UW Information Technology - Kelli Trosvig

Remodel, Renovate, Rebuild: UW-IT’s Renovation

Those of you who attended the most recent UW-IT Town Hall have heard that a renovation is going to take place in the UW-IT organization. This blog entry is to follow up with more context and details about the renovation, which will be effective July 1. This renovation is driven by three factors:

• Retirements and succession planning in Senior Leadership. At the Town Hall I announced that Alisa Hata will be reducing her hours and stepping down from the day-to-day leadership of Technology Management in preparation for an eventual retirement later this year. Alisa will continue to play an important leadership role within UW-IT, including in the Leadership Development Program, new governance structure, and other efforts. I deeply appreciate her invaluable contributions to Technology Management and UW-IT, and look forward to her continued involvement with the organization.

• The need for UW-IT to be more accountable to the UW in governance of IT resources.

• The need to right-size organizational leadership positions to reflect the spans and layers of control that are manageable for each individual.  

Each of these on its own would be enough to precipitate reorganization; together they make a case for thoughtful analysis of the current organization and how best to position us for the future. This analysis includes considering what is working and what is not, what we need to accomplish, and what external factors will be impacting the campuses, UW-IT, and the UW’s other technology organizations over the coming year. 

In addition, there is a need to ensure that any reorganization not be too disruptive, so that it doesn’t negatively impact our ability to execute over the coming year when the University is depending upon us to deliver on so many major projects.

Finally, the need to right-size leadership positions and spread responsibilities means there is an opportunity to bring greater diversity of opinion to senior-level decision making.  What skill sets do we need? What synergies can we enable with the organization?  What are the most important things we need to accomplish over the next couple of years and how much can we increase the chance for success through having the right voices at the table and the right units under a single division? 

There is a lot to think about and consider in this renovation; truthfully I have been thinking about all of these issues for quite a while, so I will try to lay out my thoughts as clearly and concisely as possible. 

The Drivers

A key consideration is what are the biggest drivers that will impact UW-IT as the lead technology organization for the University?  The UW’s ever-increasing demand for technology and our ever-shrinking budget is probably one of the biggest drivers; it is important for UW-IT to help the University achieve maximum value for its technology dollars. 

Another driver is that much of the technology campus relies on is outside our control. For example, bring your own device (BYOD) is the term most often used, but it really should be BYO Devices and Services (BYODS).  The University will call on our resources to maximize value of these devices and services through reliable and ubiquitous networks, mobile applications, and ever-increasing needs for faster access to data.  At the same time, we need to minimize the risk of these devices and services through better contracts with outside providers, better understanding of responsibilities, and better options for security. We will need to work closely with campus IT providers to determine what can best be done by UW-IT and what is best done by campus units, or through third-party providers, to deliver the most value for our limited IT dollars.

Also important is understanding what are our major projects and where UW-IT’s resources are going over the coming years. The Human Resources/Payroll system replacement project is probably the single biggest venture ever undertaken by UW-IT and the campus. Improving the student experience through Kuali Student and teaching and learning initiatives will also continue to be important for the UW. The University is depending on us to deliver Enterprise Data Warehouse capabilities to advance major initiatives such as Activity Based Budgeting.  Focusing on upgrades to deal with infrastructure debt in our data centers and networks is still a priority. The need for upgrades for the digital environment and infrastructure we provide through unified communication, video-conferencing and major initiatives around collaborative applications, such as Office 365 and Google Apps, will only grow.

Finally, considering how best to diversify the Senior Leadership Team and deepen UW-IT’s outreach with the UW community, and particularly, with faculty.

The Senior Leadership Team would benefit from representation from Engineering and Customer Service, as these are central to the services we provide across the University. At the same time, Service Management and Academic Support, which we provide to faculty and departments, will need deep outreach to all three campuses to ensure we are meeting their needs.

The Renovation

With these considerations in mind, Alisa’s current responsibilities will be spun into four operating divisions, creating a flatter organization and bringing more diversity in leadership to the table: Customer Service and Support, Computing Infrastructure, IT Services, and Academic Services.

Four New Operating Divisions

Below are more details about the four new operating divisions. Each division leader will report to me and be a part of the Senior Leadership Team. These changes are effective July 1, 2012.

• Customer Services and Support will be led by Tammy Stockton, and will include Computer Operations, Customer Relationship Management, IT Consulting & Support, and the Technology Service Center. 

