Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
cdeanParticipant
Elisha, Greg and Duane,
Thanks for your feedback to my posts. I haven’t taken the time to reply because of more pressing tasks but do appreciate the thoughtfulness of your replies.
I think anyone who knows me is well aware that like many of you, I’m strongly committed to UNM but as I originally pointed out, my first loyalty is to the law school. My struggle is to see how changing the reporting structure would benefit law. Obviously, I am not opposed to changes that would facilitate more resources in core services already provide by Central IT. I’d be happy to provide input on which core services I believe need additional funding and personnel, and I speak for all the law IT staff when I say that we are willing to participate in focus groups as appropriate. Those of you who have been around a few years know that Law has always been an active (and often outspoken) member of the UNM IT community. I’m open-minded and although my posts might come off as being from Negative Nelly, I absolutely see the benefit of a collaborative community who work together for the betterment of UNM IT – the “common purpose” that Elisha addressed. I do support any initiative that will address issues with how core services are funded and provided. Where we differ is seeing how this approach fits into our environment which is simple but highly integrated – and working very well. At last week’s IT UNM meeting, Brian stated “There will be exceptions, different reporting structures, everything is open to be discussed”. That gives me hope that there are opportunities for us to “sit at the table” and be a full participant in a way that benefits both law and the overall UNM IT community. Both Jerry and I have been here for many years and as the former Field Agents Manager, Jerry has a unique perspective and experiences that would greatly benefit this initiative. Having the IT Officers meet regularly as a group as well as with the entire UNN community (or at least a significant subset thereof) is very close to the original intent of IT Agents, if I’m not mistaken.
Brian also talked about switching from an authority model to an accountability model, where ITOs are accountable to the business units they support. I’m a little surprised that IT staff don’t already feel that they are accountable to their units. Personally, while I report directly to the Dean, I feel as though I have hundreds of bosses including not only our students, faculty and staff but also our adjuncts, external community partners including members of the NM Judiciary, practicing attorneys and our alumni to name just a few. Sure, the Dean is the ultimate *authority* but OTOH, UNM has a tradition of faculty governance – a fact brought up quite often in faculty meetings. Anyway, perhaps my experience at the law school is unique but knowing many of my IT colleagues from other units, it seems highly doubtful that we are the only ones who feel responsible for providing excellence to our constituencies.
Again, just to be perfectly clear, I support more collaboration across campus and have no problem with participating in this and other efforts that will benefit the greater UNM IT community. I simply don’t see what good comes from changing the reporting structure.
Cyndi Johnson
School of LawcdeanParticipantFrom the TIG report: “It is recommended that the new IT organization have fewer layers of management to bring the senior management of IT closer to the users and the internal IT staff…The goal is to keep management layers to three or less between CIO and the staff.”
However, in many cases, the current person most likely to be tagged as the ITO reports directly to the Dean of their College. Under the new model, the ITO reports to a Director of User Experience and Engagement (DUEE) who reports to the CIO. This adds a layer of management that currently does not exist in many cases, as does the dotted line to the Provost. This does not seem to be in the best interest of the department they are serving. At the 10/11 Town Hall, Duane stated that the “primary function {of the ITO} and what they will be measured on is how they are continuing to deliver services to the areas they are representing”. I’m having a hard time understanding how a Director can conduct a valid performance review if s/he isn’t even in the same facility as the ITO. Additionally, since personnel files are subject to review when current UNM employees apply for different positions within the University, the ITO’s loyalties will lie with the person conducting the performance review. And what happens when the department’s IT goals don’t align with the DUEE or CIO? The ITO is in the position where s/he is tasked with, and reviewed on, providing services to the areas they are representing yet in the case of a conflict, the ITO can be put in a position where s/he must fight for what’s best for the department, therefore going against the DUEE and CIO. It’s a no-win situation. Policy 3215 Personnel Management Section 5 lists Insubordination (defined as defying authority) as proper/just cause for a personnel action. Some people might say that sounds extreme but as someone who is fiercely loyal to our constituencies, if I’m faced with doing what’s right for the law school but it’s in opposition to what the DUEE and/or CIO direct me to do, I’m probably going to risk my job in favor of the department I’ve worked with for so many years. Additionally, the model of pooling money and allocating it based on FTE puts the Deans in a position of having to ask for the funding to support services (new or old) that might benefit “just” the law school and therefore could conceivably be seen as a lower priority as a service that support multiple departments. Significant financial and operational staff and resources will shift away from Academic Affairs and over to Administration by moving all IT reporting to the CIO. As an alternative, consolidation of IT staff in Administrative units may be the most natural first approach. At the very least, the solid and dotted lines for the ITO reporting need to be swapped.
