residence halls are fully networked with a port for every pillow and have full wireless coverage.  The academic and campus buildings are fully wired, with wireless in most buildings and scheduled to be completed for the rest of the campus early in 2007.  Virtually all faculty and more than 90% of students have personal computers, and significant pilot projects and experiments are underway using content management packages, wikis and blogs.  We have recently added audio and video streaming to our collection of campus IT assets.

Of special note is the Blackboard (course management) environment, now so widely used.  Blackboard is more than a single product as we have implemented it.  We have added building blocks like Turnitin, Learning Objects and on-line SOOT surveys.  The University Libraries has adopted the Blackboard Content System to deliver electronic reserves, and Sodexho now uses the Blackboard Community Portal module to accept deposits for the campus BUC$ card.  This learning environment has grown rapidly from introduction to widespread use in just over four years.  It is our most critical software environment.

We clearly have the hardware, software and communications resources in place to support changing paradigms of scholarly work.  We need to develop the support structures to help faculty and students more fully take advantage of these resources.  Much of this technology, and the initiatives above, directly take us to the future.
Initiatives ITS should undertake in support of this objective are:

• Blackboard has become a critical core system.  It should be reviewed in a number of ways:
• The ACET should review how priorities for the system might be better articulated by the campus and incorporated into its operation.
• Open source course management systems (CMS) continue to evolve.  We should periodically review the market to see if the open source option or alternate commercial product would provide us with better options.
• We have built a redundant system which should be able to fail-over in case of problems, but this is expensive to maintain.  As dependence on the CMS grows, we need to continually assess backup plans that could increase reliability, including options for hosting with the vendor. 
• Assist in the completion of construction of the University Downtown Center, where ITS is installing the building wiring, the voice and data networks, the phones and computers, the classrooms and attendant equipment, the public labs and information commons, and is preparing the operational support for all of the above once the building is complete.
• Continue the renovation program for classrooms, under the leadership of the Learning Environment Committee (LEC).  Continue to build to the standards for classroom technology set by the LEC.
• Classrooms which have not been raised to the basic, “laptop ready” status yet have asbestos concerns that prevent the installation of wiring and projection equipment in ceilings and floors; work should continue to find ways to use wireless and non-disruptive methods to enable the renovation of these hitherto “untouchable” classrooms.
• Work to standardize on a single “clicker” (course feedback) system for our classrooms, to increase reliability and reduce costs for students now faced by multiple systems in multiple classes.
• Invest in pilot projects which promote new forms of collaborative communication in support of teaching:  wikis, blogs, personal portfolios, etc.
• Develop the capability to distribute documentation, web presentations and streamed course material to personal devices and via podcasts, to promote mobile learning.
• Work with the ACET to define potential desirable approaches to distance learning.
• Work with the ACET to assess the potential need for media production support and facilities for people preparing materials for teaching and research activities.
• Better advertise video conferencing, documentation and other services which could enhance the teaching environment.
• Carry out other initiatives as appropriate.

ITS Objective 3:  “Support research IT infrastructure improvements for faculty and students where it can be shown that it will support multiple research initiatives across disciplines.” This objective primarily supports Goals I and II.

While many research projects require resources dedicated to that project, some resources and services can be useful to many projects across multiple disciplines.  Under past long-range plans, ITS supported the acquisition of many resources intended to better support broad research efforts on campus, including connecting to Internet2, helping to establish the campus GIS center, acquiring the “StatMart” server to support common access to commercial databases, creating of a 24-hour research support facility, and providing space and environmentals in the data center for faculty research projects.  ITS is also a founding member and continuing supporter of the joint Linux Technology Center, together with the School of Engineering, School of Management, IBM and Mainline, and has been a participant in the formative meetings for the New York State Grid. 

Initiatives ITS should undertake in support of this objective are:

• Continue to work with the ACET to understand what IT environment can best support faculty research on campus, and do follow-up surveys with researchers to identify and refine opportunities for support.
• Assist in the completion of construction of each building planned for the Innovative Technologies Complex, including (as with the UDC, above) installing the building wiring, the voice and data networks, the phones and computers. 
• Work to acquire personnel resources for technical support for common tools used in research, such as statistics, Linux, data modeling, mining and simulation.
• Establish a steering committee between ITS and the Research Division to better facilitate support of campus research projects.
• Provide infrastructure support for faculty participating in the New York State Grid project.
• Continue participation in and work for the success of the Linux Technology Center.
• Continue support for the GIS Center.
• Upgrade the StatMart server, so it can serve as a more general computational resource for the BU research community.  Add modeling and simulation software in addition to the basic statistical packages that have been its core.
• Identify the IT resource needs of graduate students.
• Continue regular upgrades of equipment and software for the New Media Center.
• Carry out other initiatives as appropriate.