• Computing Infrastructure will be led by Brad Greer, continuing his current responsibilities, which include Application Integration Services, Applications Engineering, Identity & Access Management, and Network Management Tools, as well as Large-Scale Storage and Systems. In addition, Brad’s responsibilities will now include Unix Engineering and Windows Engineering. Most of you know that Brad led the Unix Engineering group for a number of years and has, over the last year, taken responsibility for a diverse portfolio of applications and infrastructure, including Research Computing and, as mentioned above, Large-Scale Storage and Systems. 

• IT Services will be led by Erik Lundberg, who has served as Director of the Computer Science Laboratory for the Computer Science and Engineering Department.  For the last year, Erik has worked half-time for UW-IT with cloud services, service management and vendor management. IT Services will include the Program Management Office, Service Management & Planning, Strategic Sourcing & Vendor Relationships, and Technology Business Continuity.

• Academic Services will be led by a yet to be determined member of the teaching faculty.  In the interim, Alisa Hata will lead this division. Academic Services will include Academic & Collaborative Applications, Accessible Technology, and Learning Technologies.

I am pleased to welcome Tammy, Erik, and Brad to the Senior Leadership Team and am confident their presence will make a positive impact on this group.

FAQ’s

Why a teaching faculty member for Academic Services? 

Much of the work we are doing right now requires an ability to engage faculty. Initiatives such as lecture capture, a campus-wide learning management system, pilots in Massive Open On-Line Courses (MOOCs), and how to teach with eTexts; all involve faculty leadership.

Do you have someone in mind for that position? 

No, I really don’t.  There are some names that come to mind, but this is an opportunity to have the groups be involved in the process.  Potential candidates should have some interaction with the groups before a decision is made.  This is an opportunity to build a bridge between the campus and UW-IT, and we need to have a process that makes sure the bridge is strong and productive.   

Are we going to be moving offices? 

No, this renovation shouldn’t require moving any office spaces; it took months to plan and execute the last move, and moving offices would be too disruptive at this time. The last move was productive because it brought groups working on different parts of the same problem closer together, but this time it shouldn’t be required.  

 

Here’s to our own R.L. “Bob” Morgan

Yesterday morning at the Internet2 meeting, UW-IT’s RL “Bob” Morgan was recognized with the prestigious President’s Award for his service to the global research and higher education community.  Bob has been key to many community-wide initiatives, including: Shibboleth, SAML, Groups, Directories, InCommon, Middleware CAMPs, and others. With his contributions at a national level it is easy to forget what a leader and mentor Bob is in our own Identity and Access Management program.  Many of you have worked with Bob, where he has been our secret ingredient to making the ultimate experience more secure and seamless for the UW community and our research partners.  Much of the work UW-IT is doing now is preparing us for the next wave of innovation in higher education. Our integration with cloud services and enabling the Net+ services is possible due the foundational work that Bob has influenced so well.  Bob continues to help ease our worries in the middleware arena and provides encouragement in our daily work lives.

Congratulations Bob; we share your accomplishments not only in UW-IT, but with the entire higher education and research community.

David Lambert, President of Internet2, and Bob at the awards ceremony

Article

Transparency and Accountability – It is a Journey

We developed an initial set of metrics for UW-IT as part of our effort to increase transparency and accountability. The metrics are now available on our external Web site. The metrics measure our organization’s performance in six key areas:

• Services – Shows customer satisfaction ratings by service area and approved or completed priority 1 and 2 projects for FY 2012; focused on service upgrades or enhancements by service area
• Finances – Shows UW-IT’s FY 2012 budget by service costs and by funding sources
• Support for Strategic Goals – Shows how UW-IT’s priority projects directly support our strategic goals
• Customer Satisfaction – Shows highlights from our May 2011 Customer Satisfaction Survey and FY 2012 priority projects; focused on addressing lowest-rated areas
• Employee Satisfaction – Shows results from our recent Organizational Pulse survey
• Peer Benchmarking – Shows how the UW and UW-IT compare to peer institutions (R-1 Research) in key measures, based upon data from the annual 2011 EDUCAUSE Core Data survey

I had the opportunity to review these metrics with the Provost in our annual budget meeting this week. She was impressed by the breadth and depth of the work going on within UW-IT and our focus on campus needs. Sharing these metrics with the campus is another way of showing UW-IT’s contributions to the University community.

We welcome any comments or suggestions on other metrics, or better presentation of data. After all, it is your story being told. Life is a journey; these metrics are a snapshot of UW-IT’s ongoing voyage to greater transparency and accountability.