Cyndi Johnson
School of LawcdeanParticipantThere’s a lot going on in this SLA but at first reading, here are my comments with more to come as I have sufficient time to study it.
* 2.1 Bullet 4 – extra “t” between “of” and “ERP”
* 2.1.1 – Grammatically, I believe “both” is not the right adjective when talking about three groups of end-users (faculty, staff and students).
* 2.1.2 Bullet 3 – “current team has knowledge or is” should be “knowledge of or is”
*2.1.2 Bullet 4 – How will it be determined if a service request requires more than 80 hours?
* 6.1 Incident Report – “Time spent…”. I believe the nebulous wording of a service being “end user caused” and concerns about departments being billed for these types of incidents was discussed earlier in this exercise. I would repeat those concerns for this SLA.
cdeanParticipantThanks, Duane. Like you, I can only speak for myself about the IT Agents question. Mine centers mostly around why are we doing this? What is the definitive goal?
I have discussed my questions and concerns with Kevin and he did listen thoughtfully. I am confident that he will try to get a clearer picture from the President’s office.
CyndicdeanParticipantThanks, Duane. Two things:
1) While I appreciate your insight as to defining the exact purpose of the Standards and SLAs, you preface your definition by stating “In my opinion…”. Therein lies the problem, I believe. I know you were at the IT Agents meeting when this question was posed over and over again in various ways by multiple people. People were essentially asking the same question. Why are we doing this? I appreciate and respect your opinion but am concerned that if I posed the same question to others on the ITSAC or the President’s IT Executive Governance committee, I might hear a different end-goal. It would be very helpful to get clarity on the big picture please.
2) You state that multiple groups can provide Supplemental services. Yet the End User Device Support Standard explicitly disallows that possibility by stating that “All UNM owned devices must utility Microsoft Active Directory (AD) authentication and be joined to either HEALTH or COLLEGES UNM domains. That pretty much excludes any other group from providing that Supplemental service, doesn’t it?
Thanks…
cdeanParticipantDuane,
Yes, that’s what I mean. The 2009 AD standard states “The ADTC evaluates and makes recommendations on requests for exceptions to this standard. The Office of the CIO is the only entity that can grant exceptions to this standard and will do so only after consultation with and recommendation of the ADTC.” Of course, there is no ADTC these days but I use that only as an example.
Quite frankly. even though I chaired that work group for quite a long time and was part of generating the standard, I was never comfortable with having the Office of the CIO as the “only entity that can grant exceptions” to the standard. I would find similar language related to an appeal process troubling if the only body who could determine if a standard is being met is a non-neutral party. I would suggest a formal appeals process be implemented, similar to other appeals process on campus (see, for example, the layers of appeal defined in UAP 3220 Dispute Resolution).
Cyndi
cdeanParticipantOh, and I forgot to point out that “Supplies & Daily Operation” states that departments must provide protective cases and carrying bags. Great idea for *mobile devices* (not specifically stated) but is that really appropriate to be in a Standard???
CyndicdeanParticipantIn addition to the questions posted by others, I submit the following:
1) Scope of the Standard: “The standard addresses the following Supplemental service…”. The definition of Supplemental as per KSA is “Those aspects of information technology that are offered via a central entity on a non-exclusive basis”. However, later in the standard’s “Equipment Set up, Integration, and Security” section, bullet 5 states “All UNM owned devices must utilize Microsoft Active Directory (AD) authentication and must be joined to either HEALTH or COLLEGES UNM domains.” These statements seem conflicting to me. If a standard applies to a department offering a Supplemental service, can the standard specify that the non-exclusive central entity must use an Enterprise service? As usual, I’m confused. And why is it that only the HEALTH or COLLEGES UNM domains are specified? See my additional comments below.
2) Also in Equipment Set up Integration and Security: “Operating systems must be within manufactures {SIC} product life cycle.” What about a system that is not connected to the network at all via wired or wireless?
3) If the Standard is stating that everyone must now join the Enterprise AD, who will be responsible for the potentially extremely complex and costly (both in terms of people and downtime) process of migrating existing directory services to a different AD?
4) Can a department choose to join the HEALTH domain?
5) There are multiple items specified in the standard that do not belong, IMO. For example, under “Usage”, bullet 2 states “Publish best practices for users of the device.” Most of the section called “Support Plan” is not appropriate for a standard. There are multiple University Administrative Policies that specify departmental responsibilities for publishing policies. For example, here are snippets from UAP 2500 and UAP 2520. I’m sure there are others.
