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HelpUCSF Campus Report January-February 2006
UC Information Technology Leadership Council
January 31-February 1, 2006
Administrative Systems Advisory Committee (ASAC) Five-Year Plan
As reported in September, the ASAC Strategic Plan for FY 2006-2010 was approved as presented to the Executive Budget Committee last spring. Since then, work has been underway on two projects - Procure to Pay (P2P) and Leave Accrual/Time and Attendance.
- For P2P, UCSF completed a comprehensive RFP process to identify an eprocurement solution that would best meet the needs of the campus. PeopleSoft with Perfect Commerce as the Supplier Network were selected. The team is currently beginning conceptual design activities. We hope to go live with our Phase I solution in May 2007.
- For Leave Accrual/Time and Attendance, the UCSF campus is completing a comprehensive requirements assessment for time collection systems to facilitate payroll processing and financial leave accrual accounting. Implementation recommendations will be presented to the Executive Budget Committee in the Spring.
In addition, testing, end user training and cutover activities are underway as the campus finalizes its preparations for the major go-live of the Research Administration System (RAS), the final project funded under the ASAC 2002 plan. RAS includes five PeopleSoft modules that will facilitate the administration of the sizable extramural fund portfolio of the campus. The go-live was moved from January 2006 to April 2006.
Information Technology Strategic Plan
In response to Senior Vice Chancellor Barclay's request to update UCSF's IT Strategic Plan in light of the changes that have taken place across UCSF since the 2000 IT Plan, UCSF's "CIO Group" has begun that work. This group is comprised of the clinical, academic, and administrative IT leadership at UCSF, and they are jointly developing an overall revised IT Strategic plan with a target of completing this work before the end of the current fiscal year.
NGMAN: Next Generation Metropolitan Area Network
The collaborative effort continues to select the best option in terms of vendor equipment and fiber solutions. The procurement of the layer 2 and 3 network equipment is pending the outcome of this effort. We are also determining the state of our building distribution facilities (BDFs) for the implementation of the NGMAN. An installation team will be formed to explore this. Migration to the new network is expected to begin in 2006.
Technical Support Partnership (TSP)
UCSF is developing a campus-wide Technology Support Partnership (TSP) to ensure the effectiveness of computer support services at UCSF, delivered to end-users through a distributed process that involves both central and departmental efforts.
The TSP has four main components:
- Support Role Clarity
- Training
- Communication
- Technical Infrastructure
Support Role Clarity
In UCSF's distributed support environment, there exists a division of technical support responsibility between central and departmental technical staff.
Central IT organizations (Campus, Medical Center, School of Medicine, School of Nursing, for example) support enterprise or "organization-wide" technology (systems, applications, networks). These organizations have their own support operations and customer service/help desks.
Individual departments support their own customers' desktops (word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and other desktop software including email clients, and browsers) and departmentally developed or implemented applications and networks (departmental databases and LANs, for example). At UCSF, departmental technical support staff are know as "Computer Support Coordinators" (CSCs). Each department (depending on size and other factors) may have one or more CSCs.
While this structure provides the flexibility and technological range of solutions required by a diverse academic environment, it presents some not-insignificant technical support challenges.
Where does "central support" end and "departmental support" begin? If a customer presents a problem with a centrally supported application, what is the problem resolution path for determining if the problem results from an issue on the desktop or LAN (departmentally supported) or with the network or application itself (centrally supported)?
To address this issue, one aspect of the TSP seeks to better clarify departmental CSC roles and responsibilities as well as the roles and responsibilities of the central IT organizations.
UCSF's IT Governance Structure is currently reviewing proposed CSC Roles and Responsibilities (see: http://its.ucsf.edu/information/support/csc_roles.jsp ). Establishing clarity of support responsibilities will provide a part of the structure required to deliver more successful technical support to all members of the campus community.
Training
UCSF is developing an "Excellence in Computer Support Curriculum" to help ensure that departmental CSCs and central support staff are trained in the areas required for success in their roles, including an understanding of UCSF complex and distributed support model.
The "Excellence in Computing Support Curriculum" includes the following classes:
- Distributed Computing Support
- IT Governance at UCSF
- IT Policies and Regulations
- Customer Service for IT Professionals
- Installing and Configuring Workstation and Server Security Tools
For more information see: http://its.ucsf.edu/information/support/curriculum/index.jsp
Communication
With hundreds of departments and a campus community of 30,000 customers, communicating with customers and support partners (even knowing who the support partner in a particular department is) can be challenging.
Information Technology Services has developed a database that - at the department level - tracks the technical support contact(s) (CSCs and other technical support staff) for each department. For each department, the database contains the names and contact information of technical support staff who may fill a variety of roles. If there is a technical "emergency" (a fast-spreading computer virus, for example), who should be contacted? Who is the departmental contact if there is a network problem? Who is the contact for a telecom issue?
Although not fully operational (data on all roles has not been collected and loaded into the file), the database is integrated with our call tracking system and is available to central support staff when customers call to report problems or request service. This information supports better collaboration between central and departmental support staff and can speed resolution to a customers problem or service request.
Technical Infrastructure
UCSF's central IT organizations implemented (in the late 1990's) a comprehensive problem and service request tracking system (Remedy). Central IT organizations financed the purchase of the servers and server software.
Departments with their own service desks who wish to use the application for their support activities may do so for the cost of their own licenses (and the yearly maintenance of their licenses). ITS provides free consulting and implementation support for those interested in joining the Remedy "Partnership".
While no department is required to use the tracking system, currently the "partnership" using this application holds nearly 600 licenses and in 2005 created and "worked" over 140,000 support cases across UCSF through this shared application. In addition to the collaboration this approach fosters, the shared use of this tracking system provides a wealth of data on support activities across the organization.