Short and Sweet Entry (unlike the actual legislative session)

For the first time in three years, Washington lawmakers passed a state budget that includes no new reductions to the UW, or to other state higher education institutions. This is good news for the UW, and as good a budget as we could have hoped for, as state legislators struggled to close another nearly half-billion budget shortfall. It is a testament to the importance of higher education in our state and recognition of the need to reinvest in the UW, and other state higher education institutions.

While this is certainly positive news, it doesn’t mean that the UW’s budget challenges are over. The UW faces rising costs, new funding mandates, and no additional state funding. We will not know the exact impact on the UW’s overall budget – or on UW-IT and other UW units - until our institutional budget planning process is complete, sometime in May or June. If you want more details on the outcomes of the legislative session, see the latest Planning and Budget brief.

What we do know is that any reductions to UW-IT’s budget are likely to be small, and we will endeavor to manage them without significant impact to staff, including no budget-related layoffs. In addition, the overall funding picture is beginning to brighten and, thanks to all of your hard work, there will be opportunities for new investment in our most important initiatives. 

Kelli Trosvig Named Vice President and CIO

Hopefully many of you welcomed the announcement today that the interim was removed from my title and that the VP of UW-IT has been named.

I thought that I would write this blog entry as answers to potential questions you may have.

Why Vice-President, and not Vice-Provost, and what does this mean for the organization?

Really it is a title change, not a change in reporting relationship for either me or the organization. We still are responsible for supporting the needs of the University, be it academic, research, students, or administrative.  I still am accountable to both the President and Provost, meet with them regularly, and President Young and Provost Cauce will be attending a Town Hall over the coming year to speak with UW-IT. 

Why not do a search and see if you really are the best candidate for the job? 

There are pluses and minuses of a search process. The biggest concern is that it would bring uncertainty to the leadership of UW-IT, just as we are involved in some of the biggest initiatives we have undertaken as an organization: improving the student experience; HR/Payroll replacement; network and telecommunications upgrades; greater use of cloud resources; and greater efforts to support research, to name a few. This consideration was weighed against the potential advantages of a search.

What do you think are the most important characteristics of a great VP, and how do you think you measure up? 

Big question - lots of answers to it, and the following response is not necessarily in priority order: a good understanding of the most important issues affecting the campuses; a strong communicator, both within IT and across the university; a good listener; someone who cares about technology and seeks to understand the major forces affecting not just our campus community, but all our lives; someone who uses good judgment on when to be a leader, a fast follower, and when to let others lead; someone who recognizes that UW-IT is a strong organization because of the dedication of the staff, and understands that all we have accomplished is because of the work of the collective team, and not just one individual. And last, but not least, honesty.

I don't think I have all of these yet; both UW-IT and I are a work in progress.

Why now, after all this time, were you willing to accept the position? 

A couple of reasons: First, for the first time in three years we have stable, long-term leadership at the UW. I have the utmost respect for the President and Provost, and for their vision and commitment to providing a great public education for the students of the state of Washington. I also have respect for the organization UW-IT is becoming, and the course we have set, including our efforts in Service Management, becoming more transparent to the campus, greater accountability, and our strategic plan.

Don't we need a technical person at the head of IT?

I would have said that a few years ago, but I think right now our biggest challenges aren't technical; they are management and relationship-oriented.

Haven't you done all you can for the organization? 

I really don't think so. To a certain degree some of toughest challenges are ahead of us.  Being "interim" had its’ own limitations and issues. Some people think they can simply wait you out; ignore you; or even worse, think you are on the right course, but are afraid to engage or invest because of the word "interim”.

Is this really permanent? 

Yes, for the foreseeable future. But keep in mind that I serve at the will and the pleasure of the President and Provost; nothing is ever permanent and change is inevitable.  The safer course would have been to move back to the COO role or take on another organization in need. Staying the course is a risk for me, and truthfully it is a little out of my comfort zone. 

How is it going to be different now that you are the permanent VP?

Can't give it all away in one blog; this is long enough. Just know that I am optimistic and excited about the future for all of us.

I work in UW-IT; we are the engine of a great university.

FY 2013 Budget Narrative

As part of the UW’s annual budget planning process, UW-IT and other UW units have been asked by the Provost to prepare budget narratives for FY 2013. In the interest of transparency, all of the narratives from across the University are posted on the Planning and Budgeting Web site. I want to share with you a brief overview of what will be included in the budget narratives and update you on our budget planning efforts.