– UAP 2500 Acceptable Computer Use: “Individual departments within the University may define “conditions of use” for information resources under their control. These statements must be consistent with this overall policy but may provide additional detail, guidelines, and/or restrictions. Such policies may not relax, or subtract from, this policy. Where such “conditions of use” exist, the enforcement mechanisms defined within these departmental statements shall apply. Individual departments are responsible for publicizing both the regulations they establish and their policies concerning the authorized and appropriate use of the equipment for which they are responsible.”
– UAP 2520 Computer Security Controls: “Therefore, all departments operating University owned computers, including those operated by faculty, staff, and students, must develop departmental security practices which comply with the security practices listed herein. In addition, departments must have environment-specific management practices for business functions such as maintenance, change control procedures capacity planning, software licensing and copyright protection, training, documentation, power, and records management for computing systems under their control. This may be done by hiring a qualified employee, sharing resources with other departments, or contracting with UNM Information Technologies (IT). IT is available to assist and advise departments in planning how they can carry out compliance with this and other computer technology-related policies. Departments must document and periodically review established practices.”
Cyndi Johnson
- This reply was modified 8 years, 1 month ago by cdean.
cdeanParticipantFor what it’s worth, the analogy of the Kool-Aid colors standard was entirely tongue-in-cheek and intended to add some levity to the conversation and make people smile…not to be offensive.
cdeanParticipantAdditionally, I believe there needs to be an appeal process that is clearly defined and articulated.
cdeanParticipantI haven’t posted on this thread not because I’m uninterested in this topic but, rather, because of time limitations. I agree with what has been said so far, and believe that dbanward (Darrell Banward, University Press) is right on with his comment that we are trying to fit all of UNM into the same bucket, yet our needs and our customer’s expectations can be quite different. For example, the law school’s computing environment has used Exchange and AD since 1999. We use SharePoint workflows for various processes and have a high dependence on email integration with the client management system we use in our clinical law program. (We are the largest law firm in NM.) Our spam filter is customized for law. I’m pretty sure that our user’s expectations (and therefore Law IT’s expectations) are quite different than those of Computer Science, University Press, the research community, etc. Is there a mutual baseline expectation of service? Sure. But the devil is in the details and other than the assumption we all should have that relying on an enterprise service means *at least* the same level of service we currently provide, if not better, it’s hard for me to imagine that listing Law’s specific needs would benefit the greater UNM community. However, we do have the start of a Law-specific email SLA (about 9 pages worth) but it’s more along the lines of “here’s what we do now that we would continue to need” and quite frankly, I don’t have time to get it ready for public viewing right now.
I also echo wvaldez’s (Walter Winegar-Valdez) comment that enterprise services are dependent upon departments having their own SLAs indicates that our departmental SLAs are somehow the foundation that enterprise services build upon. Perhaps the intent of the statement was Central IT has the expectation that departmental IT can and will provide baseline services but isn’t the idea of an enterprise service that all departments can use it? What about departments without any IT staff? It just seems a little weird.
I am very concerned about the blanket statement about the apparent considerable latitude UNM IT has to bill departments if UNM IT somehow determines (apparently on their own, without input from the department) that an issue is due to “lack of Department staff knowledge, planning or poor UNM implementation practices”. Should the department benefiting from that finding really be the ones determining it? Very scary thought.
Those are just my thoughts on a Tuesday afternoon. I’m sure more will come to me later.
Cyndi Johnson
School of LawcdeanParticipantI guess I’m slow and/or confused. The signature page of each SLA has a spot for the approvals. Who would sign as the Customer?
Cyndi JohnsoncdeanParticipantChuck, with regard to the NetID, has the underlying problem with identify management with changing a NetID for a legal reason such as marriage been changed? By underlying problem I mean that in the past, if one changes their NetID, they lose their Learning Central history, purchasing authorizations including Banner/Hyperion/MyReports access, etc.
cdeanParticipantPatrick, Law has the same concerns about email archives but not specifically to the email limit. Our faculty also have email archives (both in .pst and online, as we are an Exchange shop) that span decades. My concern is more about who is responsible for migrating/importing/organizing the multiple archive files. Each faculty member has their own method for organizing their archive files. Some archive based on calendar year, some on academic year, some on email age, etc. They will absolutely want the same organization no matter what the email system. They won’t be happy if archives are actually just folders in their inbox. Some even store their older .pst archives on CD…available but not part of their mailbox.
Law provides our graduates with a permanent @alumni.law.unm.edu email account for the same reasons you state. Since our email environment is mature (Exchange 5.0 installation in 1998 or 1999 but VMS mail before that), we believe our needs are specific to our current use and are working on generating a law-specific SLA.
cdeanParticipantLaw reserves the right to create a customized SLA specific to our needs with mutually-agreed upon consequences for both Law and UNM IT.
Cyndi Johnson -
AuthorPosts