CIT's FY 96 Annual Report to the UVM Community

This is the first year that this document will be made available via web access as well as the more traditional printed medium. It can be accessed from the CIT home pages using your favorite network browser.

The report first talks about accomplishments in meeting the nine goals set for the fiscal year 96 period. These goals were set this time last year when the previous year annual report was presented. The FY 96 goals are as follows:

1. To continue to implement the recommendations as contained in the Strategic Plan for IT at UVM, particularly in academic computing, outreach activities, and secured access to the institution's databases and systems.

2. To continue collaborative partnerships with Colleges and Schools, and with administrative departments, in meeting their computing needs in a time of diminishing resources.

3. To continue the transition to distributed computing and to assist the UVM community in realizing the benefits of information technology through IT-based re-engineering.

4. To participate actively in the campus initiatives in distance education

5. To challenge the staff at CIT to develop professionally and academically by participation in and sponsorship of outreach activities like conferences, publications, symposia and the like.

6. To operate a cost effective Microcomputer Services depot for the UVM community

7. To continue to operate a reliable, cost effective telephone company for the UVM community and its affiliates.

8. To empower students, faculty and staff by increasing the availability of direct access to electronic information

9. To work with the custodians of the major administrative systems to set up criteria for AIS staff assignments to implement and maintain their systems in good working order.

The report then mentions Concerns for FY 97, followed by FY 97 Goals Finally, in the addenda section are listed Web sites of related documents and/or kudos that speak to our accomplishments.

FY 96 GOALS

Meeting the growing demand for open systems hosts ‹ Over the past year both the number and usage level of accounts on UVM's primary open systems host (Moose) have experienced unprecedented growth. In order to meet this demand additional hardware and software have been swiftly implemented. See attached paper "Keeping up with the Growth of Moose Computing Demand At UVM" for more detail.

Open access to administrative information systems ‹ More and more online secured network access to UVM's corporate databases is being provided to students, faculty and staff. For example, secured access to course schedule information, grades, up-to-the-minute enrollment information, budget reports, labor distribution reports (awaiting approval for release), and employee payroll/benefits personal data is currently available through the campus network. All of this online data is properly secured and easily accessed using a common Web browser such as Netscape. Further exploitation of this environment is planned.

More efficient handling of electronic mail ‹ The rapid growth in popularity of email and listservers has placed increasing demands on limited system resources, and clients had begun to experience unacceptable delays in email delivery. In the case of Moose and Zoo systems substantial effort and investments hardware and software were necessary to meet this demand. In the case of the IBM ES9000 (UVMVM), approximately 40% of its resources were being consumed to service email and email related activities. Combined with increasing demands on the Notis system, the result was unacceptable deterioration of system response time for UVM Library patrons. Since a processor upgrade to this system would be costly, consideration was given to removing applications that did not have a unique requirement for the IBM host. Several large listserver lists, serving Library and Risk Management needs, were considered for removal but, largely because of objections from the list owners and subscribers, were spared. Subsequently a new software product (LSMTP) running on an inexpensive Pentium (SMTPGATE) made it possible to delegate the email delivery to other hosts. This preserved the value and character of existing listservers while substantially reducing the burden on the UVMVM host. This, along with diligent Notis tuning efforts, restored the system responsiveness for the Library staff and patrons. Because the SMTPGATE system has additional capacity, we expect to assign the delivery of Zoo email to it as well.

CREN will be discontinuing BITNET support effective December 31, 1996. Because CIT has been planning for this for some time, the loss of BITNET is not expected to have much impact at UVM. It will require that the listserver running on UVMVM will have to be converted to use the Internet exclusively.

CIT General Purpose Microcomputer Facilities ‹ Computer hardware and software have been upgraded to meet changing academic needs. Specifically, the oldest computers in the public labs were replaced and software versions upgraded. In addition carpets and furniture were renewed in the Waterman labs making for a more pleasant and efficient workspace for UVM students and faculty. New projection equipment in the Waterman teaching labs now makes it possible for faculty and students to project computer screens that were previously illegible or otherwise problematic. New printers, X-terminals and optical scanning equipment have also been added.

The Bailey-Howe lab facility was expended to add more stations in a joint cooperative effort with the Library & Medial Services staff.

The Academic Resources Facility (ARF) continues to receive modest enhancements. Additions include two systems to provide CDROM recording facilities, an AV-capable system for realtime input-output video production; two X-terminals and a pressure sensitive tablet for graphical work to alleviate stress-related ADA problems caused by mouse and/or keyboards.