In the budget narratives, units were asked to highlight their strategic plans and priorities, key metrics, process improvements and major accomplishments. They were also asked to model the impact of a five and ten percent budget reduction. This modeling is for planning purposes only as the UW will not know the extent of its state funding reduction until the state legislature has finalized a budget later this spring.  Keep in mind that UW-IT’s budget narrative is a proposal only. Over the coming months, we will involve managers in more detailed budget planning as we prepare our FY 2013 budget.

Many factors will affect the outcome of the state’s budget discussion and its impact on the UW. The Governor’s proposed budget for FY 2013 calls for $1.7 billion in budget reductions, including a 17 percent reduction in funding to the UW.  However, the final outcome will not be known until the state legislature agrees to a budget, which is likely to take another month or more. Other factors include a proposed temporary general sales tax increase to make up for funding reductions in education, followed by a longer capital gains tax to sustain this funding. The UW might consider tuition increases to offset state budget reductions. With these issues still under discussion, it is too soon to know what the UW’s final budget reduction will be, and how that will impact UW units, including UW-IT. I will keep you updated as I learn more. You can also find links to current information on the Budget Update page on Inside UW-IT.

The good news is that UW-IT is in good financial shape, thanks to your continuing efforts to keep costs down and to use our resources efficiently and effectively. In addition, UW-IT has multiple funding sources, including state appropriations and tuition, the Technology Recharge Fee, and self-sustaining revenue. The Technology Recharge Fee was recently approved for FY 2013, with the same rate and methodology as the previous two fiscal years – an affirmation of how much the UW community values and appreciates the services we provide. Any state budget reduction will only apply to the University’s state appropriations, which is only one component of UW-IT’s central (GOF/DOF) funding, or $41,381,180, which represents about half of our budget. All of this puts UW-IT in a very solid position moving forward.

Investing in IT is really about making the UW as a whole more efficient and effective.  As the list of accomplishments in our budget narrative shows, we are working on strategic initiatives that are delivering valuable services to the UW community and positioning the University for the future. Thank you for your hard work—it is making a difference across the UW, and the campus is noticing.  

 

 

UW-IT Fires up the Campus

I had the opportunity to attend the Ignite! event yesterday afternoon on “Teaching and Learning with Technology”; the interest in the topic was inspiring.  There was lots of energy, both from the UW-IT staff and the faculty presenting, as they buzzed through the challenge of communicating the material in just five-minutes. Many, many people in UW-IT worked hard over the past six-months to roll-out and support many new technologies, and to so many areas of campus; the positive impact was evident at yesterday’s event.

Here are some highlights from the presentations and the conversations afterward:

• Canvas, the learning management system, offers a number of benefits to learning. One innovative way it is being used is for online/remote office hours. Offering alternate office hours, such as in the evening, allows the instructor to reach more students. Additionally, students and TA’s are able to form impromptu remote study groups. Another component of Canvas is SpeedGrader. This system provides timely and quality feedback to our students.
• Tegrity lecture capture sparked a lot of interest about non-course uses, such as administrative units using this for presentations/meetings. UW Bothell advised they installed Tegrity in all their classrooms.
• Yarn allows the instructor to set-up a back channel to ask questions during a lecture. This site can be moderated by a TA, and enables them to clarify a point for the student “on the spot”. This system encourages active participation during a lecture.
• Flip It enables the instructor of large lectures to segment the lecture hall into smaller working groups, thereby offering a more active participatory learning environment.
• SQLShare helps students analyze very large data sets, both on campus, in the field, or in the case of the presenter, on a boat in the San Juan Islands. The presenter also found that SQLShare teaches the students to “ask the right question”.

The results of our 2011 Teaching and Learning survey were also presented at Ignite!  The full report is coming out next month, so I will save that for another blog entry.  Let’s just say that the survey gives us more items to work on, but that is OK - we are on the right track.  

UW Information Technology 2011 Annual Report

It is with great pleasure that we release to you the UW-IT 2011 Annual Report.  We hope you enjoy reading about your efforts and seeing your contributions reflected in the narrative. 

In general, IT professionals can be a stoic lot, with little fanfare, as teams solve service problems, keep systems running and build the next generation of infrastructure. We recognize that sometimes it isn’t enough to just do good work; we have to spend a bit of effort letting people know about our current efforts and plans for the future.  This is accomplished through a variety of vehicles: IT Connect News, UW-IT Insights, our web presence, and now the UW-IT 2011 Annual Report.  As the entire institution struggles to be an efficient and effective provider of a quality education for our students, a world-class research environment for our faculty, and the most up-to-date clinical systems for our service mission, the UW is advancing IT as a transformational investment that will help the UW reach these goals.