ITS Objective 4:  “Maintain a scalable, modern, high-speed and secure campus and externally-connected communications infrastructure sufficient to handle the University’s growth, and to enhance seamless collaboration among people and machines for academic, research, university business, outreach and social purposes.”  This objective supports Goal I, II, III and IV.

Past campus long-range technology plans have overseen the development of a high-speed, technically-advanced campus network, with wireless extensions covering most of the campus.  External links connect to the commodity internet, Internet2, and the local Time-Warner “RoadRunner” network.  Network links of fiber, wireless and laser connect the main campus with the Innovative Technologies Complex (ITC), and external connections via fiber are being implemented to connect to the University’s Downtown Center (UDC), scheduled to open in September 2007.  At the same time, the campus voice network provides phones in each residence hall room, along with free domestic long-distance service to campus phone users.  Cell phone and RoadRunner services are offered to faculty, staff and students at discounts to commercial rates.  During the past five years, Binghamton was recognized repeatedly by being listed in the top 100 campuses for both its wired and wireless networks.

The campus network, designed to enable data communications, has become a primary enabler of newly-developed forms of collaboration, social networking, and entertainment, with the development of collaborative software like blogs and wikis, and tools like MySpace and FaceBook.  These tools enable the campus community, and particularly students, to be constantly “in touch”, and maintain active “traditional” electronic communications with home and family, and develop entirely new kinds of relationships with met and unmet friends and collaborators around the world.  The network provides the connection that will make the always connected, context-and-location sensitive software of the future possible.

Initiatives ITS should undertake in support of this objective are:

• Complete the rollout of wireless to the rest of the campus.
• Continue the 3-year replacement cycle for networking equipment, to ensure that the network remains near state-of-the-art.
• Encourage the development of a high-speed networking point-of-presence (POP) in the Binghamton area to facilitate implementation of additional connections to NYSERNet, Internet2 and National Lambda Rail research & education networks as needed.
• Explore the opportunity and potential payoff for implementing voice-over-IP technologies and converging services like unified messaging.
• Formalize plans for supporting widespread use of mobile devices as the next step in the evolution of the personal computing model.
• Work to improve network security, including the current methods of screening emails for viruses, controlling spam, and detecting network intrusions.
• Implement identity management to identify people and authorize access to campus voice/data/video services and to emerging applications like the campus portal. 
• Develop a security plan for the campus network and user machines, addressing access, backup, authentication, encryption, virus protection, and intrusion detection.
• Continue to support the use of collaboration and network tools by the campus community, but actively teach and remind users of their ethical uses. 
• Extend the Campus Manager anti-virus and software certification protection to all campus network connections.
• Carry out other initiatives as appropriate.

ITS Objective 5:  Strengthen the University’s business support systems, and focus especially on ways to improve services, reduce costs and adapt effectively to changing needs.  This objective supports all the University’s goals but especially Goal III.

Under past plans, the University has replaced its human resources and finance systems with the Oracle enterprise resource planning (ERP) package, and upgraded, extended or replaced many peripheral systems, including the degree audit reporting system (DARS), room scheduling (Resource25), recruiting (Recruitment Plus), housing (Adirondack), and Reporting Database.  ITS has also negotiated site licenses to provide “free” office productivity and protection software for faculty and staff, along with training for common business software via the Technology Training Center, and provided problem support for the community via the Helpdesk.  The campus recently signed a contract with SUNY and SunGard to replace its core student services systems with SunGard’s Banner package, and to use that project as a way of removing the use of the social-security number as an identifier from our core systems.

We expect that our strategy of moving our main systems to vendor packages will contribute to efficiency and productivity by simultaneously reducing the overhead of maintenance on our staff and taking advantage of the vendors’ need to continuously improve their products.  Coupled with a strategy of aggressively working to integrate our remaining home-grown systems and smaller vendor packages with the core systems, this approach will help us prepare and be ready for the applications of the future, which assume a high-degree of integration and inter-connectedness.