A site license for ESRI Arc/Info was funded by CIT, SNR and A&S, alleviating historical tensions over GIS software funding while making it possible to deploy Arc/Info and other related software on the new Zoo cluster ‹ or on any computer/workstation on campus. In addition students and faculty across campus can now take advantage of a wealth of GIS software previously unavailable at UVM.


VSE TCP/IP support‹ As part of our goal to exploit the benefits of open systems for those applications (Notis, FRS, HRS and Telecom billing) that remain on the proprietary IBM ES9000 mainframe, TCP/IP was implemented in the VSE environment. This facility has allowed much more efficient exchange of information between the IBM mainframe and other open systems environments.

2. To continue collaborative partnerships with Colleges and Schools, and with administrative departments, in meeting their computing needs in a time of diminishing resources.

As in past years we upgraded some of the systems in our labs, and several useful networked systems were distributed to faculty, for the creation of the Redstone campus microcomputer lab, CESS, Living Learning programs and other parts of the campu s. Of principal note is the jointly-financed upgrade of the Morrill lab, with replaced equipment being distributed by the College to its faculty. Upgrades to the SNR MAC lab were also put in place to facilitate ARC/INFO access from that lab. With the demise of CALS/SNR file server known as CLOVER, Moose took on another 350+ accounts for email and off campus access. The news server located and managed by EMBA-CF was upgraded, as a jointly financed project, to handle the increased demand for news reading by the campus. Offers to work with the School of Business in sharing the cost of new lab facilities for the Kalkin Building were politely declined. CIT staff assisted EMBA in defining and securing their microcomputer requirements for students.

From time to time Client Services technical staff are called upon to diagnose problems and resurrect file servers that have failed across campus. There are numerous reports of this kind of effort on the part of CIT, but one stands out in Advancement when their LAN manager was on vacation and their file server had to be revived.

For the second year in a row Residential Life and CIT teamed up to conduct network card and software installations for students in the residence halls. Several clinics involving as many in CIT as possible were scheduled and proved most useful for getting students on the network. Residential Life is now in the midst of hiring their own network installation coordinator, a position crafted along the lines of Client Services recommendations. We are both looking forward to helping the students get online again this coming fall.

We collaborated with client areas to make the Waterman lab facilities available for Church Street Center classes in computing and graphic arts, for College of Education classes disenfranchised with the conversion of their lab space to offices, and for Arts and Sciences "Computer Animation: Transforming Culture". In addition, staff helped faculty introduce web publishing, email and file transfer protocol (FTP) to Geography 001 and to English I. Both teaching labs continue to be in heavy demand for classes and new lab scheduling procedures were developed with the help of faculty. At one point in the spring semester it was necessary to dedicate the open lab area on a one-time, one-day exception basis to a faculty and her class when that class was oversubscribed.

CIT and the Bailey-Howe Library will be receiving a grant from Electronic Book Technologies (EBT) to acquire their suite of SGML tools. An Electronic Finding Aids project based on the Berkeley Finding Aids DTD, and a project to develop models and methodologies for designing digitized primary resource collections, are planned. Initial training will begin this fall, with the first examples of the initial projects expected early in 1997.

AIS staff have been successfully managing technical staff who are client-funded. Such management is a cooperative one whereby AIS does the technical management and the client does the work assignments of such staff. Examples to date are in SIS, Personnel and in Sponsored programs. This has the capacity to become the standard of getting work done in future, given dwindling resources and increasing expectations of realizing the benefits of information technology.

3. To continue the transition to distributed computing and to assist the UVM community in realizing the benefits of information technology through IT-based re-engineering.

NOTE This section includes #8 below, which reads as

8. To empower students, faculty and staff by increasing the availability of direct access to electronic information

In an effort to make more productive use of information technology and yet be sensitive to the needs of CIT staff and our clients, the Administrative Information Systems group has been experimenting with full-fledged telecommuting for one staff m ember with excellent results reported by the clients' area. An on-call system for critical support of systems which rotates among the AIS staff helps assure that help is available when needed. All CIT staff have had access to flexible work schedules for several years which recognize the needs of client systems, alternative work schedules for CIT staff and reduced staffing in the client areas and CIT. This approach has allowed for additional hours of coverage with fewer staff.

In order to help all members of the UVM community get connected to the network and also have desktop support available to them, staff in Client Services and the Depot have identified hardware and software standards for meeting common as well as advan ced needs. These standards are published on the CIT's Web pages.