This first Annual Report to the University community will be sent to key stakeholders (UW deans, vice presidents, vice provosts, administrators, computing directors, and others) later this week, but we wanted to ensure you had the opportunity to see this document first.

The report highlights key UW-IT initiatives that are helping UW students, faculty and staff be more effective in four key areas:

• Transforming how we do business
• Improving the student experience
• Connecting people
• Positioning for the future

The report also includes UW-IT’s FY 2012 budget and highlights from our Customer Satisfaction Survey.

You can view the report online at:  uw.edu/uwit/reports/annual.html

Thank you for all your efforts to make this possible.      

The Ultimate Purple Friday

Today the University of Washington celebrates a milestone, one-hundred and fifty years as a higher education institution. For those of you keeping track, that is twenty-three years before Washington became a state.  A little territorial university has grown into one of the greatest universities in the world, remaking itself, as the world changes, to meet the needs of the state. The UW is many things to people of the state, an economic engine that fuels the state’s economy with innovation, a purple tide filling Husky Stadium on a sunny Saturday afternoon, and a place of culture that supports the arts.  The UW brings thought-provoking research and analysis, from bench to bedside we deliver the highest quality medical care to literally tens of thousands of citizens across the state.  First and foremost though, the UW is the primary access point to higher education for the best and brightest students in the state.  We in UW-IT contribute to all these missions and visions of the UW, as we focus on making faculty, staff and students more effective.

Recognizing that we are all very busy, I encourage all of you to take part in the celebrations on Red Square; drop by and enjoy part of the festivities, celebrate both the UW accomplishments and your contributions to its success. 

http://www.washington.edu/150/w-day/

For those of you that missed it in UW Today this week (I almost did as it was at the very bottom of the page), I encourage you to read the story of Brewster Denny ringing the Homecoming Bell last Friday. Brewster Denny, 87, great-grandson of Seattle pioneers Arthur and Mary Denny and dean emeritus of the Evans School of Public Affairs, has, like so many others, been a lifelong supporter of the UW.

http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/brewster-denny-five-decades-ringing-in-uw-homecoming

Another thing I encourage you to take a look at is the latest Office and Planning Budgeting Brief on the value of a college education (fair warning, brief is a somewhat of misnomer as it is seven pages long) and myths heard in the popular media. 

http://www.washington.edu/admin/pb/home/pdf/briefs/Bubble-Brief_Final.pdf

Happy 150 years!

 

Musing on the Terrestrial

A long and winding roadmap makes it over the first hill with the HR/Payroll replacement project - we are in the foothills now!

Yesterday the UW Board of Regents (BoR) approved moving forward to seek state approval to issue an RFP for a new Human Resources and Payroll (HR/Payroll) system. This is a significant step on the road to providing the UW with the first truly modern information system to manage our greatest resource - people. It made me think of a hike up one of the most accessible peaks in the northwest—Mt Si. Every weekend literally hundreds of hikers, joggers, and families make the trek to North Bend to summit “the peak”.

With the BoR approval we have made it all the way to North Bend, and as we approach Mt Si with its many false summits, we see the entire mountain and know how beautiful it is going to be at the top. But we know the HR/Payroll system is a project we are going to have to carry up that “hill”; it is too big for UW-IT to do alone. We will need help from our partners in Human Resources, Academic Human Resources, and units on campus. UW-IT’s role on this hike will be to keep us moving in the right direction, up the hill, when we have different capacities for change and risk.

Many times on the climb up Mt. Si (to a new HR/Payroll system) we will reach a false summit; some of us will think we have gone far enough and the summit is not worth the effort. We will need to keep going, not give up, and motivate the rest of the University to reach its true summit—an integrated, modern Human Resources Information System. Many people in UW-IT and around campus have worked hard for us to reach this point, but I would like to extend a special thanks to UW-IT’s Human Resources/Payroll Program Team.

Another significant milestone reached this week through UW-IT’s efforts was the announcement of new direct deposit payments for eTravel. As of November 1 we are offering campus direct deposit for travel and other reimbursements - no more checks, no more trips to the bank. The response to the news has been amazing. Thanks to UW-IT’s Financial Systems Team for all their work over the summer and fall to make this happen.

So get on your hiking boots - I’ll meet you at the top!