[ccovey01]

The new standards increasingly affect UNM beyond IT staff, and so it’s disconcerting to see that there is no commentary from the non-IT community on the discuss.unm site.

Are UNM’s non-IT communities aware of these new SLAs and standards, and the impact on their business processes – and budgets?

A couple of examples:
• The Project Management Scope invokes recruitment, advising, building services amongst others. I suspect that any IT staff attempting to implement project management principles with staff and faculty (who weren’t aware of these standards) will have limited buy-in from them.
Yet there is also the compliance aspect to this standard. It seems like a good faith effort to follow the standard, without wider communication to and acceptance by faculty and staff, is doomed to be dismissed by those customers; and yet IT staff could be found out of compliance as a result.

• End User Device Standard – Putting aside for now that a number of departments likely have workgroups or directory services that fully meet their needs, what of the many devices that are purchased out of research, grant, and discretionary budgets where the buyer has no intention of attaching their device to an Active Directory? Or the device’s operating system won’t attach?

The Equipment Set up and Usage sections, as they are currently written, are far-reaching and it seems like a number of UNM constituencies should be made aware of their impact, and be encouraged to comment.

And depending on how aggressively the Compliance sections are enforced, where the enforcement could become a disciplinary action, should these standards go out in the official HR and other communications?

[jcolangelo]

I would like to respond specifically to your first example:

Related to the Project Management Standard, it is true that any office that is engaged in an IT project alongside an IT unit (and Project Manager) would be impacted, and hopefully benefit from, the standard.
When IT staff engages with a customer (whether it be Staff, Faculty, Capital Projects, or any other business unit) one of the first items discussed is project methodology, approach, and standards. IT engages customer involvement by demonstrating the value of applying the PM standards. It has been our experience that once the customer understands the value proposition that the PM standard provides to the project, they tend to cooperate and collaborate.
There is agreement that more work will occur with campus communication so that we can implement effective collaboration and ensure fidelity to the standard. The Project Management standard, if followed, helps ensure quality is built in to every work product.

[tjm]

In regard to compliance, the compliance process is under development.  In my opinion, some of the standards would benefit more from a maturity level assessment of compliance than from a true/false compliance.  Additionally, as security standards are being discussed and developed, people using devices to access protected data will be required to follow appropriate standards.  

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