By restructuring the way Client Services and Network Services work together and by preconfiguring systems purchased through the Depot, CIT has been able to eliminate the backlog of network installations for faculty and staff. Residential Life folks are adopting similar ways of doing business for their resident student clientele.

CIT staff have demonstrated the benefits of implementing information technology across UVM's operations, for example,

€ secured web access to SIS information to eliminate waiting lines and administrative registration;

€ general web access to FRS budget reports to eliminate paper (this facility was demonstrated at the Yankee IT Directors' meeting of the New England Land Grants at UVM, leading to the sharing of our techniques);

€ secured web access to personal data, labor distribution and personnel actions;

€ establishment of departmental moose accounts e.g. payroll@uvm.edu and cit@uvm.edu to improve the efficiency and responsiveness of communications during the day and to facilitate communication outside the regular 8 to 5 schedule;

€ web based Travel Request Form prototype was prepared by a CIT student consultant;

€ efforts to further automate operational processes have continued, e.g. ORACLE script was implemented to automatically detect space leaks that prevent Banner from coming up, and disk storage staging of Notis backups allow them to run without operator involvement;

€ spread sheet based travel expense form is used for internal departmental use.

In addition CIT has played a key role in the Web pages development for SGA, UVM Rescue, CASWELL Credit Union, and EPSCoR Environmental Resources Database. CIT has also linked in the current short course schedule and registration to the CIT home page and made its lab schedules and almost all its publications available on the Web.

Of particular note is the use of the CIT developed-web applications for the submission of time sheets data for paying its student consultants. This is being implemented campuswide to eliminate paper time sheets, and to support the implementation of biweekly payroll processing. The concept and some code have been used by the Business School in developing its own system.

We provided technical guidance, training development and/or planning support to the Center for Health and Well Being, CATCARD project, work sessions for lab consultants in Living/Learning Lab, Residential Life, Redstone Lab consultants, FOCUS system for OSP/GCA and FOCUS consultation to other areas using this product, seminar for Controller's area in FRS budget reporting using the web, general assessment of needs for OSP and the Division of Student Affairs.

The UVM Web pages have attracted considerable positive attention, including the following review from the respected Internet firm specializing in Web searches:

"A cleanly designed and straight to the point site. General info, campus phone numbers, special projects, and a decent selection of jumping off points for the web. And Charlotte, the Vermont Whale, is one terrific online museum exhibit."

The Helpline continues to provide telephone resolution services to the campus community and beyond. In the period June 1995 to May 1996 recorded requests for help exceeded 8,700. The Helpline is staffed with student consultants who have been trained and nurtured through CIT Client Services training programs

4. To participate actively in the campus initiatives in distance education

Distance Education

Telecommunications has provided Continuing Education with high speed T-1 video links to the Rowell Studio, and fiber links to the new teleclassroom in Kalkin 003. ISDN links to 460 S. Prospect and to the Rowell TV studio were also installed. Lower per minute costs for ISDN calls made using NYNEX lines for VT toll calls were negotiated at the same time and added to UVM's customized netsaver plan. We provided 800 service to CE's lab and to Fletcher Allen Health Care contiguous campuses at rates that average less than 10 cents/minute. This is 8 cents less than what Fletcher Allen Health Care was previously paying for the same service, and represents yet another example of a win-win from sharing.

Technical evaluation and pricing information for Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) services were provided to Continuing Education as they explore this for their computer/teleclassroom in the Old Mill complex and elsewhere.

Cable TV

Telecommunications reviewed Cable TV installations at over 25 institutions, including Boston College, Brigham Young University, Mississippi State, UCLA, University of Minnesota, University of Illinois, Ball State, University of Michigan and Duke. Only Duke makes any money according to those we spoke to, and that is because they serve the surrounding area with DevilVision services and have more than 20,000 subscribers.

On behalf of Residential Life telecommunications staff reviewed interdiction equipment which provides pay-per-view and channel grouping and filtering. Our recommendation, which was eventually confirmed by two private consultants retained by ResLife , is being used as a model when constructing fit-up requirements for ResLife's new communication rooms. We have participated in weekly meetings with ResLife and A&E services to plan the student recreational TV project. Approximately half of the rooms will be equipped with cable TV, two category 5 data cables and category 5 phone cable. We have specified and ordered wiring and faceplates to accommodate this project and are awaiting release of construction specifications by A&E Services. Telecom will be providing quality control for the contracted work and will be issuing materials to the contractors. We will also be responsible for installing all CATV ends and data terminations. Due to construction requirements we have to change out hu ndreds of phone lines to the CAT 5 wiring--we'll have a tight timeline to get all these phones working by August 29.