Initiatives ITS should undertake in support of this objective are:

• Implement the SunGard Banner student suite to replace the current legacy systems in financial aid, course management, student accounts, records and registration, and integrate these with continuing legacy systems.
• Remove the social-security number as the primary identifier in campus systems.
• Build a network storage environment that preserves, protects and makes available to authorized users the campus data needed to make decisions.  Provide the tools that make location and analysis of appropriate data efficient.
• Expand current web-based credit card payment programs to make secure, 24-hour credit card payment options available for multiple campus systems.
• Implement a campus portal, and an integrated content management package to allow better coordination of content across campus websites.
• Use the portal and web wherever possible to allow end-user self service.
• Upgrade to the next level of DARS.
• Upgrade the T2 parking system.
• Implement a common imaging system, to assist offices with storage of document images in a standardized and consistent way.
• Experiment with LINUX on the mainframe and VMWare on Intel servers as potentially efficient means of reducing the need for multiple servers for multiple applications.
• Work with the Enterprise Data Committee to ensure that adequate policies, procedures and training are put in place to protect the University’s sensitive information, and integrate application security and network security efforts.
• Implement Banner’s Operational Data Store, and assess whether to adapt it to the current Reporting Database, or extend it to SunGard’s Data Warehouse.
• Fully automate the AISRC committee’s new software request process.
• Carry out other initiatives as appropriate.

ITS Objective 6:  “Employ approaches and good practices within ITS that will foster more productivity in its projects, more clarity in setting its priorities, and more accountability in measuring and achieving positive outcomes to goals”, as a means of supporting all the University’s goals.

In spite of the signal successes of ITS’ planning and implementation efforts over the past years, the selection, prioritization, and management of appropriate projects within CSET has remained relatively informal.  ITS’ management and advisory committees believe that more formality could improve productivity, involve more of the community in decisions concerning support, and ensure more efficient execution of projects.  Over the past two years, ITS has taken steps to implement more formal project management practices, and the AISRC committee has developed a new process for submission of software development requests.  The goal is that ITS projects will be initiated in response to validated University priorities and that they be “projects that will make a difference”.   Better practices, better clarity of purpose, and better outcomes should also pay off with better sense of accomplishment and better job satisfaction for staff members.

To that end, ITS projects should adhere to the following principles and practices listed below.

• General principles:
• Stay current while maintaining reliability and efficiency:  In order to get good value for resources spent, vendor-supplied operating systems and applications software should be upgraded regularly (provided they have established a record of reliability) to stay reasonably current with technology.
• Promote self-service:  In order to improve operational efficiencies and data accuracy, self-service options should be used wherever practical.
• Improve integration:  Whenever changes are made, CSET should enhance inter-operability and integration among business systems.
• Ensure the user’s voice:  Users of IT should find it easy to provide input about and evaluate the services which serve them.
• Promote professional development:  as an educational institution, we should invest in training our staff well, and leverage our skills to provide excellent training for any new service and for other skills our workforce will need.
• Seek sources of external funding and external partnerships:  IT should seek to supplement state funding for as many of its projects as is practical.
• When a major project is proposed, it should follow the process approved by the AISRC.  The software development request form can be found at http://buweb.binghamton.edu/fssii/projectRequest/project.asp.
• ITS has established a process for the use of standard project management techniques, found in the “Project Management Cookbook” at http://bingweb.binghamton.edu/~prussell/Cookbook.doc.  The goal of these procedures is to ensure that projects, once approved, should:
• Follow a consistent method of project management,
• Periodically and publicly report progress (via the project manager), and
• Be subject to post-implementation reviews upon completion.
• Develop more effective ways of communicating between ITS and the campus community, by removing communications silos within ITS, streamlining access to web content, and utilizing new content pushing tools, and integrating the still-independent websites of the component organizations of ITS.
• Carry out other initiatives as appropriate.

 VII. Conclusion

This plan is intended to articulate ITS’ plan for supplying IT tools to carry out the University’s goals. Completing the objectives of the Plan should also position the University well to take advantage of powerful technologies likely to become commonplace over the next few years.   Readers are invited to comment on this plan by sending comments to ACET members at large, or to Mark Reed (mreed@binghamton.edu) or Jim Wolf (jwolf@binghamton.edu).