We looked at CATV distribution on the current coax system and verified with Campus Televideo and with Powers and Company that the use of single mode fiber is more appropriate for TV signal distribution as it makes the system far easier to maintain and tune. Single mode fiber for TV will be deployed to most every building on campus, starting with the Residence Halls, Old Mill, B/H Library for video servers, Votey, Kalkin and Rowell.

We also worked with Land Records and others to get Hyperion Cable a point of presence in Southwick Hall and in Waterman this summer to provide SONET wide area networking connections and on campus high speed 155 megabit backbone capability.

5. To challenge the staff at CIT to develop professionally and academically by participation in and sponsorship of outreach activities like conferences, publications, symposia and the like.

CIT gave technical support; participated in and/or opened UVM's lab facilities to the Agricultural Communicators in Education (ACE) and National Extension Technology Conference (NETC); Communication Technology CE Conference; VISMT; Vermont teachers as part of their two week summer course on the web and Internet; UVM's annual open house for Fresh Air children and their host families; admitted students tours; orientation for international students; open house reception for new and returning graduate students; June Orientation; the National Association of Retarded Citizens annual conference; the VT State Business & Technical Expo;Northeast Association for Institutional Research (NEAIR); Ronald McDonald House; Alumni College 1995; new Faculty orientation; "A Question of Access," a panel discussion on problems of access to knowledge and information via technology, sponsored by the UVM Humanities Program; and MathFest, sponsored by the American Mathematical Society.

Client Services was instrumental in arranging a computer donation to the UVM-Honduras Partnership for the Americas.

Our program for granting Internet accounts to non-UVM persons ended this fiscal year, mainly because commercial service providers offer more affordable, robust services and such external accounts were a drain on the UVM modem pool.

Several staff attended or participated in professional development workshops of national and international stature, for example, SIGUCCS 95, EACUBO Workshop, International Online Meeting for Strategic Communications on Multimedia Publishing and the Web, Administrative Information Systems and ORACLE technical conferences, Putting Pizzaz in Pedagogy Conference at Worcester Polytechnic, Apple Quicktime VR seminar at Regis College, Weston, Mass., NAWEB '95 ‹ Educational Opportunities on the WWW an International Conference and SIGGRAPH 1995 "Interactive Digital Solutions". It should be noted that a video produced in the ARF by one of UVM's art class was featured in the student animation screening room of SIGGRAPH 1995. An AIS staff member was invited to act in a consultative role for the installation of the Banner product at another prestigious institution. As is our wont, several staff members attended and presented at the annual Mastering the Maze day.

A few staff continue to pursue academic degrees either at UVM or through Independent Study Degree Programs at other institutions. One AIS staff member has received a UVM MBA this year. Others make frequent use of on-the-job-training videos, our own free courses and planning retreats for staff.

Our staff also scheduled, presented at and/or taught professional sessions, for example, EUDORA and WWW workshops, Noon on the Net, Continuing Education Courses, Work Session for Department Chairs, Online Tools for Teaching ‹ A Workshop for Educators, Staff and Faculty Development presentations, in-service training for Extension staff, Workshop for Office of Multicultural Affairs students, and Working Strategies Conference May 1995.

Staff are constantly being challenged by their clients for new and not yet tried information technology resources. This necessitates their learning ahead of the curve and sometimes along with the clients they are serving, for example Windows 95 and Windows NT. In other cases it means careful planning with known risk in moving ahead with information resources in a production operational environment, for example, upgrades to the Banner AIX, ORACLE, Touch Tone and multiprocessor environments, or implementation of Zoo and IBM's Distributed Computing Environment (DCE).

Many staff also find time to serve on a variety of committees, councils and task forces, some of which are the Student Judicial Council, advisory council to University Graphics and Printing, search committees, Skunkworks, Benchmarking and University Redesign Team and ITEC funded projects.

6. To operate a cost effective Microcomputer Services depot for the UVM community

The Depot is projected to have FY96 results of operations in the black, with the third consecutive year of increases in fund balance. The showroom area was expanded and spruced up to be more attractive. Personnel in the Depot teamed up with Client Services to ensure that workstations sold through the Depot are network-ready upon delivery to faculty and staff offices. Student equipment is also sold network ready and are distributed at strategic points around campus.

7. To continue to operate a reliable, cost effective telephone company for the UVM community and its affiliates.

The Telecommunications department continues to be a financially sound income/expense activity, providing affordable and reliable services despite the 12 year old switch, software and cable plant. It should be noted that this department also provides the management facilities of UVM's fiber optic network plant and routing services which is the basis for electronic communications for the campus community.

Discussions continue with FAHC to develop on-going associations in the delivery of telephonic services to the UHC and MCHV campuses of FAHC. In the past these associations have proven fruitful and mutually beneficial for FAHC and UVM, particularly in the areas of sharing expensive trunking facilities and working with long distance service providers. As UVM looks toward replacement of its aging switch and as FAHC looks to consolidating the benefits of merger it is extremely important to pursue these associations if they are in our mutually best interests. Such discussions will continue at the highest levels of both organizations.

Work has started to set up a campus representative telephone advisory committee with due process to develop the needs analysis of the campus community and to craft an RFP for UVM's new telephone switch. The UVM community is being asked to participate via a series of vendor presentations and a series of inclusive information and needs analysis fora across the campus. The expected time for signing a purchase agreement with the selected vendor is Summer 1997, with installation within three months afterwards.

Telecommunications rate specialists reduced the cost that FAHC and UVM's CE pay for INWATS service by 8 cents per minute by combining the INWATS traffic from both institutions.

The new telephone billing system is scheduled to be in production by September 1997 and will be first used for student billing for the fall semester. Evaluation of the business case for providing SLIP/PPP access for off campus clients to UVM's network indicates that commercial vendors are better suited in pricing and support staff to do so. Even though UVM has already demonstrated that it can be done from a technical standpoint, UVM does not have the appropriate staff resources to provide such access i n a competitive way. UVM will be preparing an RFP for release this summer to several vendors to provide this service for UVM clients on a fee-for-service basis.

UVM's fiber optic network backbone has been upgraded to handle increased traffic loads with redundancy between the major hubs. Further upgrades will continue and become necessary as newer applications and challenges come forward and are implemented by our clients. We need to keep an ever watchful eye on the health of the backbone and work with our clients to stay ahead of demand. Efforts continue to evaluate alternate suppliers for UVM's Internet link for increased bandwidth and redundancy. We need to examine the risks inherent in having one provider route almost all Internet subscriber access in the state of Vermont through its one point of presence in the Waterman basement.

Residential Life and Telecommunications are collaborating on an equity basis to install additional networking and cabling access in the Residence Halls this summer. Of critical importance is the need to have a network port per pillow in the residence hall s. Cable TV accommodations are being installed at the same time in approximately half of these rooms.

Telecom & Network Services have worked with A&E Services, CE and B/H Library
in developing a communications plan for Old Mill which will provide connectivity to WAN services at Waterman and provide for interconnection of distance learning facilities in Old Mill, Bailey/Howe Library, CE's TV Lab in Rowell and Engineering facilities in Votey.

8. To empower students, faculty and staff by increasing the availability of direct access to electronic information

Included with #3 above which reads as follows:

3. To continue the transition to distributed computing and to assist the UVM community to realize the benefits of information technology through IT-based re-engineering.

9. To work with the custodians of the major administrative systems to set up criteria for AIS staff assignments to implement and maintain their systems in good working order.

There are currently 12 FTE's in the Administrative Information Systems group, providing development, implementation and maintenance support for the five major administrative systems (Banner, FRS, HRS, NOTIS and BSR/Advance). In addition there are oth er FTE's in other areas in CIT, e.g Client Services, Operations and Systems Programming that are dedicated to the technical support services of administrative clients. Seven and one-half FTEs in the Administrative Information Systems group are dedicated to the Banner Student Information Systems project. This project will reach a mile stone at the end of Fiscal 97, at which time funding for two of these FTE's will expire. Priorities for these staff will be reexamined in the light of resource requirement in the five major systems. One FTE is dedicated to the NOTIS Library system, one-half FTE to Development's BSR/ADVANCE VAX-based system, and three FTE's to FRS and HRS work. By the end of the current FY 96, we will have contracted with SCT and erstwhile staff to assist in the migration work to bring both HRS and FRS to current releases of the software. This work is envisioned to be completed by December 31, 1996. The Library and Development clients are exploring alternatives to their current systems to take advantage of less costly, open systems with greater client controls. Decisions will not be forthcoming until next fiscal year, at the earliest.

The recently concluded University Redesign Team efforts on process re-engineering have identified many areas where information technology will benefit our clients. Implementation of such work will require additional resources in the client areas to make necessary changes and interfaces to existing Administrative Information systems.

Concerns for FY 97

NEXT PERIOD FY 97 GOALS

http://www.uvm.edu/~djw/reports/fy1996report.html
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